A story of growing up 100 years ago

By Melissa | November 23, 2015

Editors Note—The following story was sent to this newspaper back in 1995 and was misplaced until just recently. It is from Barbara Schultz, then of Hudson. She wrote; “I am sending you a story I thought your readers would enjoy about life in the Glenwood City and Emerald area in the years of 1904-1924. The story was written by my mother, Eugenia Newell, who was born in Emerald or near there and raised there and going to high school and graduating from Glenwood City.”

I remember

Written by Eugenia Newell Field Ronningen before her death in 1981.

“I was born on February 7, 1904 in Emerald, Wisconsin. My mother was born March 10, 1879, the only girl and last child after six brothers: William, born January 23, 1865, John, Henry, Frank 1870; George, June 30, 1883 and Sam. Their father’s name was, Smith, who was born June 16, 1831 and their mother Ellen, was born January 11, 1839. Their last name was Mcaleny, a Scotch-Irish name.

[emember_protectd] My mother’s name was Harriet. Mama told me her family came over early in the settlement of America, the third boat after the Mayflower, and settled in Pennsylvania. One young son fought in the battle of Bunker Hill at age 15. Later one or two fought in the Civil War.

My grandparents came west to farm in Nebraska, where my mother was born. The young family, with seven children, was hit by the great locust plague, causing them to take their few belongings and leave by Ox cart east, to Menomonie, Wisconsin.

This is my story, I remember!

Grandpa Newell in his mustache and chin whiskers sitting under the windmill in our front yard. He was taking his old felt hat off and putting it on my head in play fashion, It must have been in the spring of 1908, just a month or two before by brother, John Newell was born in the downstairs bedroom of the house where uncle Noble and aunt Lib Fleming lived for many years. Now it is torn down and replaced with a new home where Paul and Violet Fleming live just south a mile and west a rod or two from Emerald, Wisconsin in St. Croix County.

John was born July 9, 1908. All the relatives were happy to have a baby boy born after Lela, my sister and I. I was four years old and the oldest and Lela was just 18 months younger. He was named Bert, after my dad, but Mama changed his name to John in later years because she didn’t like the name Bert and anyway everyone called him Bertie, which added to her dislike. Of course, father’s sisters thought that was a foolish thing to do, because they always favored his wishes. He had plenty of sisters too, and only one younger brother, Art, who always remained a bachelor, a very lovable person, but with some bad habits of too much drinking of firewater, my mother always said. Of course, my father had the same bad habit, plus chewing Right Cut tobacco and snuff. Always there were plenty of places to purchase liquor in Emerald. The corner Moore’s Saloon was one. They were never called a tavern or bar in those days. It was just plan saloon up until prohibition in the years of the 1930’s.

After that the big industry of moonshine came. Stills were set up in back forties, basements, root cellars and what have you. Moore’s, who were Irish folks, were the first owners of the saloon I can remember, then George Granger and his wife Mayme, were the next owners.

George was a brother of my uncle Eddie (my favorite uncle) who married my aunt Sade (my father’s sister). He was an Irish railroad man full of fun and laughter. He had lots of black hair and always earned a good living for his only child, a son, Alfred. They lived in Irvine, Wisconsin, a mile out of Chippewa Falls. This was the railroad center, so was very near for uncle Eddie’s work.

Lela and I often went on the train from Emerald to visit them when we were in our teens. This was a great treat and at the time we did not own a car. Few people had cars then, and those that owned one put them up for the winter months, and travel was replaced with driving horses, sleighs and cutters and shanks horses. Snowdrifts were high and roads narrow with pitch holes made where snow drifted across and grew deeper and sharper with constant travel. It was dangerous to drive horses fast, stepping off the hard crust would cause them to fall or stumble. Our neighbor’s 14-year-old boy had a horse that broke his leg, and the father, Henry Frederick (a German family) wanted to kill the horse, but the boy, Harry, nursed the horse back and the leg healed. He had a sling built around the horse to hoist him up into a standing position and after months of loving care, the leg healed.

It was in the spring of 1916 that we moved from grandpa Newell’s house, the first house west of Emerald cemetery. It had been a real heavy snow and the roads were full of chuckholes caused by blowing and drifting snow across the way. Few cars were in use and in the winter none at all. This was an exciting time, one reason because we were much nearer the one room school, 1 mile south of Emerald and also nearer the village with its saloons owned by Moore’s on the south end to welcome the folks, some of which couldn’t resist the temptation of stopping in.

Then there was the Emerald Creamery on the north end, where all the surrounding farmers hauled their cream, separated from milk. At this time I was in the seventh grade, and being the oldest, it fell to my lot to take old Prince and the buggy every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and take the cream to town before school hours. This made me hurry to be in school by 9:00 and sometimes I was late. This caused me to stay after school and write certain sentences many times like ‘I’ll try not to be late again’ or to write a spelling work one hundred times. It never angered me much, only I had to walk home alone, unless someone else had to stay too.

The rural school at Emerald, one mile south of town, was just one big room heated by a stove with a big tin jacket around it. The entrance was one door in the front where we entered into the hall, the girls took the door to the right and the boys to the left. Benches were provided to put dinner pails on and rubbers were placed underneath. Often times in winter the sandwiches were frozen and then we were allowed to put them under our desk. Two outside toilets, privy, we called them, some called them back houses, were provided, one for boys and the other for girls. You asked to be excused by raising your hand.

My first teacher was Blanche Peabody from Spring Valley. The Omaha (Pig Tail) as it was called, stopped at uncle Alex’s Blacksmith Shop at 8:30 in the morning, which was across from the school, and Blanche would go home on this train on weekends. She was little, petite and pretty, a good teacher that taught all eight grades and up to 60 in attendance. We never seemed to have discipline problems.

All made their own fun at two 15 minute periods of recess and one hour at noon. Playing baseball was the spring and fall game. In winter, ‘Fox and Geese’ followed a pattern in freshly fallen snow. Lela, John and I all graduated from this rural school, Lela in 1920, John in 1920 and I in 1918.

We didn’t go to high school until 1919. There were seven of us from Emerald that started high school in Glenwood City. They were: Hazel Arnson (Mrs. Clarence Fleming), Mable Fleming (Mrs. Andrew Wilk), Sadie Schultz (Mrs. Frances Larson), the Boyer sisters, Marjorie and Esther, and myself. We found a room to rent at Frank Gordon’s, three blocks from high school for $12.00 a month. We did our own cooking and shared the cost of the room and food. We each had 25 cents a week to spend. 19 cents was spent for a gallon of kerosene, fuel for our oil stove. It cost 18 cents to go home on the train if we didn’t get a ride with someone from Emerald.

Sadie’s father ran a garage in Emerald and often the two bigger brothers; Armon and Vernie would pick us up. Sometimes we walked the seven miles home with a suitcase full of dirty clothes and a quart fruit jar so we could always bring cream back. Our diet was made up mostly of eggs, breakfast food, potato and bread, which was always home made. The seven of us from Emerald going to the high school were called the ‘Emerald Exiles’.

These were difficult years because we didn’t have all the gadgets that make household work easy as it is today. No one had indoor plumbing. There was always outside privies with usually three holes, two bigger and one smaller for the children. All bedrooms had a chamber that was used at night. It was always my sister and I that had that job of emptying and cleaning it every morning. Another daily chore was washing lamp chimneys and filling lamps with kerosene, cleaning the wicks or cutting the black tip on top. We always had a rain barrel for soft water which was needed to wash our hair. Culligan was unheard of in 1918.

I remember when I was about eight years old, word came the Titanic on its maiden voyage, sank. At that time we lived about three miles north of Emerald on what was called the Gleason place. I remember Mama crying then over that tragedy. She was about 33 years old. World War I was fought during my teen years and I contracted the flu, which took many lives then. Mama called the doctor because I was so sick with high fever and fell into a coma like state for three or four days at which time the doctor said we can only wait and see if she can fight it on her own. I came to, not knowing what had happened and thankfully was glad to be alive.

Cars were not plentiful while I grew up. If you had one you were considered to have money. The Maxwell, Ford and the Buick Overland were popular. We did not have a car until the early 20’s. We drove places with a horse and buggy.

In those years before 1920, saloons posted those names on the door who had their excess of liquor. They could not be served any and this list was called the “Black List’. It was adhered to and followed without deviation.

I remember the year 1912 when Mama sent to Sears Roebuck for a spring hat. My father walked a mile to get the mail at the corner where the Emerald graveyard bordered the southwest corner. The hat looked beautiful on page 72 in the catalogue and it was pretty with various colors of flowers, but Papa said it weighed eight pounds and was too damn heavy.

To keep warm in the wintertime, we had a Kalamazoo hard burning heater with Isinglass windows in the doors. The red burning coal gave warmth as well as a contented feeling. Cars also had Isinglass curtains at that time to keep out the wind and rain, and I’d say vision as well.

I’m thinking back to some of the things my mother told me about her life. She was the youngest of seven children. Her family generations before had come over on the third boat after the Mayflower in the 1600’s and settled in Pennsylvania. Much later, her parents came to Nebraska and settled. She was named Harriet, because she was the namesake of grandpa Mcaleny’s sister who was the victim of an Indian scalping. She told my mother that the Indians would not molest you if gingerbread cake was left on the doorstep for them. My mother often talked of aunt Maria Kelsey and made her recipe for gingerbread, and I have made it over the years and now is passed down to daughter Barbara.

In those days while my mother was a very young girl in Nebraska, the locust came by the millions, blocking out even the sun, eating every green thing and in a matter of a short time, the landscape lay bare of any grass, leaves on the trees were gone and crops. Even the clothesline was chewed off the posts. As suddenly as the locust appeared, without warning, the seagulls came and swallowed up the locust by the millions. Man never knowing why and how this event took place. With this devastation the family had to pack up what little belongings they could by wagon and oxen and seven children and headed east.

While crossing the Missouri River the wagon tipped by the rapids, one Oxen drown and their belongings were swept away by the current. My Grandfather told how he reached out to grab the family Bible in the current, which to this day shows, water stained pages. But the family made it safely across. Because there was no money or food and the journey was difficult with so many children, a farmer who gave them water or supplies offered to keep one older brother and give him room and board for his labor. So they left him behind and continued on their journey to Menomonie, Wisconsin. After some time, my grandfather began to wonder about his son and decided to walk west, on the other side of Minneapolis to find his son at the farm and discovered his son had been abused and mistreated by this farmer. He took him back home with him, always, thanking God for the rescue, which he was compelled to make.

My mother’s parents were godly people, believing in the word of God as it is written and following it as a guide in their lives. I can still see my mother playing on her piano in later years, ‘What a Friend We Have In Jesus’. My mother, Harriet, grew up with a different family than her own in Menomonie. She told me she left home at age 9, never to return. Relatives in Menomonie, Anna Messenger, who was her father’s sister, married into wealth and supported my mother. She made a home for her and sent her to school where she graduated with highest honors from the Dunn County Normal, as it was called then, qualified for the position of a teacher. In those days only the wealthy could afford higher education above high school.

My mother had come from a poor family. No one could stump mother on her English. She always quoted the poem ‘Dipper, Basin and Cup’. After mother married, life was not easy, but she was a strong Christian woman. My father was a very heavy drinker and difficult to live with. My mother had to work hard and keep an outside job as we grew up. My memory can never recall where there was any extra money for the niceties. We never had a Christmas tree, but always each had a gift. I still have my doll with clothes Mama made for it. My doll had dark hair. Lela’s doll had light hair. John, my brother, liked dolls too, and one Christmas we all got Kewpie Dolls. They were real popular before the 20’s. While we went to Glenwood High School, Mama worked in a laundry in St. Paul. She worked real hard as jobs were scarce and pay was low. We would see her on weekends as we were staying in a room in Glenwood City while going to high school. I remember my teacher in high school taking me aside and asking me how I was always so happy and eager to learn knowing our family background. I guess that is just the way I was and chose to be.

Thinking back in 1912, I must have been about seven years old, we moved to Monroe, Washington, as Mama had an aunt out there as life had become difficult with Papa. But Papa came out and found us, taking my brother John, only three years old, back home with him, knowing this would cause my mother to return, which it did.

Papa worked some, in the milk condensery. I remember grandpa Newell would say ‘we must go to the ice cream sociable, instead of social. This was always held at Emerald at the hall.

Grandpa Newell had a Sorel horse with a sprained joint that caused the horse to limp. We always felt sorry for Prince hitched to the buggy limping off with grandpa in it, probably to take Almy Cook grocery shopping.

Now I’m looking back when I was probably only four or five years old getting the cows early in the morning and being barefoot and how cold the early morning dew felt running through the long grass. I drove the hay load myself, and how high I’d climb up to drive the horses, there were no tractors then.

After high school, I took a six week course at the River Falls Normal which the University was then called, and was given a teacher certificate to teach rural school, which I did. We were called ‘Six Week Wonders’ at that time only North and South Hall existed. But our education was very good in high school and in these few weeks we were trained in depth in English, grammar and writing as well as history, science, spelling and math. We were well equipped with knowledge of the basics and the school functioned very well on a budget much less than today’s school. There was good discipline and harmony between teacher and child. The parents stood behind us as well as their children. We did our very best giving the other respect and helping each other, making the teacher’s word final. I was 17 when I started teaching rural school. One of my students was 18 and in the 8th grade, as he had helped with farm work for his father which put him back this far. He stayed after school once to ask me for a date. But it was school policy the teacher did not date her students.

They were a great group of students to teach. I have a picture of all of us in front of the rural school. They are not dressed up in today’s garb, but they are wonderful with their pants and suspenders or bare feet some of them. Always looking the best they could and the girls in dresses below their knees. They were happy and wanting to learn and always obedient and kind.

I walked to school a few miles and started up the fire in the stove so it would get warm by the time they came. My education in the country school was as good or better than any child could have today.

I taught at one school near Clear Lake and stayed at the Grimes’. Their son, Burleigh Grimes, was a professional baseball player and is in the Hall of Fame as a famous ‘Spitball Pitcher’. He later became manager of a professional team and his life story can be seen at the Clear Lake Historical Museum. I also taught at the school Carol Brink wrote about in her book ‘Caddie Woodland’ that is a historical school today.

Harriet Woodhouse had eight children and the title of land signed by President Lincoln, is at Dunnville, the center of the county, which was once the county seat. There was a steamboat landing here. The family in the story moved to St. Louis in 1867. The book was written in 1935 by Carol Brink, and was required reading as a classic for children.

Eugenia Newell Ronningen
October, 1973 [/emember_protectd]

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