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Mabel Gregerson, Badger
Minnesota's "Hello Girl" Part I
At the early age of
16 Alexander Graham Bell began his start toward the development of the
telephone. Today the telephone is a device we take for granted. Not
only do we usually have at least one phone in our homes or businesses
we also have mobile phones and cell phones so we can always make
contact with one another no matter where we are. The telephone has
changed how we live and work.
Bell
could not have imagined what would have transpired from his invention.
Mabel Gregerson, was
the Badger “Hello Girl” for the Stokes, Nereson, Barnett Telephone
Company exchange for 51 ˝ years beginning in 1918. The information
here is taken from Pioneers and Progress and
Roseau County
Heritage
books.
Mabel was born in
1900 at Blooming Prairie Minnesota to Gust and Sophia Gregerson. Her
family homesteaded on Section 17 in Nereson
Township
in 1900 where they farmed until 1913. In 1913 they moved to Badger and
Gust managed the telephone exchange. Not long after the move a family
illness caused the Gregersons to move back to the farm where Gust
passed away in 1916.
Perhaps it was during
the years when her father managed the exchange that her career really
began, by the time she was 18 she was working at the telephone
exchange and had began a lifetime of service to the community.
Les Lockhart said “If
any one person was to be singled out as having touched the lives of
more people than anyone else in this area … it would have to be Mabel
Gregerson.”
“For someone who has
never experienced anything but a dial system it may be difficult to
understand or to grasp the meaning of “extra services”, as a telephone
is just a telephone---but not when Mabel was part of the system.
Mabel was an “operator” in more ways than one. She could, and did,
install a telephone, solder loose wires, change batteries, and repair
switchboard plugs whenever necessary to maintain constant service.
“Persons calling into
Badger have been thunder struck by her knowledge of the where about of
persons in Badger. Long distance callers have reported calling into
Badger and asking for a person and being told, “Well, he isn’t home
right now but I’ll ring the café or one of the other business places
and sure enough the call is often completed. Somehow she has been
able to be aware of our habits, nicknames, our whereabouts and if not
has taken it upon herself in her free moments to locate us and let us
know who was calling or what time they will be calling back.” (to be
continued) Information from Pioneers and Progress and
Roseau
County Heritage,
Gladys Paulson, 82, 306)
RCHS Footnotes
For those who are not
familiar with the holdings in the research center at the Roseau
County
Museum you will be quite surprised. School record holdings include
attendance record books, school census records which tell how far the
parent/guardian lived from the school as well as vital information;
and school clerk records.
Some of the school
folders contain small keepsake memory booklets that a teacher would
give to the students on the last day of school. These booklets usually
give the school district name and number. The teacher’s name and
photograph may be on the cover with the student’s names listed
inside. Many times an encouraging poem would be in this souvenir.
As you go through old
trunks or boxes you may find one of these souvenirs. If you do find
one, please bring it into the museum so we may make a copy of it and
place it in the appropriate school file.
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