Tact, Patience and Sacrifice Were Used to Establish Schools on Montana Prairies During Homestead Era

by Anne Hawkins
(Published in the Hysham Echo
Sept. 17, 1925 & June 28, 2013)

The Russell Sage Foundation, after one of its investigations of school systems throughout the country, gave Montana highest mark among all the states in the union.

And when we went out into that big new prairie country in 1909, there didn’t seem to be anything in sight for the “Montana school system,” to act on: sheep wagons, tin cans, bands of sheep, new houses and shacks going up, but no schoolhouses being built. A huge county and a big district and nothing organized for our immediate locality. This was May, and families with children were coming in to settle right along. How to get school going by fall was a problem.

There is a lot of red tape about getting a new district created and set off from the old one, and the nearest point of contact to a school in this big district was too far away to be of any use to us. Now next to being the county agent, there is no person or persons more “harassed” than school trustees in a place being newly settled, so we went and “harassed” the trustees at the nearest point of contact. Finally they, or “he,” as there is usually one from the other two trustees allowed to go ahead and do most of the work, said if we could put up our building, that this district would furnish the equipment and pay the teacher. That was the hardest part of our problem, to get the building, and we solved it in this way: After making diligent inquiries we came across a young man who thought his sister might be induced to come to Montana and take a quarter section of land and use her own house for a schoolhouse and teach our school. The very thing.
A glowing account of the pleasurable life of a Montana schoolma’am, together with the subtle bait of being a landowner, was promptly forwarded to the young lady in question, a university graduate and teacher of experience. The west appealed to her and she came. She entered a quarter section of land in a place conveniently situated for a school, bought the lumber for her house and the neighbors built it. One large room for the school and one small room to live in and our building was solved for the time being. We had a good school running by October and an eight-month’s term. So much for the beginning.

School Ambition Grows

Then as the population grew, our ambition in school matters grew. We created a district of our own and were set apart and had our own home-grown trustees and internal troubles of our own. Each little creek within a radius of six or seven miles desired to have a school in its own dooryard, if for only two or three months. That was the one thing they ought not to have, a two or three month’s term, for every boy and girls in Montana is entitled to a nine months’ term.

To establish a central or community school is about like trying to walk on several acres of closely packed eggs without breaking any egg-shells. So many petty things to consider, so many very sensitive feelings to avoid hurting. No matter if the children suffer greatly by being deprived of a half year of school, the parents MUST be thought of first.

We did, however, establish a central school with a nine-months term. Some of the most difficult parents to appease were well satisfied when their eldest boy would be offered the job of driving the school wagon from their immediate locality, at so much per month, which really was a benefit all around, justifying an honorable means to a worthy end.

Then there was the chronic fusser to be considered, whom you can no more overlook than you can the wasp that has made up his mind to sting you. Whether it was the very important fact that the horses on the school wagon were not the right color or whether the first quarter of the new moon didn’t act just right, the trustees for the central school got it hot and heavy. Were you ever - ? but then at some period in your life you must have been a school trustee. Nice, wasn’t it? But then some one has to be “it” or the children would lose out.
As time went on it became apparent that a town would be necessary factor in the general scheme of empire building, and so we laid off a town. We were on one of Jim Hill’s surveyed lines for extension and were all set for the railroad to be built through. We hitched the steam plow engine to the central school and brought it to town. The county superintendent said, “You must have two teachers, one teacher can not do justice to the number of children being taught.” Once more we had civil war and even the trustees had “feelin’s” toward each other. Economy was the watchword. Two teachers would be gross extravagance. Two of the trustees were for one teacher and one trustee was for two teachers, and then when the “minority” urged that the daughter of one of the trustees be the second teacher, and the other trustee was urged that his boy’s wages on the school wagon be raised. We heard no more about extravagance and the three trustees worked as a harmonious whole, and once more a worthy end was accomplished by honorable means.

Working for the Children

Often the newly established schools really do more for the children than those of older towns and cities. We were so acutely aware of many privileges denied our young folks in that big raw country, that we redoubled our efforts in all things pertaining to schools. Our library fund was used to the very limit, bringing the finest and best authors into every child’s home and because of so few outside attractions, those same books in older communities. We put in a phonograph with a selection of high class records and no “jazz.” We offered prizes for the best-made loaf of bread, the best apron, the earliest chickens and turkeys and the earliest vegetables and sweet peas. I remember our school was out the middle of June that year and the agricultural display at the schoolhouse was particularly fine and the sweet peas that took the prize had blossomed on the 12th of June.

As time went on and we were ready for a third teacher, we almost “rocked the nation” again. Whereas there were many fine and worthy people scattered through the country, there was quite a sprinkling of people who were not worthy. They did not “spik” the English language and they should not have been allowed the use of the ballot because they always threw a monkey-wrench into the machinery that moves our home-made American institutions; and now at this particular crisis when we needed three teachers for the immediate welfare of our school there two of the three trustees with foreign blood in their veins and they were about to throw the monkey-wrench. The one with the stolid face said one teacher would be enough, so much cheaper than two or three. I am not going to tell you what the third trustee did in detail, for perhaps he wouldn’t like to have me. Suffice it to say, we had three teachers.

Name for a High School

In the process of school evolution we began to graduate our eighth graders and we were up against a very hard problem again. Our county high school, some eight miles away, was an exceptionally fine one which it would have been a privilege to attend, but the settlers were beginning to experience some of the “lean” years and it was out of the question to send their graduated eighth-graders away from home. School wagons could hardly solve that problem.

We made a rather startling announcement that we would have a high school right there in our own little town on the prairie. Such an undertaking meant an almost endless amount of work and patience and (there is no other word) fights. Factions and sections fight each other bitterly on school matters and usually the spite falls on those least able to protect themselves, the children. If people could once get it firmly fixed in their minds that ignorance is vastly more expensive than education there would be less blind opposition to the extra mills to be voted for school purposes.

Of course, it was necessary to vote bonds for a new school building if we were to have a high school and we had to be sure first that we would be allowed to have a high school in our new building. We studied the Montana school laws assiduously, we communicated with the state department of education at Helena, and communed with the heads of the county high school. Those communings were not of an altogether pleasant nature because the heads of the county high school were opposed to the establishing of any small high schools in the same county.

They said, “At best you will only have a little fuddyduddy high school half kept up. Why not send your pupils to our high school?” From their viewpoint they were quite right, but we simply had to have our high school or turn our finished eighth graders out to grass. We had many closely contested arguments about funds, as we did not agree upon the same interpretation of the school laws. The state department at Helena did all within its power to help us, but it’s some little job to plant a high school in a small prairie town, and they realized, as perhaps we didn’t, the size of the task.

No one but a most efficient principal could have weathered the strenuous times we went through and made such splendid success of the school as he made.

Oh yes, we got everything we went after and when we dedicated the new school building, our eyes were a bit misty but we were very happy. Our high school became a four-year one, and let me say this for the Montana school system: From that little rural high school, pupils entered the University of California, and the North-western university, besides those attending the University of Montana. Print this post