The Brown School District was established formally in January 1891 and a school was erected the next year, on NE22-4-27W in what is now the Municipality of Two Borders. It closed in 1959 and the district was dissolved in 1961. The remaining students went to Melita Consolidated School No. 440. The school building was later moved to Melita where it was renovated into a private residence. A monument commemorates it at the original site. The plaque on the monument gives its name as “Browns School” but available historical records indicate the name was Brown. Some records for the school are held at the Antler River Museum in Melita.
Among the teachers of Brown School were Annie B. Jamieson (1891-1892), Mr. D. D. McQueen (1893), J. A. Graham (1894), C. A. Wright (1895), Susie H. Beattie (1895-1896), Bessie Archibald (1897), Vina C. Dobbyn Porteous (1898), K. Stirke (1899), F. Pauline Smith Ferguson (1899-1900, 1902), Ralph B. Bell (1901), Jennie E. Cobb (1905), Maggie Hope (1906), Clarence C. Enerson (1907), Nellie A. Thompson Elliott (1908), Helen M. Andreson Harmon (1909-1910), Bertha Wyatt Brown (1911), Laura Laughlin (1912), Agnes S. Forsythe Erickson (1913), Jessie Phoenix (1914), Violet Norgrove (1915), Myrtle Christie (1916), Marion Morton (1917-1918), Edna Innis Topping (1919-1920), Greta Harvey (1921-1922), Anna Smith Couling (1923), Margaret Holden (1924), Florence Blair Hambley (1925-1926), Winnifred Greaves (1927-1929), Dorothy Winstone (1930), Sadie Fairlie (1931-1933), Mary Anderson Stacey (1934), Winnifred Coates Peterson (1935-1937), Janet Wilson Coleman (1938-1939), Mrs. Gertrude McNish (1940), Marguerite McNabb (1941), Thelma Doris Chandler (1942), Irene Beryl Murray Frederickson (1933-1944), Noreen Robinson Junson (1945-1947), Dorothy Margaret Mills (1948), Melba Joyce Greenley Judd (1949), Mrs. Fay A. Watson (1950), Eleanor Alison (1951), Shirley Trenouth Akert (1952), Gerald Argue (1953), Hazel Brown (1954), Ida Myrtle Brown (1955), Nancy Cunningham (1956), Evelyn Basiuk (1957), and Mrs. Grace Roblin (1958).
Brown School (no date) by George Hunter
Source: Archives of Manitoba, School Inspectors Photographs,
GR8461, A0233, C131-1, page 98.
The former Brown School building in Melita (circa 1986)
Source: Historic Resources Branch, Public School Buildings Inventory, slide 131.
Brown School commemorative monument (October 2011)
Source: Gordon GoldsboroughSite Coordinates (lat/long): N49.32546, W101.03132
denoted by symbol on the map above
One Hundred Years in the History of the Rural Schools of Manitoba: Their Formation, Reorganization and Dissolution (1871-1971) by Mary B. Perfect, MEd thesis, University of Manitoba, April 1978.
Our First Century, Town of Melita and Municipality of Arthur: 1884-1984 by Melita-Arthur History Committee, 1983, pages 230-231.
A Study of Public School Buildings in Manitoba by David Butterfield, Historic Resources Branch, Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Tourism, 1994, 230 pages.
Obituary [Noreen A. Junson], Winnipeg Free Press, 3 October 2020.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 12 September 2022
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