History: Greenwood, Wisconsin (1909) Greenwood Gleaner 29 Jul 1909)

Contact: janet@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

----Source: 1909 Greenwood History, Originally published by Max C. Baldwin in the Greenwood Gleaner, Enhanced and edited and compiled with various photo collections by Janet & Stan Schwarze.  Copyright 2008

1909 Greenwood History

Originally published by Max C. Baldwin in the Greenwood Gleaner

Enhanced and edited and compiled by Janet & Stan Schwarze.

Copyright 2008

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Source: Greenwood Gleaner 10/28/1909

The Home of Dr. Hale W. Hunt on North Andrew's Avenue.

One of Greenwood's Pioneer residents and businessmen.

Owing to the illness of the editor during the past week we are obliged to omit our usual installment of the history of Greenwood for this issue.  However, we are glad to print below a letter from a former Greenwood resident, which bears upon many of the events in Greenwood history.  We are glad of the corrections Bert L. Bailey has made and hope the rest of the old settlers will lend their aid as readily in searching out the facts of this valuable and interesting history.

A LETTER FROM A WESTERN FRIEND

Portland, Ore., Oct. 13, 1909

Editor Gleaner: I want to congratulate you, and the town, on the many evidences of zeal and industry revealed in the paper’s columns of late.  You are certainly doing your part towards getting out the best local paper I’ve seen for many a day.  I don’t know how it looks at close range, but from a distance of some two thousand miles, it doe look good.  It seems to me, that for county news generally you are doing very well, while your “features,” if I may cal them such must be appreciated by all your readers.  Your “Clark County Land Transfers” must carry interesting intelligence in every issue to most of your readers.

Your “Editorial Comments” has but one marked fault – brevity,  That is the part of the paper which especially helps the reader to see men and events as “Others see” them, and so long as you philosophize on subjects worthy of discussion, you are doing no insignificant work as an educator.

Your “Retrospect,” to, is a good idea, in my estimation.  In my own case, it seems like a chat with an old friend, to read lightly, as the friend, perhaps now dead, would have spoken lightly, of some trifling occurrence, many of the gems of humor of those other days are not recorded in the back numbers of the Gleaner.  Many a good laugh have I had in recent years, in recalling funny incidents that occurred in the days not “be fo’ de wah,” but before the Gleaner had commenced to record passing events.  One such is “exciting my risible as I think of it now – the time when Pete Klein wanted to sell his hogs to Chris Wollenberg.  “Are they fat?” asked the lean butcher.  “Fat, of course they’re fat!” answered Pete.  “The I don’t want ‘em,” retorted Chris.  The laugh come in over Peter’s attempt to correct the tactical error he at once saw that he had made in describing his hogs as “fat,” when probably at the time Chris was carrying an overstock of lard, which he could not sell at any reasonable price (certainly not for the 16 cents a pound at which it goes now, in Portland at least).  Pete’s last word, according to the story as it was told, was “Oh, they ain’t so AWFULLY fat!”

If my recollection serves me, the italicized word is not just the word Pete used.  If it isn’t, Chris could probably supply the right one, and confidentially, that word, in that connection, was so absurdly a misfit that it was a barrel of fun in itself.

Now, Mr. Editor, while this yarn is essentially retrospective, I don’t think it was ever in the Gleaner, or heard of by the majority of its present readers.  Don’t you think you could hit the fancy of your clientele, by broadening that department, so that good stories of those departed days could once again be dressed in the fanciful habiliments of yore, paraded for our mutual enjoyment, and then be laid carefully away, embalmed in the files of the Gleaner?

In speaking of these through “features” of the Gleaner, I have left to the last the one which, in my opinion, is that one, and that only, which moved me to “take my pen in hand,” as I picked up the last Gleaner, on arriving at home after my daily stint of work today.  What I have said heretofore, was written in full sincerity, but I hardly think I would have taken the trouble to compliment you about it, as I have, but for the irresistible impulse to give you what encouragement I could, in your “History of Greenwood” feature.

So far as I know, no work of equal value or interest to the rising and to future generations of Greenwood citizens, in a literary way, was ever before undertaken there.  Who, that has called the old town “home,’ but will turn eagerly to its columns, looking for familiar facts, and the equally familiar faces of our old neighbors, the actors, which our memories have so carefully stored away? The facts may not have impressed us as pleasant at the time, or the faces as dear, yet the golden glow of the long ago, tints and mellows everything of that day, now surely, in that view, it was all good, for weren’t they the Good Old Times?

As it happened, the very week that your issue referring to the origin of the name of the Town of Eaton reached me, my mother and I had as a guest the only surviving member of the family of “Lige” Eaton, his step-daughter, now and for 25 years past Mrs. Joseph Allen, but best known as old times on Black River as “Cad Clark.”  As may be imagined, we had a great gabfest.  In the interest of historical accuracy I asked  her many questions concerning things she had intimate knowledge of.  Several statements in your history suggested the need of proof-reading by a contemporary , and the thought occurred to both Mrs. Allen and myself.  What a pity that Bob Schofield couldn’t be interested as assistant Historical Editor!  I have rather expected to read corrections of several inaccuracies in your articles, which, so far as I have noted, stand uncorrected yet.

For one thing, the town of Eaton was not named for the two Eatons, “Elijah and Frederick,” but for the pioneer, Elijah, who was, to the people of his day, just plain “Lige Eaton.”  There was no “Frederick” Eaton.  I never saw Lige Eaton, since he died before my parents took me, a four-year-old, to Greenwood.  But the Eaton you mistakenly called “Frederick” (Alfred S. Eaton, for year past a resident of West Superior), was well know by all old timers to be no relation to Elijah Eaton.

Just another word: you speak in the last copy before me of “Eaton Brother’s mill, and taken in connection with other references to the pioneer “Eatons,” a reader unfamiliar with the facts would assume that Elijah and “Frederick” constituted the “firm” of Eaton Brothers.

If there ever was such a co-partnership there, I never heard of it.  While you “Frederick Eaton” was a myth, Elijah had a brother, and he might have had some interest in the mill, though I don’t believe that he did.  His name was “John,” and I remember him well, since he outlived Lige ten years or more.

Now don’t let the idea creep into your history that John Eaton, the brother of Lige, was the John A. Eaton for whom the Greenwood G.A.R. Post was named – for the latter was a brother of A. S. Eaton, and fell in the Civil War.

Alas! For a proof-reader who knew them all!  Are we to recognized the familiar “Uncle John” Bowerman in the “Mr. Baumann” you list as one of “four more settlers?”  And why have you left out of your list “Uncle George” Andrews, whose “old” shop on the east side of the tote-road – there was not “street” then, -- was surely there at that time?

Go on with the good work Mr. Editor, but do try to secure the cooperation of some old-timers as mentor and proof-reader.

With best wishes, and greetings to all old friends, I remain,

   Your Truly,

      Bert L. Bailey

Sub-rosa – The missing adjective used by Pete Klein, according to the story, was “Jesusly” surely as grotesque a misuse of the word as could be conceived.  Chris did not tell me this story.  I don’t even know who did, and he may have forgotten it, but I hope not, it would spoil its flavor.