Education is part of the legacy and cultural heritage of the Kerns family.

It began as far back as William Brewster, born 1567 in England.  In an age when almost no one had the opportunity to go to school, William Brewster attended Cambridge University.  He was the presiding elder among the Saints on the Mayflower, and was, therefore, one of the very first Europeans to immigrate to America.  William Brewster is my 11^th great grandfather.

Due to the lack of organized school systems in America, few people in pioneering times received educations.  I have found the wills left by my grandparents of varying degrees, and I can't think of one that had an actual signature at the end.  Most signed with a mark.

I'm sure that many of my ancestors were able to read and to write.  Several of them were ministers of the gospel in various faiths, and the rest were Bible-believers and Bible-users.  Probably most people in those pioneer times who learned to read, did so using the Bible as their textbook.

The first ancestor who actually got a college education in those pioneer days was my second great grandfather, Thomas Condon.  He graduated from Auburn Theological Seminary in New York in 1852, boarded a clipper ship with his new wife, sailed around the Horn of South America, and arrived in Oregon March 3, 1853, his 31^st birthday.  Oregon was not yet even a state.  He became a minister in the Congregational Church, taught himself geology, was appointed the state geologist, and became the first professor of science at the University of Oregon.  His daughter, Ellen, my great grandmother, was one of the five who comprised the first graduating class of that new school.  She was the valedictorian.

Ellen Condon married Herbert Fraser McCornack.  Herbert was a one-year-old baby when his parents came to the Oregon Territory on the Oregon Trail in 1853.  They came with five little boys, ages one to ten, and had seven more children in Oregon.  Family, church, and school were the priorities of the McCornack family.  Remarkably, of the 12 children in that pioneer family, nine received college educations.

The Condons and the McCornacks were my mother's people.  My father's side of the family was equally committed to educating their children.  My Kerns grandparents raised their seven children on a remote ranch in Wyoming.  Their schools were a several-mile horseback ride away where five children would gather in a one-room schoolhouse.  To insure better educations for their children, my grandparents moved their family to Spokane, Washington for a time while still running the ranch in Wyoming.  Five of the seven children received higher educations, including all three girls.  My father graduated as an agricultural engineer, and one brother became a college professor teaching biology.

Because of this family emphasis on education, I spent my growing-up years hearing the admonition, “Put that in the bank for your college education” whenever I earned some money.  Consequently, all five of my parents' children went to college.  The three boys earned degrees.  Seven of my 10 children also received university degrees.  I did not help pay for any of them.  They earned the degrees on their own.

I should tell the story of the Adams family.  Bernice Adams was my mother's mother.  She was orphaned in Missouri at the age of ten.  She was the youngest of six surviving children.  The older children took over the care of their younger siblings.  The two older boys went to Oregon, got jobs, and sent for their four sisters to come join them.  They helped one another get educations.  The eldest boy became a dentist.  My grandmother became a teacher.