Sisters Across the Bay: Archaeology and the Influence of Two Late Nineteenth-Century Free Kindergartens in Northern California

Abstract

In 1878, Kate Douglas Smith (later, Wiggin) opened the Silver Street Kindergarten in a San Francisco building that had housed a prestigious Institute for Young Ladies in a more prosperous decade. A well-connected New Englander, Kate embraced reform principles and studied Froebehan teaching methods. The kindergarten reached out to the poor families in the "Tar Flat" neighborhood and provided a safe, comfortable place for their children's introduction to learning and middle-class values. The model provided by the first free kindergarten west of the Rockies inspired others to follow, and soon the Silver Street Kindergarten provided training for teachers as well, until the building was dynamited to stay the fire's progress following the 1906 earthquake that nevertheless destroyed the surrounding neighborhood. Elizabeth Betts, a student of Kate Wiggin, founded the West Oakland Free Kindergarten in 1886. By 1900, it had evolved into a community center, dubbed "Sunshine Corner," housing a sewing school, cooking school, kitchen garden, boys' club, secondhand goods center, and mothers' club, along with a school of domestic science. It provided essential services to the neighborhood until it was torn down in the 1960s. In advance of freeway reconstruction following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, historical archaeologists excavated hundreds of artifact-filled archaeological features associated with families within the spheres of influence of these organizations, in addition to excavating the Silver Street Kindergarten privy. What can the archaeological collections tell us about the importance of early childhood education to these mainly immigrant families struggling to make their futures in California so long ago? What can they tell us about the importance of such programs today? Additional considerations concern whether kindergartens were established for social control or internal colonialism and/or to provide poor children with the advantage of early education? The social control school contends that reformers strove to impose their middle-class values and practices on working-class people. In contrast, proponents of internal colonialism consider the possibility that working-class people willingly adopted at least some dominant-group practices, particularly in the domestic sphere. As I hope is demonstrated herein, good historical archaeology can and should complete the loop and tie into present day places, events, and processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)