She spent her entire life in one town: Fort Worth. And she spent her entire career at one task: educating the children of Fort Worth.
Clara Peak Walden was born in 1854 in a building of the abandoned Army fort. She inherited her passion for education. Her father, Dr. Carroll Peak, was one of the strongest campaigners for tax-supported schools in Fort Worth in the 1870s and 1880s. (Photo from 1926 Central High School yearbook.)
Central High School Principal R. L. Paschal in 1940 wrote a profile of Mrs. Walden. (Photo from 1926 Central High School yearbook.)
Her education, Paschal wrote, began at home: Her father had a good library. And, Paschal wrote, “Colonel John Peter Smith, who lived eight years in the Peak home, was a constant help and inspiration in her study of Latin, Greek, and higher mathematics. At this time she began the study of Hebrew and later read the Old Testament in that language.”
Schools in Fort Worth in the 1860s were private. Paschal wrote that in 1866 Captain John Hanna opened a high school in the Masonic lodge hall at the corner of Jones and Belknap streets.
Clara and brother Howard attended this school, and Clara later became a teacher in the school until Hanna closed the school in 1869 to practice law with Jonathan Hogsett.
About 1870, when Clara was sixteen, she married LeGrande Walden, himself a teacher, and for two years the couple taught in country schools.
Mrs. Walden then joined the faculty of the Fort Worth School, established in 1869 by brothers Addison and Randolph Clark. She taught there until 1873, when the Clark brothers moved the school to Thorp Spring and renamed it “AddRan College.” (The school would return to Fort Worth as “Texas Christian University.”)
In 1875 Mrs. Walden joined the faculty of the Melton brothers’ private Fort Worth High School, housed in the First Christian Church building.
The Fort Worth Standard in 1876 called Mrs. Walden “a lady of superior intellectual endowments, first rate literary qualifications, and large experience as a teacher.”
In September 1876 Mrs. Walden opened her own school: a girls school in the First Christian Church building.
In 1877 Mrs. Walden and Miss E. R. Arnold established the Arnold-Walden Institute, again in the First Christian Church building. But the next year Mrs. Walden built a schoolhouse at the intersection of Macon and West 4th streets, and classes began there in 1878.
Note that other private schools were operated by Mrs. H. C. L. Gorman, Mrs. Belle M. Burchill, and Reverend Thomas Loughery.
Among Arnold-Walden graduates over the years were developer John C. Ryan, attorney Sidney Samuels, and minister H. A. Boaz.
Mrs. Eva Haywood Flournoy, a student of Mrs. Walden and later one of her teachers, wrote of the Arnold-Walden schoolhouse:
“For that day and time the building was considered up-to-date in equipment. It was a frame building, containing two large class rooms and two smaller rooms—one a music room and the other a library and science room combined. A movable glass and frame partition divided the two class rooms. Mrs. Walden owned the grounds, equipment, and building, but in her usual generous, modest way, named the school for Miss Arnold and herself, giving, as she always did, the first place to her co-worker.”
The Arnold-Walden schoolhouse appears on this 1886 bird’s-eye-view map.
The Arnold-Walden Institute was merged with the Fort Worth public school system and became a ward school. It stood until 1939.
In 1879 Mrs. Walden was teaching at the Second Ward school.
By 1880 Mrs. Walden was widowed and living with her parents. That year the school board offered her the job of superintendent, but she declined, Paschal wrote, “saying she could render better service to the system as teacher or principal.”
Instead Mrs. Walden recommended a colleague, Miss M. Sue Huffman, who was elected but served only until Alexander Hogg became the permanent superintendent in 1882, when the city quashed the last of the legal challenges that for years had kept it from levying a tax to support public schools.
Early in 1882 Mrs. Walden was again teaching at her own private school. But after professor Hogg took over the revamped school system, among the first teachers he hired was Mrs. Walden.
Dr. Carroll Peak died in 1885, three years after his efforts to give Fort Worth “free schools” had paid off. His daughter continued his work.
In 1885 the school system opened a girls high school. Paschal wrote: “The board had decided views about the evils of co-education. In their meeting on June 2, 1885, it unanimously resolved ‘that for the future the high school for girls be held in a building separate from the boys’ high school, so as to be entirely in separate schools.’”
Mrs. Walden was appointed first principal of the girls high school and reappointed in 1886.
When the co-ed Fort Worth High School opened in the Sixth Ward in 1891 Mrs. Walden taught tenth grade there. Note that Lily B. Clayton also was a teacher at Fort Worth High School in 1892. (R. L. Paschal would become principal of the school in 1906.)
Mrs. Walden retired from the classroom in 1898 but remained active in education and religion.
On October 13, 1914 Mrs. Walden was a victim of the new century’s new technology: She was struck and killed by an automobile. The accident occurred outside the home of her mother at the intersection of West 5th and Florence streets. Florence Street was named for Clara’s mother.
Clara Peak Walden is buried in Pioneers Rest Cemetery.
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