A Brief History

In 1935, Ruth Teuscher purchased 40 acres of land in the Town of Somers in northern Kenosha County. Inspired by a grove of native hawthorn trees growing along the Pike River, she and her sister, Margaret, both teachers in Racine, named the property Hawthorn Hollow. They soon posted the land as a wildlife refuge, the first step toward developing what is now Hawthorn Hollow Nature Sanctuary and Arboretum.

Reflecting the Teuscher sisters’ interests, Hawthorn Hollow today combines nature, history and horticulture. Two miles of nature trails wind through the woods of the Pike River Valley. In spring, the forest floor is covered with native wildflowers. During the spring and fall migrating seasons, many songbirds stop at Hawthorn Hollow. Others remain year ’round, making Hawthorn Hollow one of the finest bird watching spots in the area.

Unique to Hawthorn Hollow is a small but valuable area of original prairie, reflecting the type of vegetation that once covered much of the Midwest. Hawthorn Hollow also boasts a restored prairie, perennial gardens, a butterfly garden and a dwarf conifer collection.

To assure the preservation of Hawthorn Hollow, the Teuscher sisters deeded their property to the Hyslop Foundation in 1967. Since then, its Board of Trustees has made many significant contributions to Hawthorn Hollow.

With the help of outside contributions, three historic buildings were moved to the property in 1967: the original Pike River School (1847), the second Pike River School
(1906), and the original Somers Town Hall (1859).

The Hyslop Foundation also established a twelve-acre arboretum which features a variety of trees and shrubs, including Ruth’s lilac collection, which runs along the south edge of the arboretum.

The Friends of Hawthorn Hollow was established in 1988 to help preserve, maintain and further improve Hawthorn Hollow. This organization provides financial and maintenance support through memberships, fund-raising events, boutique sales and volunteer work days.

Our Three Historic Buildings
(The following information was gathered from the writings of Ruth Teuscher)

The Somers Town Hall (d.1859)

Before meetings were held in this Town Hall, the town of Somers was called the Town of Pike, and meetings were held in the home of Charles Leet. He had built his home in 1842 at the present day intersection of County Highway JR and Green Bay Road. His home was also used as an inn for travelers and a store. It was in the store that the town meetings took place for the first fifteen years once the Town of Pike in the county of Racine was granted by the legislature of the Territory of Wisconsin on April 15, 1843.

The first Town of Pike hall meeting was held May 1, 1843; the first annual meeting April 2, 1844, and the second annual meeting April 1, 1845.

It was in the minutes of the 1850 annual meeting and without explanation that the first mention of Kenosha County appears:  “… at an annual town meeting held at the house of Charles Leet in the town of Pike Kenosha County….”

The 1850 By- Laws of the Town of Pike were posted May 20th in the three most public places:

1)  House of Charles Leet.

2)  Windmill ( a grist mill operated by Rev. James Ozanne … where all the farmers from miles around took their grain to be ground).

3) Tree, that stood directly in the Public Highway (Green Bay Trail/Plank Road).

1851    Annual Meeting, April 1, Town of Pike becomes Town of Somers, as stated in minutes and without explanation.

1855 Population:  Males = 597 ;  Females = 514.

1857    Annual Meeting, 156 people turned out and voted to build a “Town House.” The Town House abstract cost $30.00 … And voted to raise $50.00 as recompense Mr. Leet for the use of his store from 1843 to 1857.

1858    Two months after the annual meeting, a special meeting took place on June 7 where the contract for building the Town Hall was awarded to Mr. Lucien Carpenter, the first postmaster of Somers – his bid being the lowest at $740.00.

The Somers Town Hall is built at the southeast corner of Green Bay Trail and present Hwy. E, just west of the Oakwood cemetery. The land was donated by William Smith.

The first Somers Town Hall meeting was held on a Tuesday, April 5, 1859 (and the first presidential election of Abraham Lincoln of 1860). On that Tuesday, the meeting was called to order at the Leet store for the last time. A motion was made to adjourn to meet at the new Town Hall. 196 people left the Leet store and streamed down the road a half mile southward some driving horses and buggies, some on horseback, and many on foot.

1967    The Town of Somers gave the Town Hall to Hawthorn Hollow and paid for moving it. Still on oak beams – 36-foot white oak beams hewn by hand – the Somers Town Hall was lifted off of its brick piers (bricks for the piers came from brickyards on North Main Street in Racine. These brick piers were a departure from the previous standard of fieldstone foundations) onto a large dolly and hauled 2.5 miles on a side road to the back entrance of Hawthorn Hollow and set on a new cement block foundation. After 108 years and this big moving job there was not one crack in the plaster, so perfectly had all the parts of the building been aligned. The building still has some of the original 1858 window panes.

2004 Contributions are made in memory of Margaret Wilder Shaw for the continued maintenance and future restoration.

The Original Pike River School (d.1847)

Frequently both school boys and school girls from the 1847 schoolhouse went to visit an old lady named Mrs. Peter Ozanne. She was a tiny lady who lived in a tiny house on the farm next to the school grounds. She had lived there since the 1840’s, when there were hardly any white men around, only Indians. She had been well acquainted with the Indians. The school children spent many lunch time hours listening to her stories of the Indians. The school grounds had been a favorite campground of the Indians.

The 1847 Pike River Schoolhouse was originally located one half mile north of where it stands now, through the woods on an east-west road, and used until 1906.

The 1847 Schoolhouse was made by hand of wood farmers cut from trees that grew on their land. White Oak was the best. This was White Oak country. Many White Oak trees grew in the woods around here. In the winter a farmer would cut down some trees and haul them on the snow in a big bobsled drawn by a team of horses. He would take the logs to a sawmill that stood on the river in what is now Petrifying Springs Park. The sawmill was east of the where the baseball diamond is now. There the trees would be cut into boards that made the walls and doors and windows of houses and this school house.

The total cost of this schoolhouse in 1847 came to $200.00 and that included everything: lumber, nails, labor, glass for the windows. All the work was done by hand. There was no machinery of any kind to make the work easier except for the sawmill by the river.

All 8-grades were taught by one teacher. During this time, the children did not know about football, and baseball had not been invented yet. The teacher was called “Teacher,” and not by her name. “Teacher” was a term of liking and respect. Almost always the children loved their teacher, and to call her Teacher was a little like calling her Dear. The teacher not only had to teach, she also had to be the janitor – sweep the floor and make the fire. That was customary in country schools everywhere. However, Pike River School was better than most. In 1859 the district hired a boy, an eighth grader to build the fires. He was James Fink, and he lived near the school. He did it one whole winter, five months, for $1.50, that comes to thirty cents a month.

In 1850 a teacher’s salary was $11.00 a month.

In 1901 a boy named Art Bohm had the job. He was twelve years old. He did it all winter for $5.00. He would get up at five in the morning and help with the milking and barn chores. After eating breakfast at seven he would walk a mile and a half along a dirt road, now Hwy. A over here, to the schoolhouse, where he made the fire and had the building warm when the teacher and children arrived.

When lunchtime came, children hurried to eat their lunches in no more than fifteen minutes so that they would have 45 minutes to play. During the noon recess they didn’t always play running games such as Run, My Good Sheep, Run, a variation of hide and seek or, White Man, Indian. Instead they often roamed through the woods around here. The girls might pick wildflowers. The boys hunted Indian arrowheads or fished in a deep bend of the creek they called The Swimming Hole.

Sometimes, when winter weather froze the lunches that had been stored in the cloakroom, they would have to be thawed beside the stove.

By 1905 this one room schoolhouse was too small. The larger school built just west of this smaller school was finished in May of 1906 and occupied until 1965 when the new Somers Elementary School was finished. The 1847 one room schoolhouse was sold to Lawrence Ozanne in 1906, the son of Mrs. Peter Ozanne, for $62.00. Lawrence moved the school to his farm next door for storing grain.

In 1967 the Hyslop Foundation paid $500.00 for the 1847 Pike River School and moved it here to Hawthorn Hollow to be preserved. When Hawthorn Hollow got the school, there were wires stretched under the ceiling with ears of corn drying on them and the writing was still on the blackboard after all of those years – sixty years. The original writing is no longer visible.

In 1995 Dr. Clifton E. Peterson graciously adopts the Original Pike River School for future maintenance and restoration.

The Second Pike River School (d. 1906)

(District No. 7, Town of Somers, kenosha County (1906-1962).
Compiled from the records in the original ledgers kept by the clerks of the district. This history was written in 1980.)

July 3, 1905, at the annual meeting, the first steps were taken toward building a new schoolhouse. A special meeting was called.

1905-1906, the new school is built, probably by Ben F. Yule, though no records show how the school was built. Some of Yule’s homes still stand in Somers.

The schoolhouse accommodated 50 students and was valued at $1150.00 for schoolhouse and grounds, apparatus $80.00, and the library $50.00.

After the schoolhouse was finished, coal chiefly was used for heating but in a stove, with some lesser expenditures for wood.

The Town Superintendent Annual Report shows that in 1905-1906: 41 children attended school, 27 males and 14 females with an average daily attendance of 26; 157 days were taught, and the teacher pay $40.00/month.

1906-1907 – The District voted to have 9-months of school. Beginning 1908, nine months of school were held regularly.

1910-1911 – Tuition per pupil was $12.26.

1911-1912 and 1912-1913, the teacher, Edith Snyder, was paid $55.00/month. She was greatly liked.

June 1913, Herman Tabbert painted the schoolhouse: $20.00 for work only, not including paint.

From the beginning, District No. 7 had been called Pike River, but at the annual meeting on July 7, 1919, the name was made official. “By a majority vote of the members present, the school was named the Pike River School and a report to that effect was sent to the county superintendent.”

Through 1935 someone was paid for lighting fires; e.g., in 1921-22: Leonard Miller, $16.40, 1923-24 Matt Klinkhammer $20.75.

At almost every annual meeting, repairs and improvements were approved by the voters. The building was painted regularly both inside and out. For example, in the summer of 1921, E.G. Ozanne was paid $51.70 for 128 hours of painting at $0.40 an hour, and varnish.

For the first time a special teacher of music was hired to come on two or three days a week for $12 a month. For the next 22 years, as long as the school was in operation, there was a special teacher of music.

1931-1932 – Earl Torrey “put down a new well,” for $354.74.

Then came the big remodeling of 1943.

Up to this time Highway A, on which the schoolhouse faced, was a dirt road with grass growing between the ruts made by wagon wheels. In 1933, the highway was surveyed, and surprisingly it was found that the front of the schoolhouse, which faced north, extended two feet onto the highway. At the same time, there was considerable feeling that the schoolhouse, now twenty-seven years old, needed improvements in addition to the new roof that had just been laid.

“A sentiment meeting was held in the schoolhouse on the evening of Dec. 9, 1933 to hear the report of a committee named to investigate the possibility of improvements on the building under the Government Civil Works Administration. Mr. C.P. Heide was named chairman. Herman Arndt (superintendent of Petrifying Springs Park, a 350-acre county park one-half mile east of the school grounds) reported that the Government, under the CWA, was furnishing all labor and one-third the cost of labor for material and that the improvements considered would be very little over the amount furnished by the CWA if project was accepted.

“The improvements planned were as follows: Move the building approximately 75 ft. south placing it on a new foundation with basement and adding 9 ft. to the front of the building.

“Installment of water system connected to the present well.

“Installation of toilet rooms for the girls and boys; installation of septic tank with proper drainage; installation of a heating plant; provide wire guards for all basement windows; leveling and surfacing the playground; removal and trimming old trees and planting new ones; and painting the building inside and outside.

“The purchase of one-half acre of land was necessary in order to move the building back from the highway according to the law; the purchase price of $75.00. Paid by C.P. Heide.

   “Donations of $525.00 were promised: C.P. Heide at $250.00; L.E. Ozanne at $25.00; and Parent Teachers Association at $250.00, in two years.”

Arthur Bloom, who as a boy of twelve had built fires in the 1847 schoolhouse, dug the new basement, beginning with a tractor but soon changing to a team of horses. It had been decided to excavate a deep, substantial basement, and the tractor could not get up the incline with a load but the horses could.

Deserving special recognition was Mr. C.P. Heide. Not only did he contribute from his own funds, he also lent money. Most of all, he gave moral support. He was a substantial businessman. People thought, “If he believes we can do it, we can.” He gave them confidence at a time when money was scarce. He was a leader in more ways than one.

In 1935 the old toilets were sold to the highest bidder for $8.00

The minutes of the annual meetings proceed routinely for the next twenty years, with regular approval by the voters of needed repairs and increasing expenditures for equipment to keep the school in accord with modern times.

About 1945 Mr. Leslie Van Natta had bought the Lawrence Ozanne farm adjoining the school grounds on the east. He became intensely interested in Pike River School, and from the time he was elected Clerk in 1949 until it ceased to be a separate district in 1962 he gave it devoted service. He superintended repairs and improvements and gave it business-like administration. Every morning for years, he went over to the school before leaving for his office in Racine, where he was a highly regarded certified public accountant. He was especially helpful in the negations by which the four districts of Pike River, Burr Oak, Bullamore Forks, and Washington consolidated to form the Somers Elementary School.

When he bought the Ozanne property, he found the old 1847 schoolhouse on it. He guarded it carefully, taking pains to keep the 1906 writing on the blackboard from being obliterated. In 1967 when this schoolhouse was moved to Hawthorn Hollow, it had sturdy tongue and groove siding on it. It had not had such siding when it was used as a school. It had to be Mr. Van Natta who had it put on after he acquired the building. The siding is still there in excellent condition.

In September 1960, the seventh and eight grade pupils at Pike River were sent to schools in Kenosha by bus because the numbers in all eight grades were too many for one teacher to handle. In September 1962, the remaining grades, one through six, began to attend the new Somers Elementary School, and Pike River School was closed.

In 1962 District No. 7 (Pike River) was merged with District No. 1 (Washington), No. 5 (Burr Oak), and No. 8 (Bullamore Forks) to form the Somers Elementary School.

In 1965 an emergency meeting was called, Mr. and Mrs. Christen P. Heide spontaneously came forward with a liberal donation to save the school and the Pike River grounds on which it stood. Through the years, their interest, leadership, and generosity have assured the present use of this building for historic and educational purposes.

In 1967, the Second Pike River School was moved to Hawthorn Hollow.

In 2005, the School was adopted by the Charles Heide Family further assuring the preservation and dedicated in memory of
Christen P. and Anna Heide.

The Old Indian Trail

The Old Indian Trail at Hawthorn Hollow, which traverses just to the east of where the historical buildings are now located, is on the map of a government survey made in 1835 by engineers Mullet, Brink, Hathaway, Lyons, and Silby.

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