The Amazing Legacy of Annie Webb Blanton

From Stone 46, one of the “FOOTPRINTS OF FAYETTE” on the Courthouse Lawn: “Annie Webb Blanton (1870-1945), a La Grange High School graduate, was the first Texas woman elected to statewide office when she became State Superintendent for Public Instruction in 1918.”

Although I worked with and for Debbie Mauldin Cottrell, now president of Texas Lutheran University, for almost a decade, it was only when Dr. Cottrell and I (with others) were enjoying a visit over lunch in Round Top in early November that I heard of her interest in Fayette County as the home of the woman educator whose life Dr. Cottrell researched for her doctoral dissertation/degree in history. When she spoke of Annie Webb Blanton, I thought the name might be vaguely familiar, but I surely did not have any idea of the importance of Dr. Blanton’s contributions to public education in Texas during the years after World War I and up to her death in 1945.

Now, a few months later, having read Dr. Cottrell’s biography of Annie Webb Blanton published by Texas A&M University Press (1993), I am determined to sing Dr. Blanton’s praises to a wider audience, and I hope you too will find her life worthy of note and recognition and recounting. Dr. Blanton was born in Houston to parents with deep family roots in La Grange, but following the death of her mother in 1879 when Annie and her twin sister were age 9, her father moved his family of seven young children back to La Grange where their paternal grandmother helped care for them.

Annie’s twin died when they were 15, but she persisted with her studies and graduated from La Grange High School in 1887, immediately taking a position to teach at the tiny one-room school at Pine Springs, just north of Flatonia. Only 17 years of age, she nevertheless had the credentials, strength of character, confidence, and presence to succeed in this role. Unfortunately, her father’s death in 1888 meant she had to make a change: as the oldest sibling still in the household, Annie determined the best course was to move all of them to Austin, where they lived with her older married sister. There Annie began work in the Austin public schools, and also began her studies for a baccalaureate at the University of Texas, where she eventually graduated in 1899.

Ambitious for more by 1901, and with her younger brothers out of school and on their own financially, Annie moved to Denton, joining the faculty of the new North Texas State Normal College for teacher training. Her ambition was not only for herself, however. She soon realized that there were others who could benefit from her pursuit of greater recognition for women teachers in what had always been a male-led organization, the Texas State Teachers Association, and she was eventually elected its first female president in 1916. From there, it was clear to her that the route to more reform of teacher training and recognition for women teachers in rural and urban settings led through the state capitol, so she sought the office of Texas Superintendent of Public Instruction, first winning the Democratic Party Primary, in which women were allowed to vote. She further carried the vote of the male-only state electorate and won in November, the Democrats then being dominant in post-Reconstruction Era Texas, handily winning through her enthusiastic and hard campaigning.

As the first woman State Superintendent for Public Instruction, she focused her work on appointing more women to leadership roles in local schools, setting higher standards for local superintendent certification, and winning higher salaries for teachers (along with salary equalization for male and female teachers, where she had less success than she hoped for). In addition, she won approval for a constitutional amendment that increased property tax support for local county school districts, winning for herself a second two-year term in 1920 at the same time.

Having pledged to restrict herself to two terms as State Superintendent, Blanton ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1922, and then took a position as a professor of education at UT, where she completed her life of service to education in Texas. Before her death at age 75, she had also completed a doctoral degree, founded Delta Kappa Gamma (the national honor society for women educators), and researched, published, and taught extensively on the improvement of schools and instruction for rural Texas students.

My father attended a oneroom school from 1925 – 1933 here in Fayette County, taught all seven years by Emil Kern (who let Dad skip one grade and sit for his pre-high school exams a year early). I expect Dad and his classmates were unwitting beneficiaries of Dr. Blanton’s efforts, not only in their elementary years (when local funding would have increased), but also in later years when the quality of instruction for new teachers would have been more rigorous. Surely Dad’s early education in Harms School was no handicap, and he successfully completed a degree in mechanical engineering at Texas A & M in 1941.

May we all, dear readers, have the same fervent commitment to quality education that this Pioneer Woman Educator* with such deep roots in Fayette County always held for the students of our state!

*Title of the Blanton biography by Debbie Cottrell, published by TAMU Press.