On the wall of the old country school at the Mower County Fairgrounds, the 1872 rules for teachers are posted next to one of two doors into the one-room school:.

Monday, May 01, 2000

On the wall of the old country school at the Mower County Fairgrounds, the 1872 rules for teachers are posted next to one of two doors into the one-room school:

1. Teachers each day will fill lamps, trim the wicks and clean chimneys.

2. Each morning teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session.

3. Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.

4. Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they attend church regularly.

5. After 10 hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or any other good books.

6. Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.

7. Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.

8. Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.

9. The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.

During the second week of May, the entire Banfield third grade is heading to country school, brown bags and all. Each day, a different group of third graders will arrive at the fairgrounds, and sit down in the authentic rural school, "Excelsior No. 12," built in 1870 and moved to the fairgrounds in 1957.

Mower County Historical Society director Shirley DeYoung points out that such an experience will be a wonderful way of making history come alive for the youngsters, surely better than any film or report.

"I don’t know what era they’re going to teach, but I do know they want it to be a regular school day, from 8:30 to 2 p.m.," DeYoung said, adding that this is the first time the historical society has been host to an authentic country school week.

A taste of an old-time school isn’t the only thing on offer from the Mower County Historical Society.

The administration building is a taste of heaven for any local history buff, and an excellent resource for genealogists. The group have copies of the 1880 Minnesota Census, a vital statistics file full of births, deaths and marriage records from around the county, the cemetery records for Austin and Mower County and plat maps of the county all the way back to 1896.

Want newspapers? One can find copies of the Austin papers as far back as 1863, Grand Meadow papers back to 1897, Lyle papers from as far back as 1898, as well as copies of the Mower County News, the Mower County Transcript and LeRoy and the Six-Town news, as well as various special editions and anniversary issues of the local papers.

Feeling nostalgic about your own school days but you never bought a yearbook? The MCHS has all the school yearbooks from around the county.

Need a photograph from days gone by? The group has a vast photo collection, many of them courtesy of the Austin Daily Herald. Those photographs will soon be available in a digital version as well, thanks to the Austin Elks Club.

Three employees and seven volunteers – at this time – work together with the MCHS board and members to make the historical society what it is.

Most times when a person walks into the administrative building, there’s at least one employee or volunteer poring over bound newspaper volumes.

Volunteer Lucille Hanson spends at least part of every week catching up on the Grand Meadow gossip, via the 1890 Grand Meadow newspaper. She enjoys it.

"If you think today’s newspapers are too explicit, you should read the old-time ones," Hanson said. "If someone had surgery, you find out exactly what for. There are some of the worst murders I ever heard about – very bloody descriptions … like the woman who hit her husband in the head with a frying pan."

Getting the scoop on the lurid details of our forefathers’ lives is a fringe benefit; what Hanson is really looking for are birth and death records, which she copies down on individual cards and files away, for the convenience of genealogists and others who wander into the MCHS.

"A few minutes ago a man from Alberta, Ala., called and wants everything we can find on the Medberry family from the Dexter area," DeYoung said. "He’s sending a check in the mail and we’re making copies to send to him.

"If you came in and wanted to know about your great-grandfather on the Thompson side, we would look up Thompson in the vertical files," she said, referring to the large bank of regular-sized files in the administrative building. "We would also look in the card files, where we keep track of vital statistics, and we would look in the history books."

DeYoung said the starting fee for research for non-members is the same, $5, whether the person comes in the MCHS administrative building or whether an MCHS employee or volunteer does the work. Whether one regards the task of delving into local history work, however, is another question.

For members of the MCHS, there is no fee for research, use of the files, history books or old newspapers; nor is there a charge for members for tours of any or all of the 19 buildings and train cars at the fairgrounds.

For anyone else, unless it’s fair week when the buildings are open free of charge, a tour costs $5 for adults, $10 per family and $1 for students.

Right now, its spring cleaning time for the employees at the MCHS, they’re getting the buildings ready for the summer season: hanging pictures, washing walls, dusting exhibits, and soon to be mowing.

How do they afford all this? Not very easily.

Although funded in part by the Mower County Board of Commissioners, plus tour fees and research fees, the group is working now on increasing its membership.

"We’re aiming for 1,000 members," DeYoung said. "So far, I’ve been getting a pretty good response."

The fee for membership is $10 per person. For more information, call the MCHS at 437-6082 between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.