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By Tim Ruzek

In 1912 on a January afternoon, hundreds of students and teachers covered blocks of Austin streets as they somberly escorted the body of Ethel Messecar, a local college student, to the train station.

This funeral procession began after a 1 p.m. service in the Southern Minnesota Normal College’s chapel for the 26-year-old Ethel, a North Dakota native who died three days earlier from pneumonia.

Mourners walked about 1.5 miles from the college, which was where Galloway Park is today in southwest Austin, while escorting Ethel’s remains up Main Street and east on Water Street (4th Ave NE) to the Milwaukee Railroad depot in Austins’ east-side railyard.

The Austin Daily Herald estimated Ethel’s funeral procession included about 300 people while the Mower County Transcript guessed around 500.

As the procession approached the depot, a photograph was taken from above on the railyard’s pedestrian overpass, showing the mourners making a long line through the snow from Railway Street (10th St NE) to the depot and back again to Railway.

Ethel’s body was being sent by train to her family in Neche, North Dakota (a small town near the borders of Canada and Minnesota), who were notified of her death via telegraph but could not travel to Austin due to sickness. That’s what led to her college peers and faculty escorting her body to the depot.

On that day, temperatures were in the 20s, which was much better for the long procession than a week earlier when the daily high was –4 degrees and followed a long period of even colder, sub-zero days.

A print of the procession’s photo was found online in recent years, leading to this article looking into what was going on that day.

“Seldom does one see so impressive a funeral procession as that of 300 students, marching two by two, which followed the body of Miss Messecar through the streets of Austin to the Milwaukee depot Friday afternoon,” the Herald wrote Jan. 27, 1912.

Ethel’s death marked the first time Southern Minnesota Normal College experienced the death of a student, “which is a certainly remarkable record considering the thousands of students who have enrolled in the school,” the Herald wrote.

Known as a good and ambitious student, Ethel completed one year of courses at Southern Minnesota Normal College and, after some time, returned in November for extra schooling there. Ethel was taking courses on doing shorthand and typewriting, with plans to finish in June.

After a catching a cold, Ethel developed pneumonia Jan. 16 and died eight days later.

“She seemed to be getting along nicely, and promises of recovery were bright until Tuesday afternoon (Jan. 23) when she became suddenly worse and death resulted (the next morning),” the Herald wrote.

The Transcript wrote “all that a competent doctor, trained nurse and kind friends could do was done” for Ethel, whom it called “a very fine, young lady and liked very much by all the students.”

Southern Minnesota Normal College opened in 1897 with 35 students but quickly grew to more than 250 within a few years.

The college’s prime years were from 1908 to 1920 — including in 1913 when its name changed to the University of Southern Minnesota. During that time, the college was considered a highly valuable institution for Austin businesses and it attracted students like Ethel from North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Illinois.

By 1927, however, the college was in financial trouble and closed. Soon after, the college building was torn down for developing the property into Galloway Park named in honor of the original landowner who gifted 5 acres for the college.

If you have a question or story idea, Tim Ruzek can be reached at tim@mowerdistrict.org