Miss Haguet's first paycheck

Dec 27, 2020
Dec 27, 2020
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Pictured here is the second Riverdale School built in 1903. It replaced the original one-room school constructed in 1868 in the community of Riverside (later, Riverdale and now a section of Raymond) along the North Bank of the Willapa River. It was at the first school on this site that Miss Haguet’s infamous salary event took place.
Courtesy Pacific County Historical Society and Stony Point Pictures

Cecelia “Janey” Haguet was born in 1848 on her parents’ Donation Land Claim near present-day Ilwaco. She was educated at Providence Academy in Vancouver, Washington, and before she married was one of the early schoolteachers in Pacific County.

Her first assignment was in 1868 at the one room Riverside (Raymond) School which had been built of lumber from the “old mill” nearby. Early scholars there remembered that the floorboards of the little building were two feet in width. For her term’s work, Janey was offered a pig as payment. That seemed an excellent exchange to the young teacher who knew that a fine, fat pig would be a much appreciated gift by her parents with their large family.

On the final day of the term, farmer John Adams tethered the pig behind the schoolhouse for Miss Haguet to take home on the following day to her family in Ilwaco. Unhappily, in the morning she found that a bear had done away with her “salary” during the night.