Edna Gertrude Chrisman

by Brody Gasper

Edna Gertrude Chrisman was born on February 22, 1884, in Pennsylvania to Louis M. Chrisman and Lewis Edward Chrisman (the Chrisman family name is sometimes also spelled Crisemon). She, along with her parents and siblings (including Jennie Eva Hughes) moved to Idaho in the early pioneering days where her parents purchased tracks of land in the area sometime in the 1890s.¹

Edna Gertrude Chrisman appears in the University’s Bulletin from 1898, which covers 1898 to 1903 and lists Chrisman as a second-year student within the preparatory school at the University of Idaho.² The preparatory school at the University of Idaho during the time acted as a high school and operated through the University rather than a state-sponsored institution. Chrisman also is pictured in the 1903 Gem of the Mountains yearbook where she is pictured in the University’s Mandolin Club and the Girl’s Glee Club.³ She seemed to remain quite active within the preparatory school during the next year as well, being recorded in the Mandolin Club again with her instrument being noted as the guitar.⁴

This is where her records more or less stop for a time in the preparatory school as well as her time at the University of Idaho, with the last mention of her name being noted in the 1908 Gem of the Mountains yearbook, where she was listed as a college freshman.⁵ However, her stint at the University of Idaho as a college student was short-lived.

After leaving the University of Idaho, she enrolled at the University of Puget Sound and graduated in 1910.⁶ Chrisman put herself in for a land drawing in the Coeur d’Alene/Spokane Indian River drawing in 1910 and was selected as one of the winners. She purchased 160 acres of land that was estimated to be worth $5,000 at the time.⁷ In a newspaper article written about her in connection to the purchase, it noted that she was a stenographer from Seattle.⁸ Eventually, Chrisman left the Seattle area in 1910 and homesteaded her new land for two years, before she sold it and once again moved with her family to the Los Angeles area.⁹

Once she arrived in the Los Angeles area, Chrisman purchased an apartment building with the proceeds she had received from selling the land. Chrisman attended the California State Normal School in Los Angeles,¹⁰ joining the Pi Chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, and eventually graduated in 1916, becoming a teacher.¹¹ She taught at the Booker T. Washington school in El Centro, Imperial Valley, California and even became the principal of the school.¹² Chrisman went back to school at the University of California to learn Spanish, a subject she would teach at Booker T. Washington school.

Apart from these last records, not much else seems to be written about Chrisman’s life until her death. Edna Gertrude Chrisman died on May 28, 1966, in Los Angeles.

Notes

• Courtney E. Berge, “Gertrude Chrisman: The Not Forgotten Sister of Jennie Eva Hughes,” Idaho Harvester, February 11, 2022.