Minerva Teichert Autobiography Part 3

Continuing on a thread from 2011, I'll continue along Minerva Teichert's autobiography:

I fell quite in love with a young country boy near Soda, but Ben Dixon spent money on me. He visited my home in vacation. He wrote to me every day. I believe, of course, his bon bons won me. We became engaged. I took up a homestead so did he. He wanted me to marry him and live on his homestead. I wanted him to come live on mine till I “proved up”. We were both keeping still about those homesteads, but finally fess up. We were both obligated to our fathers and had to “prove up”. I tried to final proof in fourteen months but failed, so did he… So, it would be at least three years residence before we could get married.

I had by now finished the 3 year Academic Course at the Art Institute in Chicago was back in Idaho dead broke and in debt. I took the first chance teaching a country school again. My family was living in Arizona so I went to my cousins in Sterling, Idaho where I taught 60 pupils in a tucked u[p] room without space for aisles. I would prove up on my homestead in early spring and be married soon as school was out. The night before I went to be married the brother of my cousin’s wife, who had been an admirer for a number of years, stayed late. He just sat there holding my hand in his silent way and the tears ran down the insides of his eyelids. If he had asked me I think I would have given Ben Dixon up, but he didn’t. He just held my hand very tight, almost crushing it, and let me trek on. I think he didn’t hear a word I said.

At last I was visiting with my other cousins, the Wades in Ft. Hall Bottoms when we went to American Falls to see “A Hundred Years of Mormonism” played in Film. An old chum asked, “What will your folks think when they find you’ve married out of the church?” I answered flippantly, “Oh, we should worry. After it’s over they’ll like it alright.” But her eyes told me she did not believe me. To tell the truth it was the first time I had thot about it. That night on the Bottoms I dreamed another man came and begged me not to marry Ben Dixon—that I was meant for him. I was angry and answered, “Of course I shall. I’m going to married next Sunday.” I could not see his face distinctly –I did not want to. I feared it might be Herman Teichert and he did not speak good enough American for me, but I noted the tweed of his suit and in a life time I could never forget the tiny red and orange flecks in that soft dark tweed. I have watched for it and longed to find it as I have traveled in cars across America. I’ve looked for it in the crowds on Coney Island, Atlantic City, Broadway, on the boats between New York and Boston. Sometimes I’d think I saw it, then the old man who stood behind the wearer would not be there. What would I have done had I recognized the particular tweed? I do not know. It seemed, in my dream, that everything in his life depended upon marrying me and he wept. I became alarmed and said, “why I’ll not marry Ben Dixon if you don’t want me to. I’m sure he doesn’t care so much for me as that.” When I woke up it seemed I could hear him saying, “You’ll never wait, you’ll never wait.”

I was so distressed I got up and dressed at the first hint of day. I walked along the river throwing rocks into the water and skimming them across the glassy surface and calling on my rebellious friends. Would I listen to a fool of a dream when I was to be married next Sunday?

At breakfast my cousin, Clarence Wade, said, “Minerva, what makes you so pale this morning and why were you walking along the river in the night?” “Oh, nothing,” I answered, but he and Cousin Marion, his wife both insisted I tell them what was the matter, so I told them my dream in an insolent way. They both declared, “You’ll never marry Ben Dixon.” Of course it was up to me to show them. For the fi[r]st time Ben Dixon asked me in a letter who should perform the ceremony. I answered Pres. Hyde of Pocatello Stake, my father’s friend. His next letter came Thursday. He said something that could never be unsaid—“I would rather live single all my life than to be married by a Mormon or in a Mormon church.” It was the first thing he had ever said against the Mormons and while I made no profession of religion I made the home plate with both feet. “Start your life!” was my answer. He came to me begging forgiveness but in his apology I detected a lie. He said he objected only to Pres. Hyde. So in Pocatello I saw President Hyde to ask if they had ever had any differences—Ben Dixon was a deputy sheriff at this time and Pres. Hyde Probate Judge. Wm A. Hyde answered, “No, indeed. I have always admired the young man. We are friends.”

Well, it was a shock to my vanity. For four or five years he had written to me every day or every other day and his letters had lead me to believe him deeply in love. I tho[ugh]t I should marry the man who loved me so much even tho[ugh] back in Sterling I was leaving one that I loved more. So Herman became my real sweetheart and my family moved back from Arizona. They wanted me to marry a Mormon boy. I knew none or ever had except speaking acquaintances so after another year’s teaching and to avoid our approaching wedding day, Mother offered to help me go to New York to study under Robert Henri. She begged me to wait a year. So I took French leave of Herman who was in Idaho while I taught in Pleasant View, Utah. I was easy to do at first for I wanted very much to study under Robert Henri, but what should I do with Herman. I quit—told him to marry a friend of ours. I was leaving him behind. This washed my hands of him. I think I threw his pleading letters on the floor and walked on them for days at a time, but I didn’t feel that way and many times I fought back the bitter tears with folly. I gathered a crowd about me in my boarding home. I kept in a crowd at the Art Student’s League. I was no longer a dashing girl. I was from now on mature. I did not ever let myself think. I painted like mad under Dimitri Romanoffski. I had had three years of drawing at the Art Institute under John Vanderpool but I joined a Bridgman drawing class in New York and stayed with him until he told me what ever told few, “You can draw as well as I, now, paint.”

There are a few details here as pertains to Minerva’s family:

(a)    The extended relationship with different cousins – different sets on her mother’s side.

(b)    Fred’s relationship to William A. Hyde of the Pocatello stake. The relationship here would have been through the church, not via a professional relationship.

(c)     There is a shocking resemblance or repetition between Ella and Fred’s courtship, along with Minerva’s. It’s a sort of mystical romance. The finding of one’s spouse via a dream. There’s also the way the “wrong match” was to be short circuited. Ella used an engagement to get her mother to allow her to go to school. She now was using the desire and promise for school to keep her own daughter from getting married.

(d)    Her parents cared that she stay married within the faith (even though she does not; Herman later converts when she goes to the hospital for lead poisoning). It’s somewhat surprising that Minerva had not thought about it to this point. Her parents were very religious and involved in the Mormon community. She helped fund a mission her father fulfilled in his 40’s. How did she not think about this until this time? What does that say about Minerva?

(e)    Parents go to and from Arizona. It’s not clear what makes them return or exactly when they returned based on these notes, something I will have to tease out further. I have a good sense of when they left, but not when they came back.

(f) Obligation to the father. Was this a financial and/or moral obligation? It is something she shared with Ben Dixon.

1938 Article on Minerva Teichert (Fred's Daughter)

The Relief Society Magazine (a periodical for women published unofficially by the Church of Jesus CHrist of Latter Day Saints) in Volume 25, No. 3 (March, 1938), pages 168-170 has an article on my great-grandmother, Fred's daughter Minerva Kohlhepp Teichert. The article is entitled "One of Ours (Minerva Kohlhepp Teichert)," and judging by it, this is a recurring series. It was written by Dorothy Clapp Robinson. An interest article in its own right, I'll only focus on the details in it up to Fred's death in 1919. I prefer providing the source not in bits (as you can tell by now), so here is the section I am interested in:

"Undoubtedly her talent for drawing was inherited. Perhaps there was born with her, too, a talent for perseverance but both qualities were added upon by a rare type of directed effort. There came a time when she tasted the joy of recognition by critics and teachers but not until she had paid the price. Out of Boston came an educated talented Jew, convert to a new faith. In the West he married a girl who had been bred in that faith. Both had literary and artistic ability. Minerva, their second child, was given all that complete understanding and encouragement could give, but there was no money for painting lessons. Isolated on a farm, miles and miles from a teacher, no money to take her where there were teachers, mere living was a struggle. One less valiant would have wept and succumbed to their lack of opportunity. Not Minerva. 'Knock and it shall be opened unto you' had literal meaning for her. She knocked and knocked until doors of opportunity began opening as doors will to those who persist.

At age thirteen, the age when most girls are just leaving the doll period, she was already making her own living and paying for painting lessons. Minerva Kohlhepp was born in Ogden but in her first months her parents moved to Idaho. There is little about dry-farming and ranching that she does not know. There is little of it she has not put on canvas. In a little shore in American Falls she first exhibited. While still a child she dressed a group of dolls in native costumes of every country. They drew a great deal of praise but seemingly took her no nearer an art teacher.

In Pocatello she worked for her board and attended high school. There she met a woman with splendid artistic ability who helped her to other contacts. A Mrs. Sparks who was going to San Francisco needed a girl for nursemaid. Minerva had been preparing herself for just such an opportunity. In San Francisco she found time for work at Mark Hopkins' Art School.

After graduating from high school she taught in rural Idaho just long enough to insure a year of study in the East. In February, 1908, she enrolled as a student in the Art Institute in Chicago--and what a student! Once there, nothing less than finishing would satisfy. She worked and schemed and borrowed money in order to stay. By July she had completed the first year's work. In 1912 she completed a three years' academic course beside studying Dramatic Art and Indian Dancing at the Chicago Conservatory of Music.

The year 1913 found her back in Idaho teaching school, paying debts, writing poetry and finding time to file and live on a homestead near American Falls. It was at this time also that her determination to be a great painter suffered a slight retard. Herman Teichert, who pursued her as persistently as she pursued art, came near winning his case. But before she had quite decided, an offer came to teach art at the University of Utah. Her ambition flared anew and she went to New York for final preparation.

All these years her reputation had been growing and hardly had she reached New York when she was offered a scholarship under Robert Henri. Henri had come back to the Art Students League for the year 1914-15. This big chance swept away all immediate thoughts of homestead, sweetheart, and teaching offer. She was the first to enroll under the master portrait painter and became not only a favorite pupil but a warm personal friend. Some think her portraits show a strong Henri influence. She received other scholarships as well, one under George Bridgeman for draftmanship.

The next three years brought Miss Kohlhepp another rare privilege. The war was on. The wealth and culture of the world settled in New York. The Art Students League, fearing complications, would accept no gifts of money, but wealthy patrons of art could and did aid the struggling pupils. This aid came in the form of tickets to things of worth. Minerva Kohlhepp being an advanced student shared generously.

Many of her evenings were spent listening to opera, studying theatrical lighting effects, enjoying Russian ballet, etc.

During this time her financial problems were still with her but with the determination so characteristic of her she found things to do about it. She had a natural bent for making the most of a dollar and a propensity for finding work along the line she liked. She sketched cadavers for doctors. She painted animals for a series of school books. One afternoon she did a portrait of Wallace Beery dressed in skins for the show Purple Knight. She received fifty dollars for that. She did much work for the movies.

Of her the great Henri said, "She is one of the coming woman artists of America."

The summer of 1917, when war clouds hung so threateningly, Miss Kohlhepp woke to the realization there were other fields of interest far from halls of learning. For the first time in her life painting took second place in her heart. She hurried home to marry her cowboy sweetheart, Herman Teichert. While he served in France she lived on his paternal homestead that in the days of stock companies had been known as Tall Tree Center. Mrs. Teichert loved this old ranch and some of her finest work was done there. She loved the Snake River "bottoms" where the ranch was located. She told of it in verse and story as well as on canvas. It is her delineation of life on the "bottoms" that makes her so essentially an Idaho artist.

There was everything in that section to stimulate the artistic urge. From Horse Island to Big Hole, from Ferry Butte to the cataracts at American Falls she gathered her studies. And such a variety! Here were tradition, scenery, and local color. Here she found marsh grass, brown-topped tules, gray-green sage, blue pools and foaming rapids, stretches of meadowland and warmscented cowpaths, giant gnarled cottonwood, tangy willows and flaming kinnikinick. Here, too, were picturesque cowboys, gaudily attired bucks, squaws in bright blankets and papooses in boards. She studied bucking broncos, dances to the Sun God and the ruins of old Fort Hall."

Items to consider/research further:

- Look into "One of Ours" to see if it was a series and what general purpose of the series was. Clearly, it is to highlight and draw positive attention to Minerva in this particular case.

- Who was Dorothy Clapp Robinson and how would she have learned about Minerva?

- Here we encounter the Jewish myth once more. I've not seen in friends own writings or those of his sisters or parents anything on Jewish ancestry. I remarked in a prior post how I wonder if this spread from a folk etymology of the term Kohlhepp and family ancestry speculations.

- Fred is noted as educated and talented. It describes Minerva's art talent as inherited. There's often a reference to Fred as being a source of her artistic talent in other sources. This article (perhaps since it is an article for women) also notes that Mary Ella was a source for her talent ("Both had literary and artistic ability").

- It gets Fred's Boston upbringing right, and his marrying Mary Ella in the west. It's interesting that it seems to suggest Fred converted to the faith first, and then married a girl bred in the faith. I'm not sure that sequence of events is quite right.

- It really stresses the Kohlhepp's family poverty. They cannot afford lessons, but they do provide encouragement. No teacher is anywhere near where they live. Quite likely true in towns like Neeley and Rockland. Poverty is driving the Kohlhepps to have their children work at young ages to pay for their living and board, to live in other homes. As a teenager, Minerva is going out to San Francisco. Perhaps for someone like Frederick who made his own journey throughout the United States as a young man, this is seen as they way of things.

- The article reports that the Kohlhepps moved quite quickly to Idaho following Minerva's birth, "in her first months." This would have put the migration to Idaho in late 1888, early 1889.

- She exhibits the first time in a little store in American Falls.

- It isn't until she makes it to Pocatello that she finds a woman (Mrs. Sparks) to further her artistic abilities.

- The other items don't tell us much about Minerva's relationship with her family, as much as her having been away. It does make one wonder how much the sisters really grew up together.