Clark County Press, Neillsville,

December 14, 2005, Page 17

Transcribed by Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon.

Index of "Oldies" Articles 

 

 

Compiled by Dee Zimmerman

 

 

Clark County News

December 1905

 

Mr. Robert Garbush and Miss Amelia Gluch were married Nov. 30, 1905, Thanksgiving Day, at the German Lutheran Church near Garbush Corners.  Rev. P. H. Haas officiated at the ceremony.  A large number of guests were assembled to witness the ceremony.  Will Duge, Fred Schrieber and Richard Garbush acted as groomsmen.  Ida Gluch and Clara Hubing attended as bridesmaids.

 

The groom, who is the son of Mr. and Mrs. John Garbush, is one of the active young farmers of the Town of Grant, where he owns a home of his own.

 

The bride is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Dan Gluch of Grant, a young lady well qualified in every way to assist in making a new home.

 

A bountiful wedding supper was served at the home of the bride’s parents and many beautiful and useful presents were bestowed upon the young couple.

••••••••••

The Neillsville Spoke Mill wants 200,000 feet of white oak logs delivered at the Granton, Kurth, or Neillsville mills.  They will pay $20 per thousand for No. 1 and $10 per thousand for No. 2 logs.

 

Good saw logs of all kinds are bought at the highest market price.  Call the mill for prices.

 

Hub Logs needed: 30,000 running feet of white and red oak for hubs, must be 10 inches or larger at small end, sound and clear.  We will pay 7 cents per foot for white oak and 5 cents per foot for red oak.

••••••••••

Saturday afternoon, Sheriff Dwyer was called up by Dist. Atty. Jackson at Colby and informed that the Colby State Bank had been robbed by two men at 3 p.m. that day.  Cashier R. Johnson was alone in the bank when the two men entered and covered him with their revolvers, demanding $5,000.  The cashier went to the vault and brought out $4,000 in packages, hastened somewhat by the threatening remarks of one of the men.  Cautioning him to keep still, the robbers went out and untied the horse in front of the bank, which they had hired from a local livery and drove rapidly out of town.  They went north through Abbotsford and turned east.  When near Athens, they stopped at a farmhouse and left the horse and buggy at a farmer’s place, paying him $10 for caring for the horse and returning it to the owner at Colby.  They walked on and stayed at a farmhouse near Athens.

 

The next morning, the farmer drove them to a place near Edgar.  They walked into town and went to a livery stable to hire a horse to drive to Wausau.  Martin Keefe, the liveryman who is also a constable, suspected that they were the robbers by their display of money.  They invited him to have a drink at a saloon nearby and while they were talking at the bar, Keefe slipped out and got his revolver.  After a lively tussle in which the bystanders assisted, both were secured, their revolvers taken away and all the money except $35 was recovered.  Sheriff Damon of Marathon County was summoned and the men were taken to the Wausau jail. They were held there until Sheriff Dwyer, accompanied by Geo. K. Redmond arrived having followed the trail of the fugitives across the country from Colby.

 

The bank robbers were brought into Neillsville on the 4:45 train, Monday evening, and lodged in jail.  They made a full confession to the officers and said they were willing to plead guilty at once.

 

According to their statement, which was fully corroborated by the sheriff of Langlade County, their home is near Antigo.  One of them is married and has a six-month old child.  He lives on a rented farm and the other man works for him.  Both have borne good reputations.  The one who farms had become considerably in debt and had several notes, which his friends had signed and which were due, with other bills also.  Having read stories of other daring bank robbers; he foolishly imagined that he and his friend might get a fortune easily and return to set themselves up in easy circumstances.

••••••••••

A party of friends gathered at the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Howard, Saturday evening.  Card playing and dancing were the entertainment of the evening.  Music was furnished by the Wren brothers.  Refreshments were served at a late hour, after which all guests returned to their homes.

••••••••••

Joseph Buss of the Town of Grant has recently equipped his farm residence with a furnace put in by W.E. Poate.  Mr. Buss has one to the finest basements in his home that can be found in this part of the country.  It is thoroughly cemented, has a cistern with convenient pipes, vegetable cellar and apartment for furnace.

 

December 1955

 

The new building of St. John’s Lutheran parish went into its first use Monday morning, November 28.  Within its walls, 100 pupils of the church school met their three teachers.  The morning was spent in organizing anew the activities of the school and in becoming acquainted with the new facilities.

 

For the pupils of the school, it was a new experience.  In recent years, they have been so many that they almost burst the walls of the old school building.  On Monday, they not only spread out comfortably into three bright and commodious rooms, but they had available a fourth room equally inviting and not required for the regular classroom work.  For the present, this fourth room will be used for religious instruction for music and for various extracurricular activities.

 

What the 100 children saw in the new building was perhaps not exactly the same thing as adults would see at first.  For instance, there is the shuffleboard, the design of which is built right into the tiling of the floor in the large, all-purpose room.  Also patterned in the tiling is a basketball court.

 

Attached is the kitchen, which opens invitingly along the west wall of the all-purpose room.  The kitchen will provide hot lunches for the children, as soon as it is operational.

 

The first church building of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran congregation was located at the corner of West Fifth and Oak Street.  Their first church school was located in the next block north, between Sixth and Seventh streets.

••••••••••

Children to the number of 580 will receive polio shots in the immunization program, to be conducted at the gymnasium of the Greenwood High School Thursday afternoon, December 8.

 

Because of the heavy response, those in charge have been obliged to make a schedule. They ask that the children be brought at the time indicated, as follows:

 

1 p.m. Greenwood Public and St. Mary’s School; 2 p.m., Willard, Butlerville, Eastside, Benjamin, Braun Settlement; 3 p.m., Eaton Center, West Eaton, Hemlock, Christopherson, Decker, Rocky Run.

 

Dr. W. A. Olson, who will administer the vaccine, announces that it has been received in such quantity as to care for all who have been signed up.

•••••••••••

The Methodist Church of Thorp is bringing to a climax a program of improvements.  These will be shown to the public in their present state of near-completion in an early winter festival, to be held Saturday, December 3.  The festival, managed by the women of the church, will consist mainly of a bazaar and dinner.  The consecration will take place on the last Sunday in February.

 

The program included the construction of a basement under the church proper, to make provision for social activities and the Sunday school.  These are now added to the provision previously made in the wing of the church, which extends to the east.  Under this wing had previously been the only basement, with kitchen facilities at the east end of it.  The new kitchen is now located at the west end of the old basement.

 

The main part of the church was previously without basement, and a major project was the jacking up of the structure, excavation under it and the construction of a complete basement.  The front of the main building has been completely renovated, with the free use of amber cathedral glass.  Five stained glass windows have been installed, one as a memorial to Rev. James Irish and his wife, who were with the Thorp congregation a total of 15 years.  This and another of the windows were provided by various gifts, while the other windows were provided, respectfully by the Sunday school, the WSCS and the Youth Fellowship.

 

The improvements have cost upwards of $20,000.  To meet this expenditure the congregation sold the parsonage, no longer needed and received $5,000 for it.  Other monies have been raised, with a manageable debt remaining.  In accordance with the Methodist policy, the rites connected with the completion of the work will be regarded as “consecration.”

 

Dedication will come when the debt is all paid.

 

The present pastor is the Rev. Cecil Ward, who resides in Stanley and serves three points; Thorp, Withee and Stanley.

 

The building committee consists of Chester Johnson, Walter Bohn, Dean Hubbard, Edward Asselin and Corwin C. Guell.

••••••••••

The Zilk Bros. towing truck was called Tuesday morning to the Vern Howard farm near Granton to perform an act of mercy.  A one-year old heifer, of the Howards, had stepped through a plank covering an unused well.  She fell hind feet first, through a two-foot square opening into a 16-foot deep well, which had eight feet of water in it.  After the opening was enlarged, the heifer was place in a rope sling and was pulled up by the tow truck into the frigid morning air.

 

The heifer’s condition was reported as good with the exception of being skinned on the hind part of her body and being chilled to shiver after her rescue.

••••••••••

Honesty as a characteristic of Oscar W. Schoengarth was stressed at the testimonial dinner given for him December 3, by the Neillsville Chamber of Commerce.

 

Honesty received chief emphasis in the address of Francis J. Conway, president of Thorp Finance Corporation, who presented to Judge Schoengarth the community gift.

 

An outstanding representative of the principle of honesty, Mr. Conway said, has been Judge Schoengarth, throughout his half century of public service.  He has been unceasing in his watchfulness over the rights of all persons whose interests have depended upon the vigilance of his court.  Upon him have depended; the widows, orphans and the unfortunate.  In him, they have found an unfailing champion, who has permitted no technicality and no slackness to interfere with the award to them all that they had rightfully coming.

 

A tribute was paid to Judge Schoengarth, by William A. Campman of the Clark County Bar Association.  Mr. Camp-man said that he had always enjoyed the confidence of the Judge, and had been careful to deserve the confidence.  He would, however, he declared, have hated to proceed upon a lower principle, because he would have had to encounter the certain disapproval of the Judge.

 

Mr. Campman also told about the “little black book,” which he said, Judge Schoengarth has kept constantly upon his high desk in the main office.  That little book, he declared, summarizes all the probate law contained in all other law books together, and the wonder has been, said Mr. Campman, that, by some strange power, Judge Schoengarth has always been able to turn with surprising speed to exactly the right place in that book.

 

It was Mr. Campman’s chief duty, however, to tell things about the early life of Judge Schoengarth.  The two had been boys together in Neillsville; their fathers had been partners in the shoe business; they roamed the area in search of adventure and fun.  One of their favorite occupations was to dodge the goat, which was Oscar’s pet.  That goat had the colliding power, which makes goats formidable, and young Oscar had cultivated a technique against the goat’s attack.

 

A favorite place for the two boys was a barn back of the present Walter Beilfuss home.  This barn had beams running across with no floor upon them, and the boys would run across the beams, with the nimble goat right after them.  Below the beams, at one point, was a chicken roost.  And upon one occasion, Oscar knelt down upon the beam to look below.  The goat caught him in that position and catapulted him into the roost.  From there, Oscar emerged, covered with feathers like an Indian chief.

 

Nearby was the brickyard of Oscar’s father, and this was much frequented by the boys.  It was their custom to watch the men make brick and occasionally to lend a hand, whether their hands were welcome or not.  They told the men how to make bricks, as well as helping make them.  All around the Neillsville area are houses built of Schoengarth brick and these, Mr. Campman asserted, are lasting memorials of the old-time firm of Schoengarth & Campman.

 

(The Schoengarth brickyard was on the east side of Park Street and north of United Church of Christ. D.Z.)

 

 Toastmaster of the dinner was Bruce Beilfuss, Circuit Judge.  Judge Beilfuss is a nephew of Judge Schoengarth, and referred to this relationship as putting himself upon a difficult spot.  However, he steered a modest course, relying upon the record for his tributes to Judge Schoengarth.

 

The testimonial dinner was sponsored and managed by the Neillsville Chamber of Commerce.  It was held in the gymnasium of the Neillsville High School.

••••••••••

Clark County is experiencing a brisk demand for Christmas trees.  From the county forest, as of December 12, a total of 9, 387 trees had been sold.  The sale of these trees had brought in $6,000.  The prospect, as sized by Clark County Clerk Mike Krultz, is that the gross receipts will go up well above $7,000, with the number of trees approaching the 11,000 mark.

 

The net money derived from these trees goes into the funds of the water department; but not all the money is net.  The state gets a severance tax on all these trees.  The rate is 15 cents each. This severance tax is intended partially to balance out the 10 cents per acre, which the state pays each year to the county for keeping the land in forest crop.

 

Wisconsin Trivia

Q. What was the route of the world’s first auto race, held in 1878?

A. Green Bay to Madison

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤

 

 


© Every submission is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

 

Show your appreciation of this freely provided information by not copying it to any other site without our permission.

 

Become a Clark County History Buff

 

Report Broken Links

A site created and maintained by the Clark County History Buffs
and supported by your generous donations.

 

Webmasters: Leon Konieczny, Tanya Paschke,

Janet & Stan Schwarze, James W. Sternitzky,

Crystal Wendt & Al Wessel

 

CLARK CO. WI HISTORY HOME PAGE