Another excerpt from my long-delayed book on people who belonged to the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto between 1895 and 1934.
Oramanda Boring
An educator and field biologist, Oramanda (Ora) A. Boring was born October 12, 1854, in Carlinville, Illinois. Little is known about her younger years except a few bare facts in the public record. In 1860, she was living in Carlinville with her father John, a carpenter, her mother Mary, her older sister Mary E., and younger siblings Mary Myrtle and William. The family was still in Carlinville in 1870, living close to Blackburn University (called Blackburn College today), a co-educational college affiliated with the Presbyterian church. By this time, Mary E. had died, leaving Ora as the oldest child. By 1880, Ora was working a school teacher, now living with her parents and younger siblings Mary Myrtle (now age 23), William A., Ella L., Lewis H., Blanche M., Frank P., and Florence A. (age 4) in Greenfield, Ill., an unincorporated town just to the west of Carlinville.
After teaching high school in Greenfield, she moved to California in 1881. She was granted a provisional teaching certificate in Los Angeles in January, 1882; the State Board of Education granted her a “life diploma” (or permanent teaching certificate) in 1884. She probably taught in the Los Angeles schools for the next few years.
Ora met David Starr Jordan, the president of newly founded Stanford University, at a conference in Coronado, and he persuaded her to enter college at age 36. She began studying biology at Stanford University as a special student in 1891, the year the university opened, and was reportedly the first woman student. She participated in the first summer session of the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory in 1892.
After a year at Stanford, she returned to teaching school. She had gained enough experience, and enough of a reputation, that she was an instructor in the summer session of the “California School of [Teaching] Methods” in 1892, teaching other teachers about the history of education. After teaching school until about 1896, she then studied at Stanford again more or less full time from 1897 to 1899. In 1899, she returned to teaching school once again, and finally received her A.B. in zoology from Stanford in 1900, at age 46.
Ora had expertise in a wide range of subjects. In the biological sciences, she pursued both ornithology and botany. She became a member of the Cooper Ornithological Club, an early association of field ornithologists. She was also a serious botanist, and Harvard University Herbaria still has her collections of California plants. Although her degree was in biology, Ora taught several other subjects in her long career as a teacher and educator. In the 1893-1894 school year, she taught English, Latin, zoology, and history in the Coronado, Calif., high school. From 1894 to 1896, she was a supervisor in “primary and grammar grade work” in Stockton, in addition to teaching biology at Stockton High School.
Through the 1890s and into 1900s, she published a number of articles in the field of education. To give an idea of her range of interests, her article titled “Nature Study” was published in School Education in 1895; and “Theological Life of a California Child,” co-written with professor Earl Barnes of Stanford, was published in Pedagogical Seminary in 1892.
In her memoir of life at Stanford University, Ellen Coit Elliott witnessed Ora’s field methods for her educational studies:
“Dear Ora Boring appeared about that time. I saw her first at my front door, notebook in hand, asking modestly, like the gentlewoman she was, if she might make a few notes on my children’s reactions to the color element: she was taking one of Professor Barnes’ education courses. Oh, certainly! Louis and Christabel (little guinea pigs) were brought in from the sandpile and stood, big-eyed, in front of the strange lady on the lounge. She showed them strips of colored paper and asked them which they liked best. Christabel preferred bright red. Louis preferred bright red. The reactions were written down. Ora thanked me for the loan of my offspring and returned to her class. Dear Ora! Her lovely life and friendship were with us through the years.”
After her father died in 1893, her mother Mary moved from San Diego to Palo Alto. In 1897, Ora was living in Palo Alto with her mother, her sisters Blanche and Florence, and her brother Frank; both Blanche and Ora were studying at Stanford at this time. Her mother was an active member of the Methodist church; there is no record of Ora’s religious affiliation at this time. Her mother was an invalid by the time she died in 1901, and Ora may have been providing care for her. By 1910, Ora lived at 101 Waverly St. in Palo Alto with her sister Blanche, brother-in-law William Snow, and their children; Ora was working as a high school teacher.
Ora taught in many different school systems across California, so many that it proved impossible to trace them all. In 1899, she was teaching zoology at Palo Alto High School. She was one of the first teachers at the Clear Lake Union High School District in 1901. In 1903, she was teaching in the high school in Riverside. In 1910, she was living in Palo Alto, though it’s not clear where she taught. From April, 1912, to June, 1914, she taught in the Yosemite Valley School, a one room schoolhouse; the school year ran from April through December, and she may have lived elsewhere when the school was not in session, although as a biologist perhaps she chose to live in the Yosemite Valley year round.
In autumn, 1914, at age 60, Ora began teaching school in Sunland, Calif., then a remote town in the mountains outside of Los Angeles. An unattributed typescript memory of Ora’s tenure in Sunland appears in “Sunland: A Scrapbook,” assembled by Enid A. Larson in 1983:
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