Grandmother Pearl Harlan Hullinger Taught At This School When She Was 17 Years Old

From Facebook

Joyce Erikson Weller, a 1 room school house photo for you. This was/Is by the White river a little East from the Bridge

Dana Erikson Keera Smith, Carolyn taught at a school like this.

Lloyd Erikson Didn’t most of the older Erikson cousins around Vivian like you Joyce and Dana, go to a school like this in the 50’s?

Joyce Erikson Weller Yes yes and Carolyn taught us Lloyd Erikson. Best school year of my life..

Doris Hulce I think that is or was the school Mom (Grandma Pearl) taught at.

Dana Erikson Pretty sure you are correct on that Doris. At least according to your sibs.

Gail Douglas-Jacobson Maribee taught at Rousseau school east of Pierre by twin bridges on hwy 34

Joyce Erikson Weller 2 years

Craig Harlan Hullinger I think Grandmother Pearl told me she taught there.

Excerpted from "Memories and Milestones"Pearl Harlan Hullinger Began To Teach at Age 16


So we had fun and it was a good thing, for that was the last carefree time. In the spring our teacher, and I can't think why, suggested we take teachers' examinations. I was still only 16 and you were supposed to be 18 to teach. But several of us went, and I innocently went, too. Most of the girls were older and I had no idea that I would have to say I was a year older than I was and sign my name to it. I think my folks didn't either. I didn't have nerve to get up and walk out, so I sat there and subtracted and added to try to get the right date down and suffered. Then I was unlucky enough to pass for the very lowest grade certificate. So the folks were proud of me and I went out to get a school, just barely 17, and get a school I did -- seven months at $40 per month. It was that little old school house down on White River at the mouth of Williams Creek. There were seven pupils, the oldest a year younger than I and much wiser in arithmetic. I had a beginner, too, without the foggiest notion of how to teach him, except what I had observed from the teachers I had had.


I was homesick and scared and then someone "told" on me and the Superintendent came. It was the Ina Sutley mentioned before and as I look back I know she knew all about me, but I didn't know it then. I "confessed," of course, and she went to see Schervems, where I boarded, and they stuck up for me and thought I was doing very well. So she said I should keep on until she sent a teacher to take my place. So each week I thought would be my last, but no one came. A new Superintendent came into office. I wrote to him and asked him if I should quit and he said you shouldn't start something and not finish, so I did. But it was years before I could bear to think of it.


In the spring after my board was paid, I had something over a hundred dollars and felt very rich. All this time we had only a very small mirror at home, so again I sent to Sears Roebuck and got a dresser with a big mirror and another large one to hang on the wall. So now when you sewed you could see what you had made and how it looked. I also went visiting to Iowa and got to be 18 at last and have a real certificate. I taught another year, nine months at $50 and rode horseback from home so was able to save most of it. We weren't "drop outs" those years. We were forced out of school so always wanted to go back. I managed a year and a half at Springfield and Aberdeen before the money ran out. So I taught three more years, always with the idea of getting more school but Grandpa Johnnie had waked up and seen me and I had gotten interested, too. The war was on by now and to look back it doesn't seem as if it has ever ended.