HANOVER BECOMES MUSEUM

Once a one-room schoolhouse where students learned reading, writing, arithmetic and the Bible, the Hanover Lutheran School now serves as an educational setting of a different sort.

The 69-year-old brick building has been turned into a museum of the region's Lutheran heritage through the efforts of individual members of Hanover Lutheran Church and others.

It also serves as a museum to the rural, one-room schools that were once commonplace in the area.

"We're trying to preserve things that relate to one-room schools, Lutheran and others," said Elroy Kinder, Hanover Lutheran Church archivist.

A retired Cape Girardeau public school teacher, Kinder is a member of the Old Church Committee.

"We started setting up displays about a year or a year and a half ago," said Marie Exler, a member of the Hanover congregation and chairman of the Old Church Committee.

The committee has been involved in the preservation and use of both the school and the Old Hanover Lutheran Church.

Its efforts were recognized last month by the Concordia Historical Institute of the Lutheran seminary in St. Louis. The committee received one of 13 awards of commendation presented to Lutheran groups across the nation for historic preservation efforts, Exler said.

She said the Hanover School is a logical site for a museum of Lutheran heritage since the first Lutheran church in the Cape Girardeau area was Hanover, founded nearly 150 years ago. All of the other Lutheran churches in the Cape Girardeau area grew out of the Hanover congregation, she said.

In an effort to help develop the museum and promote Lutheran heritage, a new group was established this fall. Called the Lutheran Heritage Society, it's currently spearheaded by the Old Church Committee. The group has about 25 to 30 members, Exler said.

After the first of the year, the group hopes to begin cataloging the items it has in the museum and do a more complete job as to the history of each piece, she said.

At this point, the museum is open, but only by appointment. Tours can be arranged by calling the Hanover Lutheran Church office at 335-8583.

The brick, Gothic-style Hanover church, which sits adjacent to the school on the east side of Perryville Road, was built in 1887. It was used regularly until 1969 when a new sanctuary was built across the street.

The old church was restored in 1987 and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Since its restoration, the more-than-century-old church has been visited by various tour groups and has served as the setting for numerous weddings.

"I would guess over 100 couples have been married there," said Kinder.

The school was built in 1924 and educated students in grades 1-8 for more than three decades before closing in 1957. About 25 to 30 students were enrolled in the school at any one time, Kinder said.

In an era when many one-room schools were frame buildings, Hanover School's brick construction stood out. "This was a Cadillac and it's solid brick," said Kinder.

It's basement, which used to serve as a church meeting room, now provides storage for an assortment of odds and ends, from old farm tools donated by church members to Hanover Lutheran School books.

The school room itself has a wooden floor. It was once heated by a potbelly, wood-burning stove, although that has since been replaced with a gas furnace.

In one corner of the room, the "school" has been preserved with four wooden, student desks and the teacher's desk, as well as a number of school books, some of them in German. Each desk was designed to seat two students side by side.

Although some of the school items are not original to Hanover, the teacher's desk and at least one of the student desks were used at the Lutheran school, Kinder said.

The school room included a stage, which was incorporated at the back of the building in a rather unique way.

The chalkboards along one wall and the panels above it originally formed the front of a stage. When the stage was in use, the panels would be removed and the chalkboards raised.

"As I understand it, it was kind of a local design," said Kinder.

The chalkboards and panels, however, are no longer removable, as the stage has been converted over the years into a kitchen and bathrooms.

When originally built, the school had no bathrooms. An outhouse was used. "They didn't have running water," said Kinder.

"This school was one room and a path (to the outhouse)," quipped Exler.

The school's old American flag, with its 48 stars, is displayed on one wall of the museum.

The rest of the school room is devoted to other items of Lutheran heritage.

Stacked along one wall are several old trunks that carried the possessions of German immigrants as they traveled to America and their new home in Cape Girardeau.

Also on display is a wooden clock dial from the now-razed Trinity Lutheran Church in Cape Girardeau. The clock face dates from the 1880s, Kinder said.

An altar from the old Trinity Lutheran Church, dating back to 1929, is displayed in the museum, as is a scale model of the first Hanover Lutheran Church -- a log structure that once stood near the corner of Melrose and Delwin in Cape Girardeau.

Today it is a residential area, although the original church cemetery remains.

The original Hanover Church was built in 1846. The model includes windows made from pieces of glass from the old church and it sits on pieces of rock taken from the original foundation, Kinder said.

Exler said the first church also served as the first Hanover Lutheran School. Students sat on church benches in the sanctuary with their backs to the altar and were taught by the pastor, whose sleeping quarters were in the back of the church.

In 1876, a frame building was constructed just west of Perryville Road to serve as the parochial school. It was used until 1924, when the present school was constructed, Kinder said.

In addition to being a museum, the school is now regularly rented to civic groups. "We have three or four groups that use this building for meetings," said Kinder.

Such rent is important because both the historic church and the school building are maintained privately, largely with donations through the efforts of the Friends of Old Hanover Church.

"The (Hanover Lutheran) congregation is very supportive of what we do," said Kinder, "but there are no funds from the congregation that come here."