Fannie Hayner: License to Teach

Amazing what you can find at the Library of Congress. For instance, a whole envelope of certificates marking the accomplishments of Fannie Hayner, from her own school days to when she became a school teacher.

Fannie Orintha Hayner appears to have been born around 1850, and lived in the Town of Grafton in 1860. These certificates or rewards of merit are undated so we don’t know how old she was when they were awarded by David Manon (?) or Mary Abel, or the fabulously florid H.B.(?) Burdick, her teachers.

But we do know that in 1869, Amos H. Allen, School Commissioner for the Second Assembly District in the County of Rensselaer, found Fannie qualified to teach second grade, in any town in the district (!).

How long she taught, we don’t know. She was married to Calvin B. Dunham on May 16, 1870 (says a family tree on Ancestry).

She and Calvin apparently had four children, the last in 1879, which was also the year that Fannie died, very young. Could have been childbirth, of course. Her last child, Marcia O. Dunham, was living in Washington, D.C., when these certificates and more were sent to her in an envelope from Shroder’s Studio, 20 Third St., Troy.

Fannie is buried in Grafton Center Cemetery.

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