Museum A-Ö » Religion and society » Westman’s Ma’s Cabin

In the Westman’s Ma’s Cabin you can get acquainted with the modest school, where Johan L. Runeberg attended his first years of school. The private primary school functioned in the attic of the cabin, and the small classroom has survived to our days.

The sailor’s widow Anna Westman did what many other widows did in the 19th century and made her living by teaching small children in her own home. There are likely to have been around forty similar primary schools in the Jakobstad of that time.

Anna Lena Envaldia came to Jakobstad from Sweden in the latter half of the 18th century and first worked as a maid in the Rosenlund vicarage. In 1776 she married sailor Johan Westman, and they had two sons. After becoming widowed nine years later she was forced to support her family. There was a lack of jobs suitable for women in the city. Having a school was, however, a good option.

The schoolmarm attended to the premises, the teaching material, the heating and the lighting and ran her school without the support of the municipality or the state. The officials didn’t intervene with the teaching either. In order for the pupils to return to the school even the next term, the teacher was required to attain good results in her teaching. The school fee at the end of the 19th century was approximately two marks per child each month.

The students were primarily supposed to learn to read with the help of the ABC-book, but the catechism, the hymn book, stories from the Bible and the New Testament were also used in the school. Writing and the elements of mathematics were also practiced and in some schools sewing and geography as well. The school day usually lasted for 4 hours, and school was sometimes attended for one year, although in most cases for two years. Westman’s Ma’s school functioned in the years 1794-1828, and in the beginning she held a weaving school for girls. Her dais is preserved in the cabin.

The school’s most famous student was a boy, who was to become Finland’s national poet, Johan Ludvig Runeberg. He spent his first school years in the Westman’s Ma’s school in 1810-1812. There is an exhibition depicting Runeberg’s time in Jakobstad in the cottage. His childhood and adolescence years are represented with mementos and stories.