Schoolhouse Migrates to Norway
(Periodicals postage paid in Seattle, WA) TIME-DATED MATERIAL — DO NOT DELAY Arts Taste of Norway A “Don’t Hug « Du må gi deg selv barnets Spritz up your grenseløse nysgjerrighet og barnets Me” coma enorme tabbekvote. » cookies Read more on page 15 – Liv Arnesen Read more on page 8 Norwegian American Weekly Vol. 126 No. 40 November 6, 2015 Established May 17, 1889 • Formerly Western Viking and Nordisk Tidende $2.00 per copy Schoolhouse migrates to Norway CYNTHIA ELYCE RUBIN Orlando, Fla. After more than eight decades of serv- ing Norwegian immigrants on the South Da- kota prairie, a one-room country schoolhouse built in 1883 begins a new life in Norway. This is a personal story. It begins in 2000 when Richard Christopher of Letcher, Sanborn County, about 22 miles northwest of Mitchell, read my query in a publica- tion seeking information about an obscure Norwegian-American photographer, O.S. Leeland, who had operated portrait studios in nearby Mount Vernon and Mitchell, S.D. The correspondence that ensued be- tween Christopher and me, at the time a New York City curator and writer who had collected early real photo postcards by Lee- land, ended with a visit when I attended Memorial Day services at Trinity Lutheran Church and cemetery. At that time, I was amazed to find a one-room school in Chris- topher’s backyard. Christopher loved the school that he had attended through the eighth grade. When the Elliott township school district was consoli- dated in 1968, Leet School, like so much in rural America, became a useless anachro- nism.
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