Evelyn McKenney

Evelyn McKenney's signature, 1869 (SCSU Archives)

Adra A. Guptill headstone, Maine Prairie Cemetery, Kimball, Minnesota (Find A Grave)

Gilbert Guptill headstone, Maine Prairie Cemetery, Kimball, Minnesota (Find A Grave)

Evelyn A. McKenney was the eighth of James and Jane J. McKenney’s nine children. She was born in March 1850 in Maine, where her father worked as a miller.

In September 1869, when Evelyn entered the Third State Normal School among its first students, she and her family were living in Maine Prairie, Minnesota, where James eventually took up farming. While Evelyn was attending school, however, she and her mother lived together in St. Cloud. In the school’s first commencement ceremony on June 30, 1871, Evelyn delivered a culminating essay on “The Habit of Idleness,” arguing that laziness was the result of poor education and training in one’s youth.

After graduation, she and her mother rejoined her father in Maine Prairie, where Evelyn found a job as a teacher. On November 15, 1883, she married Gilbert Guptill, widower of her sister, Adrianna, and became stepmother to their three children, Arthur, Charles, and Ada. By 1885, Jane had also moved in with them after James passed away. By 1896, however, Evelyn was divorced and living alone in St. Cloud. That September, Ada joined her to begin her own studies at the State Normal School. Earning her first degree on May 28, 1897 and her second on May 26, 1898, Ada is St. Cloud State’s first known legacy student. The two continued to live together in St. Cloud, where Ada taught at Seventh Ward, Lincoln, and Union schools.

Around 1907, they moved to Santa Anna, California, where Ada continued to teach. By 1910, they had moved again when Ada found a new job in Los Angeles public schools. Both were registered to vote as Republicans in the early 1920s and remained so for the rest of their lives. They lived together until Evelyn passed away on January 10, 1934. Ada never married and remained a school teacher until retiring. She passed away on October 17, 1958.