Smith School was located at the intersection of what is today, Hwy. 14 and Smith Road. It appears that it began on the southeast corner where a small house/gift shop is located.
In an early Vernon County Atlas that doesn't have a date, there is no school shown in the Smith School area. The land is owned by Tennis Larson where the first little school would be built. The land across the road, where the present Smith School is located, was owned by Jane McHenry. The date of this atlas has to be after 1868, because that’s the year my great grandfather, Hans Hanson Sherpe bought his farm across from where Old Towne Inn is located, and he’s shown on the plat map.
The next Atlas I have is 1878 and Smith School is now shown, so it must have been built sometime between 1868 and 1878.
In the 1878 Vernon County Atlas, it shows Smith School on the corner where that small house/gift shop is now. It was owned by Tennis Larson at that time. The land across the road is still owned by Jane McHenry.
Later, in the 1896 Atlas, it shows the Tennis Larson land now owned by W.T and C.W. Chase. Smith School is now located across the intersection at the location where we remember it being until it was moved two years ago to make way for a four-lane highway that isn’t needed. So sometime between 1878 and 1896, Smith School was built on that site. Jno. Michelet owned the land surrounding the school at that time.
In 1915 the plat map shows that Bernt Limoseth owned the land where the first school was. Olga Limoseth lived in that little house until she died. I remember when she lived there. R.M. Grimsrud owned the land surrounding the school in 1915.
I don't know much about the early history of the school and have only been able to try and figure out the timeframe from the early plat books.
Many people couldn’t speak English when they started to school at Smith. Most of the students came from Norwegian families. My father, Hans Sherpe said, “When I started to Smith School, around 1920, I couldn’t talk a word of English. I just talked Norwegian. We only spoke Norwegian at home and I didn’t know a word of English.” It must have been hard for those first teachers, although I suspect they all spoke Norwegian too.
Doreen (Roiland) Nienow, a relative of mine, wrote a wonderful story about her memories of Smith School. It gives a lot of history of what went on in a country school.
I started first grade at Smith School (one mile east of our farm) in September, 1932. I was five years old. My sister, Sadie (Roiland) Larkin, was my teacher. Since it wasn’t a state law that you had to be six years old to start first grade, my mother thought it would be nice for me to go to school while my sister was teaching there (I believe it was her last year at Smith). As my teacher, she didn’t give me any special privileges just because she was my sister. In fact, Sadie had to be more strict with me, so no one would think her little sister received special favors!
Howard Ramsland and I would trade lunches sometimes. He liked the old fashioned rolled sugar cookies that my mother made and my sandwiches made with homemade bread. I liked his sandwiches made with store bought bread and the chocolate covered marshmallow cookies he had in his lunch. I remember my mother making velvetta cheese sandwiches. My dad bought two pounds of cheese that came in wooden boxes. Now I see those wooden boxes in antique shops. I carried my lunch in a Karo syrup pail.
There was a front hall (cloak room) at school where we hung our coats and caps and put our boots there in the winter. There was a shelf above the coat racks where we put our lunch pails. I remember the five-gallon Red Wing water cooler in the southeast corner and a tin dipper hanging on the wall next to it. We all drank out of the same dipper! No one worried about spreading germs by drinking out of the same dipper. We were all pretty healthy Norwegians!
Some of the outdoor games we played were “Ante Over.” We divided into two teams and one went on each side of the schoolhouse. One team would throw the ball and yell “Ante Over.” If it didn’t go over, you had to yell, “Pigs tail” and try again. If it went over and lit on the ground, their team had to try throwing it over. If someone caught it, they would come dashing around to the other side. Anyone from the opposite team whom they could touch (tag) with the ball had to join their team. The game ended when one team had all the players or when the bell rang, signaling the end of recess.
We also played Hide and Seek, Tag, Pump, Pump, Pullaway, and Flip-Stick.
The Christmas programs were very special and exciting events. I remember memorizing recitations and worrying that I might forget some words. Our parents attended our programs and we wanted everything to be perfect. The highlight of the evening was when Santa came and handed each of us a beautiful, large, red Delicious apple and a small, colorful, rectangular cardboard box with a wide string handle that contained nuts, peppermints, colorful ribbon candy, and all sorts of delicious hard candies.
I walked to school with my sister, Sadie, while she was teaching there and then later with Alda and Alice Virak and Irma Jean Rude. We would meet down at the crossing just a little ways north of the Virak farm.
In the winter, when the snowdrifts were too high for cars to travel, I could ski to school. Sometimes, my dad would give us kids a ride in the sleigh with our grey Percheron horses (Barney and Frank), hitched up to it. Dad had a strap of sleigh bells for each horse that he attached to their harness and the “bells jingled all the way,” while we rode down the snow-covered country road. What wonderful memories!
Country school teachers had to start the wood fires in the furnace in the morning (No janitor). It was up to them to keep the schoolroom clean and in order. I enjoyed helping our teachers with wiping and cleaning the blackboard and dusting the erasers.
The last day of school was a picnic for the entire family. There would be potato salad, sandwiches, home-baked beans, cake, cookies, and lemonade. I will never forget these great memories of my grade school days.
I’m so happy to have had the opportunity to attend a one-room country school for eight years and I don’t believe that our education was inferior to the city schools. We learned to share and to understand schoolmates of different ages. Honesty, self-discipline, patience, and respect were learned by close contact. We learned the power of concentration, to sit at our desks doing our school work while a class was in session at the front of the room. We learned to read, spell, use good penmanship, math, history, geography, and we didn’t depend on a pocket calculator to do our adding and subtracting! Phonics was always an important part of our beginning education. There was a special togetherness... people caring about people.
Doreen is right. Country schools were a wonderful experience. We were a family. On August 7, 2010, many of our family will get back together again for our first Smith School reunion and we’ll talk about many of those experiences that Doreen mentioned.
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