In case you missed it, our Sheldall Schoolhouse museum was featured in the Iowa Life section of the Des Moines Register on July 20th, 2014.  The article featured country schoolhouses that have received grant funding through the State Historical Society of Iowa's Country School Grant Program. To read the article online and see a video about the Sheldall, please visit: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/life/2014/07/18/schoolhouse-sheldall-hamilton-county/12838003/

January 16, 2014
Carriage House Museum
619 Grand Ave
Story City, IA 

Stop by the Carriage House Museum for the Historical Society's Winter Dinner and Presentation. A free-will donation soup and chili dinner will be provided, including spicy and mild chili, vegetable beef soup, oyster soup, Norwegian flat bread, and traditional Norwegian desserts.

Following the meal we will be showing a television program that originally aired on WOI-TV on March 1, 1960 entitled “TV Schooltime: Landmarks in Iowa History: Story City”. Herb Hake visits Story City and the Sheldall Schoolhouse and talks about some of the customs of the Norwegians who settled the area. 

Dinner will be served from 5:30-6:30pm
Welcome and announcements 6:30pm
30 minute video on Sheldall Schoolhouse 6:45pm

Join us for dinner and a show! 

-By Hope Mitchell

This summer the Museums of Story City received a grant from Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area in order to hire an intern to digitize and catalog the Sheldall Schoolhouse collection and create an online exhibit about the Sheldall Schoolhouse. I was the very lucky recipient of this internship. When I am not interning with the Museums of Story City, I am working on my Masters of Arts in History at Iowa State University or working as a Student Conservation Technician at Parks Library. I have always had a strong interest in museums and conservation and this internship has been a wonderful opportunity to further my knowledge and experience within museums.

My first job was to photograph all the objects in the schoolhouse and assess their condition. These objects ranged from books, to desks, to carpentry tools. Assessing the condition of each object varied a bit depending on the object, but in general I took note of the physical appearance and dimensions of the object, this included any wear or damage, and commented on future storage and conservation needs. My next job was to enter all of the information I had gathered into the PastPerfect system, which is an electronic cataloging system used by many museums and is essential for streamlining the collections management process.

My next step was to build an online exhibit about the Sheldall Schoolhouse for the Museums of Story City website. To do this I did a lot of reading about Story City. Some of this consisted of files that had been collected by the Story City Historical Society over the years, but other great sources of information included The Sheldall Schoolhouse: A Historical Sketch by Nehemias Tjernagel, The Follinglo Dog Book: A Norwegian Pioneer Story from Iowa by Peder Gustav Tjernagel and The Passing of the Prairie by a Fossil: Biographical Sketches of Central Iowa Pioneers and Civil War Veterans by Nehemias Tjernagel. The Sheldall Schoolhouse online exhibit explores the ways in which rural children interacted with the school by telling their own stories in their own words, outlines the lives of the 30 teachers that came through the Sheldall Schoolhouse, and looks at how the education these rural children received affected their lives after leaving the Sheldall Schoolhouse.

My final task as an intern at the Museums of Story City will be some minor conservation work on the photos of the teachers of the Sheldall Schoolhouse. L.J. Tjernagel, a former pupil and teacher of the Sheldall Schoolhouse, collected photos of all the teachers in honor of their service to the students. Over the years these photos have been exposed to moisture and major fluctuation in temperature, which has compromised some of the photos. The conservation efforts will consist of adding a moisture barrier, to prevent further damage, and adding new backing paper to stabilize the photos within the frame.

I have had such a wonderful time working with everyone at the Museums of Story City, especially Kate Feil, the Board Members, and all the volunteers. This has been such a rewarding experience and I could not have asked for a better summer internship.

Any of the four Story City Museums can be toured from noon to five on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and during their summer hours from one to three on Sundays. The Sheldall Schoolhouse online exhibit can be viewed on the Museums of Story City website,http://www.storycityhistory.org/sheldall-schoolhouse.html.

The work has begun on the Sheldall Schoolhouse rehabilitation!  The team from Hedberg & Son Roofing did a wonderful job installing the new cedar shake roof in July.  

As you can see, the new roof is a vast improvement over the old moss covered roof.

The Museums of Story City have been fortunate to receive grant funding to help cover the cost of the rehabilitation.  Our local Questers, the Praeri Rail Trail chapter, received a State Quester Grant in the amount of $3,959.  To this amount the local Questers added $1,041 to make the grant total of $5,000.  The Museums of Story City will also be receiving funding from an HRDP Country School Grant Program through the State Historical Society of Iowa.