Teachers from the past and present celebrated

Missy Hermes

Published Saturday, September 6, 2008

This column is a shout out to the great teachers we have in Otter Tail County. Welcome back.

Plenty of parents are rejoicing that school has started again and not just because they are happy to see a certain fifth grader named Johnny heading back to math, reading, science and leaving his brother alone.

Our teachers accomplish so much with limited resources but lots of caring and talent.

I must say that conditions for teachers have improved greatly since the early days of Otter Tail County history.

The honor of first schoolteacher in the county goes to Zeruah Sherman.

Her grandfather Cutler’s visions led a band of Mormon pioneers to the Old Clitherall site. Miss Sherman had actually received some college education in Tabor, Iowa, and so she became the first teacher, earning $16 per month.

One of her 30 students, Emma Whiting Anderson, wrote that the school, “was built with an old-fashioned fire-place at one end which was admirably contrived so as to let most of the heat go up the chimney.”

Mrs. Whiting also remembered how her teacher solved discipline problems.

“Some of the big boys became too boisterous and unruly and forgot their manners… She gave them such a fierce lesson on good manners and the proprieties to young ladies that it really took effect, and worked so well that one of the young gentlemen afterward married the teacher.”

My brother-in-law recently found himself starting a new teaching job, moving from Pelican Rapids to Foley. (We miss you Uncle Tony.)

Teachers do change districts occasionally but few teachers can match the number of Otter Tail County school districts in which Miss Bessie Walker taught. She served 12 different districts, including Aurdal, Perham, Butler, Rush Lake, Star Lake and Everts Prairie, over the course of her 50-year career.

In a Daily Journal article from Sept. 10, 1930, she recalled, “Mr. Cowing used to say to me, when I took my [final] report to him, ‘Is your grip packed and ready? Go to such a district and begin school Monday morning.’”

Like most rural schoolteachers, she boarded with families. Miss Walker wrote, “In those early days nearly all farm houses had only one room.

To make a place for the teacher a thin partition was put across one end of the room, just wide enough for a bed.”

Her “first Otter Tail County boarding place was a shack you might call it. I slept on the floor, my head under the table, my feet under the stove.”

In the Historical Society collection we have her contract signed on Aug. 25, 1873, for $20 per month for a three-month term.

E.T. Barnard’s description of Miss Walker’s career describes that of most Otter Tail County teachers.

“Their influence in moulding the character of the citizenship of the county has been far reaching, and it has always been an influence for right and truth.” We thank you all. Have a great year.

Missy Hermes is the Education Coordinator for the Otter Tail County Historical Society