News: Clark Co. - New County (28 Feb 1878)

Contact: Robert Lipprandt

Email: bob@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Cook, Edminster, Rice, Seyler

----Source: The Stevens Point Journal (Stevens Point, WI) 02/28/1878

We have lost our new county; but if the saying is true, that we cannot lose that which we never had, then we have surely not lost much.

But whether little or much it is something that the people in general have desired and worked for ever since the population along the line of the Central in the proposed territory, has been large enough to warrant us being set off by ourselves.

If the little town of Neillsville thinks that the enterprising people along this line are going to submit long to being tied to her apron strings, she is much mistaken. If she can through the treachery and misrepresentations secure enough influence by the aid of a few renegade people in our midst, to defeat the wishes of our intelligent people before the Legislature, in the matter of a new county, compelling us to go fifty and sixty miles to the county seat to do business, she will find out that we can lessen that distance very much by bring the county seat very much nearer to the center of population.

During the four years that we have tried to get a new county, we have expended enough within the proposed territory in sending chairmen of town boards to the county seats to transact our business, to build all the county buildings that we would need for the next twenty years.

Instead of being too poor to organize a new county, it is a matter of economy with us to have our county seat in our midst, when it would not cost us twenty dollars every time we wished to go to it.

We have lost the new county, but there is on thing that Neillsville and her clique cannot cheat us out of, and this is our new tram road that Mr. J. S. Edminster is building to get his stock of logs to the mill on.

If the people of Neillsville were as energetic as Mr. Edminster, they would not need the help of this splendid section of country to support them.

Mr. Edminster is bound to get in a good stock of logs, whether there be any snow or not, and to that end, he is building a tram road four miles long, to where he was a large stock of as find pine longs as one would ever wish to see. He has one mile of road complete, the ties and rails being laid and the road being cut the rest of the way. In about two weeks he will be hauling, if he has no drawbacks.

The firms of Rice & Bro. and Seyler & Cook are building his cars for the road, and as he has his own teams, he can get the logs with but little extra expense.

Mr. Edminster has made many improvements on his place this year. He has cleared about thirty acres of land and built a large barn, one hundred and seventy-five feet long, which is complete in all its appointments, and painted up in good style. Let the good work go on.