Bio: Rowe, William
Contact: Loyal Public Library 

----Source: Excerpt from "The Centennial History of the York Center United Methodist Church, 1880 - 1980..

ROWE FAMILY

It was 1876 when Mr. and Mrs. William Rowe and son, Walter came from Sheboygan Co. and Mr. and Mrs. Horace Lawrence, Sr. and family came with them. It was early winter. The neighbors had built a log house and a barn for the oxen but the land had not yet been surveyed so there were no property lines established, but the neighbors thought they knew. As it turned out they were on the wrong side of the road and so the next spring they had to build another set of buildings on the south side of the road. The Lawrences already had a house built. The task then was to clear the land so that they could raise crops. It took a long time to get much done as oxen were quite slow.

To get groceries from town they either had to walk or take the oxen with a "boat" on which to haul things home. There were no roads, just trails throughout the woods.

The trip from Sheboygan Co. took about 14 days as they had to cut their own road through some of the timber and brush.

As the country opened up the people started to build with lumber rather than logs. Mr. Rowe was a good carpenter and worked at building new barns and houses for many people. The wages were small and they worked at that job in the summer and in the woods in the winter, earning enough money at the logging to live on. When the harvest fields opened up in the Augusta area, the men went there to work, shocking grain and threshing it and also putting up hay.

Milford's mother was Sadie Graves. Her parents were Mr. and Mrs. Walter Graves. They, with their two children, moved up from Eden in Fond du Lac County in 1892 and bought the Sam Gibson land on which to farm. It is the present Rowe farm. Sadie, their daughter, taught in the nearby schools, Merry Vale and Romadka, for a number of years before her marriage to Walter Rowe of York Center. Milford and Verla are the children of the couple. (See Verla Hales).

Milford then bought the home place. He married Irene Counsell of Neillsville. They have two children, Shirley Ahlborn of Minocqua and Donald on the home farm.

Mr. and Mrs. William Rowe had quite a large family of children. They were Walter, Jennie (Fulwiler), Ernest, Jesse, Vernon, Glen, and Forest. Walter stayed in farming but the rest of the family took to the cities for employment.

Sadie Rowe was very active in church work and played the organ for many years. Walter Rowe and Robert Teatz and the minister at the time, Rev. Chatterson, surveyed the cemetery into lots and lined up the tombstones.