Eulalia Bourne

Eulalia "Sister" Bourne (c.1895-1984) was a pioneer Arizona schoolteacher, rancher and author (Woman in Levi's, etc.). Born in West Texas, the oldest of five girls, she was dubbed "Sister" by a younger sibling who couldn't pronounce Eulalia. After a sketchy education, she got her first teaching job circa 1910 in Beaver Creek in Arizona's Verde Valley. At the end of her second year, she was fired for dancing the "one-step", considered a “vulgar rag” by the chairman of her school board. Bourne's next teaching job was at Helvetia, a mining camp in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson. None of her students spoke English, nor did Bourne speak Spanish. At that time, Arizona had a law forbidding the use of Spanish in school. "It was the...