submitted by Jim Sanders

Ten years after arriving in Jasper County, Iowa as pioneer settlers, Anson and Lydia Dart Moxley gave birth on June 26, 1881 to their second daughter, Mabel Elizabeth Moxley. Her elder sister, Lucie Elizabeth Moxley, died in 1901 leaving Mabel the oldest of her siblings�a sister Blanche (born in 1887), and a brother, DeWitt Talmadge (born in 1891).

Mabel grew up on her parents� farm and attended country school near her parents� acreage in Hickory Grove Township, not far from the towns of Newburg and Gilman. Upon finishing the 8^th grade, she entered Iowa College Academy. She received a certificate, the equivalent of a high school diploma, in the Academy�s "Anniversary Exercises" on June 8, 1900. The Academy formed part of Iowa College which adopted the name Grinnell College in 1909. At Iowa College Academy, Mabel remembered, "We were mixed in with all the college students. So I felt like I was a college student." Graduation from the Academy bestowed eligibility for college. However, "Father lost a lot of money about that time and he didn�t feel he could send me to college. The bank failed and he lost a lot of money�so I began to teach and I just kept on." "I think he [Father] would have sent me on through college if he had the money. But you know we had an awful lot of bank trouble in Grinnell, and the banker took a lot of money from the bank and then later on he drowned himself," she recalled. Despite her parents� financial setback, Mabel pursued sub-collegiate study from 1905-1906 at Iowa State Normal School, now known as the University of Northern Iowa, in Cedar Falls.

Following her graduation from secondary school in 1900, Mabel began teaching in a standard school. "I�d teach [in] one school perhaps a year and then I�d maybe decide to teach [in] some other school�we were hired that way you know for the year and then if we wanted to change we would change�" "Generally if it [the school] was very far from home I would board with some of the people right near by the school house. But if it was near home quite often I use to drive, I�d drive a horse�and a buggy." And, "I didn�t have any electric lights at first." The curriculum included reading, mathematics, grammar, history, and geography and several different grades. She remembered: "We had certain readers for the primary, certain readers for second grade, certain readers for third and fourth." The school day lasted from 9:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m.

While still a young country school teacher Mabel met Frank Adams Barns, the son of Henry and Sarah Adams Barns who farmed west of Grinnell, Iowa. "He [Frank] was very fond of history and he was also very fond of poetry. He was always quoting poetry to me." "He had such a wonderful memory," she remembered. Portions of their courtship correspondence survive. Mabel wrote accounts of her daily activities that included occasional references to her advancing age�"I�m getting so old that I cannot stand the cold weather," and "�what else can you expect from an old maid." Frank, who in the same letters was urged to "Echo soon either in person or writing," seems ultimately to have gotten the point. On March 18, 1908 the two were married in the home of Mabel�s parents, Anson and Lydia Moxley, who then still resided on the land they settled as pioneers in 1871. The Grinnell Herald-Register noted in an article two days later that "The house was superbly decorated with American Beauty roses, carnations, ferns, house plants and evergreens, when before about fifty relatives and close friends the bride, dressed in a French lawn trimmed with point laces, and the groom, took their places before the clergyman."

After her marriage to Frank Barns, a farmer who later became a rural mail carrier, Mabel continued her teaching career, until her children were born�Rachel in 1915 and Lucille in 1919�after which she remained at home as a mother and a housewife. But present-day concepts of career obscure much of Mabel Barns� legacy. She was particularly close to her father, Anson, and interested in his side of the family. While still a single woman in her early twenties and before her marriage, she traveled to New York on money she had saved from two years teaching and spent a year with her Moxley and Dart grandparents who lived near Jefferson in Schoharie County, New York. During that year she came to know her eastern relatives well. Living for a year in the environment of her father�s past (and her mother�s as well since the Darts� farms lay next to those of the Moxleys) deepened her own sense identity. The formative nature of the year-long visit emerged clearly when she recounted an aspect of it in her old age. "I remember my grandma [Ruth Elizabeth Dart Moxley] because I went out there and stayed for a whole year. Oh, she was a very bright little woman, and she had formerly been a teacher. It came in our family as sort of a family trait. I was a teacher and Rachel (one of her daughters) was a teacher and Jean (a granddaughter) was a teacher. Five generations of teachers. That�s something to be proud of." Teaching was deeply rooted in family tradition. Mabel�s grandmother�s obituary notice observed, for example, that "She was the mother of five children and both of the parents [Ruth Elizabeth Moxely and her husband Ezekiel Moxley] and all of the children were school teachers in Schoharie county during their lives."

Mabel�s experience of living with her eastern relatives belies William Maxwell�s view expressed in his book Ancestors that "With a Middle Western family, no sooner do you begin to perceive the extent of the proliferation of ancestors backward into time than they are lost from sight." The Moxleys, perhaps unlike other families who moved westward during the latter part of the nineteenth century, were not habitual movers who as Maxwell says "did not bother to record or even to remember the place of origin." On the contrary, they migrated only once�from Schoharie County, New York to Jasper County, Iowa--, and established a successful farm on the prairie. Connections with the family in New York remained close and continuous. Mabel�s stay with her parents� families evidence this enduring connection and the trip enabled her to pass on to her own grandchildren some understanding of who the Moxley�s were. Indeed by the 1970s when she had become elderly she was the only remaining family member in Iowa with any firsthand knowledge of her father�s parents, brothers, and uncles. She confided in a letter to her daughter Rachel in September 1973 after a visit from her grandson that "I am so glad he is so interested in the Family Tree of the Moxely�s. After I am gone he will know about them." Her year in New York helped establish continuity between the past and the present, between her parents� origins and the new lives they fashioned in Iowa as pioneers. Through her the family�s past became a living past because long after her parents had died, she could speak about the eastern relatives as one who knew them personally. Similarly, Mabel�s esteem for her parents allowed her to appreciate their lives as pioneers, a subject on which she eventually became the only living authority.

Mabel Barns� legacy, however, is also one of character, if by character we mean loyalty, long-term commitment, and self-sacrifice. Ordinary perhaps in the sense that she occupied no political office, participated in no contemporary social movements, and for the most part did not exemplify any popular trends that would make her �significant� to conventional historians, her past is nonetheless important for the example of character it offers.

For all of her adult life Mabel lived in and around Grinnell. In 1917 her parents, Anson and Lydia, retired from the land that they acquired as pioneers and farmed since 1871 and bought the house at 1509 Elm Street with Lydia�s inheritance. The house came to exemplify a thick carpet of family life common to pre-World War II American communities. Increased mobility characteristic of post-war America had not yet enabled younger generations to move away. At one point, Anson and Lydia lived in the house with their daughter Blanche and her young son Donald, Blanche�s husband, Arlie Bentley, having died unexpectedly in 1920. To this house Mabel was a constant visitor caring for her elderly parents, even while she was fully occupied with her own family. Anson�s 1938 diary provides a witten record of Mabel�s activities�bringing food, preparing meals, cleaning house, doing laundry, and working in the garden. Anson, especially sensitive to Mabel�s attention, wrote in a letter to her that "I have been thinking of your hard days work yesterday for Mother and how hard you worked to give her a good day. The flowers were most lovely�. We thought of your great sacrifice in leaving all your interests at home to please Mother and I. You looked so tired when you went home and so many things unpleasant, Father thought of them all. � It brightens up each one of our lives to see you coming in the house. Mother always is better after you have been here. You are a kind of peacemaker between us. Mr. Hays [a family friend] thinks you are an angel�."

In 1941 Anson died at the age of 91. Mabel�s sister, Blanche, remained in the house at 1509 Elm Street with her mother, Lydia. Four years later in 1945 Mabel�s husband, Frank, died of heart disease at the age of only 59. After Frank�s death Mabel had little to get by on apart from his civil service pension. By then her daughters Rachel and Lucille were grown and married. She taught briefly in a country school for part of 1946 to augment her income and saved on expenses by lodging with people near the schools where she taught. But circumstances for her were hard. When her daughter Lucille�s second child was born she moved to Red Wing, Minnesota where Lucy lived. Not long after she began to spend part of the year with her daughter Lucy in Minnesota and the other part with Rachel in Iowa, continuing to do so until in her late 80s she entered Haven Guest Home in Red Wing. She died there on September 25, 1974 at the age of 93.

What is left of the past is often less than we would wish. Few documents survive from Mabel�s early and middle years. However, for the period 1970 to 1974, years she spent in a nursing home in Red Wing, a substantial series of letters written to her daughter Rachel in Iowa remain extant. They show her to have been a keen observer of the activities of her daughter Lucy�s family, but they also reinforce her lifelong interest and commitment to teaching. In a letter dated July 26, 1972 she wrote about her granddaughter that "[I] am proud of Jean. She has done well and I think she must be a good teacher." On September 13, 1972 she wrote that she anticipated visiting Northfield where her grandson served as Principal: "I am so anxious to visit a school once more and I am still interested in education and schools." For Mabel Barns teaching proved to be a lifelong calling. In addition to her parents, teaching helped form her character, a character which remained influential long after she left the classroom: in her own family she was the disciplinarian, primary money manager, and a major force in the education of her grandchildren. She not only tutored them in subjects such as reading and music, but through her they learned much about the natural environment, most especially how to identify common birds and trees as well as the basics of gardening. Mabel began her adult life as a rural school teacher; she passed the teaching tradition on to a daughter and several grandchildren; and in her old age she felt both an emptiness engendered by absence from the classroom and pride in those of her descendants who carried on the teaching tradition of her ancestors.

The following sources provided information for this biographical sketch: Personal Interview with Mabel Barns on August 16, 1973 at Haven Guest Home in Red Wing, Minnesota (recorded and transcribed by James R. Sanders). Various items in Mabel Barns personal papers, including a program for Iowa College Academy �Anniversary Exercises�, dd. June 8, 1900; a Teachers Second Grade Certificate from the Office of the County Superintendent, Jasper County, dd. August 26, 1902; a Teacher�s Contract for Rural Districts, Poweshiek County, dd. January 3, 1946; Personal Communication from Leslie Czechowski, Assistant Archivist, Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa, dd. March 30, 1998; Personal Communication from Gerald L. Peterson, University Archivist, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa, dd. March 25, 1998; Telephonic communication from Rachel E. Sanders, 30 December 2000; Mabel Barns� personal correspondence, 1970-74 [Privately held]; newspaper obituaries of Frank Adams Barns and Mabel Barns, Grinnell Herald-Register, February 15, 1941 and September 26, 1974, respectively; various Moxley family obituaries, Moxley Family Scrapbook [Privately held]; "Married � Barns-Moxley," Grinnell Herald-Register, March 20, 1908; E-mail Communication from Catherine M. Rod, Grinnell College Archivist and Associate Librarian of the College, dd. January 3, 2001.