Clark County Press, Neillsville, Wisconsin

October 3, 2012, Page 14

Contributed by "The Clark Co. Press"

Transcribed by Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon.

Index of "Oldies" Articles 

 

Compiled by Dee Zimmerman

 

Clark County News

 

October 1892

 

The Dignin sisters, from Chilton, Calumet County, Wis., are opening a new Millinery and dressmaking establishment in the north section of the Esch-Rabenstein building opposite the Times newspaper office, where they are showing the new Fall and Winter Styles of Millinery Goods, and are prepared to do the very best class of dressmaking. Ladies of Neillsville and vicinity are invited to call and examine their goods.

•••••••••

At the residence of C. A. Youmans in the Town of Grant, on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 1892, by Rev. T.G. Owen, Mr. Oscar E. Counsell was married to Miss Minnie Heaslett, both of the Town of Grant. The young couple took the 11:45 train for a short pleasure trip.  On their return, they will take charge of the big Youmans farm, in the Town of Grant, which Mr. Counsell will manage. We wish them joy and success in all they undertake.

•••••••••

During Saturday’s thunderstorm, lightning struck Chas. Isentraut’s (Eisentraut’s) new barn and knocked out a piece of the stone basement wall.  It is reported to have struck at seven different points out on the Ridge within a radius of one mile.

 

Lightning struck the residence of August Schoengarth, on Grand Avenue last Friday.  Nobody was hurt and only a few bricks were displaced.                                                                                   

•••••••••

With the Fireman’s hall’s disappearance, should also depart “The Barn” and the “Reddan House,” all are like the shucks or husks of Neillsville’s early days.                                                               

•••••••••

Benny Tragsdorf, who is in Chicago at a hospital receiving surgical and medical treatment for the injury recently received in his bicycle tumble, is reported better, but not likely to be home yet for two or three weeks.

•••••••••

Joseph Gibson, last week, sent a crew of men into the woods near Medford to skid logs, with Chas. Squires to be in charge of the camp.  The logs to be sided are hemlock, peeled during the summer by Mr. Gibson’s men and will be put into the Black River for Sawyer & Austin in La Crosse.                                       

•••••••••

The largest transfer of pinelands that was ever made in Northern Wisconsin was consummated in Ashland Thursday.  The Cornell University sold to the Chippewa Logging Company 109,600 acres of pineland for a consideration of $841,706. The lands are situated in Price, Taylor, Chippewa, Barron and Ashland counties and have been a prize long sought by lumbermen.                                                                                              

•••••••••

Geo. Frantz is arranging to leave the farm south of town where he has lived since 1852, and now shortly the Frantz farmhouse will be occupied by Mr. Fred Kalpe, who will work the farm for Farmer Hemphill.

 

The roof of Bob Hemphill’s new barn on the Frantz farm looms over the landscape as seen from Ross Eddy, like Edward Everett Hale’s Moon. Bob is clearing lands at the northwest corner of his ranch and keeps brush fires burning on every hilltop.  He has induced the pathmaster to repair the rock-ribbed road leading into the farm and now one can drive that way in safety and comfort. (The Hemphill farm was 1 mile south and ½ mile east of Neillsville. DZ)

•••••••••

Yesterday afternoon Ed Markey’s heavy team of horses ran away, from a point near his barn.  They scared another team hitched to a load of feed, and they ran away.  That startled a third team standing near Marx’s saloon and off they skipped.  The town began to look like a Roman chariot expedition in disorder. And while these teams were flying around, Fred Kalso’s team started in, with one horse slipping his bridle and down near the oil shed, driver and a daughter were thrown out of their buggy, and Kalso received serious internal injuries, causing such suffering that morphine had to be resorted to him for relief.                                                                                         

•••••••••

A solid stone and brick block will be built on Hewett Street between Fourth and fifth Streets next year.

•••••••••

North Hewett Street is having done to it what will eventually be done to every hilly street.  The hills will be dumped into the hollows.  Soon North Hewett Street will have a dress-up suit of new sidewalk.

•••••••••

Joe Huntzhauser has arranged with Ed Bruley to move to the Chandler farm and Lute Marsh will move into the pretty house south of Cornelius’ residence as soon as Joe emigrates.                   

•••••••••

H. A. North has had men at work a week or more excavating for an enlargement of the cellar at his corner property at Sixth and Hewett streets.  He will put in a new stone basement and brick veneer the building, raise the rear extension to two-story, and put a flat steel roof over the whole structure.  It will be a very substantial addition to the city.  Neillsville can’t afford to fall into the sere and yellow leaf.  Matt Kapellan will put a fine stone, brick and iron building on the corner diagonally opposite, next spring, and that will permanently fix the aspect of that corner, which will show brick and plate glass on the four corner lots.

 

October 1942

 

Jan Garber, whose press agents bill him as the “Idol of the Airways,” visited Neillsville last week.

 

And he almost got away without being recognized.

 

Thursday afternoon a rather short individual, neatly dressed walked into the office of the War Price & Rationing board, over the Neillsville Bank; he inquired of Virginia Scholtz, a clerk there, directions to the telephone office.  Miss Scholtz gave polite instructions; and after he had gone, Edna Tews, another clerk, rushed in:

 

“Gee! That looked like Jan Garber.”

 

A few seconds later, Miss Fern Robinson of the telephone office excitedly called confirming the identity of the distinguished visitor.  He had stopped to make a call on his way to play an engagement in Eau Claire.

 

When Bill Meier, local theater manager, heard about it, he could only remark: “When you bill them, they don’t show up, a la Edward Arnold and Frances Dee; and when you don’t know about it, they pop up all over the place.”

•••••••••

At long last!

 

The Rationing Board has approved an application for the purchase of a bicycle, the first approved since rationing went into effect.

 

The applicant was Randall Earl Gennrich, a Dorchester newsboy, who also sells defense stamps on his route.

 

Four applicants received previously have been disallowed because the applicants were not eligible according to the board.

•••••••••

Elvin E. Kile of the Town of Butler and Milton L. Collier of Owen enlisted in the navy at the Chippewa Falls recruiting station last week.                                                                               

•••••••••

The Washburn School board is having its troubles to keep the two schools going at Cannonville and Sleepy Hollow.  The board was confronted almost simultaneously with the resignations of the two teachers, Mrs. James West and Mrs. Harry Kissling.

 

The resignation of Mrs. West is occasioned definitely by the labor shortage.  Having taught at the Audubon School two years, Mrs. West switched to Cannonville because it was nearer home and the purpose was to employ help.  But as it now turns out that help is practically impossible to get, either in the house or outside, and Mrs. West is giving up the school so as to have her entire time available at home.

 

Mrs. Harry Kissling, who also resides upon a farm, is confronted by the same sort of problems, but in addition, it is understood that she ahs found the Sleepy Hollow School in somewhat less than complete repair.  Her resignation is before the board, but she is still teaching and it is understood that she will continue another week or two.

 

The board succeeded in getting Mrs. Ed Lindquist in the place of Mrs. West at Cannonville, but no arrangement is known to have been completed for Sleepy Hollow.  There has been some discussion of transporting the fifteen children from that district to the Cannonville School.                                                         

•••••••••

A new record for going backward down the South Hewett Street hill without a driver was set by Miss Helen Bartz’s car last week.

 

Starting from Sixth Street at Hewett, Miss Bartz’s car traveled all the way downhill to the picket fence across the old Dangers building ruins on the corner of Seventh Street.

 

Enroute, the car passed safely between the big tree and the light post at the post office corner; knocked over a 10-minute parking sign before the post office; crossed South Hewett Street and felled a light post before a vacant building; carried the light post across the sidewalk and deposited it as the car rolled upon the floor of the old Dangers building foundation; and came to rest after smashing three or four pickets in the fence at the end of the flooring.  Miss Bartz’s car is not the first that had its mechanical brakes fail to hold on the Sixth Street corner; and judging from past experience there will be another attempt at a record in about six months.  The previous backward rolling record in that particular location was set about six months ago by a car, which stopped at the front step of the Northern States Power Company office, before the new, extended front was built.                                                                               

•••••••••

Seventy-eight men from Clark County will leave from Loyal Friday for Fort Sheridan, Ill., where they will begin army training.

 

Neillsville: Joseph M. Resong, Ward A. Lockman, Edmund J. Statz, Howard S. Stilwell, Marvin W. Benedict, Hugh F. Stoffel, Herbert C. Henchen, Mike Finder, Ernest Ziglinski, Henry G. Zastrow and Lawrence L. Struble.

 

Greenwood: Leo W. Wehrmann, Laverne Brown, Ralph H. Seefluth, Verland W. Schorer, Glenn L. Howard, Allen L. Luber, George E. Finkle, William E. Joyce, Fred H. Decker, Edward F. Potter and Harry E. Steffen.

 

Granton: Leroy F. Todd, Robert G. Howard, J. Kleinschmidt, and James C. Engebretson

 

Humbird: Harold B. Anerud, Joseph N. Cooper and Vernon L. Smith

 

Chili: Charles L. Selk, Marlyn S. Lindow, Norman E. Miller and Burr A. Voelker

 

Willard: Roger A. Djubenski

 

Loyal: Ewald W. Hinkelmann, Glen F. Clouse, Edmund J. Hinkelmann, Robert A. Bugar, Albert W. Oestreich, Edward J. Groh and Leo N. Bertz

 

Owen: Lester F. Jens, John E. Winslow, Merlin A. Behringer, Harold Krarup, Arthur C. Johnson, Cecil J. Schmidt, Walter A. Alexander and Christopher R. Berg

 

Thorp: Ellery B. Freese, Steve J. Kosikoski, Herbert H. Broeren, John S. Dedra, Maximillian G. Beller, Harry F. Quelle, Anton S. Harycki, Hugo J. Roesler, Albert E. Morrison, Stanley J. Sokolowski and Dewey L. Andrews

 

Dorchester: Ray W. Hugoboom, Franklin Fritsche, Orvin A. Frome and Arthur A. Meyer

 

Stanley: John L. Qualheim, Harry H. Robinson, Philip Haugen and Clifford H. Hanson

 

Withee: Ira L. Baker, Anthony F. Laski, Hans C. Paulson, Otto Rohland, Albert F. Beilfuss and Jacob E. Ahomaki

 

Curtiss: Kenneth C. Herrick and Elmer E. Durbin

 

Spencer: John Schoolman

 

Abbotsford: Melvin Nikolay, Sylvester Mittelstedt and Saul Krom

•••••••••

Nearly every pupil in the elementary grades of the city school system is receiving a half-pint of milk each day at a cost of one-cent, Supt. D. E. Peters revealed this week.  The milk-drinking program is federally sponsored, with the government paying the difference between the one-cent per half-pint paid by each child and the market price for the milk.

•••••••••

Newspapers the nation over during the last week have spun human interest yarns about the United Scrap Metal campaign; but there probably isn’t a one that holds a candle to the way three Neillsville mothers and five small children pitched into the scrap.

 

With unbounded enthusiasm, two shovels and a crowbar, they uncovered an old dump at the end of East Ninth Street and dug out 2,280 pounds of metal for Uncle Sam.

 

Proud of their achievement this week are Mrs. Claude Ayers, Mrs. Ray Eggeman, Mrs. Irving Marden, and the children, Wendell, Melvin and Donald Ayers, Bobby Eggeman and Keith Marden.

 

The idea of using the old dump as a “scrap mine” came after Mrs. Marden returned from a walk along O’Neill Creek, which turns northeast at the end of Ninth Street.

 

“My,” she remarked to Mrs. Ayers, “there is a lot of scrap metal in there.”

 

Mrs. Eggeman was anxious to help, because her brother, Henry Zastrow, is now in an army training camp.  Mrs. Ayers wanted to do something extra for her husband, in Australia, Mrs. Marden just wanted to do something more about licking Hirohito.

 

That afternoon the youngest children were placed under the wing of Mrs. Susie Thoma, mother of Mrs. Ayres (Ayers). The three women shouldered the shovels and crowbar; and the five children trailed along.

 

They cut through a five-year growth of vines, matted grass and dirt the city had used to cover the old dump.  The mining was good.  They uncovered aluminum, brass, copper and iron.  There were bedsprings, bedsteads, chunks of iron and pieces of old automobile motors.

 

Finally they came to the frame of a large automobile.  They uncovered it and with great effort rolled it to the top of their pile. Then they found the frame of an old truck.

 

By then it was time for supper. They were determined to finish the job that evening.  When they left the dump they found that Mrs. Thoma, while minding the little children, had fixed their supper.

 

Darkness came as they struggled with the heavy truck frame, but that did not strop them.  They sent the children after flashlights and worked by their light until the frame was completely uncovered.

 

It was too heavy for them to remove, though; so the next afternoon when the scrap collection truck made its rounds, they had the frame hauled out by the truck.


The scrap they uncovered, plus a little they had at their homes, made up a whole load. That load weighed 2,280 pounds. 

 

The next day they were sore and stiff in every muscle and joint; but they were proud of the job they had done.

 

The dump had been unused for about five years.  During that time the city had gradually covered it over with dirt to improve the appearance of O’Neill Creek and the large sandstone rocks, which border it.  The city will have to put more fill in there now.

 

 

This photo was taken circa 1900, when there was a watering trough located in front of the Neillsville City Hall.  Horses were a common means of transportation in that era, so it was a necessity to have a means of providing drinking water for them during the warm temperatures of summer after taking a trip to or around the city.  Note that the watering trough was made of metal, possibly copper, mounted on a marble slab base, a class one model, compared to the old wooden types used on area farms.  (Photo courtesy of Ray Strebing)

 

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