"Many women have done excellently"
-Proverbs 31:29

By Jessica Sylvanus
Okanogan Centennial Planning Committee

     One of the best known pioneers of Okanogan is Virginia Grainger Herrmann. Of course, she belongs to the whole county as the first woman to become county superintendent of schools (1890-92 and 1896-98).
     We can visualize her, as author Bruce A. Wilson says, "resolute and nearly tireless, (she) rode horseback through a territory extending from Canada to the Wenatchee River, organizing schools and teaching a month or two at each until an instructor could be employed."
     But she also is identified with the City of Okanogan. The Grainger pasture was located where the main business section is now located. She moved to Alma in 1893 and lived over the small trading post, which she ran, and also served as postmistress.
     Hazel Oaks' article in The Chronicle about Virginia Grainger describes her relationship with the Indians while at the trading post: "Many of the friends she made were Indians, among the chiefs: Joseph, Moses, Tonasket and Aeneas and Indian Edwards, a horse trader with a large herd from the Loomis area. She learned to speak Chinook quite readily.
     "One evening she was alone when her door opened and in stepped Chief Smitkin, holding a cigar box. The wealthy Indian wanted her to count the money in the box ($1,500) and keep it for him. She did this for three weeks, and so became one of Okanogan's first bankers."
     In 1905 she participated in re-naming the Alma Post Office to Pogue, and continued to be influential in community concerns. She was an astute business woman and she acquired property, some of which she donated for the building site of the schoolhouse and the Presbyterian Church.
     Another excellent woman, a school teacher and an early comer to Alma, was Eliza O'Keefe. She, her husband, John Willis O'Keefe, and two children, Edward and Grace, traveled by steamboat up the Okanogan River to Alma in 1900.
     Eliza O'Keefe's first term in the Alma district began in 1901, but because there was no school building, she taught the children in her home.
     By 1903 a school building opened with Mrs. O'Keefe in charge. Later she taught at the Pine Grove School in Pleasant Valley, leaving in May 1907 to go with her husband and family for what turned out to be a brief stay in White Salmon.
     They returned in 1910 and she resumed teaching duties at Tarheel Flat School beginning in the winter of 1911. She also taught in the Pine Grove School.
     By 1915 she was teaching in Okanogan, grades seven and eight, and continued teaching there.
     Both of her children, Grace and Ed, were married in 1917. Her Husband, John, died May 17, 1917, at the age of 65.
     She continued on at the Okanogan school, becoming the principal in 1922, while continuing to teach.
     Helen Rawson, Okanogan, remembered Mrs. O'Keefe as a "wonderful teacher; very patient, stern, but with a sense of humor, too!"
     She retired in 1930, but taught for a while in Chelan Falls and later in Wauconda.
     It is certain that both Virginia Grainger Herrmann and Eliza O'Keefe knew the next excellent woman of Okanogan, Bessie Misel.
     Bessie would probably say, "Who, me?"
     She left her home in Synarep in 1906 when she was 16 to seek work in order to help her family.
     And work she did. She found employment as a chambermaid in the Central Hotel. Wilson says that "the husky young farmer's daughter found herself swept up in a life at least as demanding as she had experienced on a marginal timber claim at Synarep."
     She worked from "dawn to dusk, carrying water and fresh linens up two flights of stairs, sweeping, dusting and making beds in 16 of the hotel's 20 rooms."
     She did the laundry for the hotel and for the hotel owner and his large family; she washed dishes in the hotel restaurant and ran errands.
     Misel then went to work for Mrs. Charles Lindsay, who opened her own restaurant. Bessie worked from 5 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., seven days a week for $20 a month, her meals and a bed in Mrs. Lindsay's home.
     Wilson writes her story in "Late Frontier: A history of Okanogan County, Washington." You can practically taste the good food, see the crowds (which included Frank Matsura and William Compton Brown) and appreciate the hard work.
     Bessie worked in Okanogan from 1906 to 1909.
     She moved with her family to Canada in 1909; later she married Claude Mills, whom she met in Okanogan.
     Mrs. Lindsay said that "no three girls in Okanogan could do the work Bessie could."
     Information for this article was taken from "Glimpses of Pioneer Life of Okanogan County, Washington;" Bruce Wilson's "Late Frontier: A history of Okanogan County, Washington;" an article about Eliza O'Keefe published in The Heritage, quarterly publication of the Okanogan County Historical Society, and an article about Virginia Grainger Herrmann written by Hazel Oaks and published in The Chronicle.
 

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