December 1879

The bridge on the dam at the Dells, which is to supply the place of the bridge now in use in the Town of Levis, is nearly completed and will soon, be ready for use.                                              

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The wisdom of our country fathers in providing a janitor for the Courthouse is already evident in the improved appearance of the building and grounds.                                                                      

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The Eau Claire Lumber Company has just completed the boss flood dam on the south Fork of the Eau Claire River, the dam being located on Section 34, Town 28, and Range 3 west.  The dam is six hundred and forty feet in length, with sixteen feet head and ample flowage to create a reservoir sufficient, in connection with the other two dams on the same stream, to enable the company to command the stream at any stage of water, thus enabling a drive at any time, getting logs to lumbering market, as a safe business. 

(That dam would have been located on the southern edge of the Town of Reseburg, east of Bachelors Avenue and south of Cloverdale Road. DZ)                                                                                

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Hank Myers mourns the loss of his three canary birds, that all fell in one swoop, during one of the cold nights the latter part of last week.                                      

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James Woods has purchased Mrs. Wood’s interest in the business of Hewett & Woods and will hereafter conduct the business in his own name.                                                                  

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The people of Neillsville came forward last week with their usual benevolence and made Mr. Al Lyon’s recent loss by fire about $100 lighter by a purse of that amount.                                      

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Fred Klopf has purchased of James O’Neill, Jr. the property now occupied as a barbershop and millinery store on Main Street, including the barn and a few feet of land west of it.  It is safe to say that Mr. Klopf will at no very distant day build a nice brick block on the lots.                                                                          

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A meeting of the citizens of Pine Valley was held pursuant to call, at the Presbyterian Church, last Wednesday evening, for the purpose of making arrangements for getting up a general Christmas tree.  James O’Neill Jr. was appointed chairman of a general committee with power to appoint subcommittees that will meet Saturday at 2 o’clock p.m. sharp.

The meeting was well attended and the general desire manifested was to make it free and open for all, irrespective of class or sect, to provide presents for the children of the town, especially of the poorer class.  It is the day of all, whether called upon or not, to help make this the best Christmas festival every held in the town.

(It is interesting to note that during the late 1800s, a Christmas party was then referred to as a “Christmas Tree.”DZ)

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Lowe Brothers have bought F. D. Lindsay’s property on Main Street, now occupied by the express office.  They express their intention of putting up, in time, a substantial brick building, to be used as a meat market.

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If there is not already a law to prevent people from leaving their cows to lie in the street at night, in such weather as we have been having, with perhaps as much of a lack of feed as of shelter, there ought to be one.

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Dixon and Laramie have once more moved their barbershop, this time for the better again.  They now occupy Judge Dewhurst’s front office and present one of the cleanest, neatest and most inviting barber shops to be found in the state.

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The contract for stone was given to Thomas Northup at $5.50 per cord.  Henry Lap took the contract for cutting timber on the Poor Farm and hauling it to Visgar’s mill, one and three-fourths miles east, then hauling lumber back to the farm when cut, at $2.25 per thousand.  The contract price for cutting the lumber is $3.25, which will make it about as cheap a lot of lumber as could possibly be obtained.  No specific plan for the building has yet been adopted, but it has been generally agreed upon that it will consist of a main part, principally for the use of the farm overseer and family with a large wing for the use of paupers.  The committee will meet again soon and adopt a plan.      

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Neillsville now boasts a candy factory, which has recently been opened in the room north of the Neillsville Bank, by a Mr. W. H. Woodward of New York.                                                                                                      

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The stave business has already become a very important one in this vicinity.  Several buyers are now in the field here and prices have already advanced materially over what was first paid.  For the standard wine cask-stave, four feet long, four and a-half inches wide, and an inch think, $13 per thousand is now being paid.  These staves are shipped to Europe, where they are used almost wholly for handling wines and liquors.  Shorter staves for various purposes are also being bought at prices varying with their length.  There is no end of the demand for these staves, and there is hardly a section in the United States where better timber for the purpose is found.  The price now paid is probably insufficient to make it much of an object to get them out, but with a little better railroad facilities, which we shall soon have, the land owners in this county will have a harvest from their hard wood timber that they have little dreamed of.

December 1944

For nearly nine years, the owners of the Neillsville Milk Products Cooperative left in its treasury one cent for every pound of butterfat. This plan of financing was adopted to buy, improve and equip the present modern dairy plant.  A growing and loyal membership persisted in this policy until seven million cents had been saved and invested.  The job was completed in 1942.  Thus 1943 is the first year in which the members have enjoyed the full fruits of their thrift, for the investment is now their own.

The members now possess one of the finest dairy plants in this section, with substantial buildings and modern, efficient equipment.  The present value is well up toward $100,000, the worthy home of a worthy institution.

Checks have gone out to more than 500 individuals, in payment of the fourth annual dividend of 3 per cent.

Since 1940, the Cooperative has been so solidly based that annual dividends were conservatively justified.

The company keeps on growing.  In the year 1943, they added a modern powdering plant.  This has made it possible to powder the greater part of the whole milk during the last half of 1943, that being the most profitable outlet.

They now have a wide choice of products, ranging from butter and cheese to milk powder and casein.

Personnel: Ferd Hrach, Jr. President; William Zank, Vice Pres.; Herman Schoenherr, Secretary and Treasurer; F. A. Viergutz Gen. Mgr.

Directors:  Herman Schoenherr - 1944; Frank Dobes - 1944; William Zank - 1945; Steve Rosandich - 1945; Paul Schultz - 1946; Ferd Hrach, Jr. - 1946

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On Thursday, December 7, anniversary of Pearl Harbor, Loyal will unveil its memorial to her service men and women of the current war.  The exercises will be held in the high school gymnasium at 8 o’clock.  Principal speaker will be James Dutton, attorney at Marshfield.  Others on the program will be Fred Lakosky, village president; Arthur Stadler chairman of the county board; Myron Duncan of Owen; Dorothy Kannenberg of Loyal and the Loyal High School band.

The plaque, first of its kind and intended to serve as a model for those in other communities of the county, contains the names of Loyal’s Veterans of the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II.

It stands five feet in height and is three feet wide.  To the left of the names in the honor roll is a “Minute Man” statue, and two eagles flank the top of the plaque.  Several oak leaves also adorn the memorial.

In charge of the program, which will be held in the high school auditorium, are the village of Loyal, the Loyal Rotary Club and American Legion Post No. 175.  The program is public.              

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One hundred and twenty-two little spruce trees have come to Neillsville to make Christmas merry. They were escorted into the city by the Rotarians and were placed by them through the business section.  They made the Old Home Town look as much like Christmas as it could in the war-forced absence of electric lights.

The little Christmas trees were harvested last Sunday by member of the Rotary Club, who went to Wildcat Mound, where they cut the trees under the direction of Al Covell, the county forester.

The Rotarians left Neillsville at about 9 o’clock and were back at noon.  They gathered again right after dinner and did the decorating.  In the afternoon, they had the help of the Brownie Scouts, who offered their services through Mr. Oluf Botnen and Mrs. Don Schwantes.  There were a lot of Brownies on the job, and they busied themselves in cleaning up the trimmings, as the Rotarians progressed with their work.

For the Brownies, one more opportunity loomed as it become evident that the shields holding the greens upon the lampposts were not as white as snow.  Those shields, intended to be white, had evidently been stored a year in a place, which was not white and they needed their faces washed.  Except for this Saturday night job of giving the shields a bath, the job of decorating for Christmas has been done up brown, as brown and Brownies and Rotarians could do it.

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For the morning worship service of Zion Evangelical and Reformed Church Sunday, which was dedicated to the Indian Mission School, the seating capacity of the church was taxed to the utmost.  Rev. Be n Stucki spoke, and Miss Gretchen Hauser, a teacher at the school presided at the organ.  A Christmas song, “The Gospel Light” was sung by two girls from the school and the entire group of school children sang, “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”  The men’s chorus of the church sang, “Savior Again to Thy Dear Name.”  Donations to the school amounted to 125 quarts of canned goods and $48 in cash.  The Indian School Boy Scouts appeared for the first time in their scout caps and neckerchiefs.                                                                                                

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Oscar Teeples of the Hatfield Power House and his son, S/Sgt. Robert Teeples, who has a 30-day furlough from a camp in the South Pacific, were supper guests of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Olson and family last Wednesday evening.  Sgt. Teeples has spent 32 months in the South Pacific, leaving with the Marshfield unit of the National Guard in October, 1940.  Later he transferred to the Neillsville unit and was attached to the 128th Infantry Service Co.  He has seen much action and had many narrow escapes.                                                                                  

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Mrs. Cora D. Cannon has been interred in the Loyal Cemetery.  She taught school in the vicinity of Loyal before her marriage, her maiden name being Gwinn.  She as an aunt of Hugh Gwinn, former district attorney and made her home with him several years.  She died at the home of her cousin, Mrs. Isaac Sisco, in Thorp.  She was born in 1865 in Black River Falls, and was married in 1889 to Chester C. Cannon.  Mr. Cannon died within a few months after their marriage.

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Globe Community Christmas Holiday news: The Christmas celebration went badly for little Franklin Meier, who was the guest of his grandparents, the Richard Hagedorns.  He fell down the cellar steps and cut his head.  It took six stitches to put him together again; Miss Hildegarde Schumann came from Red Wing, Minn., to spend her Christmas vacation at the home of her parents, Rev. and Mrs. Adolph Schumann; Mrs. Kurt Schoenherr and sons of Columbus came up to spend the holidays with her home folks, and also was a guest at the home of her sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Herman Dux, for a few days; Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Howard and family have moved to their farm home, which they purchased from Forest Klueckmann;

Mr. and Mrs. Hugo Klauer celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on Christmas Day.  The Ladies Aid, of which Mrs. Klauer is a member, came with filled baskets for a well planned supper.  Rev. Schumann gave a very interesting talk. They were married at Helenville, Wis. and immediately came to the Town of Seif, which has been their home since.

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An important postwar project, as far as Wisconsin is concerned, is the modernization and improvement of the equipment, which serves and the plants, that house the vital and great Wisconsin dairy manufacturing industry.

That is the opinion of scientists and planners at the Wisconsin college of agriculture, who estimate that the refurnishing and modernization job would require an outlay of about 30 million dollars.

The college experts noted that the cheese industry ought to ponder the advisability of pasteurization of milk before cheese manufacture and the development if new commercial uses for whey, a manufacturing by-product, for greater profits and stability in that essential element of the general dairy business of the state.

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William Arch, the son of Louis Arch and the late Mrs. Louis Arch, has been awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action on the Italian front.

He serves in the 338th Infantry Regiment, 85th Custer Division, part of Lt. Gen. Mark Clark’s Fifth Army.

Arch led a squad in repelling a numerically superior force of attacking Germans in a two-hour fight.  The enemy was heavily armored with automatic weapons and rocket launchers.  When an enemy machine gun was moved into position, Arch destroyed it with a hand grenade.

“His gallant and heroic leadership in reacting speedily to the enemy attack,” the citation stated “enabled the squad to repel the onslaught, resulting in the capture of three German soldiers, one of whom was a commanding officer, and secured the strategic position for the platoon.

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