Story of a Family Secret that was Part Myth

Grade school souvenir, teacher Mattie Mae Needham pictured. 

So one of our family secrets has been handed down this way.  "Your grandmother Mattie was a teacher and married.  She fell in love with one of her students who was your grandfather Keith, got pregnant by him, had to divorce her first husband and marry your grandfather.  But they were in love, had five more children, and were happily married until death."  Well it turns out while being factually true, it isn't as salacious as it sounds.

In 1904 my grandmother Mattie was an unmarried twenty-year old, teaching my ten-year old grandfather Keith.

She married her first husband in 1906.  She got pregnant by my grandfather in 1917, when my grandfather was an adult of twenty-three years.  Not when she was his grade school teacher and he was her student.

So yes, a teacher did have an affair with one of her students, got pregnant and married him.  But long after he graduated from grade school.


Copyright © 2016 by Kevin W. Walker