Bertha Haug Hayman, 1902, Graduation from Peru Normal School.

            
         My mother, Bertha, was born to Fred and Sarah Haug on November 28, 1882.  She  attended grade schools in Buffalo County.  Her first school was District 22 and her first Sunday School was  District 22 United Brethren Country Church.  One day she went off to school and her folks hitched up the team  and went to town. When they all returned home that afternoon they found that their house had burned down during the day and she and her folks had only the clothes they had on that day when they left home.  In digging through  the ashes of their home, they found a little cup and saucer which had dropped down without breaking.  It was  in fine shape except that it had changed to a blue-black in the fire.  Afterward, they lived with Fred Haug's  parents, who had homesteaded near there and probably with Sarah's folks, who lived north on the Wood River.   About 1896, they moved north of the Union Pacific Railroad next to her grandmother Oliver's homestead and home.  Bertha was in School District 8 in 1897.
 
 

Shelton School where Bertha Hayman was principal from 1945 to 1951.

      Upon graduation from the eighth grade, Bertha went to High School in Shelton.  She probably drove a horse and cart to school.  She often told the story of her mother and her hitching up the horse to the cart and starting for her grandmother's house.  They had been moseying along as the horse was not too lively and after going a couple of miles this way, Bertha's mother, growing tired of this slow pace, took the whip in hand and gave old Dobbin a lash which was so unexpected that the horse leaped forward and hit an obstacle in the road.  Bertha and her mother were tossed back out of the cart and Bertha landed right on top of her mother, thus breaking Bertha's fall.  After many years, Bertha still laughed at what a funny sight it was. She realized, however, that it was not funny to her mother.  Bertha enjoyed high school to the utmost.  She especially enjoyed mathematics.  She was rather a mischievous girl but always serious in thinking that she wanted to be a teacher.

         At about this same time in 1876 a little boy, Ora, was born to Mr. and Mrs. S.S. Hayman in Ohio.  They decided to move to Nebraska and they came with the group which arrived in 1883.  They lived on a farm and suffered many of the hard times.  When Ora was about sixteen he took up bicycle racing and often bicycled from Grand Island to Shelton as part of his training program.  He became an ardent bicycle racer and on May 10, 1895, he won first prize in the five-mile cup race.  He also became Nebraska's State Champion bicycle racer.  Although Ora was in Shelton many times he did not meet my mother, Bertha, until they were both living in Holdrege, Nebraska, in 1903 and 1904.

          In the meantime, Bertha completed a two- or three-year course and graduated from  high school in Shelton in 1897 as valedictorian of her class.  In 1899 another year was added to the course and Bertha went back and was graduated again with the class of 1899.  That same fall she went out to District 10 to fill in for a teacher who had become ill.  She taught here for five and one-fourth months, until the  teacher recovered.  Soon after this, she decided she would like to attend Normal School.  She enrolled  in classes in Peru, working her way through school waiting on tables in the school lunch room.  She took many  courses, including Mathematics, Chemistry, Botany, German, Psychology and Astronomy.  She loved the beautiful  town of Peru on the Missouri River and enjoyed the beautiful trees there.  In 1902 she graduated and in the  following year she was hired as a teacher in the Holdrege schools. In 1904, my mother and father were married in  the Shelton Methodist Church and in 1907 and 1908, when their little boy Douglass was just a baby, Bertha was hired  to teach in District 22 in Buffalo County.  Ora helped her during the winter months, as there were many big boys who came to school after the harvesting was done.

         Not long after that they moved to the Hayman farm in Hall County and Bertha taught in District 31 in Hall county.  In 1914-15 she taught in the Berwick School District 37, a rural school that is still open.  In 1919, Bertha's father persuaded Bertha and Ora to come back to Buffalo County and farm near home.  They built their new home across the river from the Fred Haug home and in that same year, Bertha was asked to fill in for the principal of the Shelton Schools. 

District 10 School House.

         The following year Bertha contracted to teach in District 8, which was just one-fourth of a mile from their new home.  She taught in District 8 from 1920 until 1928.  She returned to teach in District 8 in 1945.  In her teaching at District 8 she was a strict disciplinarian.  She especially enjoyed noon hours and recesses and always played all the games with the children.  She could swat a ball with an old broom or well worn bat as good as the next one.  In the winter time she went skating with the children on the Wood River.  They would follow the river up and down looking for the smooth places.

         Don Nutter, a pupil, told this story:  "One noon we were skating on the river going east from the school house.  Mrs. Hayman was always with us and she went through a snow drift where the ice was not frozen underneath and went into the water about to her waist so she cut across the field to her home to change clothes.  We all thought we wouldn't have to hurry back as this would take her quite a while but suddenly we heard the school bell ringing and had to hurry back.  Mrs. Hayman must have really run most of the way home and back to school."

         One of the highlights of a day in school at District 8 that I recall was the morning exercises which could be exercises or music, as Bertha could play the piano, but the very best beginning for the day was reading.  She brought many of the classics to us such as Little Men and Little Women by Louisa Alcott, and many others.  Bertha had a vast resource of poems and the like which she could give at a moments notice.  She did many "readings" as they were called then and she often gave Henry Van Dyke's "The Other Wise Man" by heart to club or church groups.

         During the winter months there were the Literaries, usually on the last Friday evening of the month and quite often the school children had a part in them.  Then at the end of the year in May, the Last Day of School Picnic was held.  Every family in school would bring a freezer of ice cream - there would be twenty or more freezers of ice cream, all turned by hand.  Many people came from all around to the District 8 picnic.  Sometimes there would be a Last Day of School Program.  Bertha was a great mathematician and was able to explain arithmetic problems in a clear fashion.  She was also very strong in her reading program and was a great believer in the phonics system and sounding out words.  All the families of words would appear on the black board, such as the ow family in now, cow, bow; or the ing family in sing, ring, swing , etc.

         In 1928 she quit teaching, but during the World War II teacher shortage she went back to school in Kearney in summer and took correspondence courses to renew her certificate and returned to teaching from 1945-1951 in the Shelton Schools.

         Bertha had always been very healthy, hardly ever having a sick day.  She went through many sieges of measles, whooping cough, chicken pox and mumps without becoming ill, but when she was in her 60's and teaching again she contracted the mumps and although she stayed home from school she didn't go to bed, but rather sat in a rocking chair until she improved.

         In teaching in country schools, she often had pupils who were on the honor roll at eighth grade graduation.  In the class of 1926, she had the whole class on the honor roll.  Donovan and Don Nutter were first and second and I was ninth and Wilma Wilcox was eleventh in the county.  In 1928 Jean Nutter was highest with an average of 98.35 and Vesta Wilcox was fourth a 97 average.  In later years, one of her greatest joys was hearing from some of her former pupils, telling what they were doing.
   
         In 1961 Bertha was honored by being nominated for Centennial Queen of the Shelton Centennial.  The following appeared in the July 13, 1961 Shelton Clipper:

         The Naborhood Extension Club wishes to nominate for Centennial Queen, one of our members, who is indeed a pioneer, both by heritage and by experience, Bertha Haug Hayman, (Mrs. O. O. Hayman).
         Bertha comes from a long line of pioneers who settled near Shelton, Nebraska, yet in her own right was also a pioneer.  She has seen, and has been a part of the development of this area from the days of the ox team and the walking plow to the present day of mechanization.
           Bertha walked to school a great deal, even to Shelton High School, a distance of  3 or 4 miles.  She sometimes drove a horse hitched to a two-wheel cart.
         We feel that Bertha Hayman exemplifies the fine qualities of her ancestors, courage, industry, concern for her fellow man and kindliness to her friends and neighbors, well representing the true pioneer spirit which has built this fine community in the garden sport of the world.

     In 1963, she died of cancer at the age of 80 years.

Proofread 2-1-2004

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