Clark County Press, Neillsville,

March 15, 2006, Page 14

Transcribed by Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon.

Index of "Oldies" Articles 

 

 

Compiled by Dee Zimmerman

 

 

Clark County News

March 1901

 

Several farmers along Pleasant Ridge sold cows and calves to a man who said he was shipping them to New York.  He told the farmers he could have a team and wagon come after the calves when he was ready to ship.  The team and wagon never came and later the farmers heard the sheriff from Waupaca had arrested the man.

••••••••••

Alfred Drescher and Co. was in the Wilcox community, last week, with their hay press.  The power for this press is produced by an eight-horse gasoline engine, which is attached.  This machine has a capacity of 20 tons per day, on the average.  Alfred, the manager, is a hustler, and seems to be meeting with success.

 

A new creamery has been built in the German settlement near Heintown.

••••••••••

Dwight Roberts closed up his fruit business on Monday, and sold his building on the corner of Main and Fifth streets to the Walk Brothers.  He has not fully decided what he will go into, but thinks of doing some farming and market gardening.  Competition in his class of goods made it unprofitable to continue in business.

••••••••••

The Warehouse Company is buying live sparrows to be shipped to New Zealand.  The poor people of that faraway island have no sparrows and they long for them.  Well, canaries are better to our notion, if one must have feathered noisemakers.

••••••••••

Dr. T. F. Conroy reports two accidents up on the west road, last week.  N. Linster of the firm of Galligan and Linster had a leg broken while attempting to adjust a belt on their saw mill.  A. Bahr fractured a bone in his wrist, in holding a young horse.  Both men are doing well.

••••••••••

There will be a summer school for apprentices and artisans at the State University in Madison, beginning July 1st, lasting five weeks.  It is intended to give instruction suited to machinists, carpenters, sheet-metal workers, steam and electric engineers, shop-foremen, electric light and power station managers, and young men fitting themselves for such positions.

••••••••••

On Tuesday of this week, Mrs. Levi Archer sold the old Archer homestead in the southern part of Pine Valley to Edmund Sydow, of Lake Mills.  This farm consists of 120 acres with large farm buildings.  The consideration was $5,900.  Mrs. Archer expects to spend some time in visiting relatives, possibly making a trip East, also to California and later expects to make her home with her son, Frank, in Merrillan.

 

This week, L. M. Sturdevant executed a deed of the Sturdevant homestead to G. A. Helpap, of Lake Mills, with consideration, $6,400.  This place lies directly across the road from the Archer farm, and contains 160 acres of fine land.  These are two of the oldest and best farms in the town and if reports are correct, both purchasers are men of means and good farmers.

 

The former Sturdevant and Sniteman farms, in the Town of Pine Valley, west of the city were sold last week to Herman Wagner.  Forty acres of the farm was owned by Robert Sturdevant and Helen and Stella Munford, and the other 40 by the C. C. Sniteman Co.  The total consideration was $2,800.

 

Frank Dwyer closed the deal by which he sold his farm in the northwestern Town of Grant to Marcus Hosely, formerly of Green County.  This farm consists of 240 acres of very fine land, with good buildings.  It is the old Dwyer home-stead, and one of the first farms cleared in that neighborhood.  Consideration was $9,000.  The sale was made through the agency of John Welsh.

••••••••••

William Stewart has taken the job of moving the old Woodman Hall, in Chili from its present location, to the lot north of the blacksmith shop where it will be used for the creamery.

••••••••••

Unity News:

 

A New England Social and Old Time Literary Program will be given in the I.O.O.F. Hall, Friday evening.

 

Some materials have already been delivered, on the lots where a new church is to be built.

 

Hardware merchant H. I. Kohlhepp is having a warehouse built this week.  Several men are employed and the work is being pushed with much vigor.

 

Business was rather dull during the greater part of March, but a revival wave is slowing coming.

••••••••••

Two iron bridges for the Town of Pine Valley and two for the Town of Levis have arrived in Neillsville.  They are being hauled to their respective locations.  Those in Pine Valley will go over the Cunningham and Jack creeks.

••••••••••

Marshfield’s new city hall tower is to be equipped with a 2,000 lb. bell and a large clock that strikes on half hours.  Our Sister City is right in line.

 

March 1941

 

Atty. Everett P. Skroch announced that he has purchased the interest of Walter J. Rush in the firm of Rush, Devos and Skroch.  The firm name is being changed to Devos & Skroch.

••••••••••

Harry Schlinsog has sold his cheese factory in the Town of Eaton, north of Globe, known as the Cloverleaf Dairy to the Dairybelt Co.  His son William and Harris Dux will continue to work in the factory.

••••••••••

Plans for the construction of an addition and a grey (cast) iron foundry by the B&F Machine shop have been approved by the state, and work on the new building will start as soon as the weather permits.

 

This announcement was made this week by Earl Bruhn and Max Feuerstein, partners.  The new addition will be located at the rear of the present building on East Sixth Street.  It will be 50 feet wide and extend 84 feet in length.  The excavation of from 1,000 to 1,200 yards of dirt will be required, they said.

 

Half of the new addition will be used to house the grey iron foundry, the equipment and furnace for which will be made by the machine shop.  Thus equipped, the machine shop will be in position to turn out castings, machine them, and turn out a complete job.

 

The remaining half of the new addition will be turned into space needed in the making of commercial truck bodies, to which the shop has returned after a period of activity on war work.

 

The machine shop was established in 1928, and the present building was erected in 1936 after fire destroyed the old building.

 

Before World War II, the shop had achieved a wide reputation in Central Wisconsin for its commercial truck bodies.  It is to this work, and to general machine shop work, that the shop has returned following the cancellation of its war contracts after the surrender of Japan.

••••••••••

Charles “Bitsy” Wasserberger, Neillsville High School Senior, has been selected to the first all-conference team of the Cloverbelt league’s Eastern Division.  Honorable mention went to three other Neillsville High Cagers; Ronald Meihack, forward; Kenneth Karnitz, center; Milton Tock, guard.  Members of the first squad are: Gilbert Shilts of Stanley, and Robert McAdams of Withee, forwards; Kenneth Bachmeyer of Thorp, center; and Wasserberger, guard.

••••••••••

A description of the activities in forest and upon Black River is given in the Cooper History of 1918.  From that the following description was:

 

A logging camp on Black River presented to the spectator a combination of animated sights and sounds.  Here, camped in log shanties and with log stables for oxen and horses, were congregated together anywhere from 25 to 100 men, according to the size of the winter’s work laid out for them.

 

Some of the men would be engaged in cutting down the pine trees, and were call “choppers;” some were engaged in sawing the logs into lengths, varying from 12 to 18 feet, or more, the average being 16 feet.  Others with oxen were busy in skidding the logs, while some men, called teamsters, engaged in hauling great loads of logs on immense sleighs, from the skid-way down to the river.  There, the logs would be unloaded either on the ice on the river, ready for the opening of the river in the spring, or on the bank roll-ways to be tumbled into the swift running stream; the last work mentioned being termed “breaking the roll-ways.”

 

Before the logs were landed they were marked on the bark on the side of the log with the owners log mark, and stamped on the ends of each log several times with what was known as the “end mark.”  Each logger had his own marks, which were registered in the lumber inspector’s office at La Crosse.

 

With the coming of spring and the disappearance of snow from the logging roads, labor in the forest came to an end.  The loggers now turned their energies to the log drive.  Presently, rivers were freed of their imprisoning coat of ice and spring floods were at hand to carry the logs to the mill.  Unhappy the logger: particularly when his operations took him far up stream if the melting snow and the spring-rains produced only a slight rise of water.  Then his logs were tied up, and he must wait for a more favorable year to carry them to market.  But when the river was high the red-shirts gaily set about the hazardous work of “break” the rollways and delivering to the swollen stream the accumulated harvest of the winter’s work.  The drive was the most dangerous portion of the season’s operation.  Down the ice-cold torrent thousands of logs went surging and hurtling, sometimes halting at an obstruction as if in hesitation and piling up in wide masses, then rushing onward again with greater momentum than before.

 

A crew of men furnished with boats or bateaux, with tents, blankets and provisions, would follow down the river behind the floating logs, and with pike pole keep the immense sea of logs floating down the river in constant motion.  Often the logs would be piled up against some obstruction like a rock, or the pier of a bridge, and they would become what were termed, jammed.  Sometimes these log jams would extend for more than half a mile up the river, and the problem was how to break it.

 

The dexterity that the men showed in accomplishing this was marvelous.

 

The work was done at the head of the jam and the drivers attacked the logs, which like keystone of an arch bound and held the great mass together.  The work of a driver was dangerous and sometimes a daring fellow lost his life, but it was well paid, log drivers in the late 1860s received from $3 to as high as $7 per day.

 

Then at night, the “Waunegan” boat that carried the tents, blankets and supplies was headed into shore, camp was made, fires were built, and after a hearty meal, tired out with day’s hard work, the men slept the sleep of the just, to be routed out at daybreak for a repetition of the labors of the day before.

 

There was a flavor or resemblance in these men, with their boots and camps, and their songs that called up at once, their prototypes, the old French Canadian Voyageurs, but the days of them are now past and gone.

 

Work in a logging camp was no sinecure.  No union labor there, nor eight hours a day’s work.  The hours commenced at daylight and only ended with darkness.  Teamsters generally continued their duty long after daylight had gone, in the care and attention that was necessary to give their teams of horses or oxen.

••••••••••

The city of Neillsville faces the prospect that its main street will be torn up this summer.  The stretch of Hewett from Sixth to O’Neill Creek will be cut off from traffic, and the present sewer will be replaced by a new one. 

 

The city has been facing this evil day for a long time.  The old sewer has been giving way, at first one point and then another.  The climax came last week when the pavement went out in two places opposite the Merchants Hotel.  The point has been reached at which the city officials dare no longer face the responsibility.  There is danger that the pavement will go at such time and in such manner as to involve the city in complications and possibly bring injury to persons or property.

 

The prospect is forbidding, because it will be necessary to deprive business places on Hewett Street of their sewer outlet.  Just what they will do without sewers is something, which somebody will have to figure out.

 

The sewer work can go forward this summer because the city already has on hand the necessary pipe.

 

The old sewer was made of concrete, after a style now considered impractical.  The concrete, as then used, will not stand up.  And when it gives way, it opens the way to washing, which undermines the road bed.  This accounts for the various breaks in the pavement, which have recurred on Hewett Street for several years.

•••••••••••

The Rev. George Hohmann has accepted the resident pastorate of the Humbird Evangelical Reformed Church.  He will assume his duties next week, and will deliver his first sermon March 31.

 

Rev. Hohmann is a graduate of the Eden Seminary of Webster Grove, MO., a suburb of St. Louis.  He will succeed the Rev. N. J. Dechant, pastor of the Reformed Church at Neillsville.  A dinner honoring the Rev. Dechant and his service to the local pastorate will be given Sunday following his last sermon in the church.

••••••••••

This week’s Farm Auction Listings:

 

Stark Brothers, ten miles northwest of Greenwood, March 16;

 

Breseman Bros., 3 miles east and ½ mile south of Granton, March 20;

 

Gust Bergeman, one mile north and Ό mile east of Granton, March 19;

 

Jake Fitzmaurice, 2 miles west of Humbird on Cty Tr. B., then ½ mile north to Sunny Side School, 80 rods west; or 2 miles south of the Fairview Church, March 22.

••••••••••

Attention Farmers!  The feeding value of Whey is between 25 and 35 cents per hundred pigs or calves.  This whey is FREE to anyone selling milk to the Shortville Factory.  Plus you get a good price for your milk.  E. L. Hanson, proprietor

••••••••••

There will be a cribbage tournament Sunday, March 17, at Club Meyer in Loyal.  Bring your own board and cards.  Prizes will be given.

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A circa 1940 Neillsville view of Hewett Street as it appeared from the intersection of Fifth Street, looking north.  The style of automobiles parked along the street, helps verify the era that the photo was taken.  (Photo courtesy of Bill Roberts’ collection)

 

 

Readers Comments

 

Look at the car on the right, it looks about like at 1949 model and it is parked near the store that was Zimmerman’s or Berger & Quinlan men’s clothing and I remember that Arthur Berger had a 1949 Pontiac.  I make this comment as it states it is a circa 1940 photo, and may be more closer to 1950, unless I am wrong in the identification of that car, it could be as old as a 1946 perhaps, as I am no car buff.  And to look at the cars on the left side of the street, it could be an older photo.  J. C. Penney’s is on the left and it was started about 1938 and I see Rexall Drug, but don’t know what year it came to be, and then I see Drugs which must be the Sniteman Drug Store, and also the Adler Theater on down the street.  Anonymous

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The one car appears to be a lot like a 1937 chevy that I had, and like someone said the other side of the street has all older cars.  My father in law had a '29' buick that was very sleek.  I do believe the car in the picture is a '37 Chevy!  Elaine Wood Greene/Jenson

 

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The cars on left side look older than late 1940's - but then lots of people had pre-war cars yet in late "40's" and we saw farmers coming up the hill past our house w/teams of horses when I was growing up.

My dad (Don Warner) drove his same Ford (about '40 or '41) on the mail route all the years thru WWII...as I recall it had about 350,000 on it when he got rid of it, after about 3 engines? Norma Telford

 

 

 


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