Eminent Homemaker
County: Walworth
Margaret Masteller was born near Selby, the youngest of a family of eight girls. After attending Selby High School and Northern State College for one year she taught school, then married Merl Masteller in 1934.
She began assisting “Grandad” Masteller on various types of war bond and community fund drives and has helped with these ever since. At first she never considered herself much of a homemaker because the older girls in her family helped with the kitchen duties while she helped with the outside work.
In an effort to learn something about homemaking she joined the Jolly Homemaker Extension Club in the fall of 1934. In 1939 she helped organize her first 4-H Club called the Happy Hustlers and led it for 25 years. In 1960 she also organized the Sunshine Workers Club. Both were among the most active in Walworth County and were well known for their 4-H Share-the-Fun talent.
Masteller was named to the Walworth County Extension Board in 1940 and still serves as secretary. She has been on the area six Extension Board for three years and was on the statewide advisory board from 1965 to 1967.
In 1952 when Walworth County was without a Home Agent she was asked to help lead handicraft training schools. The schools became very popular and she held them on a twice a year basis for a number of years.
She served as County Chairman of Home Demonstration Clubs, then district chairman and as a statewide project leader for “Our Children” project in 1961. In 1967 she was named a director on the South Dakota Home Demonstration Council.
In 1960 she helped organize two Extension Clubs: one, located in Selby was called the “Town and Country Club” the second the “Rock and Rolling Pine Club”. The same year she was named “Outstanding Woman of the Community” by the Selby Jaycettes.
She has also served on the board of directors of the Black Hills Recreation Laboratory; participated in activities of the Methodist Church in the area and in a neighborhood social group called the “Jolly Club”.
There are two children. Joanne, (Willis) Bieber of Bowdle, a graduate home economist, and Vance is working on a masters degree in Botany at South Dakota State University.