website watertownhistory.org
ebook History of Watertown, Wisconsin
Another
school classroom c. 1910
Believed
to be Grades 5 - 8, 1913
website watertownhistory.org
ebook History of Watertown, Wisconsin
Another
school classroom c. 1910
Believed
to be Grades 5 - 8, 1913
Guardian Angel statue in school yard, 1915
The
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Angel
of God, my Guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here. Ever this day be at my side, to light and
guard, to rule and guide.
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Those early students were certainly taught well by the
nuns. Grades on report cards were not
wide-ranging A’s, B’s, C’s and so on, nor was there grading “on a curve,” but
more specific 98’s, 92’s, 88’s, etc. An
updated report card was handed out to a student each month and it was required
to be soon returned by them with the signature of one’s parents.
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The Catholic hierarchy of the United States
prescribed it as a duty for every congregation to establish and support Catholic
schools.
Catholic parents are bound to send their children
to parochial schools, unless they provide fully and sufficiently for their
Christian education at home or at other Catholic schools.
On this matter there is to be no variance of
practice.
The Church has at much expense brought the Catholic
school within easy access of the Catholic family. It has sought out good teachers and aimed
sedulously to make its schools attain to the highest standard.
Now at the beginning of another school year it is
well for Catholic parents to seriously consider these injunctions of the
pastors who are ordained for their spiritual guidance.[384]
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Graduation class, 1915.
Old hall in background
The parochial school system always benchmarked itself against
that of the state in matter of education and personal welfare of the students
en-trusted to its care. A plan of
extending the public school medical inspection program to the parochial schools
of the state received the endorsement of the chief medical inspector in 1911.
An addition was built onto the school in the fall of 1914, filling in the “L” at the
southeast corner of the building. The
addition contained separate in-door bathroom facilities for the boys and girls
of the school, replacing the outdoor bathroom facilities in use up to that
time. The two-story addition with
basement was of brick construction with bathrooms on both the first and second
floors.
Daily Mass was part of each school day. Each
class sat as a group during church services, with the teacher nuns using a
clicker to signal the students when to sit, kneel, and stand; and at all times
and in every way to be respectful in the “house where God lived.”
________________________________
Vivid recollections and treasured memories of St. Henry’s
old school building were recorded by this writer’s
father, Clarence Riedl, and they were as follows:[385]
St. Henry’s School was on the corner of Third and Cady
Streets, the same place where the new school built in 1952 now is. This old school had four rooms with two
grades in each room. On the bottom level
was first and second grades in one room and the third and fourth in the
second. Upstairs were the fifth, sixth,
seventh and eighth grades. There was one
sister for two grades and one cook sister for a total of five. There were twenty kids in my grade.
The stairway was at least eight feet wide and halfway up
was the girls’ bathroom. The boys’ was
right below. Then it made a 180 degree
turn and up to the two classrooms. Also
on the first floor was a narrow room about ten or twelve feet wide and maybe
forty feet long. This was used for the
sisters to go from the school to the sisters house and was all connected. Also this room had tables on both sides and
on it were pictures, statues, rosaries, prayer books, and samples of veils the
girls could order for their First Communion.
Reminds me of all the things at Holy Hill.
The first and second grade room had shelving which looked
like bleachers and about four shelves and maybe twenty five feet long, and on these
shelves were ferns, about five feet from those large west windows. The sisters used these ferns in church on the
old altar which had a lot of shelves, and they would be in church awhile and
then brought back and new ones taken to church.
They sure had a lot of beautiful ferns.
I would guess they had close to one hundred ferns. Some were small and they must have started
them.
There were fire escape steps along one end of the building
and one could get out on it from the seventh and eighth grade room and also
from the first and second grade room.
These upper and lower rooms were separated by a hall about 10 feet wide
and each side of it was used for hanging up our coats, caps, and overshoes. The rooms also had doors at each end so if
you had to get out for a fire you could go from one room to another or through
the hall or just down the steps. The
sisters would surprise you once a week at anytime by ringing the fire bell and
then they would tell you which way to go.
Sometimes down the steps or through the next room and then the fire
escape.
From the back porch of the sister’s house, which was screened, there was a wide
sidewalk about six feet wide and forty feet long and it had benches on both
sides. That went from the sisters’ house
to the hall. This sidewalk was
completely covered, sides and top, with grape vines.
Once a week at
The boys had a good half of the playground and in good
weather always played ball. Others just
watched or played other games. I
generally played ball as those that carried lunch were playing before a lot of
the others came to school. Every once
in a while someone would break a window in school. So everyone playing at that time would have
to pay. I don’t remember but it was not
very much. The girls jumped rope and
played other games.
One thing I remember is that boys and girls did not mix in
games or even talk together. Also in the
classroom, the girls sat on one side of the room and the boys on the other side
of the room. When I was in seventh grade
the first thing we did after
When we had spelling in seventh and eighth grade we all had
to stand up and as we misspelled a word would have to sit down. I think sometimes a word was misspelled just
so they could sit down. There was one
girl who always seemed to be the last or best speller. One time in eighth grade we had some program
and spelling bee in the hall and all the parents were asked to come. When you misspelled a word you had to go
behind the curtain on the stage. They
were getting less and less all the time and all at once there was this girl and
I were left and we each spelled a few words and they were getting harder all
the time. Finally she got a word and
missed it and I had to spell it and it was right. So I won the spelling bee and the first prize
was $5.00 but the bad part was it went to the school.
The 7th
and 8th grade students, 1926
Top
Row: Clara Schmidt, Lillian Mutchler, Blanche Hady, Genevieve Pitterle, Stella Stangler, Luella Mueller,
Lorraine Mutchler, Dorothy Schuch, Eleanor Dowd, Irene West, Helen Huebel
Third
Row: Margaret Sauer, Margaret Engelhart, Ethel West, Esther Schroeder, Clara Scheblak, Dorothy Hippler
Second
Row: Paul Halverson, Andrew Boyum, Albert Hady, Sylvester Scheiber, Leon Stangler
First
Row: Alfred
Neis, Edward Boyum, James Novotny, George Nimm, Edwin Schleicher, Harvey Stangler,
Joe Giese
______________________________________________________________________________________
Memories of
attending pre-school Mass on a school day . . .
We
came, in winter, out of the dark into vestibule semi-dark, where peeled-off
galoshes spread slush across the floor.
We took off gloves and scarves, hands still too cold to dip them in the
holy water font . . . Girls without hats hair- pinned Kleenex to their heads -
it fluttered as they strode to the communion rail, like a raffish dove
ill-perched on each sharer in the mystery . . . Scapulars like big postage
stamps glued here and there on kids in swimming pools. JMJ [Jesus, Mary, Joseph] at the top of
schoolwork. The sign of the cross before
a foul shot. Fishing pennies and dimes
out of pockets pebbled with the fifty-nine beads and assorted medallions of a
rosary . . . Nuns who moved in their long habits with stately calm, like
statues rocking. The deferential “ster”
pinned to all sentences (“Yester” for “Yes, Sister”) . . .Holy cards of saints
with eyes so strenuously upturned as to be almost all white. The Infant of Prague bulkily packaged in
“real” clothes. The sight, in darkened
churches, of a shadowy Virgin with hands held palm-out at the level of her hips,
plaster cape flowing down from those hands toward votive lights unsteady under
her like troubled water. Sand under the
votive candles for putting out tapers; and a box of large kitchen matches, for
lighting tapers, stuck into the sand.
The momentary waxen strangle of St. Blaise day, as crossed candles bless
one’s throat.[386]
______________________________________
School children were always involved in extra-curricular
activities and contests, expanding their horizons, and testing their skills
against their peers.
In the 1920’s and 30’s the pupils of the school held their
annual bazaar at the hall, just prior to the end of the school year. They offered many trinkets and confections
for their parents and friends.
During the summers, the nuns conducted a one week summer
vacation school for Catholic boys and girls of the parish who were enrolled in
non-Catholic schools during the year.
Children seven years and up, including graduates of the eighth grades,
were expected to attend the summer religious education and instruction.
The sisters themselves attended summer school in Milwaukee,
taking classes for advanced degrees.
________________________________
In
1931 the Catholic Knights of Wisconsin opposed the principle of free textbooks
in public schools and urged their representatives in Madison to oppose such
legislation. The logic was as follows:
1. It will greatly increase
taxation, already burdensome.
2. It is discriminatory and
unjust, penalizing those who send their children to private and parochial
schools by obliging them to pay for the books of their own children and to
contribute toward the payment of the books of their neighbor’s children.
3. It encourages extravagance
and waste. The principle that what is
worth having is worth making a sacrifice for is given the lie.
4. Free textbooks are unsanitary. Dirt, disease, and obscene pictures are sure
to be passed along to destroy the morals of the innocent.
5. The bill is
Socialistic. If the state furnishes free
books, why not furnish free clothes, free meals, free shoes and free homes . .
. why not take the child away from the influence of his parents and home and
turn him over to the state?[387]
________________________________
Even up until about the mid 1940’s one sister had
responsibility for two grades. For
example, in 1931 the teaching staff consisted of: Sister Eleu-theria, first and
second grades; Sister Georgiana, third and fourth; Sister
Ludgilla, fifth and sixth; Sister
Stabila, seventh and eighth.
Most parishioners readily supported the church school, yet
many thought that they were being effectively “doubly taxed” in that, in
addition to supporting their religious school, they were also required to
support the public school system from which they were of the mind they received
no direct advantage.
In January of 1935 Father
Patrick Haggerty, pas-tor of St. Bernard’s, was the speaker at a meeting of the
Catholic Woman’s Club.
The subject, as reported in the Watertown Daily Times, was “Parochial
Schools and Double Taxa-tion,” it being chosen by the speaker, who pointed out
the fact that the parent has the natural right to send his children to the
school he chooses.
Catholics
and others who believe in Christian education are penalized by the fact that
they are obliged to support schools to which they cannot, on religious principles,
send their children. They are required
to pay taxes for the support of public schools from which they derive no
benefit.
We
Catholics do not expect special treatment in this matter but in behalf of all
religious sects, maintaining educational institutions, we ask that parents be
able to educate their children according to the dictates of their consciences
without the burden of double taxation.
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