School Days on the Frontier

"The school system in Sawyer County was primitive but showed an earnest effort by early settlers to give each child a typical education of the time." These words were an earnest effort by a young student in the Hayward High School to describe education in the Hayward School District in the early 1880s.

When I wrote them in 1968 I did not appreciate the excellent education children received in the remote cabin schools and the classrooms in Hayward, Radisson, Winter, Couderay and Stone Lake schools. The students grew up to be our grandparents, teachers, lawyers and doctors in this community today. All I saw was the cabin, not the tremendous energy and dedication of the young teachers.

We have a few artifacts from some of these classrooms at the Museum. Books and slates were provided by the district and parents often helped gather wood and build the small buildings that housed the schools. I once asked an octogenarian friend of mine why the kids were so willing to walk miles to school through all kinds of weather. He said that it was alot better than working in the woods or in the fields at home. Parents tried hard to guarantee the best education available for their kids because it was a ticket out of poverty and hard labor. Families took great pride in the accomplishment of each child in school.

Early schools in our District were the Reserve School ( was located in Reserve until 1901 when the Hayward Indian Boarding School opened), Round Lake School (located just off Peninsula Rd. in 1918), Crane Creek School, Hubbard's Corners School (near Phipps), Bass Lake School (on Hwy 27 est. in 1896), McCormick School (1886 grade school built in Hayward) and Jackson's School (N. end of Big Round Lake on Hwy 77).

Much of our information about early schools was provided in a book written by R.L. McCormick called "The History of Education in Sawyer County" and the memoirs of Corlie Dunster an early school teacher in the District.

THANK YOU DUE
I want to thank the young man who helped out at the museum recently. Mike Jonjak spent a long day at the Museum making copies of some materials for us and he and his sister sorted out our collection of Musky Festival buttons for the exhibit on Resorts.

We have a new member of the Historical Society, Mr. Wes Johnson and I want to say Thanks a million for retyping the manuscript "The History of Southern Sawyer County". The Johnsons also have been helping with cataloguing the cemeteries of Sawyer County. He has also started culling the Winter newspaper for obituaries and birth notices and gave us a copy of his discs. I have a little note from Pat Clough, our resident genealogist at the museum.