Doctors in La Farge

When Dr. Frank Gollin left La Farge in 1960, the village needed to reassess its needs for medical services. Gollin, who had been the doctor for the village for over two decades, moved that year to Madison where he started to work in the radiology laboratories at the University of Wisconsin Hospital. For one of the few times since its inception, La Farge was left without a primary care physician practicing in the village. With Dr. Gollin’s departure from his full-time La Farge practice (He would maintain office hours in the village on a part-time basis for the next two years, while La Farge sought a replacement doctor), the little Kickapoo River town would scramble to provide for medical needs and services. In the end of this process to assess the village’s medical situation, a decision was made to build a new medical clinic in town. Before we look at the process of getting that new clinic built and staffed with a doctor, let us peer back into the village’s history to see what medical services preceded that time.

The story of the history of medicine and doctors who practiced in La Farge is a remarkable one in many respects. Even in the pre-incorporation days of Seelyburg and DeJean’s Corners, there always seemed to be reliable medical service available in what would become La Farge. Star, or Seelyburg as it was known locally, had a medical man soon after settlement in Dr. Jesse Smith. Dr. Smith kept his office in his cottage built next to the old schoolhouse on Plum Run Road, located north of the Kickapoo River. In 1869, Smith’s practice was expanded to include Dr. Amos Carpenter. Carpenter built a home at the intersection of the hamlet’s Main Street (the old river road) and the Lane, which led off to the east and up on Maple Ridge. Carpenter built an office and apothecary (drug store) across the street from his house, where his practice remained for three decades. Carpenter was an “eclectic practitioner” who used herbal and Native-American remedies in his practice. The Winnebago Indians, who traveled along the Kickapoo and camped in the area, regularly traded their potions and poultices with their friend, “Dr. Amos”, when they were in the Seelyburg region. Mrs. Carpenter was an accomplished midwife, who assisted in many hundreds of births over the years, and continued her birthing assistance even after the death of her husband.

The first doctor in La Farge was E.E. Gaines, who came to the growing little village in 1897. Dr. Gaines first had his practice in the La Farge House Hotel before moving it to several other Main Street buildings over the years. In October of 1897, the railroad reached La Farge and the little community really spurted in growth. The following year, Dr. William E. Butt moved his practice to La Farge from Fox Lake, Wisconsin. (There will be another connection between La Farge and Fox Lake in regards to medicine seventy years after Dr. Butt’s move, but more on that in the next Local History Notebook.) Dr. Butt was the son of the renowned Colonel Butt of Viroqua and set up his practice in his room at the Klondyke Hotel (now the post office). Later he would move his practice to second-story offices in the Miller Building (now the Field House Bar).

Later in 1898, Dr. Adam Shambaugh came to La Farge to construct a residence and place for his offices. Shambaugh was 82 years old and well known in the area. He moved to La Farge from Muller’s Mill on south Bear Creek, where he had a drug store and practice for many years. He started his La Farge practice, limited due to his advanced age, in his new house (now the Walker house, just north of the Lawton Library), from which he also sold groceries and herbal medicines.

When La Farge incorporated as a village in the summer of 1899, there were four doctors practicing in the new town. They would all be gone before the tenth anniversary of the village. Drs Carpenter (1900) and Shambaugh both passed away (1905). Dr. Gaines joined the group of Kickapoogians who headed west in the early twentieth century, moving his practice to Montana in 1908 before eventually settling in the state of Oregon. Dr. Butt moved his practice to Viroqua in 1909.

Despite the fluid nature of the medical profession in those days, or perhaps because of it, La Farge did not suffer from a lack of doctors when that first batch left the village. Dr. Perres Randall moved his practice from Soldiers Grove to La Farge in 1901 and became a popular member of the community. Dr. Randall suffered a stroke and died in 1903 at the age of 55. That same year, Dr. A.J. Lewis moved into the village, coming from Bloomingdale. He built a bungalow south of the Hotel Ward and established his medical office in the front parlor of the house. Dr. Lewis stayed in La Farge for five years before moving back to Bloomingdale.

Dr. Joseph Esch, who had a practice in Rockton, moved south to La Farge in 1903 to also establish a practice in that booming town. He had offices in several locations before settling into space above the post office for many years (currently apartments owned by George Wilbur located across from the Stittleburg law offices).

Dr. Esch bought the first automobile to La Farge in the fall of 1904. The La Farge physician had traveled to St. Louis to purchase the auto and it was brought to La Farge on a railroad car. With the new automobile, Dr. Esch could expand his practice into the rural areas around La Farge. The good doctor liked his new auto so much that he bought another and then another. He was soon selling autos out of the Hotel Ward garage, a lucrative addition to his medical business. In 1909, he purchased a White steam-driven automobile. The White Steamer greatly enhanced the doctor’s country practice as the vehicle could climb the area’s steep hill roads without faltering. When Dr. Esch went into the country to make house calls, he would have someone drive the White Steamer for him, so he could rest or sleep between calls.

Because of his auto, Dr. Esch became known as La Farge’s “country” doctor, who could make calls everywhere in the steep terrain of the Kickapoo Valley. Dr. J.E. Bingham, who came from Whitewater in 1909 to establish a medical practice, stuck with the old-fashioned horse and buggy form of transportation. Dr. Bingham was known as the “town” doctor in La Farge. During this time, a Dr. Cohen came to La Farge to practice in 1908-09, but left after a year to practice in Wonewoc. Eventually, La Farge settled in as a two-doctor town for much of the time from that time around 1910 until the 1930's.

Strange Political Bedfellows

Whenever I am giving a talk or leading a history hike about the La Farge Dam Project (which usually occurs at least several times a year in my capacity as unofficial historian for the Kickapoo Valley Reserve), a question that invariably comes up will relate to why the project was stopped. What were the reasons for stopping the project when it was nearly three-quarters completed? I have a pat answer, which I use in my presentations, that there were three general causes for the stoppage of the project in 1975 – financial, environmental and political. Looking at the politics of the failed dam project is an amazing gaze in many ways, rather murky on the surface at times, but it is a look that can become much clearer when viewed with some historical perspective.

A project of the magnitude of the La Farge Dam Project as designed by the U.S. Corps of Engineers can only become a reality through political sponsorship in both houses of Congress and the endorsement of the governor of Wisconsin. These kinds of massive public works projects only happen when congressmen and senators at the national level and the chief executive of the home state where the project is located “sign on” with their approval and political endorsements. Congressman Gardner Withrow was the politician who made the La Farge project happen.

Withrow, from La Crosse, made flood control for the Kickapoo Valley one of his political priorities in 1935, when the project was initially envisioned after the great Kickapoo River flood of that summer. The Kickapoo Valley was part of Withrow’s congressional district (then called the 7^th District of Wisconsin) and he soon had Congress authorize studies for the river system and its flooding problems. These studies, conducted over several years by the Army Department’s Corp of Engineers and the forestry and soil conservation branches of the Agriculture Department, yielded a plan that included a dam and levees to protect the villages of the Kickapoo Valley. When the first plan was released in 1940, which included a proposed dam at Rockton and a levee for the village of Gays Mills, Withrow was no longer in Congress. As the Progressive Party candidate, Withrow had been defeated in the congressional election of 1938 and would remain out of national politics for a decade.

Reelected to Congress in 1948 as a member of the Republican Party to represent Wisconsin’s 3^rd District, Gardner Withrow once again championed flood control efforts for the people of the Kickapoo Valley. Working closely with leaders from the Village of La Farge, Withrow organized meetings with the Corps of Engineers officers from the Corp’s regional office in St. Paul. His efforts would continue for more than a decade until finally in 1961, the Corps released another plan for flood control of the Kickapoo River. The new plan called for a dam to be built north of La Farge and levees for the downriver villages of Soldiers Grove and Gays Mills. When Congress authorized the spending bill that included the La Farge Dam Project in October of 1962, Withrow was nearing the end of his political career. He retired from Congress at the end of that session, deciding not to seek another term in the November election. Vernon Thomson, a Richland Center Republican, who would take up the task of sheparding the Kickapoo River project to its conclusion, replaced him in the 3rd District congressional seat.

In the U.S. Senate, Senator Alexander Wiley had championed the Kickapoo River project for many years. Wiley, a Republican and the senior senator from Wisconsin (Democrat William Proxmire was Wisconsin’s other U.S. Senator at the time, having been first elected in 1957 to fill out the term after the death of Joseph McCarthy), would also be ending his time in Congress in the fall of 1962, but not by his own choice. Wiley had been a Wisconsin Senator since 1939 and was an influential member of several committees including the powerful Foreign Relations Committee. When the Cuban Missile Crisis broke out in October of 1962, Wiley remained in Washington, hoping to be seen as a key figure in the foreign relations nightmare, and did little active campaigning in his home state. It was not a wise political move on his part, as his opponent, Wisconsin’s popular Governor Gaylord Nelson, carried the day in the November election and ousted Wiley from his Senate seat.

In a remarkable few weeks for the Kickapoo Valley, the appropriation bill for the La Farge Dam Project passed Congress in October of 1962, and a few weeks later, the political leaders who had championed the project, Gardner Withrow and Alexander Wiley, were out of office. In Washington D.C., that left the project’s fate in the hands of Thomson, the new 3^rd District Congressman, and Nelson and Proxmire, the state’s senators. How these three politicians, a Republican and two Democrats, would come together in the nation’s capital at that particular time is an interesting story of Badger state politics.

The saying that goes, “Politics makes strange bedfellows” would certainly fit as Vernon Thomson, Gaylord Nelson and William Proxmire settled into their Congressional seats in January of 1963. For the three to work together on the La Farge Dam Project might have been doomed from the start if one looks at their previous political connections to one another. Those connections, mostly adversarial, go back to the 1950’s and center on the gubernatorial elections of that decade.

William Proxmire is remembered locally as the man who stopped the La Farge Dam Project in 1975. By many he is seen as the biggest political villain in the dam story, perhaps unfairly cast in that role by the infamous and hilarious “Proxie Funeral” that took place in La Farge a few months after his announcement to pull the plug on the dam. Many remember that the Wisconsin Senator served for thirty-two years in the U.S. Senate, finally retiring in 1989. Few realize that Proxmire was a three-time loser in Wisconsin elections for governor, losing gubernatorial races as a Democrat in 1952, ’54 and ’56. In the 1956 election for governor, Proxmire lost to a long time assemblyman from Richland County, Vernon Thomson. A year later, Proxmire would finally win a statewide election in the special election called to fill Joe McCarthy’s seat. The following year in 1958, Proxmire would be elected to his own six-year term as Wisconsin’s Senator.

Vernon Thomson served as Wisconsin’s Governor for one term from 1957 to 1959 (The governor’s term was for two-years at that time.), but was defeated in 1958 in his bid for reelection for governor by Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic State Senator from Clear Lake. Nelson, a staunch conservationist (the term environmentalist wasn’t used yet in those days), was reelected as governor in 1960. While running for the state’s highest office in that election campaign of 1960, he visited La Farge and expressed his support for the La Farge flood control project. In 1962, when Congress authorized the La Farge project, Governor Nelson gave his endorsement to the project (although he would say later that his endorsement was given guardedly and perhaps too quickly as he was leaving his position as governor, campaigning for Alexander Wiley’s U.S. Senate position and preparing for his move to Washington D.C. to take his Senate seat). In that same election, Thomson became the new 3^rd District Congressman, replacing the long-time representative, Gardner Withrow.

And so there they were in Washington D. C. together, Thomson, Nelson and Proxmire – names that would become all too familiar around La Farge for the next decade and a half. The three had been winners in those previous races for governor (Thomson and Nelson), but losers as well (Proxmire and Thomson). During those campaigns, they all must have had some familiarity with the La Farge project. Could any of them imagine how familiar the project would become to them all in the upcoming years?

From a Yuletide Dream

I awoke with this falderall swimming though my mind a couple of weeks back. I had to get it down on paper to get it out of my head. “He’s a strange one”, but sometimes we’re minions of the muse. I hope that you find some little morsel of enjoyment in it.

TIME-SLIDING TO LA FARGE

What startles me awake on this cold winter’s night;

Is it a noise that I hear that fills me with fright?

The din comes from the front; the sounds from the road,

Wagons and sleighs, trucks and cars from all ages pass my abode.

Where do they all go now, this caravan so large?

Son, hop on board; we’re heading to La Farge.

How can I go sir; it’s so very cold and chilly.

There’s straw on the wagon, horsehide throws in the sleigh,

The heater works fine in the Roadmaster; climb in son, don’t be silly.

Clip-clopping down the snowcovered road, pulled by Topsy and Mae,

Bundled in the back seat of the Chevy; the day we will stay.

The Yuletide is upon us, festivities and shopping to do,

So on to La Farge this Saturday, to spend the day through.

The village streets are filled with people; my, what a sight.

Garlands of fir boughs hang from the lights.

Brightly decorated stores are packed to the rafters with goods and wares

Front windows filled with wonders; mouths agape as we stare.

Andrew’s window has sausages, ducks, geese and ham.

But wait – Isn’t that Jennie’s store; puzzled where I am?

She had Variety; amazing puzzles and toys,

Then wasn’t Muriel’s here, too, with gifts for little girls and boys?

Quick up to the Opera House; they’re lighting the candles on the village tree,

As we race up the dark stairs and into the great hall, shouting with glee.

There will be fresh oyster stew and crackers across at the Hotel Ward,

And cracklin’ roast goose and dressing for all at Harris’ Checkerboard.

They’re giving out treats at the theater lobby, over at the Mars,

Santa is there, giving out goodies like apples, peanuts and candy bars.

But He’s in the back of the village truck, there by the bank

Mush brought Santa in the police car, isn’t that Ray or Dick; surely not Hank.

La Farge’s ice rink is frozen; let’s join hands to “crack the whip”,

We can warm by the wood fire; hot chocolate to sip.

Hike up the river; bind blades to our shoes,

There’s always best skating on those Seelyburg sloughs.

There are candies aplenty at Weisner’s, but Harry’s has them, too.

Pete Chase, Casey, Everett, Bun or Lillian; they’ll find us a gift or two.

Let us get sacks of oranges and apples from the groceries in town,

The store clerks are always helpful and smiling; with nary a frown.

The light is now gone; for home I must start,

But from these time-sliding memories, I surely do hate to part.

What’s the matter son; don’t you know where you’re at?

Please mister, please, can you give me a ride out to Jordan Flat?

Mom, my legs do hurt so; why can’t I walk?

Your brothers will carry you; hush now, no more talk.

What startled me awake on this cold winter’s night;

Was it a noise that I heard that filled me with fright?

Merry Christmas to all

May you all make it home for the holidays!

The response to the release of my first book on the story of La Farge continues to amaze me. People from all over the country have contacted me via emails, phone calls, or regular mail. It is so heart-warming to hear from you all. Thanks for your interest in this little history project.

Unfortunately, by the time you read this, we will have sold out of the first printing of three hundred copies. I have another order in to the printers for a couple hundred more, but they will not be here until after the first of the year. When they do arrive, we will have them available locally at the regular retail outlets and the area libraries. If you wish to order a book by mail, send $25 per copy to me at PO Box 202, La Farge, WI 54639.

See you next year!

La Farge History Book Released

My new book about the history of La Farge has now been released. Titled "La Farge: The Story of a Kickapoo River Town - Volume I" the book is for sale at the Visitor Center of the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, the La Farge State Bank, the La Farge Episcope newspaper office, Lawton Memorial Library - La Farge, the Viola Public Library and Brambles Bookstore in Viroqua.

To order the book by mail, send $25 (check or money order) to Brad Steinmetz, PO Box 202, La Farge, WI 54639.

The Sad Demise of Sam Hook

SAMUEL S. HOOK

NOVEMBER 7, 1857

MAY 5, 1917

WE KNOW NOT THE CAUSE OF HIS DEATH

(Epitaph from gravestone in Chapel Hill Cemetery)

Sam Hook, the last merchant in Seelyburg drew his last breath in the early morning hours of May 5, 1917. His death and the suspected foul play that accompanied it haunt the old river hamlet to this day. Was Sam Hook murdered as robbers looted his store? Who was responsible for such a heinous crime?

The flames shooting out of Sam Hook’s store building in Seelyburg were first discovered around four o’clock on that Saturday morning. An alarm was immediately raised and many neighbors and friends rushed to the conflagration. However, the old store building was a mass of flames and beyond any hope to save from destruction. With Sam nowhere to be found in the little hamlet on La Farge’s north side, everyone feared he had perished in the fire. When the flames had subsided an investigation found the store owner’s body in the southwest corner of the building. He had either crawled or been placed under the floorboards and was near the cistern that he used for cooling items for sale in his store.

Foul play was immediately suspected in Sam Hook’s death as the first people to arrive at the scene of the fire had found the front door wide open. Scattered in the front of the store were pieces of money and bunches of shoestrings. It was well known in the area that Sam kept large amounts of money in the store, often tied into bundles with shoestrings. It was unusually cool on that morning and frost covered the ground. Several rods south of the store building, a person’s shoe tracks were visible in the frosty dew leading off Seelyburg’s Main Street towards the west. A bloodhound was brought up from Viola to track the trail, which led north towards the mill, across the dam to the north side of the Kickapoo River and then east back to the Advent (Star) Cemetery. The trail was lost at the cemetery by the first hound, but later in the day another dog was brought in from Richland Center. That dog followed the trail of the first, but then continued on from the cemetery south across the bridge and to a house nearly across from Sam Hook’s store. A man named Clint Rockwell and others occupied this house; when the bloodhound’s baying ended at that location, many citizens of Seelyburg feared the worst. According to the account of the incident in the La Farge Enterprise (5/10/1917), “This place has for some time been known as a rendezvous for people of none too good of a reputation and suspicion at once fell on Rockwell and frequenters of his home.”

Apparently, Hook had previous trouble with Rockwell and others who hung out at his abode. On the night of the fire, the well-liked storeowner had a dispute with Rockwell, which nearly led to fisticuffs and further indicated foul play was involved with the fire and Sam Hook’s death.

The Vernon County District Attorney and Sheriff came to Seelyburg later in the day on that Saturday of the fire. However, after interviewing many of the neighbors and friends of Sam Hook as well as the occupants of the Rockwell house, the county law enforcement officials could not find enough evidence to warrant any arrests being made. At the local level, the investigation did not cease and new evidence and information was gathered. Using that, the La Farge authorities arrested several occupants of the Rockwell house and took them to Viroqua on the following Monday for a hearing. After that session in the county courthouse, two men and a juvenile girl (all names were listed in the Enterprise article) were retained in the county jail in Viroqua. Sadly for the folks left in Seelyburg, after a few days, all of the suspects were released from the county jail and no charges were ever filed in the case.

After the initial outrage over the lack of any prosecution of those suspected in Sam Hook’s death, fear crept into the village. Doors that had never been locked before were now locked at all times. Nightlong vigils with shotgun in hand were kept at some residences in Seelyburg to protect against a fate such had befallen Sam Hook. Shortly after the release from the county jail, many of those implicated in Sam Hook’s death left the Seelyburg area, but others remained.

But the friends and neighbors of Sam Hook knew that a wrong had not been righted. For years after the death of the last storeowner in Seelyburg, they would attest to the fact that Sam had been murdered. One neighbor said, “He was murdered, plain and simple.” Another resident when questioned about the event decades later, said, “ Of course he was murdered, everyone around here knew that.” But if there was such a foul crime committed, no legal justice was ever carried out as a remedy. Yet, perhaps even today that justice for a terrible wrong is still being sought.

The funeral for Sam Hook was held the day after his death, Sunday, May 6 at the Methodist Episcopal Church in La Farge. Sam’s mother, two brothers, two sisters, friends and family laid him to rest on that day in the Chapel Hill Cemetery, south of where Sam had grown up and lived all of his life. The epitaph, which was quoted at the beginning of the Notebook, can still be seen on his headstone in the last row in the back of the cemetery. We Know Not The Cause Of His Death, indicates the remorse over his sudden loss and the agony of never knowing quite what happened, which was felt by the family over Sam’s death.

Even in the silence of the grave, justice perhaps is still being sought. Each spring when Village of La Farge employees return to the Chapel Hill Cemetery for maintenance, invariably they find Sam’s headstone askew from the winter’s frost. Most of the other grave markers at Chapel Hill survive the winter fairly well, but Sam’s always seems to have been moved, as if drawing attention back to that eerie epitaph, We Know Not The Cause Of His Death. It still seems to cry out for some kind of justice.

However, even today that cry for justice from Sam’s grave would be somewhat muffled. Sam certainly didn’t hear the intruder enter his store that night and he probably couldn’t yell out for help when he was accosted and robbed. Over his lifetime, the circumstances of Sam’s life had rarely hindered his progress, but they might have played against him on that fateful night in May so many years ago. For you see, Sam Hook, the last merchant in Seelyburg, was a deaf mute.

The Life of Sam Hook

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)

Working Away

One of the challenges for any small town like La Farge is to provide meaningful employment for the people that live there. In doing research on the village in the years after World War II, one finds that La Farge’s population swelled during those years. As folks returned to the village after serving in the military during the war, men in particular were faced with a limited number of jobs in the La Farge area. Many of those men had been married during the war and returned to La Farge to start their families in their hometown. Too many people chasing too few jobs meant many of these men would have to make a choice made by many before them. They would choose to work away at a job far from the Kickapoo Valley, while maintaining a home in the La Farge area. It would mean the men would travel to places like Kenosha, Madison, Janesville, and Rockford, Illinois to work at good paying jobs. It was an employment practice and procedure that went back to the very beginnings of this village located in the northern Kickapoo Valley. So, let’s look at what “working away” meant in those formative years.

The beginnings of settlement occurred in the northern part of the Kickapoo Valley around 1850. Two actions by the federal government facilitated the movement of settlers into the area around what would become La Farge. First, the United States Army, through several treaties, removed the last of the Native-American tribes from the area by the mid 1840’s. As the Winnebago tribe (now Ho-Chunk) left the Valley through a series of removals, the army insured a safe area for settlement in the region. With the federal surveying of the land in the Kickapoo Valley shortly after, an orderly process for purchasing land was also available for the settlers.

Cheap land and jobs was what drew settlers to the Valley in those early days. The jobs were in the vast stretches of white pines, which extended north up the Kickapoo River from present day La Farge. “The Pinery” drew the first people into the region as gangs of lumbermen were felling the pines even before the government surveys had been completed. As milling operations were established to saw up the pine trees into marketable lumber at Ontario, Oden, Rockton, Star (Seelyburg) and the Corners (La Farge), more men were required to make the enterprise function. Crews were needed to fell the trees and trim them up. In the winter, when the ground and river were frozen, the logs would be hauled to the mill sites. Soon bridge-building crews were spanning the river in key locations to provide better access to the lumber and routes to and from the mills. Men were also needed to work in the mills and then to raft the lumber down the Kickapoo. Many of these lumbermen settled in the Kickapoo Valley. Indeed, one of the first settlers at what would become Seelyburg was John Anderson, one of the original lumbermen in the Valley. Anderson, a Scot from Glasgow originally, retired from the hard life of the ax and settled on land overlooking the river in 1854. A few years later, Anderson sold some of his land to Dempster Seely, who started his vast Kickapoo lumber business at Anderson’s previous water site on the river.

Those that came to the northern Kickapoo Valley for land in those early days also worked in the lumber crews. Clearing land for a future farm was a fulltime job in itself, but little income was earned in those endeavors. Many of those early farmers in the region would supplement their income with work in lumber. In the winter months especially of those early years, “Seely’s Men” were any and all men who needed a job in the area. Working on the lumbering crews could pay up to fifty cents a day in those cold winter months. If you had a horse to help skid logs, your pay could increase to $1.50 per day, big money for those times. The work was hard and dangerous at times, as the story of “The Fatal Oak” can attest, but as long as there were trees to cut and saw into lumber, there were jobs to be had.

Of course, the trees and the forests of pine could not last forever. By the 1880’s the vast white pine forests of the Kickapoo Pinery were pretty much gone. When a fire destroyed Seely’s lumber mill during that time, he built the operation back bigger than ever, but with more of an emphasis on finishing hardwood lumber. Within another decade, much of the prime hardwood forests had been cut and the industry was on a decline. By the time that the railroad reached La Farge in 1897, much of the prime lumber in the region was gone. How ironic that the new transportation system which could haul the lumber to the markets of the Midwest arrived after most of the trees had already been cut.

By the end of the nineteenth century, many of the lumber companies based in La Farge were looking for a new source of trees. That source was available in northern Wisconsin. The Miner Brothers lumber company, located first in Clinton Township and then in La Farge, left for the north woods in 1898. A year later the Knutson and Johnson lumber mill would sell their La Farge operation to August Kriigle and move their business north to Forest County. When these lumber companies headed north, it meant that the jobs went in that direction, too. Decisions had to be made by many living in the La Farge area, those men who worked in lumber. Should we stay or should we go?

For some the answer to that question was to both stay in the Kickapoo Valley to live and to go away from the Valley for the job. They started a trend that endures to this day.

Looking back at old copies of the La Farge Enterprise newspaper, one can always find news from rural areas outside of the village. News reported by correspondents from Ottervale, Morning Star Ridge or Rockton were common in most editions of the local paper. What was happening to folks in those rural areas close to La Farge was an important function of a small town newspaper. However, if you looked at those old copies of the Enterprise from the first decade of the 20^th century, you might find reports from Mather, Warrens, Island Lake, Pine Island, Chili, Ladysmith, Lindsey, or Carter. These are not local places, but towns located to the north that are hours away from the Kickapoo Valley. The news from those places is in the La Farge paper because many men from the Kickapoo Valley went to northern Wisconsin to work in the lumber camps there. News from Chili or Island Lake was news about folks from La Farge working there or living there. Many of the men went north for the winter months, leaving in the fall after the crops had been harvested and returning in the spring when it was planting time. They were the first from the little village on the Kickapoo who were “working away”. But they would not be the last.