Person:Martha Gyger (1)

In a letter from Katie Ruble: "Mother had quit teaching school to get married to A.J. Ruble, who was buying and driving beef stock from Texas near where she was teaching school in 1867. After marrying they went to Prescott, Arizona where father had been. Friends of his found that Mother had been teaching schools. They wanted her to teach their children. Offered pay till she consented to teach. A dwelling house was vacated, Mother said, not too far from the stockade where the children could be gotten into during Indian raids as they were yet unconquered or out on reservations as they are today. So while Mother taught their children in school Father continued with the soldiers of the garrison to keep constant guard. Mother said they were in constant dread of wild Indians of which got several times in hearing distance and seen them come up over a rise or hill, where a road went over. Saw smoke of burning wagon where they killed a man, who had come by her school as they exchanged books.... Mother trained and practiced the children to run for the stockade as fire drills are practiced in schools today." The garrison which Katie writes of is Fort Whipple, outside Prescott.

According to notes from Floyd and Arlene Gyger they may have called her Mattie

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Ruble Family Bible.
2. ↑ Schwarz; Kaufman; and Jacober. The Giger's Early American Settlers
   p. 10.