It was a small building, that first one-room schoolhouse built by Charles Vassau in 1856. All eight grades of the Wagon Landing School District No. 2 were contained in the room, along with a few pictures, a stove in the back corner and a small library. Before there was a town hall, voting booths shared the backspace.
Along
the walls were the two blackboards displaying that day’s assignments, carefully
written by the teacher after the previous day’s lessons.
Elmer
Arneson, who started attending the school at age 9, remembers how the lunch
buckets were kept around the tin rim of the stove during the winter. If left in the cloakroom, they would freeze.
Walter
Lee, another long time Wagon Landing resident, recalled how cold the building
could be in the winter. Arneson said the
early teachers had, among their other duties, the job of carrying in the wood
and filling the water jug. Students and
the teacher shared a drinking cup.
Neither
Arneson nor Lee remembered an American flag in the room (although it was
purchased later) and no recital of the Pledge of Allegiance was required.
But
the students, whose ages ranged from six to 16 years, often had a song to sing
first thing in the morning at
Lee
recalled the desks were double sized so that two persons
could sit together. Girls and boys were
not usually paired but sometimes were seated alone at one desk for punishment
Separation
began when they entered the school through two doors -
one marked for the boys and the other for the girls.
In
interviews Lee and Arneson recalled their school days in that first building.
Walter Lee studied at the
Class
started from
He
remembers walking a mile and a half to school but knows that some students rode
in the open buses towed by horses after 1918.
He said the vehicles were later ordered enclosed by the government.
One
grade was instructed at a time in the front of the room. Moving from where the students were quietly
studying to the front was called “going to class.” In turn each grade studied its form of
grammar, history, arithmetic, spelling, physiology.
Besides
the regular class sessions, there was a poem to memorize and
also spelling matches.
Boys always wore overalls, Lee said, and the girls wore dresses, dark stockings and often had their hair tied up in ribbons. Their ages ranged from six to 16 years.
Lee
graduated in 1911 and attended the old Amery high school, which is no longer
standing.
In
1918 a second school was built with the modern convenience of central heating,
two rooms with a movable divider and a domestic science room.
In
the spring of 1940, that building burned to the ground. The fire occurred on clean-up day. Lee recalled.
Students had groomed the area and stuffed the leaves into the furnace,
which was located in the basement. The combustion apparently cracked the chimney
and sent sparks flying, Lee said.
Of
course, a new structure had to be raised but in the meantime classes were held at the old town hall and at
Kenneth Peabody’s residence.
Documents
from the incident are a $20.00 check receipt Lee has for the fire department
services dated
Martin
Erickson of
Elmer
Arneson started his schooling as a seven-year-old in the
Because
he was so often needed in the fields, he finished in the fourth grade at the
age of 16. He worked on the farm each
day “as long as the ground was not frozen and left
classes in the spring as soon as possible but his teacher was
understanding. She tutored Arneson on
what she thought he would need to know in the world and had him sit with the eighth grade class.
Students
didn’t cause any serious trouble, Arneson said, but they did play pranks, such
as poking the person in front with a stickpin placed on a shoe.
Misbehavior
could merit being stood face to the wall or struck with a yardstick or a
pointer but that was rare. “Parents
ruled their kids,” Arneson declared, “if you didn’t behave, that was it!”
Another memory involved the use of small amounts of kerosene in clothing to repel lice. Hair was also groomed with a weak mixture of kerosene and water.
He
recalled the bad winters where the teacher used skis
because it was too deep for the horse.
On the school property was a woodshed with hay. The students had some responsibility for the
care of the animal.
Across
the road was a waterhole that could be fun when frozen over
but it was a little dangerous during the thaw.
Some of the boys tried to walk across the thin ice and fell through,
Arneson recalled. They had to return a
mile or more to return to their homes to change clothes.
For
24 years Arneson bussed children to the
He
used a horse-drawn sled in the winter and a T-Roadster with a pickup box on the
back that contained seating in the spring and fall.
He
was paid $16.00 a month as one of four persons in the
community to provide the service.
Wagon
Landing
By Paulette Quick
Walter
Lee of Amery is the last surviving member of the six children to the Ole Lee
family of Wagon Landing. Ole had arrived
in the
Having
farmed in the area for 40 years, Walter and his wife, Cora
especially remembered how the families worked for the neighbors as well as for
themselves.
Threshing
was too much for one farmer in the days before mechanized agriculture, Lee
recalled. So
each year, a group of eight to 20 farmers would form a crew, which descended on
each farm for at least two days. The
women worked to keep the large group of men fed.
This
system, in which each person shared the maintenance of the entire community,
went out as the combines and choppers arrived.
Early days also included
more neighborly visiting after chores, usually on foot because of the time and
bother to hitch up the horses.
Ethnic ties were especially strong among the older persons in the predominately Norwegian settlement. Like most of the pioneers, Walter’s parents spoke the native language and his mother, Johanna, never learned English.
Churches
were an important social as well as spiritual center. The Fourth of July ceremony at the church
included soda pop, a rare treat for the children, as well as the ice cream from
the cheese factory of which Ole Lee was the president in 1919. Quilts and other fancywork were sold at this
time, Mrs. Lee recalled.
Lee
also played clarinet in the local band.
Special private lessons were not available. He and the other players learned music theory
from a book at home.
Once
a week the whole group would meet with the leader, Kenneth Peabody, at the
school to practice their next performance.
Wagon Landing and Star Prairie ice cream socials and county events were
usual summer concert sites. Mrs. Lee
recalled how several county bands gathered for a concert at the
Although
the band broke up in the 1940’s, Lee still has the same clarinet.
Red
Cross meetings and benefits at the new 1917 schoolhouse gave the band a chance
to practice patriotic themes. Mrs. Lee
said the Red Cross women conducted the food, which was then, which was then
auctioned off to the men in covered baskets.
Contents were unknown until the winner paid his bid.
As
an adult, Lee played in the Wagon Landing baseball team as part of an all county conference.
On Sundays, teams from Ubet,
Parents
and students looked forward to the monthly PTA meetings held at the school
during the 1940’s, Mrs. Lee said.
Besides the business meeting, the children performed in a program and
the adults held a dance.
Also
presented at the school were the home talent programs. Mrs. Lee was responsible for at least four of
the plays, whose actors were local persons.
By Paulette Quick
Certainly the first Wagon Landing settlers were easterners of English and French decent, but how did the settlement get its name?
Elmer
and Elnora Arneson offered 3 possibilities:
1. This is where the settlers’
covered wagons stopped. That is
corroborated by the Babcock tombstone, which notes that Varnom Babcock Sr.
dedicated the land in 1846 for the Episcopalians and
later returned with several families.
2. Or, a child was said to have
been born under a covered wagon by the
3. Perhaps the area was named
for the wagons that stopped at the early post office --
a hollow tree marked by three tin signs.
This mail station in Section 29, town of
By the time Elmer Arneson’s family came to Wagon Landing,
the
This didn’t matter in church, whose ministers were Norwegian and conducted services in that language, but social conversation used English. Arneson picked up on the language when he attended school.
It’s
really been the most wonderful community, Mrs. Arneson said. She surmised that the difficulty of making a
living, a problem shared by most of the neighbors, helped keep them all
together.
Arneson
recalled how during two winters in the Depression, one family’s milk check went
for livestock feed. A running credit
account at the local store kept the family in groceries.
Family
helped when problems struck. Mrs.
Arneson still has the list of contributors who helped when Elmer was severely
burned in an accident.
“People
would give as little as 25 cents,” she said, and a few gave as much as a
dollar.”
Yet,
the support was a big lift to the Arnesons.
“There’s
been quite a closeness here, I believe,” said Mrs. Arneson as she also recalled
how neighbors plowed and planted a farmer’s total acreage and how the community
recovered after a tornado.
When
asked about community events, the Arnesons recalled Elmer’s participation in
the Wagon Landing ball team and the band.
He also played the piano, organ and sometimes the accordion at the many
dances held at Star Prairie and Little Falls halls. Dances were also held at the cheese factory
curing room and the school basement.
Wagon
Landing
School Marks 100 Years
TEACHER BRUSHED SNOW OFF PUPILS
By Paulette Quick
Mrs. Jerome Winger, then
known as Jennie Ness, taught in the last years of the first Wagon Landing
School in 1916 and 1917.
She faced some six year olds, but also a few eighth graders who were 18
years old, just about her age. The older
boys “could have thrown me out the window any day!”
In the winter mornings she
started out from the room where she boarded with a family. She was the snowplow for the road, for no
concerted effort was made to keep roads cleared until 1930.
She was dressed in the
acceptable wear for a single teaching woman of the day – skirt quite long and
slim, and a jersey blouse
(dark, I’m sure) stockings and warm woolen petticoats. She had a long coat with a fur scarf and
muff, a knitted cap, stockings and mittens were all homemade.
In the winter she arrived at
school at 6 a.m. to bring wood in and to make sure the janitor had cleaned out
the stove ashes.
The janitor was paid 10 cents for each morning for his work, but Mrs
Winger generously raised it to 30 cents, out her small salary of $45 a month,
It was unusual for a school
such as Wagon Landing to have windows on all four walls.
A shade was placed on the
window facing the road so the children would not be distracted by field workers
and rigs that rode past the school.
If water was needed for the
jar it was obtained from the pump outside.
The school district furnished wood and coal but
it was up to the teacher and the bigger children to start the fire and keep it
going. The ten foot
high ceilings made the room difficult to heat. Mrs. Winger remembers that she complimented on the room’s warm temperature.
After she rang the hand bell
the classes were opened with some form of morning exercise, singing perhaps,
but sometimes those first 10 minutes were used just to shake off the snow from
the younger children’s clothing.
Students knew what exercises
they had to do because Mrs. Winger stayed an hour and a half until 5:30 the
night before writing the assignments on the two blackboards.
Starting with reading, each
grade took their turn coming to the front of the room to present their
lessons. Each class was 15 minutes
long. Spelling was often the last
session of the day. Students were
instructed to write their work with a pencil because Mrs. Winger said that ink
would freeze.
Seats were arranged in the
front for the class in session, then the first graders in their little seats
and the other grades progressed toward the back of the room near the warm stove
but away from the teacher’s lantern.
They were supposed to be
quiet, preparing their lessons, but sometimes they stared at the reciting
students, or the teacher who spoke in her normally loud voice, or they threw
chalk.
Misbehavior was punished by
standing in the corner or staying after school but nothing more severe was
needed.
“I tried to get on their good
side,” Mrs. Winder declared. “I didn’t
want to be a cranky old schoolmarm.”
Though definitely the
authority in control of her classroom, Mrs. Winger sometimes joined in the
noontime games like skiing with the students.
She taught the usual subjects
of the day, but decided they also needed manual training
so she persuaded the School Clerk Jim Kittel to let her spend $10.00 for saws,
hammers and squares. There was no budget
for raw materials so Mrs. Winger obtained the leftover
wood from the newly built town hall.
She also used the old maple
double desks that had just been discarded for the four aisles of new single
desks.
Every Friday afternoon the
boys had a lesson in use of tools, the older girls
were taught to crochet and hand stitch and the little girls made paper beads or
other simple crafts.
Two programs were held each
year on Washington Day and for Christmas presents were exchanged and the
children received candy and other small gifts from the teacher.
The last day of school was
the time of the annual school picnic which was attended by the students’
families.
At the end of the eighth
grade, classes from several schools met at one place to take the major exam
prepared by the county superintendent.
Diplomas were mailed to each student but there was no graduation
ceremony.
On one dark February night
when the big flakes gathered, Mrs. Winger lost the small timepiece she kept
pinned onto her dress. A return to the
school with the uncertain light of a borrowed lantern could not even tract her footsteps, for the snow had covered her tracts.
In June, a little schoolboy
saw the piece of medal amidst the mud thrown by a team
of horses on the road. The watch was
located and returned to it’s owner. “ I had to have the
dents taken out and the second hand replaced but that’s all the jeweler found
wrong with it.” Mrs. Winger said.
“I’m going to wear that watch
Sunday at the reunion,” said the former Jennie Ness.
This is the first of three
Wagon Landing Schools which were constructed in the town of
Sunday reunion to celebrate 100 years
Construction on the school
was started in 1856 and completed shortly after the Civil War. The district consolidated with the Amery
school district in the early 1960’s.
Persons attending the event are asked to bring a dish to pass
and their own silverware.
SCHOOL BUS
This school bus powered by
horsepower was used to transport Wagon Landing students to school. The enclosed sled contained a stove for the
comfort of the pupils.
Leona Feske is shown with
pupils at the
Left
to right are Donna Folsom, Yvonne Paulson, Marilyn Pearson, Jimmy Utgaard,
Richard Moe, Clarence Smith and Chuck Elkin.
War relates to
Is
another war imminent?
Henry
Daniels asked that question in August 22, 1940, in a
Amery Free Press story as bids were accepted for the third
The
first school was started in 1856/7 by Charles Vassau but was not completed
until after he returned from the Civil War.
In
1917 or 1918, just in time for the first World War,
the second elementary school was finished .
An
accident caused the second building to burn down in the spring of 1940. It was rebuilt in time for World War II.
Now
with the 100the reunion being planned, is anyone hazarding a guess about the
future?
IN
1922 STUDENTS
OF
THE SECOND Wagon Landing school posed for this picture. Fern Branjord, Dorothy Route, others not
identified. Second row, Verna Miller,
Irene Moe, Blanch Asp, Dorothy Miller, and Doris Nelson. Third row, Gladys Peterson, Lillian Anderson,
Stanley Peabody, Emma Anderson, Roland Krefting, Mabel Anderson, unknown,
Clarence Peterson, unknown, Walter Anderson, unknown, Herman Anderson and Albert
Asp. Fourth row, Frank Folsom, Clifford
Moe, Raymond Miller, Mercedes Peabody, Alfreda Anderson, Verna Bottolfson, Mae
Arneson, Jerry Kittel, Myrtle Larson, Hazel Nelson, Ruth Moe, Elsie and
Clara Roettger, Myrtle Moe, Meta Kastens, Perley Larson, William Thompson,
Ellmer Anderson and Teachers’ Luella Orvold and Leiah Culler.
Wagon
Landing Band
Wagon
Landing Band… During World War I, the Wagon Landing band performed patriotic
music in the Little Falls Park, Front row, left to right, Leader Kenneth
Peabody, Clfford Elkin, an Arneson man, Francis Ryan, Al Arndt, Kemper turner,
Lewy Kastens, Lawrence Turner and Stuart Perren. Back row, left to right, unknown, Earl
Winger, Olaf Haugerud, Albert Higgins, unknown, Oliver Lee, unknown, Henry
Otterson, John Kastens and August Bartz.
Elmer
and Lenora Arneson live in the heart of Wagon Landing country on property once
owned by the Babcock pioneers.
By Paulette Quick