Tag Archives: teacher

The Man with a Hoe

Charles Edward Anson P1310885Markham (1852-1940) is characterized as a minor American poet.  Since he has Evergreen roots, we’ll designate him a major Evergreen poet.  Edwin Markham was a teacher at the Evergreen Schoolhouse from 1869-1889.  During those twenty years, he would write from the East Foothills and inspire and educate students from the Chaboya family, Kettmann family, Smith Family, certainly one day principal and superintendent, Katie R. Smith, Aborn Family , Chew Family and others.  He was so cherished by the community, a redwood tree would be planted in his honor.
markhamThough not published until 1899, ten years after Edwin Markham left the employment of the Evergreen School, I like to speculate about his inspirations.  The Oregon native wrote poetry about the working class life in the late 1800’s.  He would’ve worked on the family farm as a child, like most children at the time, in the north bay area.  He would finish his teaching credential at San Jose State, then known as the Normal School, and fall in love with Evergreen.  From 1921-1931, Edwin Markham would be Poet Laureate of Oregon.
manhoe1Edwin Markham incites emotion through his metaphors and that familiar sense of earning.  It is often said that Markham’s “The Man with the Hoe” was inspired by Jean-Francios Millet’s painting of the same subject, shown here to the left.  That may have been a contemporary pop culture influence, however, Markham would get to see this activity quite regularly during his twenty year teaching stint in the town of Evergreen.
P1320557I have specific details about the farm adjacent to the schoolhouse using hoes, pitchforks and sickles, archaic equipment the immigrant family would’ve used in the old country.  The farmers in Evergreen during this time would have front row seats to the Industrial Revolution and watch their equipment mechanize before their own eyes.  Poorer farmers would have to work by hand until Evergreen’s labor force combined and circulated large rigs to harvest everyone’s fields.
Markham’s poetry would very much parallel the hardworking farmer’s plight during this time in history.  Evergreen was farm country, first appearing in the Altas in 1867.  Markham would move into Evergreen in 1869, as one time squatters became legal land owners and brand new farms were being raised all over town.  It would be harder to imagine Markham’s work not being inspired by his time in the little farming town 8 miles outside the City.
Here’s Markham’s poem.  If you enjoy this, read on.  His poetry is quite lovely.

The Man with the Hoe

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans 
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, 
The emptiness of ages in his face, 
And on his back the burden of the world. 
Who made him dead to rapture and despair, 
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes. 
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? 
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? 
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? 
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain? 
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave 
To have dominion over sea and land; 
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power; 
To feel the passion of Eternity? 
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns 
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep? 
Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf 
There is no shape more terrible than this — 
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed — 
More filled with signs and portents for the soul — 
More fraught with menace to the universe. 
What gulfs between him and the seraphim! 
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him 
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? 
What the long reaches of the peaks of song, 
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? 
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; 
Time’s tragedy is in the aching stoop; 
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, 
Plundered, profaned, and disinherited, 
Cries protest to the Powers that made the world. 
A protest that is also a prophecy. 
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, 
Is this the handiwork you give to God, 
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? 
How will you ever straighten up this shape; 
Touch it again with immortality; 
Give back the upward looking and the light; 
Rebuild in it the music and the dream, 
Make right the immemorial infamies, 
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes? 
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands 
How will the Future reckon with this Man? 
How answer his brute question in that hour 
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores? 
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings — 
With those who shaped him to the thing he is — 
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world. 
After the silence of the centuries?

Evergreen School House Rocks

image001 The Evergreen Schoolhouse opened in 1860.  There were enough Chaboyas, both European and American homesteaders and rancheros families to open up a school in Rancho Yerba Buena.  It would be incorporated into the Santa Clara County Education system in 1866 as the township became more established.

markhamFamed author Edwin Markham (1852-1940) would come to Evergreen Schoolhouse to teach in its early days after attending San Jose State University.  Teaching in Evergreen from 1969-89, he would recall the days of a single story school house, replaced by a larger two-story one.  A nearby redwood tree was planted in his honor after teaching there for twenty years, which I intend to find if it’s still around.  The Redwood would be over 100 years old now.  It is said the Evergreen helps inspire some of Markham’s work.  The commemorative redwood tree also might be the inspiration of the Evergreen trees in the School District’s logo.

P1310885In general, the School’s schedule would sync up with the fruit picking seasons and operate 10 months a year.  They insisted on keeping the school free to the public and secular from its inception.  My old time interviewees would recall the school house at the corner or San Felipe/White Road and Aborn Road, then Evergreen Road.  That may seem odd now, but it would’ve been located there the shopping center and Valero gas station stands today.  The land was donated by Mr. Nirum Cadwallader, who also donated the same amount of land to the WCR some years later, and upheld the donation by William Matthews in the transaction to Geo. Kettmann.  Education has been something Evergreen residents have felt strongly about since the town began.  The Schoolhouse had been there on Evergreen Road, now Aborn, since the 1860.  I think it’s so cool that today’s well-known creek crossings would’ve been somebody else’s path to school 150 years ago.

165) Kathrine Smithls1Katherine R. Smith (1870-1973), daughter of town leader and postmaster Francis J. Smith, would come back to Evergreen schoolhouse after being one of the first women to graduate from San Jose State University and teach down the street from her house.  The school house would remain there for a long time.  Katie is huge part of Evergreen History.

Charles C. Smith, F.J. Smith Store and Residence, Adam Herman,The two-story school house would be moved by rolling it over logs down the street on San Felipe Road and Yerba Buena Ave. during the 1950’s.  This is when San Felipe would’ve changed directions and Keaton Loop created.  Post World War and new City Planning developing in effect, Evergreen’s update began with this major move.  It also helps explain why this view of the Smith homes feels incorrect. From the drawing, the road now runs between the houses and business, and this driveway between them is essentially Yerba Buena Avenue.  Directly next to this road would’ve been Dry Creek, now known as Thompson Creek.  The Schoolhouse would come to stand where the General Store and Winery are.

P1310652That’s right, the schoolhouse moved across the street from Katherine’s House.  How rad is that?  Katherine, Katie, would become Superintendent of the Evergreen Elementary School District, watch the school outgrow this two-story facility and move to Fowler Road before expanding with new schools.  The Evergreen School is where Evergreen Elementary School is today.  Katie would live to be 103 years old and known as the Daughter of Evergreen.  As a staple of the Evergreen Community and a beloved educator, it only seems appropriate to name Evergreen’s second school in her honor in 1962.

P1310650This two-story school house still stands today, or at least that’s what I had heard from fellow Evergreenians.  I did some digging.  I found what stands where the schoolhouse was last seen.  There is this odd, adobe looking, older apartment building, called the Chaboya Apartments, standing there now at the intersection of San Felipe Road and Yerba Buena Avenue.

P1310647What I was not understanding or seeing before was that the Evergreen Schoolhouse does still stand, but with the addition to the original building disguising it.  I took a closer look at what was there and found the Schoolhouse I was looking for hidden in plain sight!  I find it here farthest to the right in the picture to the right.  It would be naturally to extend evenly in each direction, but you’re pretty limited in repurposing a building with a creek in your backyard.  To say it’s gotten some body work would be an understatement, but that’s it with the stairs leading up to it.  Only the front got the more modern adobe facelift.

It’s an incredible finding as the Evergreen Elementary School District is an ally of The Evergreen Mural Walk project, as well as a source of its inspiration.  Education is something we’d like to focus on here in Evergreen and that strength came from within in many instances.  Katie is one of those inner strengths.  The students still living having used this facility are still a connected family here in Evergreen.  Here’s some of the artwork inspired by the early days of the Evergreen Elementary School District.

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