1. The family background

First, a little bit about the back story of the Ackley family.

Mahlon Foster Ackley (1807-1873) was born in New Jersey. Selena Ann Hammond (1815-1901) was born in Philadelphia. They married and their children were all born in Allegheny. Of the five who survived to adulthood, Maria was in the middle. She had two older sisters, Laura and Selena, and a younger sister and brother, Emma and Lemuel.

Some biographical material about Maria’s parents can be found in Selena Ann Hammond Ackley’s obituary from 1901.

 

The Ackley family history site also quotes another couple of obituaries (unidentified) which provides the following extra information:

“She journeyed by stage and canal with her mother to Johnstown, Pa, where she was married to the late Mahlon F Ackley of Allegheny, who was employed on the Pennsylvania railroad, which was then in the process of construction. Early in the 1840s she came to Allegheny with her husband and had resided there ever since. She saw the city grow from a straggling village to a metropolis. Mrs Ackley was for many years a member of the North Avenue Methodist Episcopal church, and before the formation of that church was, with her late husband, connected with the Arch Street church of the same denomination.”

The 1850 and 1860 census returns list Mahlon as a carpenter and in 1870 as a car maker.

As well as giving her history, Selena’s obituary also gave details of her five surviving children in 1901. Taking them in order of birth they were, Laura J Raynor (1839-1917), widow of Henry Raynor who died in 1873. Selena A Barto (1848-1929), widow of Baptist minister, Charles Edmund Barto who died in 1883.  Then we have Maria Frances Ackley (1850-1938) and Emma Hammond Ackley (1855-1929). And finally there was Lemuel Mahlon Ackley (1857-1921), who became a lawyer in Chicago. Maria went to him first when she left CTR. Lemuel died quite spectacularly when a disgruntled defendant shot him in a courtroom in 1921.

Laura Ackley became a dressmaker before she married. Selena Ackley became a teacher and Maria followed Selena to become a teacher as well.

In the 1870 census both girls (Selena aged 22 and Maria aged 19) are listed as teachers.

Selena (with variant spelling Salina) Ackley is mentioned in the Pittsburgh Daily Commercial for July 24, 1868. At a meeting of the Board of School Directors of the Reserve Independent School District she is elected to work as Assistant in the Spring Garden School.

However, Selena would leave the teaching profession on marrying Baptist minister, Charles Barto. We don’t have a date for their marriage, but their first child was born in 1873. Years later as a widow with two adult children she listed herself as “private teacher” in a census return.

This means we can safely assume that all references to “Miss Ackley” as a teacher in Allegheny or Pittsburgh for the period 1872-1879 refer to Maria.

Maria was asked about her schooling in the 1907 court hearing. She said she had been educated at the High School, Pittsburgh, and then at the Curry Normal School. The latter was for teacher training. It may not be connected but early ZWT meetings c.1880 took place at the Curry Institute.

There are a number of newspaper references in Pittsburgh papers to Maria Ackley, M F Ackley and Miss Ackley, all in connection with teaching.

In the next article we will look at her teaching history, such as it was, prior to 1870.