A few months ago I traveled to the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay archives that temporarily held early Forest County documents that are permanently housed in Ashland County. I spent all day copying papers to bring back to Forest County so that residents can learn more about their local history. Several of the documents that I discovered were early marriage applications. If one or both of the individuals wishing to be joined in matrimony were not of legal age their parents could sign a consent form. The legal age in Forest County at the turn of the 20th century was 18 years old for females and 21 years old for males. The consent form below was signed by one of the prominent men in our county’s history, William VanZile, the brother of the founder of Argonne. The document allowed his daughter Mary, to be wed to John Slagle before she was of age in 1904. Feel free to visit the library to search for your ancestors’ marriage applications and stay tuned for more documents discovered at the UW GB archives.
I recently had a visit from Mike Kukowski and his wife from Hager City, Wisconsin. The Kukowski’s have generously donated copies of the oldest known deer hunting licenses in Wisconsin, all issued in Forest County!
In 1897, Wisconsin required its first deer hunting license; which cost residents $1.00; nonresidents $30.00. Licenses were sold only in “counties frequented by deer” which were the northern counties. There were 12,000 issued the first year. Hunting without a license would incur a fine of $50 to $200; illegal transportation of deer would cost $100 to $500; and false swearing of having a license cost $500 to $1,000. Possession of skins in the red or spotted coat was unlawful.
Michael Kukowski, has also provided scanned copies of the deer and hunting licenses dated 1897, 1898, 1900 to the Wisconsin DNR headquarters in Madison. The documents were so rare, DNR attorneys recommended against owning the original copies. The DNR instead has framed replicas in their central office.
Research on the Licenses Themselves
The only known existing deer hunting license given out the first year, 1897, was issued to George Ogomoso of Armstrong Creek. George Og(k)mas aka Ogimass, Ogemah, Ogmass, Ok maus, Ogemos, was a Chippewa, who purchased land under the Indian Homestead Act in Forest County, located west of Carter, off of Highway C and east of King Lake (source: Mike Alloway). Through my research it is possible that the man’s name was actually George Amose, who resided in Flambeau in 1920 and was buried there as Chief George Amour Amose in 1929. It is likely that George was illiterate because he did not fill out the license himself or sign his name he only left an “X” as his mark. It is possible that George was a chief because the license describes him as having “lost two front upper teeth and two teeth were filled with gold”. He must have held some standing if he was able to afford gold filled teeth. The investigation into the identity of the only known recipient of the first deer hunting license is ongoing and if you have any information please contact me.
Michelle and I receiving the copies of the documents from Mr. Kukowski
I came across several articles in the Forest Republican and the extinct newspaper, the Northern Advertiser, from 1922 that reminded me of a novel about the Wild West rather than news from the safe Northwoods. One article describes a bank robbery in which several men held up the Wabeno State Bank and stole over 8,000 dollars. The men allegedly took the money and buried it in the woods near Wabeno then fled the area. Two of the robbers, Willis Lesperance and Frenchie Yeager, were captured soon after in Forest County. The other two men, Chalmers Yaeger and Lawrence Lesperance, were apprehended in Chippewa Falls and driven back to Crandon to be put in jail. A year after the crime the police still did not recover the money. So local law enforcement officers brought Lawrence Lesperance out into the woods in handcuffs and chains to search the whole day for the missing money. If the cash was found his sentence would be reduced by ten years. The money was never found! Wabeno residents could stumble across a great deal of riches buried in the woods someday!
Around the same time another newspaper article depicted Ed Nelson lying in a hospital bed very close to death after being shot clear through the groin during a train hold up. That morning Nelson and a friend boarded a westbound Sooline train that was carrying passengers in an open box car. Just as the train left Argonne for Rhinelander three men climbed into the car and when the train was moving at full speed ordered the passengers to put up their hands. They then searched the people for valuables and took a gold watch and 50 dollars from Nelson. In the process of the hold up somehow two shots were fired with one hitting Ed Nelson! I do not know if the robbers were ever captured.
Scene from the movie The Great Train Robbery http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/
Winter is finally over! Which means it’s baseball season! Baseball leagues have been a part of our community from the beginning. It was so popular that teams from Forest County would play leagues from all over the state. As part of the Wabeno Paul Bunyan show, a Milwaukee team came to face off against Wabeno (Appaul 2013). During the Elcho-Hiles game in 1922, Elcho brought their band with them as well as cars full of fans (Forest Republican 1922). The Forest Republican on June 16, 1922 had an article describing a game:
” The Crandon Black Sox played against Rhinelander on Wednesday. The “outlaws” played horse with the Rhinelander boy and defeated them 8 to 3. Admission 25 cents”.
Crandon baseball teamCrandon Women’s baseball team
The company of Keith and Hiles Lumber supplied businesses, employment opportunities, and economic growth in the townships in Forest County, which by then included Crandon, Laona, Padus, Blackwell, Wabeno, Argonne, Nashville, Hiles, and Antigo. Keith and Hiles hired around two hundred men during the summer seasons and possibly five to six hundred men in the winter. The employees of the company labored in sawmills, lumber and siding camps, and railroad maintenance (Sharpless 2009: 11-12).
M.D. Keith owned grand scale houses on Lake Metonga and Main Street in the center of Crandon. Marshall Keith’s marriage to Nellie Page enabled his success in large part. Nellie’s father transferred his ownership of the Page and Landeck Lumber Company in Crandon to his son-in-law in addition to a large tract of land in Crandon Township
(Mier 1996: 231), later named Lincoln Township.Page and Landeck Company was first established in Crandon in 1890. The company’s large-scale lumber mill could be found on Clear Lake just north of the town’s limits. In 1891, Page and Landeck Company came into possession of a considerable amount of logging land in the area, and pushed forward the construction of the Chicago and Northwestern line into Crandon from Pelican Lake in 1901. During this time Mr. Franklin Pierce Hiles of the town of Hiles bought out the Landeck stock of the company and consolidated with Marshall Keith to form the Keith and Hiles Lumber Company Mill (Monte 2002: 50). M.D. Keith’s son took the lead as Vice President and for the next thirty years, Keith and Hiles Lumber was one of the largest and most influential lumber companies in the area. The company created labor camps and wood mills in the remotest areas of Crandon, Hiles, and Nashville Townships.
This blog post goes out to Jill Krueger, who is very proud of her Hiles heritage. This week’s post is an excerpt from a Forest Republican article written by Bonnie Roberts in 1957.
“In 1860, an old woodsman, Dan Gagen, established a trading post and inn on the banks of the Pine Lake. This log cabin was the only place that provided lodging for many trappers and traders. It was located on the Old Military Road which served as a mail route as far as Superior. This place was sold to J.B. Thompson of Wausau in 1863. H.B. Fessenden of Argonne moved to the post and was the only actual settler. He became the owner in 1895 holding it until 1902 when he sold the property to Franklin P. Hiles of Milwaukee. Mr. Hiles not only bought the trading post but also created the village of Hiles. He was instrumental in getting a branch railroad built from the main Chicago Northwestern line and in erecting a saw mill, store, and hotel. At this time land was taken from the towns of Crandon and Argonne to organize the Town of Hiles. A few years later Mr. Hiles sold his holdings both real estate and personal to the Foster Mueller Lumber Company of Milwaukee. This firm made considerable improvements and built more homes for their employees. Mr. C.W. Fish of Elcho bought the property in 1919 and under the successful management of Mr. O.A. Miller, Hiles cleaned up the streets, put in sidewalk, and planted trees. During the summer of 1924, a new Union Church and a very modern school building were erected and the old village park was beautified by the addition of a fountain. In 1924, there were eighty four families in Hiles. Some of the organizations in the town were: Woman’s Club, Protestant Ladies’ Aid, Catholic Ladies Aid, Royal Neighbors, M.W. of A, and Parent Teachers Association. In 1943, the Catholic and Lutheran churches burned down and later a new Lutheran church was constructed. One of the main attractions in Hiles is Pine Lake. It has helped to make Hiles a tourist resort. Most of the people living in Hiles (in1957) work in the woods or mills in other cities” (Forest Republican 1957).
This week’s archival discovery is an excerpt from an article written by Henrietta Knoke in 1957 detailing the use of horse drawn school buses by Forest County schools. The description of this type of travel will make children think twice before they complain about having to ride the bus to school.
“The school bus of 1910-1925 was a wooden vehicle approximately fifteen feet long by five feet in width. The inside was lined with imitation leather padding and the seats consisted of one long seat on each side of the bus placed so close together that the knees of the older students touched when seated. The windows constituted of two parts made of glass. They opened at the middle and one swung up while the other swung down. The bus driver’s seat was built like a chair and he had a square window in the front with holes underneath the window for the reins to go through. The door was in the back of the bus and consisted of two parts as well. In the nice weather of spring all the children would rush to sit by the open windows. There were spaces under each long seat for the children to put their dinner pails and books. In the winter it was very cold. Each bus had a small stove on the outside of the bus with a register entering the bus. Also, each bus was issued four or five heavy robes for the children to cover their laps and feet. Usually the first children on the bus would get the robes and sit by the register and the rest would nearly freeze. There were many times when the horses became mired in the deep snow so it was necessary for the driver to shovel around the horses so they could get a start again. When it sleeted and the roads became icy it was common for all the children to leave the bus at the front of an incline and the older students to push on the bus to help get it to the top. The typical bus ride for students would last for two hours” (Forest Republican 1957).
To learn more about horse drawn buses such as: how the drivers were chosen, special activities during Christmas time, and more hardships due to the weather visit the Crandon Public Library Local History Room.
Recently I was flipping through the Forest Republican Newspaper from 1957 and I came across articles written by Crandon High School students for their social studies class. They were directed by their teacher, C.A. Krohn, to complete the project of combing through local historical data for information about Forest County history from 1850-1930. So for the next few weeks I will be writing my blog from interesting information provided by the high school students. This week’s blog information was taken from the article entitled “The History of Argonne” by Mickey Worthington.
Around 1890 Argonne was a bustling city due to all of the people that came north to work in the lumber camps. The town amenities included: two large hotels, two grocery stores, a clothing store, a meat market, a post office, a printing shop, two newspapers, a livery barn, a bank, seven saloons, and two doctors. The bank at the time was one of the finest in Wisconsin.
At one point it was proposed that the county courthouse be located in Argonne rather than Crandon. Its suggested location was behind the service station owned by Harry Hansen. The reason listed for the failure of this plan was the persuasion of a well educated man in Argonne who was against the idea. He found a way for Three Lakes to break away from Forest County and by doing this he got rid of many of the people that would have voted for the courthouse be placed in Argonne. He also put ads in several newspapers including the Chicago Tribune encouraging people to come to North Crandon and settle. Apparently this had some negative consequences because one person from Chicago that moved up north brought the small pox with them. The article states that 85 percent of the community ended up with the disease and the doctor would charge five dollars to treat each patient.
To read the entire article on the “History of Argonne” please visit the Crandon Public Library’s Local History Room located on the lower level.
The third week in April is National Library Week and to celebrate I have crafted a new display that delves into the history of the Crandon Public Library. The exhibit features objects from the days of the traveling library when the state library would ship books to Crandon so that the area would have a greater variety of reading material. There are documents from WWI when the Crandon Public Library supported troops by gathering books and shipping them overseas. In addition, there are library books from the early 1900’s that would have been on the shelves of Crandon’s first library located in the county courthouse. I encourage everyone to come and check out the library register from the late 1930’s to see if you can spot one of your relatives’ names. The photograph below is the interior of the Crandon Public Library in the early 1930’s.
The final female featured for Women’s National History Month, Elmyra Hobbs, had a tremendous impact on the Crandon Public Library. In fact, the building is named after her because without her generous donations we would not have the new library facilities. Elmyra was born in 1911 just outside of Crandon to Emil and Anna Schimek. She spent her childhood living on the family’s farm located northwest of the City of Crandon. She attended school at Siding Two, a one room school house, until seventh grade. The Schimek family moved into the City of Crandon in 1926 and Elmyra graduated from Crandon High School in 1931. She went onto higher education at the Oneida County Normal School and worked for F.A. Himes at the local Lumber and Coal Company. She was joined in matrimony to Gordon Hobbs in 1935. Gordon owned the Crandon Telephone Company and Elmyra started working there right after they were married: book keeping, paying bills, handling the switch board, and general office work. She would sometimes work nights and sleep on a cot located in the office. During the early years at the telephone company Elmyra became skilled at repairing heat coils and using a soldering iron. Elmyra continued to work tirelessly at the Crandon Telephone Company as the General Manager until she sold the company to Rhinelander Telecommunications in 1993. In addition to contributing to the Crandon Public Library she donated to Headwaters, a Catholic Charity Bureau, which supplied them with much needed support (Hobbs-Wilbur 2005). I encourage everyone to visit the Forest County Historical Society Museum this summer which displays many objects from Mrs. Hobb’s life.
