Sunrise Ferry School
We excerpt this story from St Croix Falls resident, Rosemarie Vezina Braatz’s excellent book St. Croix Tales and Trails with her permission. This is an excellent book that is full of
pictures and local history! The log school house referred was moved to Evergreen Avenue in about 1910, and in 1914 replaced by a frame building that still stands in the Sterling Barrens two miles east of the St Croix River on Evergreen Av. Mom, Alberta, went to that school in the 1930s. What we have is a school teacher's account in her own words. The Orr family lived across from my cabin on Orr Lake, a few miles northwest of Cushing, WI in far NW Polk County.
Click on the pictures for a larger view.
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| Original Sunrise Ferry School WI bank at the Ferry Site on the St. Croix River West Sterling |
Country
School Teacher--by Maggie Orr O'Neill.
It was September 1,
1889. I had finished the country school not far from my home and had attended
grammar school for two terms to prepare for teaching. I applied for a little
school about 11 miles from my home called the Sunrise Ferry School. It was near
the ferry on the St. Croix River, which took folks over into Minnesota where
they could go to the little town of Sunrise a mile or more from the river.
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| Ferry School was taken apart and moved to Evergreen Av after disgruntled voters failed to get permission to move it at the annual school meeting--they just went ahead and move d it anyway! |
The families there were
mostly Swedish and none wanted to board the school Ma'am. I rented a small room
in the Martinson home one and one-quarter miles from school for $1 a week and
furnished my own food. I could make tea or coffee on their kitchen range if I
wished.
The schoolhouse was a hewn-log
construction about 16 feet x 20 feet, which was banked all around with dirt for
the winter season. There was a big iron box stove three feet long at the north
end that burned jack pine wood pieces two feet long.
The teacher's desk was
homemade, two feet by three feet, with a kitchen chair for a seat. The
blackboard was four wide boards painted black and nailed against the wall.
There were 10 long seats with a long desk in front of each made of unpainted
lumber. The lower ones were in the front for the smaller children and the
larger ones in the back.
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| Mom, Alberta Hanson and parents Eugene Hanson and Nettie Carnes lived in the old Blair homestead in the 1930s in West Sterling. Vertical log construction. Located on Cowan Creek--buildings all gone. |
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| Grandma Carne's family ran the Sunrise Ferry from about 1909 until the early 1940s when it washed downstream. Bootlegger;s had big cars to haul moonshine from the barrens to the Twin Cities. The girls who ran the ferry have all passed away now--and Mom is 90. Grandma and brother Elza ran it in 1909. |
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| The barrens roads were "rustic." |
There was a long bench
on which to set the dinner buckets and the pail of drinking water carried from
a neighbor's farm about one-half mile away. Two long benches in the front of
the room were for recitation classes. There was an alarm clock for timing and a
bell for calling the children in from recess. The water to clean the school
once a month was carried from the river, and I was the janitor.
The 38 children were of
ages 5 to 17. The majority were from real old country Swedish families. The
women spun their own wool and made their own clothing. The children had more
than one pair of home-knit stockings to wear in their wooden shoes, which were
lined up outside and were brought inside for the cold months.
From the November 20, 1913 Standard-Press: "Miss
Lucy Orr, a school teacher near Grantsburg, while on her way to school last
week, killed a Jack Rabbit that weighed 13 pounds."
The food in the tin
dinner pails was mostly bread and meat, (or lard with plenty of salt sprinkled
on it), was frozen nearly every morning in November on the way to school and
often the drinking water also. Then children wore homemade footwear, moccasins,
etc., but mostly sheep hide with wool inside for warmth and comfort.
There were four Indian
(half breed) children in moccasins who were eager and quick to learn. They
expressed a great liking for me and I returned that affection. I loved all my
pupils and never had any trouble, even with the older ones.
Perhaps I should mention
that head lice was very prevalent in those days and I had to send notes home to
parents with the suggestion that they might try kerosene in which to wash the
children's hair.
The subjects taught were
arithmetic, reading, spelling, language, writing, geography and constitution.
The students ranged from the ABC class to a class of several who studied
lessons from my own books. Those days most eighth graders didn't move on; they
stayed and used the teacher's books.
I walked the one and
three-quarter miles to school and back to my room Monday through Friday, with
some of the children joining me as I went along through the woods. On Friday afternoon
I walked the 11 miles to my home. I wore long skirts, high-buttoned shoes and
never less than two petticoats. The first six miles were through heavy, dark,
yellow-pine country with just a narrow wagon road and red sand almost ankle
deep. There was no chance to walk outside the road because of brush and
stickers.
I saw squirrels, rabbits
and beautiful deer but not a living soul and I tried to hurry along to reach
home before dark. The last five miles there would be a farmer's house every
mile or so. When snow came in November my father or a brother came for me on
Friday with a big team of horses and sled. Sunday they took me back with enough
food to last a week.
During this month, I would, with help from the largest boys, keep a big
pile of wood inside on which to dry our wet clothing after walking to school.
We always carried extra things to wear when we arrived. Some of the older boys
walked ahead through the three to five feet of snow to try to make a track for
me and others. There were no plowed roads and the weather many Novembers was 30
degrees below zero. Then I wore heavy-lined skirts, not less than three yards
around the bottom, several petticoats and heavy boots. I kept an extra all-wool
petticoat at the school to put on when I reached there after going through snow
and ice almost to my knees. I let the children out at 3:30 then because some
lived two miles away.
The first year we had
school in September, October and November, and then vacation and school again
for April, May and June. I received $25 per month. My second year at
Sunrise I received $27.50 per month and taught seven months.
The Martinson family,
with whom I stayed the year before, had moved so I went to the Joe Lundquist
home farther from school. I had a nice little room with a south window, a bed
frame and a small table. My corn-husk mattress just filled the
three-quarter-size bunk. I paid $1.50 per week, boarded myself and was
very happy. But there were times, at night, when a mother would sing Swedish
lullabies to a baby that I would feel lonely. I did learn to understand, to
speak and even to sing in Swedish while living with those families.
My third year there in
1891-1892, I received $30 per month for eight months, which was much more than
the average teacher was getting. That year I boarded with the Lundquists for
$10 per month. I averaged between 32 and 40 children of all ages in the Sunrise
Ferry School.
The first little log
school at Sunrise Ferry, the friendly people and the love of all my students
there gave me the happiest memories of all my teaching years.
***
Want to know more about the Sunrise Ferry? The Carnes Ferry girls wrote a booklet on it that the Sterling Eureka and Laketown Historical society has copies of for sale at $5 each. Two summers ago, I gave a last tour of the ferry area to Lila, the last of Mom's cousins who ran the ferry in the 1930s. She passed away last year. Someone borrowed the ferry charter from her, and never gave it back again--so I can't just go start a new ferry at the site without finding it ;-) contact SELHS Box 731 Cushing, WI 54006 or selhscushing@gmail.com