A Schoolteacher Vanishes Between Fargo and Puget Sound
A letter to Washington's school superintendent asks after Minnie Cooper, last heard from in Tacoma and bound for a country school west of the city.
State Superintendent Bryan has received the following letter making inquiries relative to a school teacher. From the tenor of the epistle there is room for the suspicion that a little romance may be connected with the disappearance of the young lady.
The letter is dated Petaluma, Cal., Feb. 25th: 'Dear sir: Will you kindly inform me if a lady has been engaged in any of the public schools of your state answering the following description: Height, four feet 11 inches, plump and well formed, good looking, high forehead, dark eyes and hair, cheerful countenance, about 25 years of age. I will forward copy of photograph early. Have sent one to the superintendent at Tacoma where she was staying during the month of January of this year, and from where she wrote, saying she was going to take charge of a country school west of Tacoma. The letter was dated January 18th, 1892. We have not heard of her since. The young woman is from Fargo, N. D., and left there December 21st, en route for San Francisco. Friends are exceedingly anxious about her, and she is believed to have changed her name, which was Minnie Cooper. Information regarding the young lady will confer a great favor on many sorrowing friends. Yours truly, W. H. F., Box 362, Petaluma, Cal.'
“Friends are exceedingly anxious about her, and she is believed to have changed her name, which was Minnie Cooper.”
A woman leaves North Dakota for a teaching job and vanishes between Tacoma and a country school; the only clues are a letter, a description, and a possible assumed name. Today the search would move through social media and missing-person databases, but the ache of scattered information and anxious friends is the same.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.