NEW SWEDEN TOWNSHIP, Minn. (AP) - Though the day of the one-room schoolhouse has come and gone, vestiges of the brick and clapboard structures once used to educate our state’s youth remain.
And groups like the Friends of District 6 want to save them.
The group’s namesake, a small one-room schoolhouse, is located at the heart of New Sweden Township. It sits surrounded by farmland, just one mile of east of Hwy. 22 and Hwy. 111, northwest of St. Peter.
A committee of its past students, as well as descendants of some of its original pupils, has been working for years to save it. In 2012, they replaced its basement and roof. This summer, they replaced its windows and painted it. The idea has been to return the schoolhouse to its former glory, said former District 6 student Garfield Eckberg.
Only one of two Nicollet County schoolhouses to still sit on its original site, Eckberg said it is the group’s priority to see it restored. Once it is, it will be reopened, he said. Area children will be invited to visit it for field-trips, attend reenactments and learn more about the students who once attended country schools.
“’These modern buildings represent integrity and roots,’” Eckberg said, reciting one of his favorite quotes about country schoolhouses. “I think that’s very accurate. There’s a lot of integrity in these schools and they have a lot of history for our community and its families.”
The dedication shown by the old students of District 6 have kept the little, one-room schoolhouse alive, while many of its counterparts have disappeared, The Free Press (https://bit.ly/1wJtYek ) reported.
There were once 68 schoolhouses in Nicollet County alone, most of them founded well over 150 years ago, said Bob Sandeen, Collections Manager at the Nicollet County Historical Society.
One, the District 21 schoolhouse, stood at the center of what is now North Mankato, on Lor Ray Drive between Timm Road and 512th Street. Others stood in Belgrade Township, Courtland, Nicollet and New Ulm.
“By the end of World War II and the 1950s, you’ll notice a lot of the individual listings for these schools just stop,” Sandeen said. “And that’s because of consolidation.”
After the war, many of the smaller rural schools merged with bigger schools in St. Peter, Mankato and Courtland. The unused one-room schoolhouses were either repurposed, torn down or left to slowly rot away.
Ruth Grewe, site manager for the Harkin General Store, said it’s important to remember one-room schoolhouses and the part they played in the state’s history. That’s why she puts together a program every year on the county’s old schoolhouses. To be held 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 31, it includes a virtual treasure trove of old pictures and schools books, as well as an old desk, lunch pail and slate.
“I have some lists of the old teachers in the area too,” Grewe said.
Many of those teachers stuck around, Eckberg said, and their families still live in the area, his among them.
“My mother taught here,” Eckberg said sitting at a large desk at the District 6 Schoolhouse. “She stayed in a farmhouse just north of here.”
When Eckberg says schoolhouses represent communities’ roots, he means it. Not only did his mother teach at the school, his father Raymond served as District 6’s clerk for 16 years. He himself attended the school for eight years (1942 to 1950). His third cousin, Shirley Chrest, attended from 1938 to 1947.
She and Eckberg used to sit in class next to the future wife of yet another friend of District 6, Emma Louise. Her husband Harold Rodning went to school several miles away, but now supports restoring the school house because of his own personal connection to it.
“My great-great-grandfather came to America in 1857,” Rodning said. “Settled on a farm just a half-mile away from here. Imagine. Some of his children must have come to school here.”
The school closed in 1958. It is actually the third schoolhouse built on the property - the first went up in the 1860s, while the present structure was built in 1929. Both Chrest and Eckberg have fond memories of the building, many of which they hope to share Sept. 14, during the school’s next reunion. Sitting in the District 6 schoolhouse Aug. 18, they shared just a few of them.
“Oh! Don’t you remember the box socials?” Chrest said, before launching into a story about the time a boy’s tongue froze to the flag pole.
Eckberg laughed. He can remember carrying water in from the well, doing “sums” on the old chalkboard and playing on the old swing that once hung from one of the trees outside. Leaning back in his chair and looking around the old schoolhouse, he nodded. This was a place where memories were once made.
“Oh, those were the days,” Eckberg said still chuckling. “Those were the days.”
Several of Nicollet County’s old teachers have written down their memories of the area’s old country schools and what is was like to work at them - their remembrances are now on file at the Nicollet County Historical Society. Here are excerpts from a few of them:
“My salary was $60 a month. Room and board was $20 a month, so that left me $2 a day for myself.” - Delia Monson (La Croix), District 29, Nicollet Township, 1936 to 1937
“I never remember any serious discipline problems, even with boys almost as big as I was. One day, the boys did break something in their wooden toilet. I handed them some nails and a hammer and told them to make repairs. They did, no questions asked.” -Eldora Pilotte (La Croix), District 32, Lake Prairie Township, 1928 to 1929
“I think of the little white frame schoolhouse by the side of the road. There’s a wood and coal shed on one side and two outhouses, one on each side, behind the school house. There’s a porch in front and inside the cloak room where coats and caps are hung. Here also were the lunch pails, mostly gallon pail on a shelf or on the floor. Then the school room proper with rows of desks of different sizes. In the front, the teacher’s desk and chair, the roll-down maps of the world and the blackboards. Above the blackboards the U.S. flag and pictures of Washington and Lincoln. It was a cozy place where the jacketed stove could keep it warm and the carrying of wood and coal from the outside shed.” -Vivian Harvey Johnson (Larson), districts 6, 63 and 65, New Sweden Township, 1927 to 1933
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Information from: The Free Press, https://www.mankatofreepress.com
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