Remembering the past
Restored schoolhouse wins preservation awardBy DAN FELDNER, Staff Writer, dfeldner@minotdailynews.com
Article Photos
HARVEY - Mary Meier didn't spend two years restoring the old schoolhouse she attended first grade in because she wanted to win an award, but now that she has, it serves as one more good memory for a place that is already stuffed to its renovated ceiling with them.
For two years, Meier and her husband Terry poured their hearts into restoring St. Anna School No. 1, which had been moved from its original location five miles west of Fessenden along old U.S. Highway 52 to its current spot right next to their house in rural Harvey, when they bought the schoolhouse in 2006.
The schoolhouse was mostly finished when Meier held a reunion in the summer of 2008 for students and teachers of the old school, which was built around 1898 and closed in 1960. The former students included Meier's four siblings, who all spent some time at St. Anna, and five former teachers were also able to make it.
Further adding to the schoolhouse's history is the 2009 Historic Preservation Success Story Award from Preservation North Dakota, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of historic structures in North Dakota.
"I guess you would call it a grassroots movement," Meier said. "It's a lot of people who are trying very hard to preserve the history of North Dakota, and the architecture of North Dakota."
Each year Preservation North Dakota gives out one award as the success story of the year. Meier had submitted paperwork for the schoolhouse in March, and was presented the award the last week in April at a conference in Bismarck.
While Meier and her husband both grew up in Harvey, they moved to Washington, where Terry had an architectural firm. Now that Meier is retired and her husband is semi-retired, they spend their summers in North Dakota and go back to Washington during the winter.
Education runs deep in Meier's blood, as she used to teach first and second grade and her siblings were also teachers. Spending her summers in North Dakota gave her the perfect opportunity to achieve one of her dreams, and the fact that the schoolhouse she chose was also where she attended first grade was just icing on the cake.
"I guess it was just a dream I had. My brother and sister both taught at a country school, and I'm the youngest, so as a child I had gone to help them at school, and I remember the Christmas programs," she said. "It was just such a great history for me to remember, and I felt as a teacher it would be really important for kids to understand what it was like in those days."
While the Meiers had remodeled their rural Harvey home, they had never undertaken a restoration project before. Meier said she was lucky that her husband is an architect, as he was able to do much of the manual labor while she helped out where she could.
"It was much more hard work than we ever dreamt," she said. "My husband did a lot of manual labor, so he has to get credit for most of the physical work."
They had to redo most of the windows because they were either broken or boarded up, the floors had to be sanded and refinished, the interior and exterior walls were painted, and the tin ceiling had to be repaired, as several places had rusted out.
They hired someone to replace the shingles, and also got someone to rebuild the missing bell tower that was such a big part of everyone's memories when the school was open. The original bell had obviously been missing for quite some time, and after Meier had scoured the Internet and other resources looking for a replacement, it was a simple stroke of good luck that landed her the bell she had been looking for.
"We were talking to the electrician who wired our house for us when we remodeled this home, and he wired the school too, rewired it for us. Of course it had no electricity until the 1950s," Meier said. "And he said, 'Well I have a bell.' And he said, you know, 'It's been in my yard since we bought the house,' and said you could have it. So we were just thrilled to death to have an old bell."
The electrician, Fritz Wohl, and his wife Kathy had no idea where the bell came from because it was at their home when they purchased it. This lead Meier to speculate that maybe that was the original bell from the school and it was sold at an auction, although she said she'll probably never know for sure.
While her husband handled much of the grunt work and other family members also pitched in, Meier spent a lot of time tracking down authentic artifacts to fill the schoolhouse with. A 48-star American flag, many reading books from the era, student desks and an organ from 1867 are just a few of the things she was able to track down. She also got donations from family and friends, including one sister's report card, a paper bunny art project from another sister, and her brother's eighth-grade diploma from when he graduated from St. Anna.
She also has made a poster listing all the students from 1900 to 1960, and another poster shows all the teachers from 1900 to 1960 as well as their salaries, which began at $35 a month in 1900. She tried to get items that were as authentic as possible, and even managed to get a few original items used in the school, including two blackboards, a teacher's handbell, and the teacher's desk.
Now that the schoolhouse is mostly done - there are still a few things that need to be taken care of, including the restoration of an old outhouse behind the school - Meier is looking forward to giving tours of St. Anna.
She has already talked with the school in Fessenden about letting third-graders take a field trip to St. Anna in the fall, and she is also open to anyone else who wants to take a tour. Because she isn't here year-round, she said the best time to take a tour would either be in the spring or fall. Meier can be reached on her home phone in Harvey at 324-4917, or on her cell phone at 1-509-947-1275.
Meier feels a great sense of accomplishment after completing the massive undertaking of restoring the school to its former glory. She said the process was very rewarding, not solely because of the award she received, but also because of the older generations who get to reminisce when they see St. Anna again and the younger generations who get to stare in wonder at how things used to be after seeing the little white schoolhouse for the first time.
"I don't think of it so much as an award for me, I like to think of it more that we have something in Wells County, for Fessenden and for Harvey, for our towns that represents our history," Meier said. "So I kind of like to think of it in that way, rather than saying I won this award. I like to think our area has something to be proud of."
