by Fred H. Keller, Sussex Village Historian,

Former Sussex village president, fire chief and Lions Club president Roy Stier gave me this photo in 1976 as an afterthought. He had lived all his life on Main Street, just east of Maple Avenue. He knew that the photo was a 1912 class photo of the Sussex Main Street School, but he could not identify a single person, not even himself. He thought he might be in the front row, fourth from the right.

Roy Stier was born to Fred Stier (1874-1924) and his wife Mary Smith. Mary was the daughter of Francis A. Smith (1855-1937) and his wife Eliza Love (1857-1902). Francis Smith was the firstborn son of English emigrant Jeremiah L. Smith (1829-1910), who was born in Sussex, England and came to New York at age 20, and then came to Lisbon in 1849. He married Ann Rebecca Weaver (1835-1922) on Nov. 8, 1854, and they had 10 children at their Howards Lane/Highway 164 40-acre homestead.

Politically, Jeremiah was a Democrat, and he frequently won the Waukesha County Coroner vote in addition to some positions in Lisbon township politics.

Ann Rebecca was the granddaughter of the first woman settler in Lisbon, Melinda Warren Weaver (1813-1886), who left New York in September 1836 and arrived in Lisbon in March 1837. She was a relative of General Joe Warren, a dentist by trade, who was the first U.S. general officer to die in battle, at the battle of Bunker Hill during the Revolutionary War.

Melinda was the first teacher in Lisbon and the first in Waukesha County in 1838. Today there is a mini park on Maple Avenue that is named after her, on land adjacent to the land her husband John Weaver claimed (160 acres for $1.25 per acre, $200 total). Today, Clover Drive bisects it as it meanders east of Maple Avenue.

A major event in Melinda's life was the Centennial celebrations of the United States in 1876. She was asked to write a small history of her life as the first woman settler in Lisbon. The book, which is available at the Pauline Haass Public Library, is titled "Memories of Early Days." It is often used to show the hardships of early women settlers in the Midwest. Melinda was Roy Stier's great-grandmother on his mother's side.

On his father's side, Roy's father Fred Stier was one of the 16 signers of the Village of Sussex incorporation in September 1924. Roy's grandfather was Jacob Stier, who was born in Germany and married Anna Eisenhauer, a distant relative of President Dwight Eisenhower (notice changed spelling).

Getting back to the class photo, there were 75 students in the two-room school, 39 boys and 36 girls. The photo also includes the principal and the lower-grade teacher. Two of the girls are carrying dolls, while two boys have baseball bats.

Originally, the Sussex Main Street School was located where Paul Cain's Service is today, and it was called the Lisbon #10 District School. It was built in 1849 out of wood and had a value of $150. The land was acquired on a rental deal from pioneer William Weaver Jr. (1802-1896), with an annual rent of $2.

In 1867, an acre of land on the far eastern limits of Sussex next to the Sussex Creek was purchased from George Elliott. A new two-room cream brick schoolhouse with outhouse toilets was built on the site, for $1,683.41. This version of the school is the backdrop for the 1912 student photo.

The school's location on the eastern edge of the village prompted businesses and churches to build there as well.

Scarlet fever closed down the school in 1886, as so many children were absent in April and May.

Very soon after the photo was taken, a new red brick, four-room, two-story school was built in front of it, opening in 1914. The old school was torn down soon after. The new school lasted only until Jan. 30, 1922, when it was completely destroyed by a nighttime fire. Another new school, also two stories and four rooms, was quickly built at a cost of $25,000 on the foundation of the 1914 school. It was abandoned by the Hamilton School District in 1979, and in 1990 it became the Sussex Village Hall.

The kids in the 1912 photo are sitting where today the parking for the Village Hall starts north. A question to the reading public: Is there anyone out there who might also have this photo with the names of the students on the back?

Source: Living Sussex Sun, Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011

One of the great community happenings in the late-1980s through June of 1990 was the saving and remodeling of the 1922-built Sussex junior high school and Sussex Main Street elementary school. The village prior to 1990 met in the Sussex Community Hall a New Deal project building.

Prior to building the Sussex Community Hall, the Sussex Village Fathers met in the former Lisbon Town Hall which today is the reception room of the Sussex Family Medical Group and the Sussex Community Hall is now home to the Sussex food pantry.

The school was built for about $13,000 and it was the pride of Sussex. In 1920, a two-year high school was carved out of the inside of this school building.

However on Jan. 30, 1922, in the middle of the night the school was destroyed by a fire. The cause was likely spontaneous combustion of a new delivery of coal, but there was also suspicion that it might have been arson because a series of schools in the Fox River Valley had been torched. The burning of the Main Street School caused the formation of the Sussex Volunteer Fire Department which received its charter in May of 1922 led by John Kraemer.

The school district cleaned up the ruin and a new school was built for $26,000 that was ready for eighth-graders and two-year high school students by September of 1922. In 1947 the state ruled against two-year high schools which ultimately led to the construction of Hamilton High School from 1958-62. This followed by the decline of student population in the school district in the 1970s closed the Main Street School by 1979 and the village bought the building.

In 1988 the building was three days from being demolished when a "Save the School" or SOS group of local residents convinced elected officials to have professionals evaluate the condition of the discarded school. Two University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee architectural professors, Jeff Ollswang and Harvey Rabinowitz, had just evaluated the 1866-built Lisbon Town Hall prompting its reuse for a doctor's office.

According to a brochure created by the SOS committee, $500,000 was spent to convert the building into Sussex Village Hall. A grand opening was held on Sept. 15, 1990. To add to the newly created civic center, the Sussex World War II monument was moved to the area in June of 1990 and the Sussex village stone monument sign was installed there in October of 1992.

Plunkett Raysich architectural firm warned officials that the former school building is no longer suitable as a long-term seat of government after they conducted a recent study of the building. They have suggested the village invest about a half million dollars in maintenance that might add 10 to 15 years of life to the building. The consultants also suggested a new building could be built for about $5.5 million that would "allow for the utmost in flexible space and energy efficiency at only a slightly higher cost" than remodeling and expanding the existing building.

Sussex Village Trustee Pat Tetzlaff has been appointed to lead a citizens study group to explore options for the historic building.