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At its September meeting the Society’s Board of Directors approved three projects to ensure that the former Fairwater school building will be protected from further decline. The Board approved using a Caesar and Peggy Sweitzer donation to give the go-ahead to Blair Heating of Ripon for the installation of a new heating system, including an option to heat the basement. Also approved was a bid from Ness Electric in Markesan to install a new electrical panel and restore electrical service to the building. Following donations received during the Fairwater
Heritage Days weekend in August, the Board also approved issuing a request
for bids to complete roofing work begun a year ago. It has accepted
a bid from Stellmacher Lumber Company of Fairwater for the work. The projects put the Society’s efforts to preserve the building ahead of schedule and allow it for the first time to begin developing plans for the building’s restoration. The Society has targeted the building’s 100th anniversary in 2010 for completion of the project.
Board and membership meetings in October will focus on activating committees for long-range planning, research on the construction and early use of the building, and display design.The challenge will be to ensure integrity in restoring the building to its early appearance while converting it for use as an area history museum. Community and area residents are being invited to join Society members in planning the project. Expressing his concern that we are losing an important part of our Civil War heritage by forgetting the prominent role the state of Wisconsin played during the anti-slavery movement, Lance Herdegen, Director of the Civil War Institute at Carroll College, applauded the efforts of local historical societies in documenting early social activism in the state. Herdegen joined Beaver Dam local historian Kevin Dier-Zimmel and more than forty members from area historical societies at Fairwater’s first Civil War program on September 1 at the Civic Center. Dier-Zimmel-a Beaver Dam area historian who has spent more than a decade studying area figures from the Civil War era-described the abolitionism of the Willard Pond family of Alto as representative of the anti-slavery activism in Fond du Lac, Green Lake, and Dodge counties during the decade before the war. Citing the Ponds’ underground railroad station and James Pond’s involvement with John Brown in Kansas, he also identified Waupun’s Hans Heg and Ripon’s Edward Daniels as influential members in the anti-slavery movement. Dier-Zimmel reminded the audience that Frederick Douglass, the noted anti-slavery orator and former slave, was a regular visitor to southern Wisconsin during the last half of the 1850s, including Beaver Dam and Fond du Lac. Herdegen also noted that the state legislature threatened to secede from the Union over the Fugitive Slave Law. During tours of the Fairwater museum following the program, visiting society members expressed appreciation to the Society for its efforts in promoting an awareness of the area’s early history. The September 23 One Accord concert sponsored by the Society raised $350 for the museum project. A brat sale at the park in Brandon on October 12-13 will be the season’s last event. Tom Montag and Barb Vande Brink recorded an interview
with Elaine Briese in August. Briese described accompanying her mother,
Fairwater’s correspondent to the area’s newspapers, door to
door to gather Fairwater news items. She also shared her recollections
about the Fairwater school and of her father’s tenure as the village’s
fire chief. Henry Johnson’s account book for the Uriah and Anna Johnson properties following Anna Johnson’s death in 1938 spans the close of the depression and the beginning of World War II. Included among the Johnson properties were the farm two miles south of Fairwater, the farm home, a marsh, and a Montana farm. While the Fairwater farm and home were sold in 1942, Johnson continued to maintain the accounts for the marsh and Montana farm through his death in 1972. The account book has been donated to the Society by Loma Klossner. The following records detailing expenses on the Fairwater farm offer a glimpse of farm operations and Fairwater area businesses from October 1939 to October 1940. Oct 10 Stellmacher Lumber 30 fence boards, nails 13.35
Property taxes on the farm accounted for $189.46, nearly twenty percent of the year’s expenses. Repayments of $120 to E. F. Starbird to close out a “chit” added another thirteen percent. Tractor fuel costs totaled $26.95 on one half of 350 gallons. The purchase of animal feed cost $91.02, and feed grinding added another $9.81, more than eleven percent of the year’s expenses. Johnson’s account book also details the farm’s income for the year, which included $342.96 for the sale of cream, $22.68 for a half share of the sale of 168 pounds of wool, and $440.67 for a half share of the sale of five calves, 51 hogs, two cows, and one bull. The farm also received a credit of $60.16 for its share of a conservation payment. Income for the year on the Johnson farm totaled $957.34. With expenses of $928.32, the farm netted a total of $29.02 for the year. The farm’s bottom line improved the following year to $329.01 on income of $1,554.47 and expenses of $1,225.46.
The glasses are filled and raised to the camera in a toast. The bar looks remarkably like the altar in the original Zion Lutheran church. And the calendar just visible over the bartender’s right shoulder identifies the month as April. Recently donated to the Society by Alice Miller from the estate of Hazel Miller, the photograph is of the interior of Daehn’s saloon. The occasion remains a mystery. Was it a dedication for the new bar? Or might it have been taken in emembrance of the bar’s owner, William Daehn, who died at the age of 50 in 1908? Dating the picture may be the key. With the help of of an 1898 photograph of the construction of Daehn’s Hall recently located by Florian Laper in Nellie Laper’s papers, the Society may be able to establish the date. The faces in the Miller photograph resemble several of those in the Laper photo. Similarities suggest that the men pictured here may be a somewhat older Len Nutter, Rudolph Baker, and Frank Loechelt on the left and Harry Daehn on the far right. If the identities prove correct, the Miller photograph would have been taken several years after the 1898 photo. Because the calendar identifies the first day of the month as a Sunday, the date of the Miller photo would probably be 1906. The Society is appealing for help in confirming the names of the patrons. It would also like information about the history of Zion’s altar-now in the Fairwater museum-and the Daehn bar.
A clipping from the November 30, 1899, Brandon Times given to the Society by Loma Klossner escribes the grand opening of Bornshein’s new grain elevator at the west end of the Fairwater mill pond. It was the occasion for a celebration that included speeches, music by the Brandon band, and a “grand dance.” The elevator-later operated by Smith & Schmuhl and later still by Kuehn & Damerau-was the village’s second, following the Koehler & Vedder elevator constructed near the Fairwater depot by 1895. A second Times article from September 14, 1899, suggests that Bornshein’s was already a competitor of the original elevator, then owned by the Tinkham family: “Emil Fenske has resigned his position at Tinkham Bros. elevator and is now employed by the Bornshein Elevator Co.” According to the November story, the opening of the new elevator was part of a “wonderful boom” in Fairwater that witnessed the construction of seven new stores and a number of “fine residences.“ The building boom also included the construction of a new road-Elm Street-making the depot “much easier of access to people living west of the town.” The new buildings accompanied a population growth from 150 in 1897 to 350 by 1901. Among the new businesses mentioned but not named in the Times’ article were Daehn’s Hall (1898), J. W. Lyon’s Hardware (1899), C. C. Cease’s hardware and Fairwater Hotel (1899), and the Tinkhams’ Jimtown business block on the west side of Main Street (1899). Klossner located the article while looking for information about a fire described in the Fairwater Study Club’s 1960 history of the village as “a terrible disaster.” The fire, according to the Study Club, “destroyed the entire east section of downtown between the years of 1899 or 1900, when a certain merchant left town the morning after for parts unknown.” Although she has found no report of a disaster in the area’s newspapers for the period, Klossner has found an article about 1898 work on the dam and another announcing the prospect of a new depot in 1900. The Society received numerous gifts this summer. Earmarked for the school project were donations from Kathryn Whitford, Oliver and Frances Stelter, William Horn, Jone Griese, Robert Lenz, M & I Bank, Aid Association for Lutherans, Lee and Lydia Wikkerink, and Robert Daehn. James and Carole Schultz made a donation in memory of Martin Schultz. A generous donation was also given anonymously.
Collection items included Vida Bliefnick’s donation of a photograph of the school’s primary classroom taken around 1930 and a sugar bowl and creamer from Lieske’s store. The Wikkerinks donated photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Wikkerink, pioneer storekeepers. Loma Klossner donated the stamping equipment for the Fairwater Creamery seal as well as Henry Johnson’s account books for the U. L. and Anna Johnson properties (1938-1972) and the Fairwater Creamery. George and Diane Monti donated the Fairwater Public School flag during Heritage Days. The flag has been hung above the school’s entry staircase. Florence Frei Schaefer donated a copy of Zion Lutheran’s Seventy-Fifth Anniversary booklet and a photograph of the school’s primary division classroom and its students from the 1920s. Alice Miller donated a photo of Daehn’s saloon from Hazel Miller’s estate and several WWI photos taken by Bill Miller. Bob and Kathy Schuster have donated Kurt Kunert’s Charlie Horse-a village celebrity-to the Society. The 1938 isher-Price wooden riding horse appeared onstage in numerous roles at Daehn’s Hall during the 1930s and 1940s and recently made an appearance on EBay. Charlie will have a new role in the Society’s children’s collection. A search of the Internet for information about her family recently brought Stephanne Robinson to the Fairwater Web site. There, in the listings of the cemetery’s gravestone inscriptions, Robinson found an entry for her great-great aunt. The inscription identifies her as Julia Newburn, born in 1865 and died on August 10, 1866. However, family records that Robinson has given to the Historical Society indicate that her aunt was stillborn on August 10, 1866, as Julia Etta Newbern. Julia Etta was the second child of Noah and Julia Newbern, who were married in Fairwater and were residents of the town of Green Lake early in the 1860’s. Noah Booker Newbern, a native of Ratherhaur, England, served in Company A of the 34th Wisconsin Infantry during the Civil War. He enlisted in Berlin in 1862 and mustered out in September, 1863. His wife was born Julia Elizabeth Lawrence in York, Vermont, in 1842. Shortly after their daughter’s death, the Newberns moved to Greene, Iowa, and there had twelve more children. Julia Etta was also given a marker in Halls Grove Cemetery in Greene, where she is identified as Julia F. Newborn. Robinson continues to look for information about her great-great grandparents’ wedding. The records of the Fairwater Free Baptist church do not name the Newberns as members. Records for Fairwater’s other church during the 1860s-the First Regular Baptists-have not been located. |
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NEWSLETTER
Meetings Acquisitions Membership Web Site www.wlhn.org/fairwater_histsoc Newsletter
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