Clark County Press, Neillsville, WI

April 17, 2002, Page 9

Transcribed by Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon.

Index of "Oldies" Articles 

 

Compiled by Dee Zimmerman

 

 

 

Clark County News

 

April 1902

 

Last week, August Schoengarth and son, Oscar, purchased the Hewett Street brick store building owned by George Dewhurst.  The building is located next to the Kapellen building on the east side of Hewett Street.  The new owners will make extensive improvements on the building.  Dewhurst contemplates going to Ohio.

••••••••••

A carload of buggies has been received by Wolff & Korman, direct from the well known firm of buggy manufacturers, Pronty & Glass of Wayne, Michigan.  Wolff and Korman paid spot cash for the carload of buggies, getting a liberal discount that will enable them to give their patrons good bargains on these items.  They also continue to manufacture their own style of spring and farm wagons.  Hundreds of their customers in this vicinity have tested the Wolff & Korman Wagons and found them to be very reliable.  The company has wagons and buggies on display at their storage room and Hein’s store.

 

Ira Wolff has returned from Wayne, Michigan, where he has put in a year or more as a painter in the Wayne Carriage Shops.  He has bought out Ira Houghton who has been a painter in the wagon and machine shop of Wolff & Korman.  Young Wolff will henceforth conduct the local paint shop.  He is an expert painter, having grown up with the business and has had the best instruction with the two firms.

••••••••••

The Withee Sentinel has given an extensive description of a new convertible cot and stretcher which has been patented by E. B. Clifton of that village.  Ex-sheriff W. S. Tufts is also interested in the article and it may be manufactured in Withee.  It appears to be useful and an ingenious device.

••••••••••

Sealed bids will be received on the County Farm barn until 12 o’clock noon, April 20, 1902.  Plans are to raise a barn, 40’x60’, up ten feet and furnish 20 cords of rock.  It includes 140 feet of two-foot wall, furnish all materials and do all work required.  However separate bids to raise the barn or furnish rock and build wall will be considered.  The work (is) to be done on the County Farm property, and to be completed by the 15th of June, 1902.  Bids may be left with C. M. Bradford or J. W. Tolford.

••••••••••

A large number of friends and relatives gathered at the home of Mrs. Blackman, Thursday evening, April 3rd, to witness the marriage of her sister, Miss Racie Howard to Mr. Thomas King.  Miss Howard, a graduate of the Neillsville High School, has been a very successful teacher for a number of years.  The couple received many useful as well as ornamental gifts.

••••••••••

Jack Bryden is on the warpath because his hotel in Greenwood has been quarantined.  A young man, with a case of small-pox, had boarded in Bryden’s hotel from Saturday night until Monday morning.  The patient has been engaged in taking orders for enlarged pictures around the Greenwood area.  Dr. Julian Backer had the patient as his guest until Tuesday morning, when he moved the man to the pest house.

••••••••••

The Dignin Sister’s Millinery Opening will begin Friday and Saturday, continuing through the following week.

••••••••••

A maple social will be held at the Methodist Church parlor on Wednesday evening.  Supper will be at six o’clock with maple syrup and sugar being served in all forms.

••••••••••

Fred Sears is opening up a large farm in the Town of Levis.  He has purchased a flock of Angora goats from the Withee farm near City Point.

 

April 1947

 

There will be a special school meeting of the qualified voters of the Granton School District.  The meeting is scheduled to be on April 7, for the purpose of discussing the question of buying a new bus for use in conveying pupils to the local school.

•••••••••••

The Nelson Muffler Company has concluded an arrangement for the occupancy of the building once used as a warehouse by the cannery. It is located north of East Sixth Street, near O’Neill Creek and north of the bowling alley building.  The Muffler Company is moving four machines into this building in preparation to operate them there.

 

In the immediate future, the Muffler Company will operate both in these new quarters and in its present location.  Meanwhile the building will be partially occupied by Neillsville Milk Products, the former owners.  The building will be repaired, and be put into readiness for the full occupancy of the Muffler Company.

 

The plan is that on or about July 1st, the Muffler Company will occupy the entire building, consisting of two stories and about 14,000 square feet of floor space.  This will give the company about four times its present space and will make possible considerable future expansion of its local operations.  The company now employs 21 men.

••••••••••

Possession of the Ervin H. Witt cheese factory, located about three miles south of Thorp, in the Town of Reseburg, has changed hands.  The business has been passed on to Mr. and Mrs. John J. Worachek as of April 1st.

 

This was revealed in a deed recorded last week in the office of the Clark County Register of Deeds.  The Woracheks bought the property in section eight, including the cheese-making equipment and machinery, store and fixtures, grocery stock, about 200 milk cans, office equipment and supplies as well as other incidental equipment associated with the business.  The deed had $8.80 in federal revenue stamps affixed.

••••••••••

Should the Veterans of Foreign Wars desire to erect horse sheds upon the property west of the Masonic Temple, just bought by them, they will encounter conditions and obstacles.  The sheds, if constructed at all, must have the east wall or walls constructed of stone, brick or concrete; they cannot, by any account, be constructed of wood.

 

At this time this condition was encountered by the Veterans, it did not greatly disturb them, because they have no intension of erecting horse sheds.  What they intend to put up is a good, modern building.  It would be constructed wholly of some good, permanent building material, such as brick.

 

But when the horse shed condition was written into the deed, there was really a point to it.  It was back in 1919, when cars were coming in, but when horses had not gone out.  The lot in question, measuring 80’ x 132’ was bought from the Masons by the Zimmermans, owners of the Big Store.  What the Zimmermans wanted was to hedge against future transportation developments.  Owning the Big Store, it looked to them then as though they would need to convert all of the land they owned immediately west of their building into a parking area. Also, they might need, conveniently at hand, some additional land, where either horses or cars might be parked, depending upon the future trend.

 

So when they negotiated the purchase from the Masons, the Zimmermans dealt upon the basis of their anticipations.  The Masons didn’t want their temple property hurt by being in proximity to wooden horse sheds.  Thus the restriction was written into the deed.  Passing the property on, the Zimmermans could sell only what they owned.  And they definitely did not own the right to construct upon that land; horse sheds with wooden walls to the east.

 

Having purchased this site, the Veterans of Foreign Wars have assured themselves of a splendid location for their future home.  With about $3,000 earmarked for the purpose, the Veterans have a start toward a building, but that is as far as they have gone.  The building possibilities are being explored by a committee, the building committee consists of Millard Cole, Bruce Beilfuss and Robert Schiller.

••••••••••

The collective eyes of 16 Neillsville families are upon John H. Flynn, the city clerk as he goes about the business of fixing one of the units at Veterans’ Village.  This is the sole unit that is vacant at the village and 16 veterans with their families are upon the waiting list.

 

The reason that this one unit is vacant while 16 families wait is that it is a casualty of the peace.  It is suffering from painful joints and other misfortunes, for which surgery is necessary.  The units’ present conditions were reported to the city council by Flynn.  He was authorized to go ahead with whatever is needed in making repairs.

 

The trouble with this unit is not so different from the trouble with the other units at the village, except that the vacant unit is more so.  All of them have suffered more or less from a sort of shifting, which has been due to extreme exertion.  The exertion has been due to the heaving of the earth under the cottages.  There is no firm foundation below the frost level upon the area that the cottages set.

 

The story travels around the village that the vacant unit took a spill upon delivery at the site.  As it was being eased down to its resting place, a jack is said to have slipped and it had let one end of the unit go boom.  The result was rather disastrous to the various joints and connections.  The story is told that the Clumpner family, which once occupied the now-vacant unit, used to sit at the breakfast table and look down through the gap in the floor.  There they cold see the green grass.  As their gaze traveled downward, the flied, mosquitoes and bugs traveled inward, until finally the Clumpners covered the gap.

 

The operation proposed by Flynn is to give the unhappy unit a firm foundation below frost level, in the hope that it’s shifting and distortions may be brought to a happy end.  Clumpners tried to live in the cold weather, pending the completion of their new home.  They just couldn’t keep the place warm; so they gave it up.  Mrs. Clumpner and the children went out of town to live with her parents, while Clumpner slept in his sleeping bag in the basement of their uncompleted home.

 

The cure of ailing conditions within the Veterans Village, if fully accomplished, will be in line with the benevolent purpose of Uncle Sam.  In this, as in many other undertakings, Uncle Sam has shown a big and kindly heart.  When the city of Neillsville originally bargained for some of these units, the agreement was that the city would pay the costs of transporting the units and setting them in Neillsville.  The city was also to put sewer and water into the street.  In addition, the city was to pay the federal government $1 per month per unit as rent.  But this first agreement must have been too much for Uncle Sam to grasp so he altered it, in line with a new national policy.  He has agreed to compensate the city for the cost of moving the units and for setting them up and connecting them with sewer and water.  Under this agreement the city is to operate the Village, to meet all the expenses and to turn any net balance over to the federal treasury.

 

But in modestly asking the new earnings for himself, Uncle Sam continued his generosity.  He was willing, it was made clear, to pay taxes, or money in lieu of taxes.  So the Village fund was nicked for a little more than $800 for that purpose.

 

The potential income of the Village is $226 per month.  That income would be earned, if all 12 units were fully occupied.  The monthly rental rate is $18 for the four one-bedroom units and $22 each for the eight two-bedroom units.  This would seem to indicate gross revenue of $2,712 per year.  But out of this gross revenue must be met with the cost of operation and maintenance, plus the taxes.  Maintenance has been expensive with the leveling, jacking, repair of frozen and broken plumbing.  After a year of operating the Village the currant cash balance on hand is $226.

 

All told, the Village has called for an investment of a little more than $10,000, plus the units themselves.  The moving and setting of the units cost just a little less than $7,000, while the sewer and water main cost about $3,300.  Of these costs, borne the city in the first instance, the expectation is that the larger item of transporting and installing the units will eventually be paid back to the city.  But the necessary auditing has not yet been done and Uncle Sam, though willing to part with the money, has not yet written his check.

 

Though the Village has its ups and downs, such as the drafty doors and cracks in the floors, with occasionally being surrounded by mud, it has unquestionably played an important part in the local housing.  Without these units, the pinch in Neillsville would a have been even worse.  With 16 families on his waiting list, Flynn, the custodian, wishes that there were 20 or more of these units, instead of only 12.  (Veterans Village was located on the west side of Hill Street, between 2nd and 4th Streets. D. Z.)

••••••••••

The Service Flag was retired at special services at the Trinity Lutheran Church of Greenwood and St. John’s Lutheran Church in Christie, Sunday morning.  Service certificates were awarded to the following servicemen: Herman Seebandt, William Seebandt, Henry Seebandt, Wilmer Kroll and Ervin Kroll of Christie; Wesley Schwarze, Robert Carl and Wilbur Lenz, Greenwood.  Certificates will be mailed to Henry Schmidt of Owen, Wilbur Bruss and Loren Lenz of Milwaukee, Vernon Mech of Greenwood, and Lavern Durst of Kansas.  The Rev. George Heilman is pastor of both congregations.

 

Circa 1900 view of North Hewett Street, railroad tracks in the foreground.  To the right, the lettering on the building says, “Buy Today’s Flour,’ ‘The Best,’ Neillsville Milling Co., Wm. Hemphill, Prop.”  (Photo courtesy of Bill Roberts’ Collection)

 

 

 


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