October 1881

When you want anything in the line of pipes, call on Sol. F. Jaseph.  He keeps the best assortment and sells the cheapest.

At Sol. F. Jaseph’s you will find 35 different brands of Smoking Tobacco and 12 of the best brands of plug Tobacco.

At Sol F. Jaseph’s you can buy Groceries cheaper than any other place in town. 

Also, Candy and Nuts, buy the carload.                                                                

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At the residence of Thomas Garvin on Monday, October 24th, 1881, Willie U. Wright, and Anna M Garvin were united in wedlock, by Rev. Harvey Palmer, of Pine Valley.  Mr. Wright is a station agent here for the C. St. P. M. & O. Company.  Their many friends in this vicinity and elsewhere wish them much joy in their new relationship, and many years of connubial happiness.                                                                                           

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Town of York News:

The people of York are looking forward with pleasure to the prospect of a railroad through here.  It’s just what we want to carry off and use up our surplus timber.

The bridge at Visgar’s mill is being rebuilt by Frank Osgood, and the bridge over the North Fork of O’Neill Creek is being built, by Messrs. Johnson and Gibson.

Potatoes are rotting badly in the fields.  John Dwyer claims to have raised 600 bushels.

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The village is surrounded, hemmed in, and characterized by woods, and yet it is in perpetual hot water because a shortage of firewood.  Some farmer of an enterprising turn should cord up a lot of wood here in town, so it can be bought when country roads are impassable.  A person living in town could act as an agent in selling it.

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An open winter has been predicted, and the impression appears to be general that is the sort of a winter we are to have.  Lumbermen, however, will put in their camps as usual and there will be no letup in the pineries.  Immense contracts are to be filled, and the hundreds of choppers, teamsters, cooks, and such, will flock through the village as in years past, and enlist for the winter’s war on the forests.                                                           

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This is a big time for the boys and girls.  Our educational institution is “clean gone busted” on the wood question, and as a result Tuesday afternoon was a holiday for the school children.  Furnaces don’t heat up much without wood, and wood is a luxury in the market at Present.  A “young one” now and then remarks that the new furnaces aren’t a brilliant success, but we learn from Principal Deming that thus far, owing to the delicate state of the wood pile, the furnaces have done duty on “short rations.”                                                                                                         

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Prof. Begar opens his dancing studio school this evening at Fireman’s Hall beginning at 8 o’clock.  It will no doubt be attended by numbers of young people who desire to acquire the new modes and he is in a village where he will be appreciated.  A juvenile class will be formed this afternoon at 4 o’clock.  Not being acquainted with Prof. Begar, we cannot speak of his acquirements, but knowing dancing to be a very graceful pastime, recommend all to embrace the opportunity to learn dancing.                                                                                             

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Shop at Hewett’s store and get a pound of Baking Powder with a silver teaspoon in the can.  Every can contains a silver-plated teaspoon.                                                                                                         

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On last Monday, the bus line was compelled to suspend business, the roads not having frozen hard enough to bear a team of horses over some of the unavoidable mud-holes, so passengers to and from trains were obliged to watch their chance and go a-foot.                                                                                                             

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The old iron bridge, formerly in use at the Dalles, which now is spanning the river at Greenwood, was formally donated to the Towns of Eaton and Warner by the “country fathers” last week.

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That the license money received for the sale of intoxicating liquors by the towns in counties having adopted the county system of caring for the poor belongs to the county, has been legally established, and yet, in this county the Towns of Eaton, Mayville, and Mentor are the only towns that have complied with that requirement since the county poor system was adopted.                                                                                             

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Early last spring a pocketbook containing a sum of money was picked up, on the road near Hewettville by the proprietor of this paper.  The property was advertised in this and other papers for several weeks, but failed to bring the owner, and we still have the pocketbook and money.  That it was lost by someone who had been at work in the woods is our belief, and this notice is published for the purpose of bringing the matter to the notice of the person by whom it was lost, should he chance to seek employment in this locality again this winter.

November 1941

Mud of soup-like consistency has all but halted operations on the relocation of four and a-half miles of Highway 73 south and east of Neillsville.

While farmers have been having their troubles to get their fall work in the fields done because of an unusually wet autumn, the construction crews on Highway 73 have been able to work but 23 out of the first 60 days on the job between Shortville and Hiawatha School in Pine Valley.  This was revealed early this week by the records of Fred Boak, construction superintendent for the Turner Construction Company of Boscobel, contractors.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Boak declared, had it not been that work on cattle passes could be carried on when the moving of dirt could not, the work record would be even more dismal.

“With favorable weather from now,” he stated, “we will finish in short order.  But if we do not get the breaks in weather, I’m afraid of the kind of a road it will be next spring.”                               

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Mrs. Phoebe Hutchinson of Humboldt, Ia., a former resident of the locality, celebrated her 90th birthday Oct. 18.

Mrs. Hutchinson was born in Buffalo, N. Y. coming here as a young lady with her father, six sisters and a brother.  Soon after their arrival she was married to Arthur Hutchinson.

Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson kept the Pleasant Ridge post office that was located on their farm, which is now owned by Mr. and Mrs. James Hughes.  Many older people around here remember stopping as children at the post office, when going home from school, to get the mail.

About 60 years ago, they moved to Neillsville for a short time, then they moved to Bradgate, Ia., where Mr. Hutchinson died.  Shortly after his death, Mrs. Hutchinson and her family moved to Humboldt.

Mrs. Hutchinson has many relatives and friends here.

(The Hutchinson 80-acre farm was located on the east side of what is now Pray Avenue, between Hwy 10 and Ridge Road.  The Kurth School was located on their property, a short distance from Hwy 10.  DZ)

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Turkey, Goose, and Duck Shoot!  Sunday, Nov. 9, at Riverside Pavilion.  Open All Day Sunday!  Free Admission, Hard Time Dance in the Evening & Last Dance of Season.  Everyone is Welcome!

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Anecdotes of pioneer Neillsville men who helped to build the city and county and who started Masonry on its way here 75 years ago highlighted the Golden Jubilee Celebration of Neillsville Masonic Chapter here las Friday evening.

The man who told the stories was C. R. Sturdevant, oldest living past master of the chapter, who knew as a youth many of the prominent early men of the territory.  With sparkling wit and keen memory of the past, Mr. Sturdevant turned the dry subject of “The History of Masonry in Neillsville” into a vital, living thing and kept the 100 members and guests who gathered for the banquet rocking in their seats with his stories about Dr. B. F. French, the first worshipful master of the Neillsville lodge.

Dr. French was an uncle of Mr. Sturdevant, and he was a self-made man.  Prominent in affairs of Clark County at a time when it was composed of one township, Pine Valley and included all of Taylor County in its area, the good doctor did about as most people nowadays would like to do, he shaped his life as he pleased.

First, Dr. French set great store by books, and through prolific reading made himself almost whatever he wanted to be.  When he wanted to become a doctor, he read all the books on doctoring that he could get hold of, and then hung up his shingle.  He was a successful physician, and the first in Neillsville.

But after a few years, doctoring became boring to Dr. French, he decided to become a lawyer.  So, he read all the books he could find on law.  Before he had been admitted to the bar, Dr. French was elected district attorney of Clark County.  When he appeared before the circuit judge for admission to the bar, Mr. Sturdevant recalled, the judge remarked that as long as the people of Clark County had enough confidence in him to elect him district attorney, he, the judge, ought not stand in his way.  Thus Dr. French became the first resident lawyer residing in Neillsville.

It was with such sidelights that Mr. Sturdevant punctuated the drabber factual history of Masonry in Neillsville.  Dr.

French, upon whom Mr. Sturdevant dwelt on in length, was one of the charter members of the Neillsville Lodge.  The others were: George M. Kling, E. H. McIntosh, E. H. Bacon, A. J. Manley, James Furlong, and J. P. Thompson.

At first, the lodge operated under a special dispensation, granted by M. L. Young, grand master of the State of Wisconsin, and W. T. Palmer, grand secretary.  The special dispensation was granted August 3, 1866, and the charter was granted in October 1866.

(Neillsville’s first hospital was established by Dr. French, who provided nursing care in a couple of rooms kept aside for patients in his large residence that was located on the northeast corner of Hewett and Fourth Street.

On the humorous side, a story was told that Doc, French has been a master-mind in the plot of setting up a barrel of “free” whiskey on the north bank of O’Neill Creek on the election day when votes were to be cast in deciding which village, Weston Rapids or Neillsville would become the county seat.  Voters from the Weston Rapids area had to walk the narrow shaky bridge to reach the poll site on the north side and if they were imbibed from the whiskey, well, you can imagine the result. DZ)                                                                                        

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Preparations are being made to reopen the old bank in Chili about December 1st as a branch of the Central State Bank of Marshfield.  The old bank building was bought recently by a group of Chili businessmen.

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Miss Anna Belle Gassen daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Gassen, Neillsville, and Private Ralph Bauer, son of Mrs. Frank Bauer, Medford, were united in marriage on Wednesday, Nob. 19, at 8:30 a.m. at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Father J. A. Biegler officiating.  The single ring ceremony was used.

Mary Ellen Gassen, Neillsville, sister of the bride, and Jack Bauer, Medford, the groom’s brother attended the couple.

The bride was attired in a street length dress of gold silk with brown velvet trim and matching accessories of brown and gold.  Her flowers were a combination of brown, yellow, and gold baby pompons.  Her attendant wore a gown of beige wool crepe with brown accessories, her flowers being brown and gold pompons.

A wedding breakfast was served at the Merchants Hotel, with eighteen immediate relatives present.  The table was decorated in pink and white, lighted tappers, and a wedding cake being the outstanding features.  At the reception, which was held at the Gassen home that afternoon, Miss Mary Ellen Bauer, sister of the groom, sang “Ave Maria.”

The bride was graduated from Neillsville High School in 1939.  For some time, she has been employed as a clerk at Schultz Bros. Store.  The groom is a graduate of the Medford high School, completing his course with the class of 1938.  Before entering the army, he clerked in a store.  He has been stationed at Camp Davis, North Carolina, for the past six months, returning to camp the latter part of the week.  The bride will continue to make her home in Neillsville.

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Become a league bowler at Neillsville Recreation Lanes.

Relax at lunchtime or after a day of routine work by bowling!  Meet your buddies here or make new friends, while playing our modern alleys, the best of Central Wisconsin.  You will find bowling a grand sport and lots of fun.

Bowling costs 20¢ per person for First Line and 15¢ per person each successive line.

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Gambles Stores Hunting Specials!

Hunting License $1.00; Deer Tags, $1.00;

Ask about Hunters’ Insurance Policy, $1.00.

Double Quilted Brown Gloves, 15¢ per pair.

(*An Oops! Due to an error in last week’s “Good Old Days” article, the year 1951 was omitted, which should have been placed above the Hiawatha School paragraph. DZ) (*note I the transcriber, caught that error and fixed it.  Thanks, DMK)

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