Education Sharp William H (1 results)

Condition: Overall excellent. William H. Sharp (1863-deceased) was born in Washington and lived in The Dalles, Oregon. He attended the California Military Academy in Oakland from 1880 to 1883 and then returned to The Dalles. There, he worked as a commission merchant and ran for county clerk. Offered here is a collection of letters mainly to, with some from, William Sharp, with two of his diaries covering the year 1882. The letters are from friends and family-Sharp had many cousins with whom he corresponded regularly-and cover his time at the California Military Academy (CMA) and back in The Dalles. The CMA was founded in 1865 by Rev. David McClure, and combined college preparatory education with military drills, including firearm training, with the aim to "give the youth of the remote West an opportunity to acquire an education such as could not otherwise be obtained."[1] His attendance put a financial strain on the family; his mother, Mary Sharp, reminds him that "we have to scrach hard to keep you at school" as she scolds him for his poor performance (April 8, 1882). Mary Sharp also worried about conditions at the Academy: "Willie I hope you will be kind to all new comers & comfort them all you can I read of two boys being killed by ill treatment at boarding schools, one they took out of a warm bed & pumped cold water on him in a cold night untill he died the other they tied a [?] & triped him so he fell [?] hurt his head & killed him I hope the boys do not play such tricks at your school". (November 12, 1880) The CMA promised not to admit any boys who were "morally bad, as the institution is not designed to reform vicious boys".[1] However, a letter from C.W. Chapman, Sharp's friend and former roommate, suggests that the school's rigorous drilling was not necessarily successful. Chapman writes from Nevada City, a mining town in central California: "I'm working hard as usual; but I expect you don't care anything about that. I'm having lots of fun too, if that interests you. You don't know one half as many girls as I go to see every evening. And they are the kind of girls that you can have fun with too. [.] I am making up for lost time. [.] I haven't had my fingers in anybody else's pie yet, and maybe I haven't had them in anybody's anything else either. But that's some more trash. [.] How do you fellows treat the little dears now? I hope you don't deal with them as harshly as you did when I was down there." (January 10, 1883) The two diaries agree with Chapman that the environment was a good deal more lax than the school's literature let on. Besides near-nightly pranks and pillow fights that often caused the beds to break, Sharp frequently describes giving other students a "thrashing" and even has a girl visitor, Laura, who stays the night in his room regularly: "Slept with Laura again. Fine time. Hardin got caught" (February 22); "Rained all night. Laura staid in our room" (March 14); "In D's room last night. [.] Teased Laura and gave her a good spanking" (August 2); "Laura came in and slept all night with me" (August 27). In an April entry, he mentions having "Pulled Laura out of her room last night," suggesting that she lived on campus-perhaps a family member of one of the professors or staff-or that she was a resident of a nearby neighborhood. Of course, the boys are disciplined, with Sharp often mentioning fellow students being "arrested" (likely put in detention) or expelled, including a row between "the republican boys" and "the democrat boys" leading to "60 under arrest" and a lecture (October 20). However, the faculty sometimes put disciplinary matters into the students' hands: "The fellows that lied at prayers wouldn't own up, and no one could get till they did. We got permission to make them. We tried to persuade them at first, but couldn't see through it. Dakan had a dagger. We were going to take it away and make him confess. Most of the fellows were afraid. I nearly had a fight with him before dinner. After dinner we threatened to thrash him if he refused to own up. He said he would go and own up if the others would [.] after dark Dakan and Dodge ran away. Some of us ran after them and caught Dakan in a grocery store. Only three went up to him. The others were afraid. We brought him back and made him confess. Dodge came back afterwards" (January 20) In the middle of that year, the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed; a fixation on Chinese immigrants runs throughout Sharp's diary. It seems that the CMA employed Chinese workers in the cafeteria, as Sharp mentions "Chinaman's hair in pudding" (April 25), that "The chinaman is getting to[o] fresh at the table wants knocking down" (August 2), and that "Chinaman are getting funny, won't give us enough to eat" (October 7). Sharp even "Dreamed I was a chinaman. There being too many in the country, they tried to drown me" (January 29). Of the coursework, Sharp generally reports that lessons are good, poor, or difficult, focusing more on the-on his telling-sometimes odd behavior of the professors: "Prof. Bowers called himself a chinaman" (January 6); "Prof. called me a jackass" (March 14); "Prof. taken for a yankee by a yankee" (July 21). Later letters are mainly between Sharp and his wife-to-be, Jennie Booth. He mentions attending a temperance meeting, updates her on business, which is "not overly brisk" but "good enough" (October 6, 1888), and describes hiring a "mongolian" cook who is "a very fair specimen of the celestial race" (October 5, 1887). Booth describes Oregon City on a visit there as "very picturesque" but primitive: "it has only one street that is passable the rest are so rocky that you can't get over them with a conveyance." (August 17, 1888). Around this time, Sharp runs for county clerk as a Republican; a W.T. McPhire writes from Mosier: "I am glad to know you are in the field for the clerkship, which as you state is a very desirable office. Now I can and will say this much, (although opposing you in politics) that if you receive the nomination fo.…