Rural Manitowoc County schoolhouse being torn down was built 135 years ago. What to know about Kettle Range School.
Motorists on County Trunk Highway B, 2 miles north of Mishicot, probably have noticed bricks being removed from the old Kettle Range (Mishicot Jt. 2) School.
The bricks are being salvaged for reuse at a building in Milwaukee before the school is torn down.
The one-room rural schoolhouse closed in the late 1950s when the district was reorganized and students were sent to the Mishicot grade school.
Schmidt’s Farm Market then used the building as a vegetable stand to sell seed and eating potatoes and onions.
The old school has been vacant for the past several years.
Built 135 years ago, in 1887, the brick school, 38 feet by 26 feet, is on the east side of the highway (former 163), which divides the towns of Mishicot and Gibson, between Nuclear and East Tapawingo roads. It was built at a cost of $790. Carl Pries, Robert Guse and August Stehn were members of the building committee.
The brick school replaced an earlier structure of hewn logs, built by John Langhoff in 1866, on the site. It measured 26 feet by 22 feet and cost $173.92.
A wood shed and outdoor toilets were also constructed.
The log school was furnished with 12 benches, tables, a book chest, two blackboards and a chimney box.
The first teacher in the log school was Henry Tisch.
The present front-gabled brick school features an entry door with an arched transom on the west side, facing the road. Three tall windows along the north and south walls allowed natural light inside the classroom.
Lower sections of plastered walls in the classroom and cloakroom were covered with wainscoting, painted pale green.
The building was heated by a stove during winter months. A single door on the rear or east wall led to the schoolyard.
The highlight of each school term was the popular Christmas program with recitations, songs and skits by students.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Kettle Range Busy Bees 4-H Club meetings were held at the school.
School projects prepared by Kettle Range students were often shown at county fairs.
During the winter of 1922, hoboes seeking nice, warm quarters from cold nights entered the Kettle Range School (and other rural schools in the county) on several occasions. The schools were easy to enter and had an ample supply of fuel (wood or coal) on hand.
Teachers Melvin Heyroth and Lambkin Tetzlaff, who decided the practice must end, staged night raids at Kettle Range School. One night, a lone visitor was found and chased out. School boards, parents and taxpayers in districts throughout the county were concerned about possible fires and damage to books and other school property.
During its 90-year existence, hundreds of boys and girls from local farm families attended the Kettle Range School, where they learned reading, writing, arithmetic, spelling, U.S. history, geography and grammar.
Evangeline Klein, Ruth Trousil, LaVern Sloup, Germaine Neuenfeldt and Winnifred Mayer were the last teachers at the rural school during the 1940s and 1950s.
The Kettle Range School, like so many other rural schoolhouses in Manitowoc County, will be missed once the former center of learning no longer exists.
Local residents should take some comfort knowing the old school served generations of rural children well.
An old, large, black maple tree, possibly planted when the brick school was built, remains in the schoolyard. If only it could tell us all the stories of when the children sat and played beneath its spreading branches in the cool shade.
Bob Fay is a historian and former executive director of the Manitowoc County Historical Society.
This article originally appeared on Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter: Kettle Range School in Manitowoc County was built in 1880s: History
