Henry H. and Irene C. Diedrich (Peggy) Patterson had six daughters. Five of them went on to become school teachers. Only one, the second-oldest Clara, made it her lifelong passion.
Clara Patterson was born in Illinois in 1906; she finished her teaching career during the heart of the uranium boom in Jeffrey City 59 years later.
Her father was a pioneer in his field, that being a surveyor, oilfield speculator and teacher. Henry H. Patterson was a Renaissance man long before the term became popular.
Clara came to Wyoming when she was just six years old. The family of five at the time moved into an oilfield camp at Shannon on the northern edge of the Salt Creek Oilfield in Natrona County, the first major field to go into production in the Cowboy State.
Henry discovered the town while working as a surveyor for the Chicago North Western Railway, as it looked at building a line from Orin Junction to Shannon in the summer of 1912.
He wasn’t quite ready to send his girls into the wilderness that was Natrona County in the early 20th century, so they went back to Illinois while he stayed in the Salt Creek Field, trying to strike it rich.
Clara went to kindergarten and first grade in Illinois, then had a private tutor for second and third grade.
In the meantime, Henry struck up a friendship, and later partnership, with Natrona County petroleum pioneer Cyrus Iba.
In 1915, he brought his family back to Wyoming for good.
“My sister and I walked to home camp school in Midwest, two and a half miles,” Clara said in a 1983 interview. “It was taught by Sally Mack in a tar paper shack. There were 16 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. “
Peggy Patterson valued education. She had received an excellent education at the Ward Belmont School in Nashville, Tennessee.
Ward Belmont was regarded as one of the best girls’ schools in the nation from 1913 to 1951. At its peak, there were 1,000 girls taking classes and living on campus.
“Mom said I was learning a lot of things I shouldn’t know in fifth grade,” Clara said. “She sent me away to school.”
She spent her middle school years in Tennessee, with summers back home in Wyoming. By the end of her eighth-grade year, Clara put her foot down.
“I told them I wasn’t going back,” Clara said. And she didn’t.
Instead, she went to the fledgling Salt Creek High School, which evolved into Midwest High School in 1925.
Clara and her sister Elizabeth were in the first (and last) graduating class from Salt Creek High School. She had eight classmates.
Commencement was on June 6, 1924, at the Midwest Movie Theater.
Casper Daily Tribune – June 5, 1924
NINE STUDENTS GET DIPLOMAS AT SALT CREEK
Commencement Exercises Are Conducted Last Evening
“Commencement exercises at the Salt Creek high school were held last evening, June 3, attended by a large crowd of friends and well wishers of the graduates. Seven girls and two boys, making nine in all, were graduated from that high school. The school was started four years ago without the complete four grades, these being added as necessary.
E. B. Edison, who will deliver the commencement address at the Natrona County High School this evening, delivered the address at the Mid-West graduating class last night. His address dealt with the proper aims taught, using as the matter of “The Winning Combination,” education plus hard work. A pleasing class of songs was given at the exercises which were opened with an overture by the Midwest Orchestra.
The Rev. W. H. … delivered the invocation after which the members of the class were given their awards.
Those receiving diplomas are:
- Miss Beulah Lefler
- Miss Marie Ross
- Miss Myra Waugh
- Miss Violet Snyder
- Miss Eliazbeth Patterson
- Miss Clara Patterson
- Miss Mary Seals
- Mr. Travis Wagner
- Mr. Finian Davis
Supt. G. H. Thompson presented the diplomas. The entire class average was above 80.
The invocation was delivered by Rev. H. B. Bothaide.”
After graduation, Clara headed to Greeley, Colorado, and the Colorado State Teachers College. In those days, only a two-year degree was required to become a certified teacher, but the qualification exams were rigorous.
Before the modern era, there were county superintendents of public schools. They administered tests and qualifications for a teaching license within their counties. Clara applied for a certificate in her home county of Natrona. Once certified, she was able to teach anywhere in Wyoming and in neighboring states.
“I took the teacher’s exam to get a certificate,” Clara said. “It was a very specific list of what you would teach, you had to have and practice all that knowledge.”
Her first teaching position was at Deadwood Springs between Sheridan and Buffalo at the Snodgrass Ranch. She had two students, Lucy and Evelyn Snodgrass.
“Evelyn was my first real student,” Clara said.
She met her first husband, Johnny Tisdall, at the ranch. They were married in 1929 and divorced eight years later.
Casper Daily Tribune, August 4, 1929
“At 3 o’clock Miss Clara Patterson of Midwest became the bride of John A. Tisdal. of Johnson County. They were attended by Mr. and Mrs. Henry H. Patterson, parents of the bride, and expect to make their home in Midwest.”
Clara bounced around rural schools, eventually ending up at Lysite at Fremont County School District 40. (later consolidated with Fremont 24 in Shoshoni)
“What a great span there was in the activity of a teacher, and the different ways you taught from my first year to my last,” Clara said.
It was at Lysite that she met Henry Jensen, who was teaching at a school north of Powder River in Natrona County.
“I arrived in Lysite in 1940. I was interested in Henry Jensen,” Clara said. “His family was in the sheep business. When school was out in spring we went to sheep camp. It was me, six men, two herds of sheep and Hal and his stepfather.”
Hal and Clara stayed in a sheep wagon. She cooked for the men, three meals a day.
“By sundown, you were washing the last batch of dishes in the sheep wagon,” Clara said.
During World War II, Clara and Hal moved around the West. Hal was in the Army working as an inspector.
They were in Washington State, Texas, Wyoming, and many parts in between. At each assignment, Clara would substitute teach.
“You were lucky if there was a place in the school building; usually, we lived in the barracks,” Clara said. “The poor little kids were a motley collection from all over the world. They moved with their dads.”
She had pity for the many young, pregnant women she encountered.
“Young girls saw an army uniform, became mothers, caught in the Army web,” Clara said.
Clara was a warrior, a teacher who reached her students, no matter the situation or the challenge.
Her sisters taught for just a short while, leaving the profession once they were married and started to have children.
“Elizabeth taught three years in Midwest and never went back,” Clara said. “Margaret taught two years, so did Bess.”
Hal had a job in Oregon, working with the Morrison Knudson Construction Company on a large dam project.
“I had 75 students one year in two shifts at a dam camp in Oregon,” Clara said. “It was eight to noon, then one to five. The Morris Knudson Company. It was the nicest teaching job I ever had, good salary, vacations, and matched the pay of men at Knudson.”
With 75 multi-grade elementary students, grading their work was a challenge after teaching nine hours a day.
“We had five high school students come in the evening to help grade the work of the 75 students. They sat around the kitchen table,” Clara said. “All five kids became teachers, two boys, three girls. There were lots of different expectations in those days.”
Another difference in expectations came from the Wyoming Department of Education. Beginning around 1960, they required a four-year degree to obtain a teaching certificate.
Clara taught at Lysite until 1959, then she returned to the University of Wyoming as a 53-year-old college junior.
She graduated with a BA in Elementary Education in 1961, an honor graduate.
Hal had retired from teaching in the mid-50s, working as a PR man for REA.
She graduated from UW after summer school in 1961 and took a teaching position in Jeffrey City.
Jeffery City was riding the crest of the uranium boom, and children flowed into the rapidly growing school at every grade level.
Clara taught at Jeffrey City for four years, retiring from public education in 1965.
“After retirement, I started a business helping children with problems,” Clara said. “But I was out of the classroom and out of immediate contact with children. I realized children are different now.”
Midwest is a sleepy little oilfield town today, with a Class 1-A school system barely hanging on, but it was different when Clara was a girl.
“I remember when the Nance family opened a bakery,” she said. “Stock Street had the original hospital, with a commissary in back. Down the street was a movie theater, dance hall, and hotel.”
Midwest had an active Masonic Lodge in the 1920s. Clara remembered that a group of local men who organized a civic group called the Yellow Dogs.
“A Yellow Dog was the light on a derrick,” Clara said. “The were the civic organization of Midwest. They built a golf course, brought in businesses, and bands for dances. It was fun to live in a boom town. Everything was happening all the time.
Clara passed in 1994, Hal in 2001.
Throughout her teaching career, she taught the history of whichever community she was located in. She and Hal were active in the Wyoming Historical Society after they both retired.
Her legacy remains alive with the Wyoming Historical Society (WHS). The annual award given by the WHS is named in her and her husband Henry’s honor.
If you know a deserving teacher, please nominate them for a Wyoming Historical Society award. The deadline is March 30. Click here if you are interested.
Clara M. & Henry E. Jensen Outstanding
Wyoming History Teacher Award
- Submit the Nomination Form and supporting material online.
- The award is made to a Wyoming teacher in recognition of outstanding performance in teaching Wyoming history in the classroom.
- The recipient receives $250.00, a plaque, and a plaque for the recipient’s school.
- Judging Criteria
- Awards committee members will review each nomination to determine a winner.