In the early years of Aurora County, the school buildings served as social centers, where the schoolteachers frequently organized events and created opportunities for community to happen. Not only were the teachers responsible for educating children of all ages and keeping them safe in flimsy buildings when weather events, especially blizzards, threatened their lives, they were also in charge of planning social events. Many of those teachers deserve credit for developing and hosting activities that brought neighbors together to share in the achievements of students and to participate in fun and educational activities that helped build a common sense of belonging to one community.
In the role of organizer, the teacher planned a variety of programs and entertainments for the local families, as described by Ella Todd Wilson, who immigrated to Plankinton from Scotland in 1887, at the age of nine, and later taught school herself, “The schoolhouse was not only the educational center but recreational as well. Then, too, the Friday evening “Lyceum” flourished and the entire neighborhood turned out for an evening of fun, group singing, often a debate, “speaking pieces” by the children, dialogs and small plays, and anyone who could plan an instrument or sing was sure to be on the program. Sometimes there was a lunch, but it was the fun and chance to talk and group a bit that mattered. These of course were for the winter season. The teacher was the organizer.”
In 1897, teachers at the White Lake School put together a school entertainment program with forty-nine separate performances that included recitations, vocal and instrumental songs, dialogues, essays, orations, and tableaux. In addition, sixteen girls performed a Hoop Drill and March. The teachers sometimes advertised to attract a larger audience, as did teacher, Myrtie C. Lundgren, when she placed a newspaper ad announcing a box social in a Belford Township school for February 9, 1917.
Not every event ran smoothly, especially when parents kept their children home from those carefully planned programs, as noted by the teacher Sephora Parry, (later Mrs. George Barrows) who drove a horse and buggy three and one-half miles from her Dudley Township home to her school in Pleasant Lake Township. In a story written for the Aurora County Historical Society, her family referenced a letter she wrote to her brother, Griff, and explained, “how very disappointed she was after giving her winter program at which one whole family did not show up. She was forced to leave out an important part of the program. One patron had thought it was not sickness but just plain rudeness. She wrote that despite everything which had gone wrong, she and the pupils had made $5.95.”
The minutes from the Finlayson Literary Society, in the possession of the Larson family, indicate meetings were held twice a month at the Finlayson schoolhouse in Bristol Township on Friday nights during the winter months, with leadership provided by one female and one male teacher, such as Patrick Nolan and Lizzie Grambihler. The membership drew from the young adults living in the area, (with last names such as, Larson, Johnson, Grambihler, Rake, Gardner, and Donegan), and the activities included lively debates. At one of the meetings, the members debated “That country life is more preferable than city life,” with “W. A. Nolan leading the affirmative and T. W. Johnson the negative. The judges decided in favor of the affirmative side and the question box was read.”
The members of the society also wrote articles for a hand-written, humorous newspaper called The Bristol Blizzard, which they claimed had a circulation of 10,000, where “the main office will be at the corner of Finlayson street and 5th avenue, Bristol, while the branch office will be located at the corner of Woodmansee Avenue and Carpenter Boulevard in Belford.” In the January 1896 issue of the newspaper, the writers reported on a measles epidemic and, evidently, some burgeoning relationships:
“Edited by everybody which means principally nobody.
Clarence says the measles affected his eyes so bad that he couldn’t read the first letter which Alice sent to him after arriving at Yankton. His mother had to read it to him. Clarence says the measles hit him awful hard.
Larson says that he doesn’t know where he got the measles, unless he got them of Miss Knudtson.
Ida Rake expects to graduate from the Belford University next spring.
Wanted. A young girl about 35 years old by Bill Shrader. Any one knowing the whereabouts of such a girl, please report.
Ida Rake seems to think there is some chance for her since Alice went away.”
When the Aurora County Centennial Committee interviewed the county’s oldest residents in 1982 and asked them about early schools, many of them remembered the school as the center of the social life of the neighborhood. They remember participating in or attending children’s programs, picnics, literary and lecture societies, musical events, plays, debates, and spelling matches. While those events might have only occurred a few times a month, they were clearly enjoyable and memorable.
The one-room schoolhouse served as the public hall, bringing the community together for a variety of activities. The teachers’ role as event coordinator for many of those activities places them in the center of community. In the years leading up to 1920, more than eighty rural schools dotted the landscape, each one under the administration of one teacher, usually female. That woman, whether her first year or her tenth year teaching, actively participated in bringing community together by preparing the students to perform, by organizing a social event, by creating opportunities for people of all ages to come together and build relationships of mutual interest. Through their work as teachers, those women helped build a sense of community among the local school families.
It Happened Right Here: Schools as Social Centers, by Ruth Page Jones. Published in the South Dakota Mail, Plankinton, South Dakota, March 9, 2017.
RPJ Histories - Ruth Page Jones 