Alice Allen Brant

The Learner

Alice O. Allen was born on September 16, 1849, into a farming family that believed strongly in education. She attended Waveland Academy, a college preparatory program, in Waveland, Ind. Along with Bettie Locke, she was admitted to Indiana Asbury College (later DePauw University) as one of the first five women students.

Alice lived about five miles from Greencastle and reportedly rode her horse each way every day her freshman year. One story that Alice liked to tell is that on occasion, the horse, named Kate, would break her halter and head home before Alice was ready, leaving her to walk the five miles home. During 1868-1869, Alice taught in the local one-room school house, with many of her students her younger brothers and sisters. Alice returned to Indiana Asbury to continue her education and roomed with Hannah Fitch. Upon graduation, she returned to teaching, again at her local schoolhouse. She eventually became principal of Attica (Indiana) High School. She completed the testing to obtain a permanent teaching certificate and later taught in Plymouth, Ind., Evanston, Ill., and Fremont County, Ia.

In 1878, Alice married Thomas J. Brant, a former classmate from Indiana Asbury and superintendent of Fremont County (Iowa) schools. A daughter, Edith, was born, and the family moved to Ottawa, Neb. Alice wrote a column in the local newspaper on temperance, and was active in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. She visited the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and the Chicago World’s Fair, in 1893. She died in 1894, and is buried at the Brick Chapel Cemetery in Putnam County, Ind.