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<\/a>Niebull School about 1929 – Rena Petersen 5th from right in back row beneath bell cupola.<\/p><\/div>\n
\u00a0part of the Adams County Historical Society\u2019s exhibit.\u00a0 85 year old Rena Murphy\u2019s family has a long association with the school.\u00a0 Her grandparents, Nels and Suzanne Petersen donated the land for the school.\u00a0 Her father, Hoder Petersen attended the school.\u00a0 Her mother, Hannah taught at Niebull School.\u00a0 Rena herself attended and taught at the school.\u00a0 And her daughter Joan Twachtman briefly taught in the schoolhouse as well.\u00a0 Looking to the occasion of the relocation and re-dedication of the Niebull schoolhouse, the Adams County Historical Society<\/em><\/p>\n interviewed Mrs. Murphy on April 10, 2002<\/em><\/p>\n Niebull School in 1905<\/p><\/div>\n ACHS<\/strong>:\u00a0 You taught in the one-room Niebull School.\u00a0 What years did you teach there?<\/p>\n Rena Petersen Murphy<\/strong>: Two or three years at Niebull, 1935, 1936 and part of 1937..<\/p>\n ACHS<\/strong>: How old were you when you started?<\/p>\n Murphy<\/strong>:\u00a0 I was\u00a0about 19.\u00a0 You only had to go one year after high school to be able to teach then.\u00a0 I went for training at Wautoma, and got my one-year certificate.\u00a0 I later went to Stevens Point for summer school and night school<\/p>\n ACHS<\/strong>:\u00a0 In a one-room school when you had all the different ages, how did you manage to teach all the grades at the same time?<\/p>\n Murphy<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0 In the morning we started at 9:00 o\u2019clock.\u00a0 We had first grade Reading.\u00a0 They would stand and pass and would come up to the recitation bench.<\/p>\n ACHS<\/strong>:\u00a0 Recitation bench?\u00a0 What was that?<\/p>\n Murphy<\/strong>:\u00a0 It was a long bench up in the front of the room.\u00a0\u00a0 It should be in the school house<\/p>\n Inside Niebull School, Pre-schooler Rena Petersen 1st from left on Recitation Bench<\/p><\/div>\n now, right in front of the teacher\u2019s desk.\u00a0 The kids sat on the bench and the black board was right in front of them.<\/p>\n At 9:00 o\u2019clock then, the first graders would come to the recitation bench.\u00a0 They would recite and I would have things to show them on the blackboard.\u00a0 They would go to their seats and the second grade would come up [and so on through] the seventh and eighth.\u00a0 Then at 10:30 it was recess time.\u00a0 Recess was 15 minutes and they all went out and played.\u00a0 When they came back in we had Arithmetic. Each class came up the same way [until] Noon.\u00a0 In the wintertime we had a half-hour [noon break] and in the spring and fall an hour.\u00a0 After lunch we had English or Language. Half a year we would have English and the other half what we called Language.\u00a0 It was poems and stories and stuff.\u00a0 After that we had History and Geography.\u00a0 Half of the year we had History and the other half, Geography.\u00a0 After that we had recess again.\u00a0 Then Spelling.\u00a0 It was a process that the kids really got a lot out of because if they weren\u2019t studying like they were supposed to, they were listening to what was going on and they learned a lot.\u00a0 They were listening to the big kids and maybe the big kids were refreshing their minds from the little kids.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what is in the Niebull Schoolhouse now, but when I went there and when I taught there we had double seats.\u00a0 Two kids in a seat. That wasn\u2019t so good.\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t keep their mouth shut, whispering too much.<\/p>\n ACHS<\/strong>: Did you have any duties out there besides teaching?<\/p>\n Murphy<\/strong>:\u00a0 Yes, the schoolhouse was right next to my folks and so, of course I stayed there.\u00a0 I would get up in the morning and go over and start the fire. Then I would go back home and eat breakfast.\u00a0 Then I would go back to school.\u00a0 It was just across the field.<\/p>\n ACHS<\/strong>: So you didn\u2019t have very far to walk, but I imagine some of the students did, right?<\/p>\n Murphy<\/strong>:\u00a0 Yes, one batch walked two-and-a-half miles.\u00a0 A lot of them walked a mile or so.\u00a0\u00a0 After I got the fire started, if it was very cold, the kids would stand around the stove.\u00a0 It was a big stove with a big jacket around it.<\/p>\n ACHS<\/strong>: There is a sink in the schoolhouse now.\u00a0 Did you have running water?<\/p>\n Murphy<\/strong>:\u00a0 We had a pump, and used a water pail and dipper.\u00a0 We would drink out of the dipper.\u00a0 When I was teaching there we got a water fountain.\u00a0 At noon when they had their lunch, somebody poured water in a wash basin for hand washing.\u00a0 I think the dinner pails were set on the floor, but that seems kind of funny.\u00a0 There might have been a shelf there.\u00a0 If there was, it\u2019s probably still there in the back of the room.\u00a0 Some of them had fancy dinner pails.\u00a0 Most of them had syrup pails.\u00a0 [These were] round half-gallon pails they had bought syrup in. You used whatever you could get.\u00a0 Nobody had any money.<\/p>\n ACHS<\/strong>:\u00a0 Katherine McGowan would have been the Supervising Teacher, right?<\/p>\n Murphy<\/strong>:\u00a0 She sure was.\u00a0 The kids always hated to see her come because she always had a test for them. She was the Supervising Teacher when I went to School, and she was supervising teacher when I taught school.\u00a0 She would tip toe in and you couldn\u2019t even hear her.\u00a0 Mr. [I.S.] Jones [the County School Superintendent] didn\u2019t come very often.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>ACHS<\/strong>:\u00a0 There were eighth grade graduation ceremonies then, I suppose?<\/p>\n Murphy<\/strong>:\u00a0 When I graduated from eighth grade we had a picture taken at the fairgrounds.\u00a0 There were three of us, my two sisters and me [who went on to high school].\u00a0 In our township, Big Flats, the township had to pay the tuition:\u00a0 $72 a year.\u00a0 They were quite disgusted to think that we went to high school.\u00a0 The rest of them could have gone too, but they didn\u2019t want to.\u00a0 My dad really wasn\u2019t \u201cgung ho\u201d about us going to high school because he never did, but my mother had.\u00a0 Well, she didn\u2019t go either, but she taught school.\u00a0 My dad said, \u201cIf you stay home Rena, I\u2019ll give you $5 a week.\u201d\u00a0 My mother said, \u201cNo, she\u2019s going to high school.\u201d\u00a0 See, when my mother taught, she had graduated from eighth grade.\u00a0 Then she went one summer to summer school at Stevens Point, and then she taught school.\u00a0 And she taught Niebull School.\u00a0 That\u2019s where my dad and my mother met.\u00a0 All the young fellows were looking out for the school ma\u2019ams.<\/p>\n ACHS:<\/strong>\u00a0 Who were your teachers when you went to Niebull School?<\/p>\n Murphy:<\/strong>\u00a0 My first grade teacher was Jesse Matthews. Most generally, they only stayed two years.\u00a0 I had a list of them somewhere. Pearl Knudsen, Gladys Nobel, Ortha Kleven, Clara Machovec Jensen, —<\/p>\n ACHS<\/strong>:\u00a0 Clara Jensen was your teacher?<\/p>\n Murphy<\/strong>:\u00a0 She was my eighth grade teacher.\u00a0 She stayed at our house.\u00a0 All the teachers stayed at our house because we were right next to the school. I was out to lunch with [Clara] yesterday.<\/p>\n ACHS:<\/strong>\u00a0 What do you think about having the Niebull Schoolhouse moved over here by the McGowan House now?<\/p>\n Murphy:\u00a0 <\/strong>\u00a0I think that is great. Nobody saw it out to the fairgrounds.\u00a0 People can now go in there and see what the one-room school looked like.\u00a0 I hope that everything is pretty much the same as it was then.<\/p>\n ACHS: <\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0There is a flagpole in the pictures of the Niebull School. Did you have flag ceremonies then?<\/p>\n Murphy:<\/strong>\u00a0 Every morning.<\/p>\n ACHS:<\/strong>\u00a0 Pledge of allegiance and all that?<\/p>\n Murphy<\/strong>: Yes.\u00a0 Somebody had the honor of raising the flag.\u00a0\u00a0 It was taken down every night and put up every morning.<\/p>\n ACHS:<\/strong>\u00a0 In the 1905 picture of the school, there isn\u2019t a bell on the schoolhouse<\/p>\n Murphy:\u00a0 <\/strong>When the bell was put up there it must have been 1913 or 14. The picture of the Niebull School that I gave Joan [Jones] is the picture with the belfry on top.\u00a0 Joan said that they are wondering if the roof would hold that big bell.\u00a0 I said, \u201cWell [the roof] held it for many years, and I don\u2019t know why it wouldn\u2019t hold it now.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 I believe my dad bought that bell.\u00a0 He and Pete Sorensen put it up there.\u00a0 That was when my mother was teaching there.\u00a0 I think Dad was trying to impress her.<\/p>\n Niebull School as it appeared when Rena Petersen Murphy taught there.<\/p><\/div>\n [Note: The Murphy family kept the bell at their home after the Niebull School closed.\u00a0 They donated it back to the Society for the schoolhouse.]<\/p>\n ACHS:<\/strong>\u00a0 The sign is over at the schoolhouse too.<\/p>\n Murphy:<\/strong>\u00a0 The one I made?<\/p>\n ACHS:<\/strong>\u00a0 Oh, you made the sign?<\/p>\n Murphy:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yes, but that sign, it was kind of funny because it was made out of twigs.\u00a0 I put them on with tiny nails.\u00a0 I did that when I was teaching there.\u00a0 [The Historical Society people] said they were going to have to put it into some kind of a case because if they just put it out in the weather it would soon deteriorate.\u00a0 But it was out in the weather quite a while.<\/p>\n ACHS:<\/strong>\u00a0 I saw the sign sitting on a shelf when we were in the school recently cleaning.<\/p>\n Murphy:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 That was another thing we had to do when I was teaching, clean the school.<\/p>\n ACHS:<\/strong>\u00a0 Did you get the students to help?<\/p>\n Murphy:<\/strong>\u00a0 No.\u00a0 I usually did that, or some of the ladies in the district would come and help on Saturdays.<\/p>\n ACHS:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 There is a front porch on the schoolhouse in some of the later pictures.\u00a0 Was that there when you taught there?<\/p>\n Murphy:<\/strong>\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t there when I went to school, but it was there when I taught school.<\/p>\n ACHS:<\/strong>\u00a0 There is lots of equipment in the Niebull Schoolhouse now.\u00a0 There is a piano and an organ.\u00a0 Did you have anything like that?<\/p>\n Murphy:<\/strong>\u00a0 No.\u00a0 We had a record player, but no piano or organ.\u00a0 Not while I was there.\u00a0 The globe was there and there were maps that pulled down.\u00a0 Blackboards were all on the front. There were pictures, I suppose there was one of Washington and [one of] Lincoln.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have many books, but we had books taken from one school to another.\u00a0 We had a case.\u00a0 You would have the books for a while and then they would be taken to another school and we would just exchange.\u00a0 Of course we had books that were staying there too, but not many.\u00a0 Is the bookcase there with the glass?<\/p>\n ACHS:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n Murphy:<\/strong>\u00a0 The bookcases were along the side. Along the front they had built a place for books and teacher\u2019s supplies.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if that is still there or not.\u00a0 That was put in there when I was teaching.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>ACHS:<\/strong>\u00a0 Do you think teaching was better then?<\/p>\n Murphy:<\/strong>\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have any trouble with the kids.\u00a0 If they got a shake-up at school, they got one at home too.<\/p>\n ____________________________________________<\/p>\n This article first appeared in the Adams County Historical Society newsletter The Quatrefoil <\/em>in the Winter 2002 edition.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Niebull One-Room School Days An Interview with Rena Petersen Murphy: Niebull School Student and Teacher by Harry Davis NOTE:\u00a0 On January 3, 2002, the Niebull one-room schoolhouse was moved to … Continue reading <\/a><\/a><\/a>