Warner Township

Clark County, Wisconsin

Braun Settlement School

Allan Wessel is Warner Township Historian

Add your memories to this page.

Memories of Braun Settlement School

by Allan Wessel

Braun Settlement School was a one room school house that taught all 8 grades.  Almost everyone walked to school, some as much as 2 miles, in all kinds of weather.  The only time we got a ride was when it was very cold or there was a large snowstorm.

The school was heated by a large wood furnace located in the basement.  The furnace provided us with heat and also with our hot lunch during the winter months.  During the first recess we would take a piece of chalk and write our name on our potato.  We then wrapped it in foil and placed it on the large ledge behind furnace door.  By lunch time, the potatoes were done.  We would bring them up to our desks, take out the pat of butter that had been given us by our parents and put it on the potato along with salt and pepper.  Occasionally, someone would lose a potato in the fire because it would roll off the ledge or was accidentally pushed off when another potato was put on the ledge.

We also had a hot plate in the back of the school and could use it to heat up a pan of water.  When the water was hot, we would put our pint jar of soup or hot dish in the water and heat it up. 

When I first started school, our water was gotten from the well at the rear of the school.  The water had to be pumped by hand and then carried into the school and emptied into the large crock.  When we wanted water, we would use the ladle to dip out the water and then drink.  Later on, we had a crock that had a spigot on it so that we could put water into a glass or cup.

Our toilets were two outhouses in the rear of the school yard.  The north one was for the boys and the south one for the girls.  By the time spring arrived, these took on a very unpleasant smell, even with the addition of lime.  In the winter, you did not linger very long, especially if there was a good wind blowing under the doors.

Part of the health requirements were that we had to take iodine tablets to prevent goiters.  The bottle of tablets was kept in the library cupboard in the back of the school.  If the teacher was busy with another class, we would go back to the cupboard to look for a book and then take a couple of tablets from the bottle and take them back to our desk to eat as a treat.  I liked them because I thought they had a malt taste.  Others did not like them.

Our winter games were Fox Fox Goose, building snow forts, and having snowball wars.  When spring arrived and the large mounds of snow that had been piled up by the plows began to melt, we would make paper boats to sail down the rivers that formed in the ditches.  Many times we would come home with our boots full of water because a boat had got caught on some ice and when we tried to free it, the water was deeper then we expected and overflowed our boots.

Once the snow had melted and the playground was dry, we would play softball.  Clayton Braun and some of the other parents built us a backstop in the south east corner of the playground.  This was a welcome addition and it kept us out of the neighbors fields if we missed a ball or there was a pop fly.  On some Friday's we would play one of the other schools from the area.  Sometimes the games were at our school and other times, we went to either Decker School or Benjamin School.  Both of these schools were about 4 or 5 miles from Braun Settlement.

Other games we played were Red Rover.  The older children would pick the 2 sides.  We would the spread out into two lines and hold hands with the persons on each side of  you.  The captain of your line would  call out "Red Rover, Red Rover, let (the name of the child he wanted to come over to your line).  The child that was called would then take a run at your line and try and break through.  If they broke through they got to take one of your team back with them to their line.  If your line held, they had to join your team.  The captain of the other team then got to call out the name of a child from your team and they tried to break through the other line. 

We also had a swing set that was on the south side of the school building.  It had three or four swings, two ring sets, and a slide.  The older boys would shimmy up the legs of the set and then go hand over hand across the top.  We also tried to pump the swing as high as we could if someone had to stay in for recess.  If we got the swing high enough we could see into the school through the main windows.

When you entered the building, we had a coat room on the west end of the building.  This room was where we hung our coats, kept our lunches and it was where the water crock was kept.  The entrance to the basement was also there.  There were two doorways to the main part of the school, one on each end of the coat room.  The teachers desk was on a small platform on the other side of the coat room, then there was a row of chairs where we sat when we had lessons.  Behind the chairs were the desks.  The smaller desks were in a row along the north wall.  This is where you sat when you were in kindergarten or first grade.  The second and third grade were in the next row over, etc.

We did most of our work at our desks.  At various times during the day we would have to go to the front and sit in the chairs to recite our lessons or to review our assignments with the teacher.  There were blackboards on the north wall and we would have to write out problems there or the teacher would write out information that she wanted us to copy.

Our music lessons came to us from Madison on Public Radio.  Once a week in the afternoon, we would get out our music books and the teacher would turn on the radio so we could follow along with the music program that was being broadcast. 

Just before our Christmas break, we would have a program for all of the parents.  The teacher assigned parts for the various plays and recitations and a couple of days before the program, the school board members would come in and move the teachers desk, then they would set up saw horses on the side of the teachers platform and put planks across the platform and saw horses to make a stage.  A wire was strung along the front of the stage and a curtain was hung on the wire.  We also had curtains on both sides of the stage so that we could make our entrances from the coat room.  This was an exciting time and we all got time off from our lessons so that we could practice our parts.  When the program was done, everyone got a bag that contained peanuts and fruit and some hard candy. 

Our other big event was the last day of school.  We usually had a pot luck lunch and played games most of the day.  Shortly after lunch, the teacher would hand out the report cards and you would find out if you were going into the next grade or stay in the same grade again next year.  Most of us made it through each grade in one year, but there were a few who had to repeat a grade or two.

About 1959, the school district decided to close the outlying schools and consolidate everything in Greenwood.  Eventually the school building and lot were sold, the school torn down and a house was built on the property.

 

 


© Every submission is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

 

Show your appreciation of this freely provided information by not copying it to any other site without our permission.

 

Become a Clark County History Buff

 

Report Broken Links

A site created and maintained by the Clark County History Buffs
and supported by your generous donations.

 

Webmasters: Leon Konieczny, Tanya Paschke,

Janet & Stan Schwarze, James W. Sternitzky,

Crystal Wendt & Al Wessel

 

CLARK CO. WI HISTORY HOME PAGE