Bio: Frantz, George (1865 - 1953) 

Contact: Dolores Mohr Kenyon

Email: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 
 

Surnames: Frantz, Sontag, Nelson, Neff, Elwell, Becker, Roethe, Hetland, Goddard, Volkman, Roehrborn, Schwarze, Georgas, Borde, Bennett, Hewett, Hunzinger, Kountz, Bachman  
 

----Source: Clark County Press (Neillsville, Clark Co., WI.) 1953  
 

Frantz, George (28 April 1965 - 15 May 1953) 
 

Was son of old George Frantz whose log cabin was burned by Indians --   
 

The passing of George Frantz has cut another strand in the tie that binds modern Neillsville to the ancient days. George died last Friday at he age of 88.  He came into the world just 12 years after Clark County was legally organized.  As a boy he played across the country road from an old Indian Camp. 
 

George loved to fish and hunt, and it was highly fitting that his end should come on a fishing expedition.  He and his brother Rudolph had gone with Elmer Georgas over into the Hixton country to fish.  They had seen conservation men dump legal trout into the stream, and were moving toward a spot where George wanted to fish. George was telling Elmer about his advocacy of a short season, and was telling how the game warden agreed with him.  He was sitting on the front seat at the right of Mr. Georgas. As he was telling the story, his head fell over on Mr. Georgas’ shoulder.  He made no response to a question.  The car was stopped and Mr. Georgas examined him.  There was no sign of life.  
 

Mr. Georgas drove to Merrillan and found Dr. Schwarze. "Dead," was the word.  And so George Frantz returned from his last fishing expedition. 
 

The end came instantly and without pain.  He had not even breathed hard. One second he was alive and talking and the next instant his voice was stilled and he was gone.  
 

Final rites were held Tuesday at the Georgas Funeral Home.  
 

Pallbearers were George Frantz, Elmer Frantz, Harry Frantz, Robert Frantz, Ben Frantz and Lawrence Becker.  Flower girls were Sandra and Janice Frantz. 
 

Persons attending the services from out of town were: Mr. and Mrs. George Frantz and Mrs. E. J. Roethe, Fennimore; Mrs. Victor A. Hetland, Jefferson; Mr. and Mrs. Sam Goddard, Mr. and Mrs. L. T. Becker, Fort Atkinson; Mrs. Paul Volkman, Western springs, Ill.; and Mr. and Mrs. Harry Roehrborn, West Bend.  
 

George was born in the old log cabin which had been built by his father, George Frantz, as a home for his bride, Barbara Sontag.   Before marrying her in Jefferson County, the elder George had made his start in Clark County.  Coming here as a bachelor in 1848, he had made a little stake by making shingles by hand, and had built a log cabin on the land which became known as the Frantz farm in Section 23, Pine Valley, a place owned in recent years by the Borde family. 
 

After the wedding George started north with his bride in a covered wagon.  As he approached his forest home he learned that his cabin had been burned down by the Indians.  So the couple went to a lumber camp, he to cut timber and she to cook.  They thus retrieved their slender fortunes, until finally they were able to go to his 100 acres and to put up the second log cabin.  There the children came, nine of them.  In these last years Neillsville has intimately known three of them, the brothers Rudolph, 84, George, 88, and Conrad, 96.  The death of George cuts into a record of longevity. 
 

The story of these brothers was in 1950 written with much appreciation by Keith Bennett, local writer then on the staff of The Clark County Press. From that article excerpts are printed below as fitting biography of a modest man who had humbly built himself into the Neillsville community. 
 

"George began his working years as a roustabout, a logging man.  Like Conrad and Rudy, he did farming with steam  engines.  He ran the engine for the old Neillsville drying plant, a forerunner of modern-day dehydration.  He did carpenter work on about 15 houses in the city; worked in the canning factory for a time. 
 

"He lives in a pleasant little house on Court Street, with is wife Mary, fishes with his brothers, and plays cards with them.  Last hunting season he brought down a fine little buck when he and Rudy hunted together. 
 

Hundreds of Indians 
 

"George began discussing the Indian movements along the course, of the Black River.  Occasionally hundreds of them seemed to be passing the Frantz farm, he said, and often they’d come inside to examine the home and its contents. 
 

"George recalls suffering from a skin ailment one year.  An elderly Indian lady announced that she could cure the trouble and George agreed. She gathered some cranberries, mashed them, and bound the paste around George’s arm in an old pillow case, and lo, he recovered. 
 

"The settlers themselves found a considerable amount of their medicines growing wild in the woods.  Each fall they collected wild herbs, boneset, catnip, lobelia, bloodroot, peppermint, and wild mustard.  And each spring, the kids got their does of sulphur and molasses. 
 

"Those were the years, in George’s boyhood, when Father Frantz would often build a fire by firing cotton batting from his shotgun, and use the blazing wad for a match.  And they’d sometimes load that faithful blunderbuss with gravel and shoot ducks on the farm pond. 
 

First Circus 
 

"When George was 10, he went to his first circus at Neillsville.  It wasn’t big, but it was a circus, with bareback riders, fine horses, and acrobats. There was even a menagerie, consisting of one tired and somewhat mangy buffalo. 
 

"The traveling packmen were another trademark of those times.  They came through the spring, the summer and into the fall, dispensing needles and ribbons and cloth and other oddments for the ladies. 
 

Logging Horses 
 

"James Hewett was building big bateaux in the logging times, capable of handling 14 or 16 loggers as they went up and down the river on their various jobs.  And in the spring the good townsmen of Neillsville would gather along Neillsville’s main street to watch the logging horses being brought back from their winter’s work in the camps to the north.  There’d be 10 or 12 of the powerful draft animals going south perhaps as far as Sheboygan to fatten up and get into trim for another northern winter. 
 

"George remembers that he served in the A Company here for 25 years.  When the Spanish-American war broke out he boarded the train for Milwaukee with the rest of the Neillsville servicemen, looking forward to seeing the tropics and Cuba.  He made it as far as Milwaukee. Sgt. Frantz was drilling his squad one day at that city when the news came that he was being sent home.  They weren’t taking married men, and George didn’t see Cuba. 
 

A Wild Night 
 

"He remembers when they came back, the company crammed into the Merrillan-Neillsville train and spilling out the windows.  It was a wild night in Neillsville.  They wanted the boys to march up to the armory, but no soap.  The Neillsville Company was home and it was through with the army.  The servicemen went to the Armory as a small khaki-clad trickle in a flood of well-wishers. They stacked the rifles there for the last time, turned in their equipment, and went home. 
 

"Getting back to his logging experience, George recalled the big Hatfield jam.  There were four million board feet of lumber caught in the narrows where the Hatfield dam now stands.  Dynamite and peavey poles wouldn’t break the locked timbers, though George and a host of "jacks" fought to clear the towering jam. 
 

"The old Dells Dam, now gone, and the Hemlock Dam were opened and the flood lifted the mass, ripped through it, and carried the tons of timber clear and southward toward the Mississippi. 
 

"George had more tales of merrymaking in the old days; the masquerades at the Armory.  George went as Uncle Sam several times, and again as a lumberjack, but never took a prize in the packed hall that was shaking with the tread of perspiring schottischers, waltzers and square dancers.   
 

"At least one enterprising Neillsville citizen came a cropper in one of these joyous occasions when he attended attired as a good knight in full armor.  The good man was resplendent in bright armor fashioned of stove pipe, sheet iron, and other metallic paraphernalia.  He arrived at the "Opera House" in good form and began clanking up the steps.  It was here he met his bi-metal waterloo.  The joints in his stove piped legs refused to operate and down he went, clattering like an exploding boiler factory. 
 

"He eventually got through the door, but he was traveling horizontally, motivated by sympathetic bystanders. 
 

The Cyclist 
 

"And there was the cyclist.  It was either Frank Hewett or Fred Hunzinger who possessed a wondrous cycle which had a gigantic front wheel and a small wheel in the back.  It was his custom, whichever of the two it was, to mount his bike atop Hewett’s hill and then race at suicidal speed down into the city while strong men paled and ladies screamed to see this exhibition of rocket-like velocity.  Somehow he always arrived safely at the bottom, but his trips were considered a local event. 
 

"Recalling the cycle reminded George of the early autos in the city: Dick Kountz’ "two-lunge" steam car, and Dr. Bachman’s high-wheeled gas buggy.  Their cheerful, if not powerful, chucking noises could be heard for considerable distance as they grunted up and down the roads of the city. 
 

"George purchased his first in 1915, a model of 1912 Ford.  Mary said he could buy the car if he could also swing the purchase of a house, and George managed both.  
 

"And there was the old fire horse, George remembered.  The horse was normally the motive power for the city dray; it hauled freight from the depot, etc.  But let the fire bell ring and the animal saw her duty and she did it.  Dray and all, she’d go tearing off for the firehouse to be hitched to the city fire pump.  The firehouse was known as "Firemen’s Hill" then, and was on the present site of the Armory. 
 

"George refers to Mary as his ‘Right Hand’ and says his wife is a great fisherwoman.  She’s been beating him hollow for years now, he added" 
 

Born April 28, 1865, George was a lifelong resident of Clark County with the exception of two years spent in the state of Washington.  There he worked in logging camps and saw mills.  His last logging winter was 1906-1907.   
 

He received his education in the rural schools of the county and worked in logging camps and drove logs down the river in the early days.  
 

After his marriage to Lottie Nelson of Neillsville they moved to Washington.  One daughter, Elsie, was born to them.  His second marriage to Mary Neff of Neillsville took place April 11, 1907.  One son, who died in infancy, was born to them.  They farmed in Pine Valley for seven and one-half years until 1914, when they sold their farm and moved to Neillsville.  Mr. Frantz was employed for several years in the canning factory and at the city park.  He retired about 20 years ago and had enjoyed excellent health, not knowing sickness.  He was a great outdoor enthusiast and enjoyed hunting and fishing.   
 

He was a member of Company ‘A’ for many years prior to 1898. 
 

Surviving relatives include his wife Mary, and one daughter, Elsie, Mrs. Earl Elwell, Evans, Wash., and two brothers, Conrad and Rudolph, both of Neillsville. 
 

Three brothers, Dave, Henry, and Fritz, and three sisters, Julia, Sophia and Minnie, preceded him in death.  

 

 


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