Former resident publishes book on Deerfield school, township

Ron Eustice, who grew up in Deerfield Township, welcomed a group of friends to the Pizza Ranch in Owatonna last week to celebrate the release of his latest book, “Deerfield Days: A One-Room School at the Center of a Farm Community.”

The book takes an in-depth look at life in Deerfield Township and the community it included during the early 20^th century.

Eustice said his family moved to Deerfield Township when he was 3 years old in 1948. He attended the one-room school in the township until he went to Owatonna High School after eighth grade.

“My memories do go back to those days in the late 40s,” he said. He started school in 1951.

At one time, Eustice said there were nearly 100 rural school districts in Steele and Waseca counties. Deerfield School was located on the border between the two counties. It had been established in 1882 and was one of the last country schools to close when all the Steele County country schools were consolidated in 1971.

The hardcover book is 300 pages of illustrations, a history of the area before it was settled by Europeans, genealogies of pioneer families, biographies of the schoolteachers and photos of the students who attended.

One of the more memorable teachers was Medora Grandprey, a local woman who began teaching in Deerfield in 1914. She later attended the University of Iowa and taught at the University of Minnesota. In the 1930s she began dating and married a widower, Hjalmer Petersen. Petersen later became governor of Minnesota.

The book’s focus went beyond the school, Eustice said, to include the surrounding area where life revolved around the community, school and the churches.

It also includes the names of all the students in the district taken from the school census records between 1917 and 1960.

Researching and writing the book, Eustice said, took several years and required the collaboration of numerous former students in the school.

One of those who contributed, he said, was Karen Krippner whose mother, Esther Krippner, “never through anything away” and it was all well-organized. LaFond ultimately assembled seven large scrapbooks of the material her mother had saved from the early 1930s.

She showed these scrapbooks to Eustice, and he realized something needed to be written down to preserve the stories.

Krippner gave Eustice permission to make copies of the photos and family information, and he began to assemble it into a book. Since the project began, he said, there have been four gatherings of about 25 to 30 people each to share their memories of the school, community and churches.

The Deerfield area was first settled by European settlers in the 1860s, he said, predominately from Germany. The immigrants, he said, spoke primarily German until the first World War.

Prior to the arrival of the settlers the area had been the home to the Sioux from the area around Faribault.

The school was started in 1882 and also included part of Waseca County. The teachers, he said, had to report to both counties. The state also required a census of all children under 21, Eustice said, beginning in about 1918.

Vernon Ferch said at last week’s celebration that he attended the school for only one year, in 1945, until the family moved. He said he lived halfway between the school and Blooming Grove and remembered he used to ride the Kath’s horse home from school.

Many of the photos in the book were also contributed by Sandra Schlossin who also attended the book release celebration.

She recalled her grandfather hitching the Belgian horses to take her school. There was a coal furnace at the school, she said, and it was the teacher’s responsibility to get it going every morning and add fuel as needed.

She recalled the snowball fights and sledding down “cemetery hill” in the winter. In the spring, she said, softball was the “big thing.”

The teacher taught all eight grades, she said, and would call the students by grade to have class time with her. During that time, she said, the other students studied their lessons. Sometimes, she said, one of the older students would be asked to help a younger student.

She added she won the county spelling bee in eighth grade.

The “country kids” all went to Owatonna for high school, and the transition could be difficult, she said.

They were “ostracized,” she said, because they had to ride the bus to school and could not participate in the after-school activities. Plus, there were no girls’ sports at the time, she said.

She said she had two study halls and used the time to sell ads for the Totem and Magnet.

The farm kids, she said, were tied to the farm and the daily farm activities.

The school is what held the community together no matter which church the family attended.

“The book wouldn’t have happened without all of you,” Eustice told the group gathered at the Pizza Ranch.

Eustice is a 1963 graduate of Owatonna High School and received his degree in agricultural journalism from the University of Minnesota in 1968 and worked in the dairy and beef industry for 50 years. He has written nearly 50 books on agricultural topics and is currently working on a book that will feature all the country schools that once existed in Steele County. Also in the future is a book on Owatonna and Steele County as the “Butter Capitol of the World.”

Eustice and his wife, Margaret McAndrews, now split their time between Tucson, Ariz. and Burnsville.

“Deerfield Days: A One-Room School at the Center of a Farm Community” is available on Amazon.com or directly from the author by phone at 612-202-1016 or email at reustice@gmail.com.