A beloved Madison school teacher: Miss Hessie Gillespie
MADISON – Continuing the back-to-school spirit, this week’s article explores the life of a beloved Madison school teacher, Nancy Hesseltine Gillespie Farley, or better known as ‘Miss Hessie’.
Miss Hessie was born on July 22, 1866 in Maryville, Tennessee to Campbell Milton Gillespie and Narcissa Lorinda Clark. The Gillespie family moved to Morgan County, Alabama in 1870 and arrived in Madison nine years later in 1879 when they moved to a farm.
Miss Hessie was one of eight children and several of her siblings also became early pillars of the Madison and North Alabama community. Her brothers Samuel and Philander were both farmers in Madison and another brother, James, was a doctor in Decatur.
She received an education from the Huntsville Female Seminary, graduating on May 30, 1888. On December 7, 1892, she married Joseph Bruce Farley. They had one daughter, Frances Lorinda. Sadly, when Lorinda was just eight months old, her father, Joseph Farley, passed away from malaria fever on August 23, 1894.
Following her husband’s death, Miss Hessie was occupied by running the Farley and Gillespie Drug Store with her brother William.
“It stocked fancy groceries, stationery, hardware as well as medicine. After the store was sold, Miss Hessie was offered a job teaching in Tuscumbia, Alabama,” said descendants Elizabeth Thornton Watkins and Nancy Kathryn Bryant in an article titled, The Hessie Gillespie Farley Family, in “The Heritage of Madison County, Alabama”.
Miss Hessie stayed in Tuscumbia until her father’s death in 1910. Her mother had previously passed in 1907. Miss Hessie moved back to Madison to care for her sister, Miss Nora, in 1911, and she began teaching first grade. Thereafter, she taught Madison students until her death from a stroke on January 1, 1939.
“She instilled moral and spiritual values in her family. She enriched the lives of all the children she taught in her forty-two consecutive years of service. She dreaded the day she would have to retire,” said Watkins and Bryant.
“I would stay with my grandmother ‘Miss Hessie’ during the winter to go to school. One of her grandchildren would always stay with her and ‘Sister’ [Miss Nora] to help them and lighten the load of raising five children on my mother. Miss Hessie had a great influence on me. She taught me moral and spiritual values that have lasted all of my life. She was the main reason I became a teacher,” added Watkins, Miss Hessie’s granddaughter, in “The Heritage of Madison County, Alabama”.
Miss Hessie also taught Sunday school to Madison children at the Baptist church and belonged to a number of civic organizations including the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Home Demonstration Club, and Entre Nous Federated Woman’s Club.
