BCHS celebrates one-room teachers

By RON LARSEN

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM--Teachers who moulded the futures of hundreds of students in Brown County's one-room schoolhouses were honored by the Brown County Historical Society at the Women's History luncheon Saturday.

Of the 64 women identified by the society as having taught in these rural schools, 45 were on hand to recognized and rewarded with a crystal apple and a certificate of recognition.

The society's president, Denice Evers of Comfrey, herself a teacher, working with honorees' remembrances, created a verbal montage of all the tasks these women were required to perform as the rural school district's only teacher of youngsters between the state-mandated ages of 4 and 21.

For example, Lorraine V. Becken of Hanska, who started her one-room schoolhouse teaching career in 1940 near Hanska and ended it 15 years later, summed it up this way:

"A country school teacher soon finds out that she must wear many hats. There is cleaning to do every day, snow to shovel, keep the fire going, carry in water, etc."

Not only that but as Evers noted, these teachers in the 80 or so one-room schoolhouses in Brown County were barely out of school themselves, mostly between the ages of 17 and 20, and often barely trained.

"When one decided to become a teacher, they would attend a 'normal school' for teacher training. In Brown County, 'normal schools' were located in both New Ulm and Sleepy Eye," Evers related.

In the late 1800s, this training could be as short as four weeks for those who had no formal training. During the 1940s when the majority of those being recognized taught, "the 'normal school' training was a grueling nine months. Remember, the training had to make teachers out of teenagers in that short period of time," Evers said.

Then, there were other requirements.

"No married teachers need apply. Salary was negotiated as low as the School Board could possibly get, and no fringe benefits were given," Evers recounted.

"Often the family who sold the land for the school lived adjacent to the property, and they--or another family who lived close by--would provide room and board for the teacher during the school year if her home wasn't in the immediate area. In those days, you were expected to live in the district that you taught in, and sometimes the living conditions were not ideal."

Typical of the young women who became rural district teachers was Helen Haugen Lodes Merville, 93, now of Minneapolis. Merville, who grew up in the Hanska area, graduated from school when she was 15 and after nine months' "normal" training, she was teaching in District 56 at Godahl.

Meanwhile, all these teachers were responsible to the county's Superintendent of Schools.

Evers said there were a total of 17 superintendents in Brown County from the time the position was created in 1864 to 1971 when a state law forced the combining of those districts with those that offered a K-12 program.