Colby, Clark Co., Wisconsin

Ira Kingsley and Elvira Malinda (Potts) Cole

Where did our family have our roots, you ask?  My dad, your grandfather, was born on May 30, 1858, at Greenarbour Farm, Laughton Parish, Yorkshire, England.  He was christened Henry James, the James for his father James Cade who was born in Yorkshire also, on April 18, 1822.  Dad's mother's name was Mary Mottram.  I know very little about her except for this one story which leads me to believe her to have been a very diplomatic mother.

One day she baked a little pie or cake for my dad and his brother George.  They began to fuss about who would cut it and how it should be divided as children will.  My grandmother Mary said, "Now, boys, one cut and t'other choose."

Dad had two sisters and two brothers:  Florence and Mary, George, who disappeared when he went to the Isle of Man for his health (some feared foul play) and William, who emigrated to America or Australia.   The Cades were tenant farmers and raised prize-winning sheep and beef cattle.  Grandma Mary died and  James had remarried before Dad came to America in 1871, stopping first in Milwaukee with his Uncle William Cade and then in Lisbon, Waukesha County, where he worked for and lived with The Alfred Weaver family.  I don’t know just when he came to Colby or why he chose Colby but after he was working there, his Dad and his new wife went through all his property and then, when he was penniless, wrote and asked my dad to take care of them.

About that time Dad had met auburn-haired, blue-eyed Almira Louise Cole of Colby and they were planning to be married.  When this letter came, Dad and Mother decided to put off their plans and to use the savings Dad had toward their home to go to England and see what could be done.  When he returned to this country, he brought his father with him.  The step­mother stayed behind in England, and was soon institutionalized.  Granddad promised to quit drinking, a promise he kept as long as he lived. 

Before I go on with the life of the new Cade home they founded, I must go back and tell some of the Cole history and explain how pretty Almira Louise Cole ended up in Colby and met her Englishman.

Grandpa Cole, Ira Kingsley Cole, but commonly called King Cole, was born in New York State to parents who had moved there from Connecticut a descendant of one of the founders of Hartford, Connecticut.  He was of quite a large family who moved to Defiance County, Ohio, while he was a child and in time married Elvira Malinda Potts.  Their children were all born in Ohio except for the youngest who was born in Minnesota and lived only a short time.

Almira Louise, who always used the name Myra Louise, was born December 21, 1864, a welcome Christmas gift to the young parents.  At about two-year intervals, came Mortimer Lorell, Jessie, and Ira Lewis.  When Lorell was soon to be born, Elvira told her mother that she had no idea what to name the baby if it was a boy.  Her mother said she would dream a name for him so she did.  That is how the unusual name of Mortimer Lorell came to be a part of the family.  Later three nephews were to be named for him.  He always used the name Lorell M.  When son Ira was a year old, in 1871, Grandpa Cole purchased a covered wagon and a team of oxen and started with his family and Elvira's mother, Dorcas Lucinda Hopkins Potts, to Hersey, Minnesota, in the southwestern part of the state.  Mother never told how and where they crossed the Mississippi River, but surely they crossed by ferry. 

Grandpa had served for a time in the Civil War and the land in Minnesota may have been granted him in payment for his service.  Mother used to tell of the long trip, a trip that truly exhausted their pregnant mother but charmed the children.  People were so good to them along the way and the overnight stops they occasionally made in people's homes meant so much to her mother.  Her mother’s brother Thomas and his wife, Olive, had moved to Owatonna, Minnesota, and the Cole party stopped for a few days with them.  In fact, Grandmother Potts spent some time with Thomas and Olive while Ira and Elvira went on to Hersey and got settled.  Then Grandma Potts went to live with them.

I have no way of knowing how long the trip took but it must have been months.  Did King have to build a house or did he find one abandoned by earlier settlers?  The house was rough; the upstairs, reached by a ladder, was just an unfinished loft. It was cold in Minnesota and lots of bedding was needed.  The mattresses were filled with corn husks, straw, or clean and dry prairie grass.  The covers were made of pieces from old shirts and dresses sewn into com­forters.  There were a few woolen blankets that Grandma Phoebe Cole had made back in Ohio of wool from their own sheep.  Hot rocks and bricks were wrapped in old cloths and placed in the beds to take some of the chill off.  Mother often told of the extreme cold up there.  Her sister Jessie was a lovely child to look at and was adored by her family, but she was a wee bit spoiled and considered older sister Myra her servant.  She always waited until Mother went to bed and warmed up Jessie's side of the bed for her.  Then Mother would have to warm the other side for herself.

Mother's and Aunt Jessie's only dolls were corn-husk dolls.  No doll of later generations was ever loved more than these dolls   One day while Grandma Cole was cooking, she heard the girls cry upstairs.  Upon investigation she found that Lorell had thrown the girls' corn-husk dolls down between the walls of the downstairs.  "Relly", as the girls called him, was an awful "pest".

King took his family to church whenever possible.  One Sunday they packed a picnic lunch, loaded the family into the ox cart and went off to church.  They left good crops growing and looking so full of promise.  When they returned in the afternoon, locusts or grasshoppers had descended and eaten everything, every blade of anything growing.  The side of the house was a solid mass of insects.  The crops had looked so wonderful that morning but were now deso­lation.  The coming winter was a hard winter.  The whole wheat kernel was ground into flour, and bread, very dark and called black bread, was made of this.  Mother said they had black bread and black-eyed beans for one meal and black-eyed beans and black bread for the next meal!  Yet they had each other and were thankful for that.

Christmas came and there was almost no money.  Grandpa took one of his precious pen­nies and bought a penny stick of candy.  Grandma took a bit of wrapping paper and a little precious flour to make a paste and made four tiny boxes.  Then, dividing the stick of candy into four, she put one piece in each little box--and that was Christmas.  Mother told often of making that tiny piece of candy last until spring by licking it once, then not swallowing until they had to, to keep the flavor as long as possible.

Winters were harsh and one neighbor was lost between his house and barn and was found when the snow melted in the place where he had frozen to death, only a few feet from the house.  Elvira wasn't about to let this happen to King; she tied a rope to him and to the house so he could find his way back.  After the storm lost some of its force, they tied the rope to both house and barn so there was a guide for future storms and a safe return to the house was assured. King was often gone from home doing carpenter work.  He was gone during a bliz­zard which began without Elvira's realizing it was coming since it was wash day and all the windows were frosted.  Grandma Potts, who lived with them, started to go out and get some wood and the door wouldn't open.  They opened a window and, with a rope tied around her waist, Grandma Potts made innumerable trips out and back, laying in a supply of wood.  Some of the wood was too large for burning and Lorell used his toy hammer and hatchet to try to split the wood.  Many years later when Lorell's son Dick was helping to clean up his father's shop, he found the hammer with a broken claw and was told the story.

When Lorell was sixteen, in 1882, his mother told his father that she had taught him all she could and, if the children were to be educated, she would have to take them back to Wisconsin where Uncle Charlie Cole and his family were going to settle.  I’m not sure which brother arrived in Wisconsin first, but Uncle Charlie and Aunt Sevilla moved to Wein in Marathon County, and later into Colby.  Ira agreed that they should give up the Min­nesota venture and they moved to Colby in Marathon County, Wisconsin.  This proved to be a happy move; King and Charlie did  carpenter work and cabinet-making.  Grandpa Ira also taught school several winters and he was foreman of the bridge and building department of the Wisconsin Central Railroad.  Later he became a rural mail carrier.  The children grew to young adulthood and received their education in Colby schools.  The Cole family was active in the Methodist Church in Colby.  Myra was ready to teach school when she met her young Englishman.  Lorell went to Stout Institute at Menomi­nee and later became head of the Department of Manual Arts at Millikin University at Decatur, Illinois.

The new Cade family was formed when Henry James Cade and Myra Louise Cole were married at East Colby, Wisconsin, October 23, 1884.  They set up housekeeping in a little house in the country on the edge of the woods near Colby.  Harry bargained to clear the timber off a space wanted for future farmland.  To reach his work, he walked a mile through fairly heavy woods.  He carried his sandwiches and coffee for his noon lunch.  The chickadees knew him as a friend and would share his lunch by sitting on his hand and eating from his sandwich.  He always loved and appreciated wild life and protected it where he could.

Often Myra would do what chores she needed to do and walk to meet Harry so they could be alone a little.  A small house and domineering father-in-law made it difficult to have any pri­vate conversations.  One evening as she was walking through the woods with her faithful dog Gyp as companion, she heard a rustle in the bushes.  Gyp's hair stood on end and he ran on ahead as though afraid.  Then Myra saw the reason for the dog's fear; a wildcat, or perhaps more properly, a bobcat, was following her.  She thought that if she began to run or to act afraid, it would likely attack her so she controlled her impulse to run and walked at the same rate of speed.  When they reached the clearing, the bobcat went off into the bushes at the other side of the road and disappeared.  This took place three or four months before the birth of her first baby, my brother George.

My father Harry, being English, felt it important to have a male heir and was happy when on the 29th of July in 1885, George Henry was born and named for his father and his father's favorite brother who had disappeared.  On that day, Dad took his pipe, put it away in a cup­board back of the stove, and said, "My boy will never learn to smoke from me."  He never smoked again.

On the 22nd of February in 1888, Lewis Lorell joined the family and a little over three years later, Jessie Florence was born.  She was a golden-haired darling and was named for her American aunt and for an English aunt, both of whom had died young.  Jessie's stay on earth was also short.  When the family lived in Neenah, she died of diphtheria at the age of three.  By this time, James Kingsley had been born and named for his two grandfathers.  After the death of Jessie, the family returned to Colby.

After returning to Colby, the family lived next door to the Hibbard family.  Everyone became aunt and uncle so they were Aunty Mitt and Uncle Clark.  Later, shortly before Mother's death, she and I visited the Hibbards at Sparta where he was a carpenter with the lumberyard there. 

James was a frail baby from the beginning and baby clothes Mother had ready for him were much too large for some time.  His tiny head would fit into a large coffee cup when born.  In spite of his slow start, Mother raised him and he lived to be a white-haired man in his seven­ties.

The family continued to live at Colby, Grandpa Cade still with them.  George, Lewis, and Jim grew and developed as the years went by. 

I must tell a bit about Grandpa Cade before I go on.  He was a man of many quirks.  One day he was out in the yard and near a triangular spot bordered on one side by the trough from the windmill and on another by the barnyard fence.  He stood on the third side of this triangle, striking out with the walking stick he always carried, and calling, "Myrie, Myrie, come quick.  There's a snake out here and it's running its tongue out at me."  He had never seen a snake until he came to this country and was deathly afraid of them.  This particular snake was only a little garter snake. 

Grandpa always had a mind of his own. In the winter it was his responsibility to keep the wood-box full.  The wood box was by one of the two doors, but when he brought wood in, he would load a hand sled, bring sled and all in the door across the room from the wood-box, and pull it across the room to unload. One day just after Mother had cleaned the floor, he did this.  Mother protested and he replied, "It's naught but clean dirt."

A Cole family reunion was planned for the summer of 1906.  Ira Cole and his wife Tena thought their three-year-old Lorell would be the baby of the reunion and bragged that it would be so.  Mother said nothing, but on December 19, 1905, I was born in the Cade home in Coloma Corners, Waushara County, a little girl nearly thirteen years younger than her youngest brother and so long after the Cades had lost little Jessie; I was born two days before my mother's 42nd birthday.  The new baby was so special that she had to be named for everyone.  Vira, part of Grandma Cole's name Elvira was added to part of Aunt Tena's name, Albertine and this combination became Viratine.  Eleanor was added as a second name for a lifelong friend, Eleanor Prosser.  Oh, my!  Aunt Gertie would feel hurt so Gertrude was added as a third name.  Gertie was hurt anyway because she was last of this very long name.  Big brother George used to tease me by calling me, Viratine Eleanor Gertrude Cade XYZ.  I'd "pop" with indignation.

The reunion?  Viratine was still not the baby of the reunion; Aunt Gertie brought four- week-old George as a surprise to everyone.

Lewis died when I was about a year old; he was riding a horse after the cows when the horse stepped in a gopher hole and threw him.  Shortly after, he developed meningitis and died.  The family took him to Colby and buried him beside sister Jessie and Grandpa Cade who had died two years earlier.

The boys always had pets: squirrels, chipmunks, woodchucks, cats, and dogs.  One wood­chuck was so tame that he loved to be in the house.  When hungry, he would sit up, pull Mother's apron, and beg for bread and milk.

The family inherited a love of horses from our English father and thought a lot of a team of bays Dad had raised. The horses, Prince and Billy, were half-brothers, and were well-matched in markings.  Both were nice horses and neither was a favorite.  However, one day when Jamie heard kittens in Prince's manger and slapped him, wanting him to get over, but forgetting to speak before he slapped, as Father had taught him to do, poor Prince was startled and kicked Jim, leaving him hurt and unconscious against the barn wall.  Jamie hovered between life and death for a year. Finally Dr. Wood said he was puzzled and asked that they call in our old doctor from Colby.  Dr. Wood felt that Jim couldn't live more than a day or two at most.  Mother said that if he couldn't live, at least he was going to have what water he wanted to drink.  This started him vomiting and rid his body of the poison.  By morning he was so much better and Dr. Freeman was there.  When Dr. Wood came, he asked Dr. Freeman what he had been giving him.  Dr. Freeman was always a crusty individual and replied, "Thank you, I don't stick my nose into any man's business." Jim began to mend; it was several years before he was completely well, but eventually he recovered completely.

At this time we had a short-nosed collie called Roger.  It was well we did.  He took over the task of looking out for me while Mother was busy with Jamie.  Wherever I went, Roger went, and he wouldn't let any harm come to me.  Mother would bundle me up and turn me loose and Roger would take over much as Nana, the dog nurse in Peter Pan.  Roger was a very intelli­gent dog in other ways.  Dad would tell him to go to the pasture and get a certain cow and he would come back with only the one cow. When I was about five, I lost my beloved Roger.  He got a fish hook in his foot and died of blood poisoning.

Brother George met Genevieve Butters, whom he later married, and brought her home to meet the family.  She won my heart by playing in the sand pile with me and my dolls.  Her dress was a wonder to behold: fitted at the hips with many gores, sleeves puffed on the upper arm and fitted tightly on the lower arm, the whole trimmed with lots of braid.  The collar was of a stand-up variety with stays to hold it in place.  Several starched petticoats were worn under a dress at that time.  Her hat was a masterpiece: a huge wagon-wheel variety, trimmed with ostrich plumes and ribbons and worn to show off the pompadour hairdo.  It was all in a shade of pink and very lovely to my childish eyes.

Genevieve came from quite a large family and the older sister, Celia, had taught the younger members of the family.  Genevieve always said that Celia was the toughest teacher she had ever had and really made it harder for her brothers and sisters than for the rest of the students because she didn't want people to say she favored her own.

George and Genevieve's wedding was at Spencer on October 18, 1910.  I cried at first that my beloved big brother was getting married, but when I was told that I would have a sister, I decided it would be a good idea.  We went by train to visit Grandpa and Grandma Cole at Colby, then on to the wedding.  Jamie was to be George's Best Man; while he was splitting wood for Grandma Cole, a piece of wood struck him and split his head open.  George had a Best Man who wore a turban like an oriental.  However, the bride was lovely in  blue satin with a cartwheel hat to match.  I was so thrilled with her dress as mine was also blue, made of china silk.

The new couple lived in Packwaukee for a while, then moved to Colby and lived upstairs in Grandpa and Grandma Cole's house. 

My Dad owned a succession of general stores in several small towns in the area so we moved often.  But we visited often in Colby, going by a dirty train, which always made me so ill.  It was fun to get to Grandma's and Grandpa's though.  Grandpa was a kindly man with a white beard and twinkling blue eyes.  Grandma was a tiny person who always had big sugar cookies for a little girl.  Uncle Charlie and Aunt Seville lived near Colby.  An often remembered story was of a time when Jamie was little and the family visited them.  Before they went, Mother instructed Jamie not to beg for food.  Aunt Seville's pies held too much  attraction for the little boy, so when Mother was out of the room, he pulled at his aunt's skirt and said, "I want some XYZ and that spells pie."

The most attractive thing to me at Colby was Grandpa's buggy that he used to deliver mail.  It was a boxlike vehicle with a door that opened so mail could be put into the rural boxes, and a little desk where Grandpa  cancelled stamps with a pen.  A slot in the front allowed the reins to go through so he could guide his horse.  Another slot, larger and higher, was covered with glass or isinglass so he could see where he was going.  Heated rocks, a lantern, or hot iron helped to keep him warm in winter.  This was a lovely little house on wheels.  Memories of Colby are special to me. 

The Cole Photo Album