THE RISE OF THE ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE

Before 1960, most rural Wisconsin schoolchildren were educated in one-room schoolhouses like Reed School. These schools reflected a less, mobile, more rural era of our state’s history. Reed School, built and placed in operation in 1915, provided a first- through eighth-grade education for hundreds of youngsters, all under the tutelage of a single class teacher. Across Wisconsin, more than 6,000 such schools existed.

THE FOUNDING OF REED SCHOOL

Reed School was originally named Pleasant Ridge. The very first school in the Neillsville area in central Wisconsin, it was named for the beautiful scenery that drew early farmers to settle in the area.

In 1878, the wooden building was moved to land donated by Thomas and Lucretia Reed and renamed Reed School in their honor. It operated there for several decades before burning to the ground in a fire in February, 1915. The School Board of Grant Township District 1 wasted no time in authorizing the construction of a new, safer building in its place.

The Pleasant Ridge community took pride in its new schoolhouse. Though it was a modern up-to-date building for its time, Reed School lacked some basic amenities we enjoy today. There was no indoor plumbing and the property never had a well. Students used two outhouses in the schoolyard, one for girls and the other for boys. Drinking water was carried in milk cans to the school from a neighboring farm. Electricity didn’t come until 1941.

A HALF CENTURY OF LEARNING

Between 1915-1951, hundreds of students received their education from the outstanding teachers at Reed School. Classes of more than 30 students occurred several times. One notably large class attended in the spring of 1939, during Miss Norma Schmoll’s second year of teaching at Reed School, when attendance climbed to 33 students. Only one other Reed School teacher taught longer than Schmoll. Mrs. Orvilla Selves Zille taught at several one-room schools before arriving at Reed School in 1943. She taught at Reed School until 1948, and then continued teaching in the Neillsville area until her retirement. Many of her students later became involved in the support and restoration of the school.

School was suspended after the 1950-51 school year when the number of students dropped to 10 and those remaining students were transferred to schools nearby. The closing reflected a statewide trend. School consolidation following World War II all but eliminated these country schools from the state’s educational landscape. Despite considerable opposition from the community, the Reed School officially closed in 1954.

A FORMER STUDENT LEADS A PRESERVATION EFFORT

In 1939, Gordon Smith became a temporary student at Reed School when his family left their Gary, Indiana home for a vacation with family near Neillsville. For six weeks, he attended the school as first-grade student, experiencing an education far removed from the large urban school he attended in Indiana. It clearly left an impression. When Smith revisited the area years later, he paid a nostalgic visit to the old building. “This included the exact spot outside where the teacher took me aside for a firm lecture on good behavior,” he later wrote. Revisiting those memories prompted Smith to undertake an effort to see if the former school could be preserved and serve as a re-creation of school days gone by for future generations of visitors.

Smith’s family foundation bought the school and worked with Wisconsin Historical Society staff to restore the school. “My grandparents, cousins and the people of Neillsville who I interfaced with as a youngster all provided values that I carry with me today — hard work, high moral standards and an outreach to others,” Smith wrote. “Restoring the Reed School is a means of paying back.”