In 1953, Margot Pringle, newly graduated from Cornell University, took a job as a teacher in a one-room school in rural eastern Montana, sixty miles southeast of Miles City. “Miss Margot,” as her students called her, would teach at the school for one year. This book is the memoir she wrote then, published here for the first time, under her married name. Filled with humor and affection for her students, Horseback Schoolmarm recounts Liberty’s coming of age as a teacher, as well as what she taught her students. Margot’s school was located on the SH Ranch, whose owner needed a way to retain his hired hands after their children reached school age. Few teachers wanted to work in such remote and primitive circumstances. Margot lived alone in a “teacherage,” hardly more than a closet at one end of the schoolhouse. It had electricity but no phone, plumbing, or running water. She drew water from a well outside. The nearest house was a half-mile away. Margot had a car, but she had to park it so far away, she kept her saddle horse, Orphan Annie, in the schoolyard. Miss Margot started with no experience and no supplies, but her spunk and inventiveness, along with that of her seven students, made the school a success. Evocative of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s school-teaching experiences some eighty years earlier, Horseback Schoolmarm gives readers a firsthand look at an almost forgotten—yet not so distant—way of life. “Margot Liberty has written a warm and memorable account of the everyday struggles and triumphs of teaching in an isolated, one-room schoolhouse in the 1950s. She gives us a very personal glimpse into a unique time and place in the American West that might otherwise have been forgotten.” — Pamela Smith Hill, author of Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life “A charming book and a pleasurable read. Margot Liberty’s memoir of teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in a sparsely populated corner of Montana seems timeless, yet its setting in the early 1950s gives us a glimpse of a little-studied, changing, postwar West.”— Mary Murphy, coeditor of Montana Legacy: Essays on History, People, and Place “Liberty’s memoir is a wonderful complement to studies of rural schools and calls attention to the continued legacy of her time as a horseback schoolmarm.”— Pacific Northwest Quarterly   Margot Liberty , widely known as an anthropologist specializing in Northern Plains Indians and ranching culture, is the author, coauthor, or editor of Cheyenne Memories , with John Stands In Timber; A Northern Cheyenne Album , with photographs by Thomas B. Marquis; Working Cowboy: Recollections of Ray Holmes ; A Cheyenne Voice: The Complete John Stands In Timber Interviews ; and Songs and Snippets: Poems of Margot Liberty . Horseback Schoolmarm Montana, 1953–1954 By Margot Liberty UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS Copyright © 2016 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. Manufactured in the U.S.A. All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8061-5388-9 Contents List of Illustrations, Preface: The SH School — Before and After, Acknowledgments, Prologue, 1. Here Comes the Schoolmarm, 2. A Full First Day, 3. A Visit from Mountain Climbers, 4. A Pumpkin Party, 5. We Are the Girls from the Institute, 6. Country School Christmas, 7. Schoolhouse in the Spring, 8. The Garland School and the Other Side of the River, 9. Continuing Education, and Teacher, Goodbye, Epilogue: "Twilight" and "Nocturne", Postscript, Notes, Further Readings, CHAPTER 1 Here Comes the Schoolmarm I learned some details about the SH School before I was ever confronted with the reality of living there. I had already determined that I wanted a job as a country schoolteacher out west. After I sent in an application for an open position at the SH School in Montana, I received a response from the school clerk, which arrived while I was still living in Ithaca, New York. His letter read as follows: Dear Miss Pringle, Thank you for your application. We do not have a teacher for our school yet but your qualifications sound adequate, so perhaps we can assume that we have one now. There will be four children in Grade One, one in Grade Two, one in Grade Three, and one in Grade Seven. You will have a very nice sized teacherage to live in under the same roof, although the school itself is not extra large. There is a well close to the school house and electricity of which the school district pays up to five or six dollars. Perhaps you would like to know something of the surroundings. The SH Ranch is a very large ranch about 50 miles from Miles City. There is a good deal of irrigated land and acres and acres of dry land farming. The closest home from the school is about one half mile. Would you let us know your definite answer as soon as possible. Yours truly, Ted Hirsch P.S. There are a few things in the teacherage in the line of cupboards, but there is no bed or stove. I would suggest a hot plate for l