Title: School District No. 1. Town of Clover (Bayfield County, Wis.): Herbster State Graded School Records
Inclusive Dates: 1923-1960

Creator:

• School District No. 1. Town of Clover (Bayfield County, Wis.)

Call Number: Bayfield Series 14

Quantity: 1.2 c.f. (4 archives boxes)

Repository:

Housed at the Area Research Center, History Center and Archives, Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center; owned by the Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections

Archival Locations:

COLLECTION MAY BE STORED OFF-SITE: see catalog entry to request materials and for additional information.

Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center / Ashland Area Research Ctr. (Map)

Abstract:

Correspondence and miscellaneous records, mainly 1924-1942, of George Mathews and Anthony Janoch, clerks of the Herbster School, a school in Herbster, Wisconsin, built in 1924 and in existence through 1958. The Herbster School offered high school instruction which was unusual at the time for a small district. The correspondence highlights all areas of administrative concern including exchanges with the Department of Public Instruction, the Bayfield County Superintendent of Schools, Superior State Teachers College, and Beatrice MacLean, director of the school board. Also included are files on curriculum, transportation, construction, tuition, and emergency financial assistance during the Depression, as well as files on the hiring and discipline of teachers. A file of wartime sugar rationing records that itemize the height, weight, and age for every resident of the community is also included. Few records typical of most Wisconsin school collections, such as attendance records, are included.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-bayf0014

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Herbster is a small community in the Town of Clover, Bayfield County on Lake Superior. The Herbster State Graded School was constructed in 1924. Before then students had attended school in a two-room school building and a room at the town hall. In that year the State Commission of Public Lands loaned the district 20,000 dollars from the State Trust Fund in order to construct a new building. The new building was planned to accommodate 50 students and to allow the school to offer high school instruction, a rarity for a rural school at the time. However, after the school's opening, the district did not always support a high school program because of limited finances and enrollment numbers, and in those years it was necessary for high school students to be bused to nearby Cornucopia. The Herbster School was in existence through the 1957-1958 school year.

The Herbster School records differ from most local school records held by the Archives in that they do not include the attendance records, minutes, and financial records typical of such collections. Instead, the Herbster School records are comprised primarily of the school clerks' correspondence. As a result, the files humanize the history of the school and its relationship with the surrounding area in a manner that is very unusual. Although the correspondence essentially documents only two decades, the inclusion of the Great Depression, an era that witnessed financial stress and declining population, makes the records particularly useful. There are minutes in the records only for the years 1940 to 1942 and annual statistical reports only for 1943, 1945, and 1949. The records are Correspondence and General Records, which are arranged alphabetically by record type or subject, and Teacher Files.

The CORRESPONDENCE AND GENERAL RECORDS primarily consist of the correspondence of George Mathews, clerk from 1923 to 1935, and Anthony Janoch, who then assumed the position, together with a few financial and administrative items. The correspondence incorporates the full range of the clerk's activities ranging from exchanges with the Department of Public Instruction and the Bayfield County Superintendent of Schools about curriculum matters and with faculty at Superior State Normal School about the hiring of teachers to correspondence with drivers of the school “rig” about missed stops and other complaints. Narrative evaluations of the school from officials of the two aforementioned regulatory agencies are particularly useful, as is Mathews' correspondence with Beatrice MacLean, director of the local school board. A large part of the correspondence concerns financial matters such as acquisition of state aid for the construction of the new building, arrangements for the actual construction of the building itself, and relief funding from various New Deal agencies. Also included are payrolls, sample contracts, school publications, applications for transportation aid, and some information about curriculum, test scores, and tuition paid for students who attended school out of the district. An unusual item is a file of sugar rationing records, presumably dating from the World War II era, detailing the height, weight, and age of every resident of the community.

The TEACHER FILES consist of alphabetical files for individuals employed by the district and chronological files of letters from applicants dating from the 1920s and 1930s. The individual files include letters of application and recommendations, and occasional references. The files of Stanley Koenig, a teacher and assistant principal, and Raymond Gotham, a principal, are most extensive, with Gotham's file containing information on employee discipline. The application files contain correspondence inquiring about employment. Taken together, the two sections provide a personal view of the employment and experiences of rural teachers during the Depression.

Acquisition Information

Accession Number: C1980/026

Processing Information

Processed by Geoffrey Morse (Intern, 2001), Susan E. Davis, and Carolyn J. Mattern.

	Series: Correspondence and General Records
Box   1 Folder   1	School Board minutes, 1940-1942
Box   1 Folder   2	Annual reports, 1944-1949
Box   1 Folder   3	Audit, 1934
Box   1 Folder   4	Contracts, 1932-1933
Box   1 Folder   5	Cornucopia School library lists and work blocks, 1940-1942
	Correspondence
Box   1 Folder   6	Bidding, 1924-1947
Box   1 Folder   7	Building addition, 1936-1940
Box   1 Folder   8	Commission of Public Lands, 1923
Box   1 Folder   9	Curricular materials, 1924-1941
Box   1 Folder   10	Emergency aid, 1934-1942
Box   1 Folder   11	Evaluations by state and county agencies, 1927-1951
Box   1 Folder   12	Expenditures, 1938-1940
Box   1 Folder   13	Federal assistance, 1936-1941
Box   1 Folder   14	General correspondence, 1924-1951
Box   1 Folder   15	Laughlin Family negotiations, 1937-1940
Box   1 Folder   16	Sale of old school property, 1925-1933
Box   2 Folder   1	School District director, Beatrice MacClean, 1933-1935
Box   2 Folder   2	State aids cut, 1933
Box   2 Folder   3	Test scores, 1940, undated
Box   2 Folder   4	Transportation aid applications, 1927-1951
Box   2 Folder   5	Transportation information, 1958-1960
Box   2 Folder   6	Transportation issues and complaints, 1924-1940
Box   2 Folder   7	Tuition, 1933-1939
Box   2 Folder   8	Financial statements, 1938, 1941
Box   2 Folder   9	Payrolls, 1925-1936
Box   2 Folder   10	School publications, 1929-1941
Box   2 Folder   11	Sugar rationing records, undated
	Series: Teacher Files	⇧
	Herbster teachers
Box   3 Folder   1	Anderson, Ina S. (Phillips), 1932-1942
Box   3 Folder   2	Anderson, Margaret, 1939-1940
Box   3 Folder   3	Anderson, Muriel, 1937-1938
Box   3 Folder   4	Daniels, Isabella, 1938
Box   3 Folder   5	Dodd, Phyllis, 1940-1941
Box   3 Folder   6	Egleseder, Donald, 1936-1938
Box   3 Folder   7	Gotham, Raymond (Principal), 1928-1934
Box   3 Folder   8	Hagen, Carl, 1932-1934
Box   3 Folder   9	Harrington, Mildred, 1941
Box   3 Folder   10	Huseby, L. J., 1930
Box   3 Folder   11	Kerr, Arnold, 1935-1937
Box   3 Folder   12	Koenig, Stanley (Assistant principal), 1927-1932
Box   3 Folder   13	Kortesma, John, 1937-1938
Box   3 Folder   14	Krause, L., 1934
Box   3 Folder   15	Lund, Loche, 1931-1934
Box   3 Folder   16	Mitchell, Lowell, 1938-1941
Box   3 Folder   17	Neuwald, A.G., 1928-1929
Box   3 Folder   18	Newhart, Rose, 1925
Box   3 Folder   19	Nordby, Walter, 1939
Box   3 Folder   20	Peterson, Ardyce, 1930-1931
Box   3 Folder   21	Smith, Frank, 1927-1928
Box   3 Folder   22	Soronson, Eva, 1925-1934
Box   4 Folder   1-14	Letters of application and recommendation, 1924-1942