Campbellsport News, March 31, 1927

E. F. MARTIN
IS 80 YEARS OLD

     E. F. Martin, retired lumber dealer, and a resident of the town of Ashford and the village of Campbellsport for the past seventy-nine years, quietly observed his eightieth birthday at his home on West Main street in this village last Tuesday.
     Mr. Martin's memory of the days of long ago is still fresh and he tells many interesting stories of the hardships and pleasures of fifty and sixty years ago.
     Mr. Martin was born in Town Eight, Milwaukee County, March 29, 1847. One year later he moved into the wilderness with his parents, onto an eighty-acre tract of land his folks had purchased. (Imagine taking your wife and a year-old baby into the wilderness, without a shelter of any kind to protect you from the Indians and wild animals, still Mr. Martin's mother lived to be eighty-six years old.)
     He received his first pair of shoes when he was five years old. His father and sister walked to West Bend from their farm near what is now called Elmore, carrying grain with them to have it ground into flour. Some of the flour was carried back home, while the rest was exchanged for the shoes and other necessities of life. There was little, or no money in those days.
     They burned trees and sold the ashes for six cents a barrel. Carrying it to the old Dens farm where it was used for making lye which was later taken to Milwaukee by ox team.
     In 1853 his father died leaving his mother with five small children, three daughters and two sons.
     The school Mr. Martin attended was built of logs and had a slat roof. It was located just below the big hill near Schranth's Pond. This was built by the first white men.
     Indians were plentiful but mostly friendly. They exchanged venison, etc., for flour with the whites. The Indians did not want corn meal flour but wheat, or white flour as they called it.
     In 1875 he came to Campbellsport and started the lumber business, which is now known as the Brittingham and Hixon Lumber Co. He retired from the lumber business on 1903.
     Mr. Martin states that his parents came to Wisconsin in 1842 and that he has lived in this state continually all his life. He says they have always made a living in this Grand Old State and has never heard of a total crop failure here during his life.
     Mr. Martin is and has been a trustee of the Campbellsport Mutual Fire Insurance Co., since it was organized.