A recent addition to Archives & Special Collections, the Julia A. Power, Student Life Papers (MS 0417) document the life, work, and travels of University of Nebraska alumna Julia Power. Though the collection is small, at less than one linear foot, it is trove of information about women’s lives in the first half of the 20th century, college in the 1910s-1930s, rural education, and teacher’s lives.
Born in Dixon County, Nebraska, in 1887, Power enrolled at the university in 1911 after attending Nebraska Normal College in Wayne, Nebraska, and working at rural schools in Nebraska and Iowa. She earned her BA (1918) and MA (1924) from the University of Nebraska. In 1938 she completed her PhD with the thesis Shelley in America in the nineteenth century: His relation to American thought and his influence. Possessing a curiosity for new places and experiences, Power traveled extensively to pursue teaching jobs and continue her education. Power’s career included teaching stints in Nebraska, Colorado, Idaho, and Montana, as well as other locations in the Midwest and West, and ranged from teaching at a one-room schoolhouse to working as a trade school instructor for disabled veterans and teaching college-level courses.
A particularly important part of the collection is Power’s unpublished memoir, Teacher on the Hoof: Experiences of an Itinerant Teacher. Spanning Power’s life up to the mid-1940s, the memoir vividly presents moments and routines in the day-to-day life of students and teachers. With wit and reflection, Power makes frank observations about the individuals in her life – including University of Nebraska professors – and captures details about the living conditions and social life of an unmarried, working woman. Her memoir also touches on broader events such as World War I, the 1918 influenza pandemic, and the Great Depression and describes the many communities she lived in.
To learn more about the collection, contact Archives & Special Collections at archives@unl.edu.
-- Traci Robison, Assistant Professor of Practice, Outreach Archivist