Lisbon Community School history

School began in 1845; third version now Town Hall

Griswald earned $180 in 1867 for teaching 42 students for four months.

It included the future village of Colgate, which had an early start but did not come into its own until the Wisconsin Central came through in 1886.

Today, the area of the 1887 school is a quarter mile west of Woodside Road and on the south side of North Lisbon Road.

The school would have to wait until 1889, however, before it bought its first flag.

The kindergarten building was saved and set on a new foundation facing north and south instead of east and west, and was used until 1907 when it was abandoned.

The school would be quickly rebuilt in 1908 with a beautiful new state-of-the-art facility.

With the 1909 opening of the Lower Lisbon School in the Pocket, the area’s students had a much improved learning environment than they had in the converted barn school building.

McGill also served several terms as Lisbon town chairman and in 1911 helped start Sussex State Bank, the village’s first bank, which evolved into the Farmers & Merchants Bank and today Associated Bank.

In 1915 the Juneau County Normal was located at New Lisbon and Manual Arts and Music added to the high school course of study.

The latter began operation in 1917.

Ever wonder where that came from? The high school band director presents the tune of “College Boy” to his students in 1927.

Because moisture from the canal created a health and safety issue at the Lower Lisbon School, the school was condemned and closed in 1928.

Dolores Greenslate, who serves as the Pocket historian of the Portuguese Historical and Cultural Society, remembers attending catechism classes at the Upper Lisbon School in 1929.

Their father, the George Rolfs, was chairman of the school district in the 1957-59 era when the third school was built.

That school served until 1958, when the modern North Lisbon School was built on Woodside Road.

The school’s reunion June 21 brought back the three students who were the entire graduating class of 1960, the school’s second.

Hamilton High School would not open its doors until fall 1962.

Meanwhile Toni Mayer (married name Hexom), who graduated in 1963, remembered a horrifying experience as she wrote, “The (nearby) woods flooded and froze over one winter.

He went on to become an outstanding wrestler and football player at Hamilton, but was killed in a fire fight in Vietnam almost immediately after graduation in 1966. (The Sussex-Lisbon Area Historical Society has his United States Marine medals, including his Purple Heart.)

After high school, he quickly joined the Marine Corps and was shipped out to Vietnam in December 1967.

In 1970, the new high school would be built resulting in grades 5-8 students moving back to the main building from the Juneau County Teachers College.

The district reopened the school a few times later on for overflow classes from Willow Spring School, until it sold the building to the Town of Lisbon in 1975.

When the Portuguese Historical and Cultural Society was formed in 1979, one of its early efforts was to have the next elementary school built in the Pocket area be named Lisbon School, as a memorial to the area’s Portuguese pioneers.

Another addition was begun in the spring of 1989.

Many changes and additions took place in 2000 with the connection of all school buildings, a brand-new state-of-the-art media center, removing old elementary wing, constructing new elementary addition, and remodeling the high school classrooms.

November 9, 2010 at 6:34 am […] Lisbon schools have rich history in the Pocket area | Valley Community Newspapers, Inc. […]

11, 2011, destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City, as a massive beam of steel is on display in the park, south of the town hall.

Posted: July 11, 2014, Sussex Sun