Minnesota Now and Then: Remembering the Owatonna state school, Minnesota‘s early approach to child welfare

CATHY WURZER: It's time for another "Minnesota Now and Then" segment where we peek into our state's past to better understand what's happening today. Now, many of you know that Minnesota's child welfare system has had its problems. There was an exposé a few years back, where the Star Tribune uncovered a number of child deaths where the system failed to protect them from caregivers with a history of abuse or neglect.

For decades, orphans, children who were neglected or abused, would wind up in Owatonna, Minnesota, at one of the largest institutions in the country that housed these children in need. It was called a state school, and about 11,000 kids spent time there from 1886 to 1946. It was a precursor to what would become our current child welfare system.

Joining us with a little bit of history is Anne Peterson. Anne is the Manager of the Minnesota State Public School Orphanage Museum in Owatonna. Anne, thanks for taking the time. How are you?

ANNE PETERSON: Oh, you're very welcome, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: Well, this is a huge-- this was a huge, huge program. Tell me what was happening in Minnesota at the time, around that late 1800 time period where this school started.

ANNE PETERSON: OK. This school was actually started by an act of the Minnesota legislature in 1885. And this was going to be Minnesota's response to the child-saving movement. That's the movement that Charles Loring Brace started out on the East Coast, where it originated with his theory that if you put the kids on the Orphan Trains, they would end up with a nice family out in a farm. OK, that was his version of child-saving.

Well, in Minnesota, they decided that they didn't need to send their children anywhere. But before this time, the children were taken care of by the counties. And maybe they child would end up at the county poor farm with adults who were maybe petty criminals down on their luck. They didn't think that children should be growing up in that environment. And sometimes that was the only option available to a county.

So they passed a law to create the State School. And it would let all of the 87 counties in Minnesota send their dependent children there.

CATHY WURZER: And by the way, were there large numbers of dependent children? And I ask that question because were parents dying at a younger age, perhaps? What was going on in society?

ANNE PETERSON: There could be situations. Mom dies in childbirth, and dad has four or five kids. And he's trying to run the farm, and he can't manage it. Dad may be injured on a farm. Or sometimes-- well, more than sometimes-- alcoholism was a very big cause of children being sent to Owatonna.

The county intervened if they thought that children were being abused or neglected because of-- they called it "intemperance" of the parents. So there was intervention within the county that would send the children to Owatonna.

CATHY WURZER: So it sounds like these kids-- so they had a safe place to stay and were fed, obviously, and got maybe an education. But--

ANNE PETERSON: Correct.

CATHY WURZER: --I'm betting some kids probably benefited, but others probably found it very traumatic. In your experiences doing the research, what did these children go through?

ANNE PETERSON: Well, it's hard to imagine because I'm learning more and more stories. We're getting more people in older records. Unfortunately, the State Schoolers that went through the experience-- when the school closed-- everybody was born before, say, 1940.

So the real State Schoolers, I can maybe count 10 on my hands that I am aware of. So we are relying more on historical records. And some of this, they're just such sad stories. Because it wasn't just Little Orphan Annie showing up at the place. It was families.

And then they would divide the children, the boys and the girls separately. And the boys were divided by age. So then they started to place the children out. You're right. They did get good health care. They had a hospital up here. They got their vaccinations when they were available. They got fed, all of that.

But they weren't getting any individual attention. And then they were separated from their siblings and maybe placed out on a farm. Or maybe the youngest one got adopted. So these families were getting separated.

CATHY WURZER: Right, broken up.

ANNE PETERSON: Broken up. And I think what bothers me the most, now that I'm looking in retrospect, is sometimes the families ended up in worse situations than if they had been able to just give the mom or somebody some support so she could keep her kids together. But social services were not a thing.

CATHY WURZER: Right.

ANNE PETERSON: And families were poor, so they ended up coming here and getting separated and passed around. And sometimes it would take them a long time, if ever, to reconnect as adults. So the scars, I think, of losing your family unit, for good or bad, whatever you had grown up, you were used to that, you would come to the State School, which had to be run pretty much like a little military institution.

And then you might get sent off, and you'd lose your siblings' or contact. But at the school, they did not address those emotional needs. So it's all these under the surface scars that these children carried into the future. And then their children were raised by people who had not experienced growing up in a healthy family situation.

The cottages here were all run by women. And it was just a different dynamic. The intentions were really good.

CATHY WURZER: I wonder how it how it played out in the end.

ANNE PETERSON: Right.

CATHY WURZER: And, of course, I was a little surprised to see that it ran until 1946, which doesn't seem like that was-- I mean, it was a long time ago, yes. But 1946-- I wonder how-- do you see vestiges of the state school in the current-- or how did it morph from the State School into the current child welfare system that we have? Are there vestiges of that evolution at all?

ANNE PETERSON: What I think happened was they realized that this was not the best environment to be warehousing children or splitting up families. And social work was becoming much more prevalent and having a voice in how children were taken care of.

So that's when foster care took over as the way to handle these situations. And then the war broke out. And that kind of-- a lot of the boys went off to war. It sort of made things happen. There was just so much going on in society.

What I take from it is that before the State School, before that 60-year period, they didn't know how to handle their dependent children in a good manner always. Things weren't always so good at the State School. And I think we all know that sometimes things with foster care are not ideal.

So I'm not sure that we've come to the solution yet. We did have a speaker here in at the State School talking about the psychological impact of growing up in an institution. And she said now in modern social work, they're trying so much more to keep the families together and to give the parents the resources to keep the family together. But it's a work in progress.

CATHY WURZER: Say, final question for you. About a minute left here, Anne. Why do you think it's important? What do you tell people about why it's important to remember what happened at this school?

ANNE PETERSON: Oh, it's-- it's just such a critical piece of history. We are the only museum that tells that story within the country. Fortunately, Owatonna has maintained a lot of the buildings, so you can visually see it. But we've also accumulated memorabilias. We have audio stations around the grounds. We have the restored boys cottage.

So people can experience what it really must have been like to be a child in that period. So I think we're telling that specific 60-year history when they thought that was the solution. And for some kids it was. And for others, it was a nightmare.

CATHY WURZER: Anne--

ANNE PETERSON: But there were--

CATHY WURZER: Interesting story. I wish I had more time with you. You're fantastic. And I'm glad that you have the museum. Thank you so much for your time.

ANNE PETERSON: You're welcome.

CATHY WURZER: Anne Peterson, Director of the Minnesota State Public School Orphanage Museum, based in Owatonna, Minnesota. For more information, of course, they've got a website. Check it out-- orphanagemuseum.com.

Thank you for listening to Minnesota. Now here on MPR News. If you missed anything, we've got the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Have a good day.