Agnes Carroll, 1889 - 1992

Agnes Carroll, 1889 - 1992

Agnes Carroll was born in Midland and graduated from St. Joseph's in Midland. She began her teaching career in Garrett County in 1907, and then at McCoole from 1908 to 1910. At that point she taught in her hometown of Midland until 1913. This was at a time when a college education was not necessarily required to teach, and although she later undertook coursework at Johns Hopkins, Agnes taught for 43 years without a teaching certificate.

Upon moving to Cumberland, Agnes taught at Penn Avenue until her assignment in 1918 as a teacher and the school principal at Lindnerville. Though inside the eastern end of the city limits, Lindnerville was basically a rural school. It was a 4-room frame building, with each room heated by a stove. There was no indoor plumbing or water fountains. Each room had a large bucket for drinking water that was carried from a neighbor's house. The Lindnerville school was later replaced by the modern East Side School which served that community until its closure in 1985.

Miss Agnes Carroll was a strong disciplinarian and served as the principal of Lindnerville and East Side School from 1918 until her retirement in 1950. In 1985, and at the age of 96 the oldest retired school teacher in Allegany County, a newspaper story referred to Agnes as, "The first lady of academic learning".

...From an article appearing in the Cumberland Sunday Times by J. Suter Kegg, November 24, 1985 and information supplied by Bev Walker.