[HPforGrownups] Re: Master of This School

[MadameSSnape at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 111823

In a message dated 9/1/2004 1:40:15 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
spinelli372003 at yahoo.com writes:
In the United States public school system it is customary to call the 
teachers Mr. or Mrs., not Master.  There is a Principal who is the 
head of the school.  In private schools there is a headmaster.  He is 
still called Mr., very seldom called Headmaster although some do.  My 
son goes to a private Military Academy with a Headmaster

=================
Sherrie here:

That is true in the modern system - just add "Ms." in there. <g>  However, in 
Victorian times the terms "master" and "mistress" were in fairly common use 
to refer to teachers - of anything.  I recall one Civil War general who was a 
"dancing master" in his civilian life; and Fannie Adams (later Chamberlain) was 
a "music mistress" in Georgia before returning to Maine to marry Josh.  (Josh 
himself had been a schoolmaster - as a teenager.)  And an ancestor of mine 
referred to himself as a "school master" in an 1862 letter to his brother, of 
which we have a copy.

And not just teachers - Philinda Humiston was listed as the "wardrobe 
mistress" of the Soldiers' Orphans' Home in Gettysburg in the late 1860s.

Sherrie
(whose head is just STUFFED with such useless information)


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