Distinctly Montana Magazine

28 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • W I N T E R 2 0 2 5 - 2 0 2 6 Lucia gave the man a polite smile and made her way around the room examining the space. Eager to come to an arrangement, the miner reiterated his belief that children needed to be educat- ed and reaffirmed how willing he was to make that possible. The moment Chief Justice Edgerton asked about the price the man began tidying up a bit and cursing about the state of the space. "Well, I'll do anything I can. I'll give it to her cheap," the miner assured Lucia and her uncle. "She shall have it for $50 a month. I won't ask a cent more. It's dirt cheap." The chief justice thanked the man for his time, and he and Lucia exited the crude dwell- ing. The persistent prospector stood in the doorway repeating his desire to be generous and help the children. "Fifty dollars a month for a broken-down structure that had mud plastered walls inside and out, a mud roof and dirt floors?" Lucia said to her uncle as she shook her head. "I believe his generosity extends only to himself," she added under her breath. Lucia had begun her search for a classroom in late September 1863. After turning down the greedy prospector's offer, she spent another month trying to locate a suitable facility. Due to the exorbitant cost of renting even the most modest space, Lucia decided to teach school from her uncle's sizeable and comfort- able home. "The school was opened in a room in our own house," Lucia remembered in her journal, "on the banks of the Grasshopper Creek near where the ford and foot bridge were located, and in hearing of the murmur of its waters as they swept down from this mountain country through unknown streams and lands in the distant sea." Lucia Darling's desire to become an educator began when she was a young girl growing up in Tallmadge, Ohio. She was born in 1839 to dedicated farming parents who did not place as much emphasis on learning to read and write as they did the ability to complete chores. Lucia did, however, excel at reading, history, and math, and passed along what she knew to her brothers and sisters. When she was old enough, she received the proper train- ing necessary to become a qualified teacher. After more than nine years of service in the area of northeast Ohio and teaching at Berea College, the first interracial college in Kentucky, Lucia decided to travel west. Educators were woe- fully lacking in the western regions, and she hoped to build and grow a frontier school wherever she settled. On June 1, 1863, Lucia gathered her belongings and left home with her uncle, Sidney Edgerton, and his family and headed to Lewiston, Idaho. Edgerton was a politician, a representative from Ohio, who had been appointed U.S. judge for the territory of Idaho. The estimated three-month-long trip was being made so he could take over the position. Although Lucia would not have a group of children to teach while on the trail, she wanted

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