Am just waiting for his summons to go home to be with my dear ones who have gone before.

I am reading an account by an early settler in Pike County Missouri.  Ancestors of mine settled there following the American Revolution.  The letter is in a collection, The Daisy Chain by Muril Hart, and originally was published in a local paper in 1913.  The letter was from Louisa Dazerine Petty Milburn who was born in 1827.  

She describes her early schooling on the  frontier in the early 1830's and 40's.

Among my cards was a picture of the high school at Frankford. I just thought what a difference in it and the house the first school was taught in. It was a little log house with a dirt floor and fireplace; the seats were logs split and two holes bored in each end and legs put in. My brother, older than I, went to school there. The first school I went to was taught in a little log house on the hill, near the Pitt residence; then I went to school in the old log meeting house. Children in those days didn't have such a good chance for an education as they do now. They studied or read in any book they happened to have; the first one to get there in the morning was the first one to recite; many a race I have had to get there first so I could recite first. I knew the old Blue Back Speller by heart. I remember getting a prize, when I was nine years old for getting the most tickets for standing head most times during the term. It was a belt for the waist made of light green calico; I was prouder of it than children are nowadays of a gold medal. Aunt Polly Stark was the teacher. She was Bina Campbell's aunt. The last school I went to they had them classed. 

I owned the first coal oil lamp ever burned in Frankford. We used candles. Gabe Mefford's mother owned the first sewing machine and the first sausage grinder; our sausage was beat out on a big block of wood. Colonel Mase got the first cook stove. All the cooking was done in the fireplace. My husband W. M. Milburn helped charter the first Masonic Lodge; I think it was 1858. There were only five Masons besides himself Bird Gordon, Billy Penix. Harve Stillwell, Judge Phillips and David Stark. 

The Mefford's were my family which I am tracing.

Ms. Milburn finishes her letter with a closing which tugs at the heart.

Now if you think this sketch written by an old lady is worth publishing you may publish it in your paper. I am 85 years old and I am in fine health, and can see to sew and do fancy work. I make a lot of my own clothes by hand, as I like it better than machine work. I help too on housework, as I still like to work. I live with my daughter, Molly Guyton. She is all I have left; my daughter, Rose, has been dead nine years; and my only boy, Willie, died one year ago last February. Mollie and I are all that are left of the family. The good Lord has sustained me through all my troubles, and I realize he is a very present help in time of trouble and thank Him for all his kindness and care. Am just waiting for his summons to go home to be with my dear ones who have gone before. 

I will close now by wishing you and my many friends and relatives a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. 

Louisa D. Milburn. December 14, 1913 

 But the Blue Back Speller?  Here is a worthwhile account, The Blue-Backed Speller – Forgotten Intellectual Legacy of the American Revolution

As the Revolutionary War was ending in 1783, a former soldier in that conflict named Noah Webster published a book that was to have an enormous influence on American culture. This was not Webster’s famous dictionary, which didn’t arrive on the scene until 1828.  The book in question is the first volume of A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, a three-volume work that sought to transform the way Americans were taught to speak and write English. With this publication Webster hoped to extend the ideals of the American Revolution into the realms of language and literature.

A Grammatical Institute of the English Language was a success, particularly volume one, which dealt with spelling and related topics.  In 1786 the first volume’s official title changed from The First Part of the Grammatical Institute of the English Language to The American Spelling Book. However, generations of school children referred to it as the “Blue-Backed Speller,” because it usually was sold in a blue binding.  Revised versions of the book remained in general use for the whole of the 19th century.  The book has never been out of print, and about 100 million copies have been sold so far.

In the “Speller” Noah Webster sought to free American language from the “pedantry” of English forms and traditions.  He believed that the American people were the proper arbiters of correct speech, and that spelling should be simplified and brought into better agreement with pronunciation. For Webster these changes in language were only part of a larger cultural transformation that would cut America free from what he saw as a corrupt and failing English/European mindset.  His American Revolution was not just about changing political and economic institutions, it was about shaping a new American identity.  Noah Webster’s incredibly popular book shows how the revolutionary spirit, once unleashed, can push change in a variety of directions.  For Mr. Webster one small part of freedom was the right to drop the terminal “k” from music (“music,” not “musick”). 

I knew of Noah Webster of course but had not quite appreciated how early he was. 

On another frontier, the Blue Back Speller was also being used.  From Lincoln the Hoosier: Abraham Lincoln's life in Indiana by Charles Garrett Vannest, published in 1928.  Page 82.

Spelling, too, was an important subject. Spelling matches were held in the school nearly every day. The entire school would "choose sides" and continue to spell until all the pupils were "spelled down." Often during the long winter evenings the neighborhood would gather at the schoolhouse and have an old-fashioned spelling match. Lincoln became a famous speller and was always the first one chosen in the contest. After a while he was not permitted to take part but this did not prevent him from helping his friends to win. On the occasion of one of the Friday afternoon spelling matches, the schoolmaster Crawford gave out the word "defied." Two pupils had missed the word when it came to one of Abe's little girl friends, a Miss Robey. She started to spell but hesitated, not knowing whether the word was spelled with "fi" or "fy." She looked at Lincoln who instantly put his finger to his eye. She caught the sign and spelled the word. The spelling craze was given great impetus by Noah Webster's Blue Back Speller, which was widely used at this time all over the country.

He was born nearly twenty years before Mrs. Louisa D. Milburn but both lived on the frontier (Illinois/Indiana and Missouri respectively) and both reared on Noah Webster's Blue Back Speller.

My grandmother, Nell Hill Bayless, orphaned when she was nine, was a seventeen year old school teacher in a one room school house in the Ozarks straddling the border between Missouri and Arkansas.  I don't recall her mentioning the Blue Back Speller but she did speak of McGuffey's Readers which she used.  Another mainstay of frontier education in the 19th and early 20th centuries.