Category: Uncategorized

Hello Forest County Residents!

This week’s discovery was found by the Crandon Public Library Director, Michelle, so if you see her let her know you appreciate her research skills. The find was old FBI case files from 1909-1921 detailing the rumors of anti-American sediments among the German immigrants that resided in Forest County during the time of World War I. Two secret service men were sent to Crandon to investigate these claims but only arrested one man for proclaiming:

” The Kaiser would have a gun big enough to wipe England off the face of the earth, and then the United States would have to look out, for the Kaiser has shown them all where to get off at. The Kaiser ought to be praised for what he had done and that he never declared war on the United States and that is was alright to sink the ships because the United States had no business to stick their nose in it”.

For his crime of carrying on with public enemies of the United States the pro-German man was taken to Milwaukee and forced into military service.

It is a great surprise that the United States Secret Service would send men to investigate Forest County for anti-American sentiments! This county can be very exciting at times!

 

Howdy Forest County Residents!

Today I am going to speak about a disaster the occurred in the 1920’s that I did not know about until last year when I interviewed one of Crandon’s oldest residents. She regaled me with her recollection of the grasshopper plague that hit Forest County in 1922 and 1923 in which swarms of grass hoppers destroyed the landscape. The interviewee recalled that during this time she was walking with a friend and her child and the child lost her shoe. When they went to look for it in the morning there was nothing left but a bit of sole because the grasshoppers had eaten it overnight!

This week I found the memories of Keith Jesse from Argonne written down describing the same catastrophe. Jesse wrote “The grasshoppers ate everything in sight. A lot of the farmers had to sell their cattle because they didn’t have money to buy hay with. Pa had sent to North Dakota and got three car loads of hay shipped in and we had to feed the cattle the rest of the summer. The county agent went to different farmers, and they had a meeting in Argonne. The agent came there and showed the farmers how to mix grasshopper poison which consisted of wheat bran, oranges, banana oil, and arsenic”.

http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/

Hello Forest County Residents!

Happy National Family History Month! This month long celebration originated when in 2001, Congress passed a resolution introduced by Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, who wrote, “By searching for our roots, we come closer together as a human family.” Family history enthusiasts continue to celebrate Family History Month every October (http://familytreemagazine.com).

To commemorate this event my family and I went on a search for an abandoned lumber settlement that was managed by my great great great grandparents Horace and Delia Wheeler. I learned about the site from interviewing some of my older relatives and reading my great grand mother’s memoir. At this lumber camp my great great grandparents met when my grandmother was fourteen staying at the camp because her father owned the lumber business and my grandfather was sixteen working as a lumber jack. They ran away together down the railroad tracks all the way to Rhinelander and were married.

We were able to find the site by using the Soo line railroad as our guiding factor and we explored the woods and found an old trash pit and a root cellar! It was a very rewarding experience because I could spend time with my family while connecting with my ancestors.

I encourage everyone to celebrate Family History Month by creating a family tree, interviewing relatives, or going on an excursion to a place connected to your family’s past.

 

 

Hello Forest County residents!

Check out this photo! Can anyone tell me what these individuals are doing? My best guess was hauling water for animals or making moonshine.

Happy Labor Day weekend Forest County Residents!

I am sorry to inform you that this is the last week I am working as the full time archivist at the Crandon Public Library. I will still be cataloging archival material ten hours per week so I will do my best to write a new blog post during this time. I am working on finishing writing my thesis on the disappearance of Keith Siding as a lumber town so if anyone has any information on the subject let me know.

I would like to invite everyone to an Open House at the Crandon Public Library, September 10th at 5-6:30 pm. I will be giving a presentation on the work I did this summer and I would love to share my exciting discoveries with everyone so please attend! There will be food!

Alright back to business.

Did you know that the United States government was considering abolishing Forest County in the late 1930’s-early 40’s? According to an article in the Forest Republican, The Department of Agriculture recommended that the federal government let the Forest Service take over the cut over lands, relocate the families living in Forest County, and begin a reforestation program. These harsh measures were due to the fact that 75% of the cutover land was not fit to be farmed and a large portion of the land had already passed into the hands of the government because of tax delinquencies.

They did not go so far as to disband the county but they did put drastic measures into place in order to deal with the horrendous economic situation in Forest County. In 1939, the government enforced “rural zoning” in which any residents that lived in a sparsely populated area, was subject to tax delinquency, or lived on land that could not be farmed or logged had to be relocated to a more heavily populated area. All of the small towns in Forest County cost the state and federal government a great deal of money because they had to provide funding for schools, roads, and medical treatment to every community. The government’s solution was to buy their land from them at a very cheap rate and provide them better land to live on that the newly removed residents had to pay for over time. They created government housing right in the City of Crandon for the elderly that still stands today. This is the reason why so many small towns and rural schools ceased to exist in Forest County.

If Forest County residents could help solve this mystery for a local library patron it would be most appreciated.

Can anyone identify the woman farthest right in the back row?

She was believed to be a Crandon resident and may have attended high school in the late 1930’s.

Hello Forest County Residents!

Papers thought to be lost forever have been found! Before today there have been no copies of The Forest Republican from the year 1924. The reason for this is rumored to be because there was a big scandal in the City of Crandon that year and the town officials wanted to cover it up. Now we have two copies from January and one from February but no mention of any shocking events. Even if there were not any earth shattering revelations in the newspaper it is still a very interesting archival document because it really paints a picture of the way people were living at the time. Some of the news to make the front cover of the January 17th  edition included:

• “Injured in Fall!”- E.A. Gruentzel escaped with several bad bruises and a sore back when he fell down the cellar steps at his home Monday evening.
• “Warns Farmers of Foreign Seeds”- Wisconsin grown seeds more suitable for climate
• “Buys Snowmobile”-Dr. G.W. Ison received a new snowmobile yesterday and declares it to be the real way to travel during the winter months
• “Mole Lake News”-The pupils at the Mole Lake School have been finishing their portfolio for the Junior Red Cross this week. It is to be sent to some school in a foreign country

These are only a few of the fascinating articles. I could read the older newspapers for hours! I encourage everyone to check out the newspaper collection at the Crandon Public Library to learn more.

 

A few of the ads:

           

Hello Forest County Residents!

I am revealing my archival discovery a day early because I am fortunate enough to attend the Northwoods Regional Historical Society conference tomorrow. I anticipate a lot of sharing of amazing objects and documents found by other historical societies and I will share any awesome finds I hear about from the other museum professionals.

The historical event I am writing about this week has come up several times in different types of archival material so I thought it was time to share it to see if anyone else out there has any more information on it. Because it is so prevalent in the historical record it must have been a major event in the town’s past. On March 17, 1908 around 8 am a loud blast woke the people of Crandon when a boiler exploded at the Kempf Planning Mill located at the crossing of the Northwest railroad and Lake Avenue. The boiler was catapulted nearly two blocks through the roof of the Emil Shoepke home and finally landed in a nearby yard. The engine room in which the boiler was located was completely destroyed and three men lost their lives. That morning the engine would not work so the owner of the mill, George Kempf, the engineer, George Minton, a common worker, William Hawkins, and a manager, Henry Kempf, went in to inspect the situation. As they were discussing the predicament the boiler exploded killing G. Kempf and Hawkins instantly and Minton dying hours later. Henry Kempf would live but sustained serious injures from which he would never recover. The Forest Republican claims that the mill owner G. Kempf was to blame because it had been long discussed by the workers that the boiler was not safe.

There are a few court cases relating to the boiler explosion in which the estate of George Kempf was suing the estate of George Minton to cover the damages of the boiler explosion. The George Kempf estate claimed that as the engineer and fireman Mr. Minton should have prevented the accident. The court ruled in favor of the estate of George Minton.

There were several different postcards printed with scenes from the boiler explosion that people from town would send family members as just another form of correspondence. One of the postcards had faint X’s drawn on it to show where they found the bodies of the men.

Mill conditions were less than ideal at the turn of the 20th century and similar stories can be found in every area of the country during this time period. Many men had little choice but to accept the dangers because that was the only place to seek employment and support their families.

       

Hello Forest County Residents!

This weeks discovery is not entirely archival it would be categorized partially as a museum discovery. I visited the home of a lovely Laona resident that had entirely too many treasures in her house that she had to share with the Forest County Historical Society. One of the objects is very fitting for this time of year as the high school football teams begin their practices and as the Packers start their preseason. She donated a 1946 Laona Kelly football jersey worn by Wilmer Kramer! As you can see there is a remarkable difference from the attire of football players during the 1940’s from today’s high school athletes. I delved into the Crandon Yearbook archival collection to find a photo of the Crandon team during that time to see what the jersey would look like on a player. In 1946 Laona Kellys defeated the Crandon Cardinals 19-0 lets see what happens in 2013!

 

Crandon Cardinals 1946

Laona Kellys jersey 1946

Hello Forest County Residents!

This week’s great archival find was actually uncovered by one of my amazing volunteers, Goldie, as she was assisting me in cataloging the Civil Court records from Forest County. The case pertained to an annulment between  Louis Mortiz , the plaintiff and Rose Moritz, the defendant  who resided in Laona in 1932. Louis was a 51 year old foreign sawmill worker who resided either at the boarding house or at the Taylor residence. Rose was a 41 year old divorcee bent on being married again and used every means necessary to make that happen.  Louis claimed that Rose called the sheriff to force him to Crandon in front of an attorney to marry her under false pretenses. The attorney said that Louis had to marry her because they had slept together or he would go to jail. Louis claimed that Rose would always force him to drink copious amount of alcohol then ask him if he wanted to sleep with her. Once he sobered up he would run away from her house but she would trap him in situations so they would interact and then shower him with alcohol.  Louis did not speak or write any English and was just complying with the wishes of an officer of the law. He never wished to enter into a marriage but did so out of fear for his life. Rose admitted that the sheriff did escort Louis to the attorney’s office but claimed that he did so voluntarily and had been asking her for her hand for some time. Rose also asserted that she gave Louis over one hundred dollars for safe keeping and now she wanted that money returned. The verdict of the trial was not present so we may never know if Louis was released from the marriage or if he was forced to honor his nuptials vows and Rose kept him drunk for the rest of his life in order to prevent him from running away.

I would like to thank all my wonderful volunteers for their amazing work! Without their help I may never discover great stories like this one. I am encouraged by their love of history and dedication to the preservation of Forest County’s past. I hope this encourages others to volunteer and learn something new about the times gone by!