Sam Hook was born in Morgan County, Ohio on November 7, 1857, the son of Henry and Angeline Hook. He was one of five children, having two brothers and two sisters. When he was eight years old, the Hook family moved to Wisconsin and located in the community of Seelyburg in the northern Kickapoo Valley. His father, like most of the other men in the small hamlet, worked for Dempster Seely, who operated a lumber mill and other business enterprises. Henry Hook built a house on “The Lane” which ran east from Seelyburg’s main street on land purchased from Chauncey Lawton. Sam grew up in Seelyburg, neighbors with the Ainsworth, Parker, Wood, Gift, Lawton and Nixon families. Dr. Amos Carpenter’s house and office were nearby as well as Levi Millison’s store. Further down the street were several other stores, two blacksmith shops and the buildings of Seely’s mill. Beyond the bridge crossing the Kickapoo were the Star Cemetery, the Advent Church, the schoolhouse, Dr. Smith’s house and office and John Anderson’s house and bee yard on the hill. Downstream from the bridge was the dam, feeding current into the millruns to power the lumber mill.
Sam attended the Seelyburg School and learned at the knee of Alice Seely Nixon, the daughter of the lumber mill owner. Sam was good with numbers and clever with his hands at certain tasks. Alice Nixon was a gifted musician and singer, providing her students with a love for music. Sam was limited in his appreciation of his teacher’s musical offerings and probably one of the few in the village who didn’t enjoy Alice’s musical renditions played on the organ in her home at the foot of Chapel Hill.
When Sam reached a certain age he started to work for Seely. He didn’t become one of the dozens of “Seely Men” who worked on various crews felling trees in the woods, milling the trees into lumber, rafting the lumber down the river or building wooden bridges over the Kickapoo. But being good with numbers and friendly, Sam could always find work in the village. When work at the mill slowed down when the lumber began to run out, Sam worked at various jobs in Seelyburg and at the small community of DeJean’s Corners to the south. He would work at several of the stores located in the two communities, working at Levi Millison’s stores in both places.
His brother, Gus, owned a farm and Sam could help with the chores there. In the spring there was always rattlesnakes to hunt and kill, but Sam had to steer clear from that endeavor. Another brother, William, owned a dray line, a feed mill and other businesses in La Farge where Sam could always find work. He was industrious, good with numbers and keeping books, not afraid of hard work and frugal with his money. Over time Sam became a man of some means and purchased a store in Seelyburg.
At a time when many merchants were leaving the river town of Seelyburg and moving to La Farge, Sam opened his store less than a block from the house where he grew up. By 1898, Sam’s Seelyburg store was booming. He had developed a skill for making brooms out of corn straw and each fall would make hundreds of corn brooms for sale to his neighbors. His reputation as a broom maker spread and folks from miles around would bring their broomcorn to Sam so he could make them a year’s supply of hardy brooms. His skill at the craft increased with the work and it was said that Sam could make a new broom in six minutes from start to finish.
When the big Kickapoo flood hit Seelyburg in 1899, the water ran three feet deep through Sam’s store. Undeterred by the misfortune, Sam put his brooms to good use, cleaned up his store, which also served as his home, and continued on. Some of the residents and merchants left Seelyburg after the big flood, but Sam and his store remained.
Sam wasn’t all work and no play; the friendly merchant liked to have fun, too. He caused a stir in Seelyburg in 1900 when he applied for a license to put a pool table in his store. The correspondent from Star wrote in the March 9, 1900 La Farge Enterprise, “Our little burg is in a state of excitement over the appearance of a pool table being put in Sam Hook’s store, things being carried on there that is no credit to our burg or the people living in it. We hope that there will soon be something done to remove the curse from our place. We understand that he has even let minors play as they choose and we think it is time to have it stopped.” Pool right here in River City! It is obvious that certain people did not stop to shop at Sam’s store. But for those who did, Sam might play a game of pool with you or a hand or two of cribbage.
In April of 1902, Sam put in a new artesian well for his store. The new well ran fresh cool water into a cement cistern beneath the floor of the building. There in the new cistern, Sam could cool milk, cheese, meat and other products that he could sell in his store. Sometimes the cistern would keep bottles of fermented and distilled liquids cold; items which Sam could not sell in his store, but might be offered to friends after closing. It was not all that unusual to see the lanterns burning late into the night in Sam’s store and hear the laughter of card players emanating from his back rooms.
The government discontinued the Star Post Office on June 30, 1902. The post office had been kept in Robert Parker’s store, a few doors south of Sam’s store, for over twenty years. Before the end of that year, Parker had closed his Seelyburg store and moved to Viola, where he opened up a store in Mound Park.
Sam Green had moved north to Seelyburg in 1900 to run a store in the Seely building. Green, the man with the original La Farge Post Office at his house south of The Corners, had moved to La Farge when the railroad came in 1898. He built a store across from Millard’s Store, where the new La Farge Post Office was kept, and put in a line of goods. He rented out part of his building for a barbershop, but sold his south State Street building in 1900 to Alva Drew, the new lawyer in town. He moved his line of wares to Seelyburg, where he rented the old Seely store building for his new business. In January of 1903, Sam Green passed on; with his death, his store business in Seelyburg was closed.
Sam Hook was the last merchant in Seelyburg.
(To Be Continued)
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