In 1875, fifteen year old Carrie Ayres opened the first public school in the old settlement of Sterling, Colorado. At that time, college degrees were not required for teachers, but on most occasions they were required to pass a teaching test, and higher salaries were offered to those who had earned certificates by taking courses at the teacher’s college in Greeley, Colorado. Her first year, Carrie taught twenty students in a 14x16 foot sod house, or “soddy” as it was called, with dirt floors and earned twenty-five dollars a month.

Carrie, whose father had died in the Confederate Army when she was two years old, helped support her mother and also paid for furniture, supplies, and rent for her school. To help stretch her wages, each of her students brought their own seats.

In 1881, the Union Pacific Railroad announced it was extending its line, and homesteaders in old Sterling petitioned it to come through their settlement in hopes it would help their town flourish. Carrie and her students moved to the bustling new settlement of Sterling and upgraded their schoolhouse to a wood building on Main Street. Life seemed promising, but soon a prairie windstorm damaged the structure of the schoolhouse, and Carrie had to temporarily host classes in a dugout until a new school could be built on 4th Street.

Regardless of where she taught, and whether it was a school function or a spelling bee, cowboys came to visit Carrie in hopes of one day asking for her hand, but it wasn’t until 1885, when Carrie was twenty-four years old, that she married the esteemed Harvard graduate and doctor J.N. Hall. However, her marriage meant she must retire from teaching as district policy stated that teachers were not permitted to be married.

Carrie and her husband moved to Denver and had two sons, Sigourney and Oliver. She died in April, 1946. Her husband established the Mrs. J.N. Hall Foundation, which provides funding for state historical markers in Colorado, and the Carrie G. Ayres Elementary School is named in her honor as the first schoolteacher in Sterling.