Grandma Berta and a One-Room School: Influences of a Norwegian Immigrant in South Central Montana

Up the gangplank of a ship bound from Norway to America walked a teenage girl. The year was 1880. Berta crossed the rugged Atlantic, landed in New York City and began to learn English. She worked hard and sent money home so other siblings could follow. Six did. Soon she found the hilly country of Iowa near the Mississippi River where many Scandinavians settled. At age 33 she married Gabriel, a forty-year-old Norwegian. After seven years in Tennessee, they moved to Montana and took advantage of the Homestead Acts by staking out a claim, plowing the soil, living in a tent on the prairie, and building a home. Around 1912 Berta and Gabriel eagerly helped establish a school for their children and community. This book recounts their experiences and shares stories from some of the teachers, students, and school boards that kept Cherry Creek School operating until the 1970s. Berta and her children moved to Bozeman in 1917 to attend Secondary Classes at Montana State College. World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic interrupted studies and a gallbladder infection tragically ended Berta's life. Grandma Berta and a One-Room School is a perfect sequel to Jim Sargent's Too Poor but Always Rich: A Century on Montana Land. This Norwegian-American's indomitable spirit lives on in this book. It may produce some tears, but hopefully many more laughs. It could be your story, too. There were many "Bertas" and "Gabriels" who founded one-room country schools bringing reading, writing and arithmetic to millions of children. Free and compulsory, these public schools yielded huge benefits for the entire nation.