Wood (Stella Louise) papers

Stella Louise Wood was born in Chicago on September 2, 1865 to Abram and Abbie Wood. Six years later, the Wood family moved to Evanston, a Chicago suburb, and Stella spent the rest of her childhood there. Wood graduated in 1886 from a kindergarten teacher training program in Chicago and then worked at the Hobby Street Kindergarten, a school for immigrants, for four years. Following a year of studying at the University of Michigan (1890-1891), Wood took a position as a supervisor of teacher training and eight public kindergartens in Muskegon, Michigan. In 1895 she became the director of Dubuque, Iowa’s first public kindergarten.

In 1893, a group of mothers in Minneapolis had formed the “Minneapolis Kindergarten Association,” which supported charity kindergartens and ran a training school for kindergarten teachers. The group invited Wood to move to Minneapolis in 1896 and become the superintendent of the normal school—the teacher training school—and four charity kindergartens. Wood began a series of public talks about the importance of the kindergarten. Less than three months after Wood’s arrival in Minneapolis, the school board granted a room for the city’s first public kindergarten. The first school was so successful that several more were established not long afterwards.

Wood’s own school, “Miss Wood’s School,” was founded in 1905. Despite its success, it did not have a permanent building for a long time. In the earliest years, the school shared spaces with other kindergartens and moved between several church buildings in Minneapolis. By 1913, all classes were held at the Wells Memorial Settlement House. In 1919, the school made its final move to the house on Bryant Avenue.

Stella Wood joined the International Kindergarten Union (I.K.U.) in 1900 and was elected its Secretary-Treasurer in 1903, and became its president in 1917. Wood centered much of her work with the I.K.U. around the theme of instilling a “love of peace” in students. She presided over the “Silver Anniversary” meeting of the I.K.U. in Chicago and traveled to Europe, visiting a kindergarten for orphans in France.

During the depression in the 1930s, drastic budget reductions threatened to totally eliminate the public kindergarten in Minneapolis. Wood gave a series of talks on the radio and to live audiences and garnered enough support to save the kindergartens.

In the 1940s, the requirement to become a teacher became earning a degree in education over four years. In 1944, the University of Minnesota began to grant Wood’s graduates with two years’ credit toward a four-year education degree. In 1945, Miss Wood’s School was officially incorporated as a non-profit teacher training organization and a Board of Trustees was established. In 1948, Wood accepted the offer to merge with Macalester College from Dr. Charles Turck, the school’s president.

After 52 years, Stella Wood retired from leading her school in September 1948 due to poor health. She died at the age of 83 on February 11, 1949 at her brother’s home in River Forest, Illinois.

On November 17, 1949, Miss Wood’s Memorial Library Corner was dedicated at Macalester College. For years after Stella Wood’s death, the Alumni Association continued to circulate newsletters and hold reunion luncheons.

Written by: Ivy Coldren