https://robertbigg.substack.com/p/working-his-way-through-college
Working his way through college
Working one’s way through a college education is nothing new. Alvin Hansen’s story in the first decades of the twentieth century is, however, remarkable. Alvin, born in 1887 to Danish-American parents, had quite a struggle to achieve his aims. Whilst he had great encouragement from his mother and grandfather, a retired Baptist preacher, his father and the demands of a homestead farming life provided challenges. The one-room country schoolhouse was close by the Hansen homestead in Daneville, near Viborg, South Dakota. Nonetheless in the winter the snow could be so deep that Alvin’s father had to carry him on his shoulders to make the journey safely. When the weather was more clement the demands of the farming year would take him away from classes, so he regularly failed to complete a full year’s schooling. But he was an able student, listening in on the more advanced lessons for the older children. However his options remained limited, there was no local high school in Viborg. This was still very much the frontier, South Dakota only became a state in 1889. Bison, though dwindling fast, still roamed. In 1893 the Southwestern Railroad, linked the cities of Sioux Falls and Yankton, passing within a mile of Daneville, which prompted the creation of Viborg itself around the station. Alvin was amongst the first in his community to make the 30+ mile trip to the high school in Sioux Falls, and had to convince his father to let him finish. He then became the first student in his area to attend college in the former Dakota Territory capital of Yankton, a small liberal arts school in the New England Congregational tradition.
