News: Clark County – Historical Society (Dec 1965)

Contact: stan@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Teeples, Vorland, Keskimaki, Scherf, Scott, Cattanach, Wolf, Listeman, Sturdevant

---------Source: OWEN ENTERPRISE (Owen, Clark County, Wis.) 16 Dec 1965

All officers of the Clark county Historical Society, which was chartered June 25, 1965, were reelected at a meeting of the organization at Colby Thursday evening. They are as follows:

Miss Violet Teeples, Hatfield, president; Mrs. Pearl Vorland, Colby, first vice president; Mrs. Martin Keskimaki, Withee, second vice president; Miss Natalie Scherf, Withee, Treasurer, and Jess Scott, Neillsville, secretary. The members also elected: Mrs. Nina Cattanach, Owen, corresponding secretary, which is a new office established to assist the secretary.

The members voted to dispense with the January and February meetings and hold the next meeting the first Thursday evening in March 1966 in the REA building in Greenwood.

Rev. Gale Wolf, Neillsville, addressed the chapter on “Our American Heritage and the Preservation of Nature’s Beauty.”

Kurt Listeman, Neillsville, a charter member of the chapter, spoke on “encouraging Thinking and Appreciation by our Youth at an Early Age.” “If we fail to teach young people of our rich American heritage when they are young, they will not grow up into the substantial type of citizens we would have the be,” Listeman said.

Jess Scott, program chairman, announced that the chapter is working on the approval of historical markers for the moraine in southern Clark County; the Danish settlement in Withee; the birthplace of Major General Clarence Sturdevant, father of the Alcan Highway, and a marker at Colby, the origin of famous Colby cheese.

Our chapter, Scott said, “desires to perpetuate the history, and sell the beauty of Clark County. Objectives include planting of trees in 1966, eliminating litter along highways, forests and parks, and hope to locate a one room rural school building in our county, in a city or village where it will have police protection. If available, it will be painted red and furnished as near as possible with desks and other equipment as those were furnished in early Clark County history,” Scott told the society.

Miss Scherf announced she had registered eight new members to bring the chapter membership to 125.