Archives West Finding Aid

The collection comprises the correspondence to the Lemon and Perryman families. Individually the correspondence itself revealed little because it consisted primarily of cards with brief notes and included very few business items other than a handful of bank statements and a few formal letters. As a collection, though, the correspondence paints a picture of a woman raised in rural eastern Washington, whose father died while she was in high school, who then continued to live with her mother and work as a grade school teacher in Waverly. At the age of 30 and a couple of years after her mother's death, Marjorie Lemon left Waverly for a teaching position in Reardan where she married Clifton E. Perryman. As Marjorie Lemon Perryman, she moved to Colfax in 1940 and, according to her 1986 obituary, later taught at Steptoe School in Whitman County. Clifton and Marjorie Perryman had one child, a son Roger (1946-2007), born the year Marjorie turned 39.

Marjorie Lemon's education followed a path to teaching taken by many women of her generation. Before her 1925 graduation from Waverly High School, she received a scholarship from Washington State College (WSC) as did each valedictorian across the state. A letter from WSC President E.O. Holland explained the opportunity, which included a free room for a semester. Rather than attend WSC, Miss Lemon received teacher training at the Washington State Normal School at Cheney (now Eastern Washington University) and taught grade school in Spokane, Lincoln, and Whitman counties. A decade after finishing high school, she expressed interest in receiving a "three-year degree" at Eastern in 1935. The Registrar's reply told her that she could complete such a degree with an additional 24 credits earned by correspondence and a summer in residence. As Marjorie Perryman, she continued to teach.

Other than the glimpses into Marjorie Lemon Perryman's life, other items of interest include a 1938 letter that comments on a student strike at WSC, a 1940 letter from Springston, Idaho, that refers to a lumber mill strike, probably in Harrison, a few wartime letters that mention reporting to Fort Lewis, victory gardens and ration cards, and finally a 1954 letter from the Inland Empire Pea Growers Association with an annual update on that cooperative's plans.