SUBSCRIPTION SCHOOLS

The first schools were subscription schools that is, the funds were raised by the settlers.  The first religious services were in the dugouts and soddies and the schools, of course, were just as primitive.  Among the settlers a small amount of money was raised to hire a teacher for a three-months term.  The teachers' pay was very meagre.  The first school in Norway Township was taught by Mary Dutton, daughter of Chester Dutton on the Ole Hammer farm S. W. 4 of Section 35, two miles east and three miles south of present day Norway, in the spring of 1871.  The second in the fall of the same year by Julie McCathron in the Peder Hammer dugout in the S. E. 4 of Sec. 11, a mile and a half north and a ½ mile east of Norway.  Alfred Hammer now owns and lives on this quarter, homesteaded by his father.  A very early school was held in a dugout in the bank very near the place where Hungry Hollow school was built later.  Alfa Scott Moore attended this school.

Another was in a sod house in the bank on the Chester Lewis homestead across the highway from the present "48" schoolhouse on N. E. 4 of Section 24.  Mrs. Josephine Taggart Smith was the teacher.  Mary Rhoda Kelly was a pupil.  Mrs. Bill Ainsworth taught a school on the Isaiah Burk homestead in Section 1 in 1872.  Her pupils were Margaret Evans Bowling, Sarah Fritzinger Ames, Laura Hall Kelly and her sister, and Charles, Will and George Fritzinger.

Indians on the trail from Nebraska to a reservation in Oklahoma came by the school house one day.  They ran around the house and put their heads in the windows crying, "Many papoose! Many papoose!"  The children were really frightened but the teacher was not.