Alumni Newsletter Gives Graduation Date from 1940

The "Western Illinois State Teachers College Bulletin" from October of 1943 contained a reference to my great-aunt Margaret as a 1940 graduate who was teaching at the time in Bement, Illinois.

Western Illinois State Teacher's College Bulletin, Vol. 23, Number 3, October 1943. Obtained through the "WIU Bulletin Collection," digital image Carli Digital Collections (http://collections.carli.illinois.edu). 

 Ancestry.com's U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946  indicates that Anna M. Habben enlisted on 13 November 1942 in the Women's Army Corps as an inactive reserve. There is no doubt that this is the same person despite the fact that her name is listed as Anna M. Habben instead of Margaret Habben. The year of birth matches my Aunt Margaret and the occupation/education information is correct. The branch is also the branch of the service that my Aunt Margaret was known to have enlisted in and is what is shown on her tombstone in Idaho where she is buried with her husband.

What I do need to determine is when she was actually called up. The Bulletin indicates she was teaching Bement, Illinois, in the publication dated October of 1943. It could be simply that the information in the alumni publication was not current. 

There are some additional alumni references to Aunt Margaret and her picture appears in at least two of the yearbooks for Western Illinois State Teachers' College (now Western Illinois University). 

In a future blog post, we will have additional images and a few other details about Aunt Margaret's time at Western. We are also working on blog post about whether her name was Margaret or Anna--that one is slightly more complicated than her simply switching her first and middle names.

The online newsletters were helpful because lists of alumni are not currently publicly online for WIU.

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Reminder--we don't include complete citations on blog posts--just our personal preference. Complete citations are always included in Casefile Clues or you can learn about citations in Elizabeth Shown Mills' Evidence Explained. We always do include enough background information in blog posts that readers can find our original sources.If you think we don't, please fire off an email to me at mjnrootdig@gmail.com