A Marxist Frenchman Visits Cooksville to Find America

French journalist and avowed Marxist-Socialist, Jean George, visited the Village of Cooksville in late 1984, to try to discover America.  He came to write an article for l’Humanité, the French Communist Party newspaper, about French-American economic relationships, about the recent American elections, and about American attitudes.

And so he wrote a full-page story about the “hamlet” of Cooksville published in France in 1985.

 

Hank and Maurice in the Longbourne House, c.1980s

Jean George had met Cooksville resident, Maurice Gras, in early 1984 in Maurice’s hometown in Provence in the south of France.  Maurice invited Jean to visit Cooksville whenever he came to America

Jean George did just that, visiting Cooksville later in 1984. Maurice, a Professor of French at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his partner, Hank Bova, a Professor of French at Beloit College, were living in the historic Longbourne House in Cooksville, where Jean was their guest for a few days. Others in the village also met Jean, a bright, ebullient and delightful man. Several friends attended a Cooksville dinner party in Jean’s honor at the home of Jim Danky and Christine Schelshorn, where Communism, Marxism and America were the prime topics—as, no doubt, was French cooking.

 

The Vie International headline for the Cooksville story, 1985

Jean wrote about his American journey in an article published in the Vie Internationale section of the French newspaper l’Humanité on or about March 2, 1985.  The following is a translation of the full-page French article with its opening sub-heading, which also used four photographs of the American Midwest:

The Van Buren House and Church notecard, by Mike Saternus, mentioned in the article.

Logbook in the American heartland

by our special U.S. Envoy Jean George

Who knows Cooksville,
in the State of Wisconsin, USA?
Sixty inhabitants, the Mid-West heartland of America.
Far from the clichés of Chicago’s tall buildings, though they aren’t far away.
Wisconsin has more cows
than inhabitants.
Cooksville is a hamlet
in an agricultural area.
There you can hear the echo, muffled
by provincial life,
of the problems that trouble

an anxious America.

Coming from Detroit, I land three hours later, on a Saturday, at Chicago’s O'Hare Airport, the largest in the world, but one with no moving walkways or signs. The friendly employee at the New York travel agency, who had sold me the ticket two weeks previously, commiserated in advance with the poor foreigner, forced to carry his bag along endless corridors, looking for the Republic Airlines counter in order to retrieve his wheeled suitcase.  Concrete, concrete, concrete.

I then have to find the bus to Madison, via Beloit and Janesville.  I leave for the remote province of the State of Wisconsin, which has more cows than inhabitants.

Three hours’ drive, first by the Highway to the Northwest. The last shreds of the Chicago suburbs roll past the smoked-glass windows. We leave Illinois. Pasture and plowed fields appear.

First stop, Beloit, a small industrial town whose middle class has created a reputable college that attracts high-paying students from far beyond the borders of the state. One of the friends who are waiting for me teaches there.  From him I shall hear about this city for the first time. I notice only the bus station, drugstore, restaurant and hotel, all along the highway access road, flanked by a garage and a battery of gas pumps, the buildings you see in all the American movies that take you out of the big cities.

In Janesville, on the Rock River, 51,070 inhabitants, I get off in front of a bus station similar in every way to the previous one. Parker pens are manufactured here, but factory and houses lie beyond the dim light of the street lamps, which are blown about by an icy wind. I have read that from August to September, there are collections of old threshing machines and other agricultural machinery, which have been carefully restored as “antiques,” in nineteenth-century buildings. I have entered the land of traditions.

The person who greets me is a Franco-American who has lived here for thirty years. I met him last summer in his native Provence. He has retained the touch of an accent when he speaks his mother tongue, but thinks in English for all practical purposes.

After a few kilometers on a minor road, I find myself in the midst of a group of intellectuals who have come to celebrate my brief visit. People from different backgrounds, five currents of emigration, at least, around the table, telling me only their patronymics, all profoundly American in their relaxed manner, their kindness, their freedom of spirit.

I tell them that they remind me of some of their compatriots whom I used to meet in Moscow, especially since they hardly talk to me about the United States but question me passionately about the USSR. The same desire to know, the same sharp, often justified criticism, the same wish for peace and understanding, the same rejection of the anticommunism and anti-Sovietism that have done so much harm to American intelligence. They share Norman Mailer’s position: “We are a great nation. Make the effort to think that we will be greater still if we live in mutual comprehension of the horror of the world that now faces us.”

With them, I can relive all the struggles, all the hopes of 1960s America. They have buried themselves in this tiny village, less out of discouragement than from a reservation about democracy. During my three-week journey I met so many of these democrats-in-waiting, these potential activists/militants, free of illusions but by no means without hope.

Cooksville, a hamlet of sixty inhabitants near the town of Evansville, on Route 59 is forty kilometers from Madison, the state capital and seat of the University of Wisconsin. Very pretty wooden houses, lovingly maintained, that people take tourists to see. They surround, from a great distance, a huge common. The hamlet’s founders arrived from New England in about 1840, attracted by the prospect that a railroad to the West was to be built. The railroad was built elsewhere, and Cooksville fell asleep, like a museum that had arrived from somewhere else.

On Sunday morning, I take a slow walk round the hamlet, in a total silence in which my steps on the night frost make the only sound. At eleven o’clock the tiny white Church will welcome a female Pastor from the neighboring town. All around, in the grass and under the trees, are tombstones. Lots of names of Norwegian origin, and of soldiers who died during the Civil War, which we call the War of Secession. A high proportion of victims of both world wars, whose graves display a small Stars and Stripes. In the United States, too, the peasants have been beloved by the generals.

A few farms, with their red-painted barns and huge silos, are highly mechanized, if I can judge from the machinery I see in the farmyards. These farms are as big as ours, but here they are only of average size, and receive very little help from the State, which favors the largest ones.

The village grocer proudly displays the date her store was built: 1846. She tells me that deer- hunting is authorized in November, but only with bow-and-arrow. She was like someone from the America of our imaginations, a dream many Americans share. I buy note-cards of the village from her, drawn by an architect who is restoring an old house from the last century and has saved a local deconsecrated church.

I left the grocery store with a copy of the local weekly, The Hub, which serves two communities. It lists deaths, marriages, births, admissions to the hospital, sporting and academic achievements, birthday greetings from friends, hunting trophies. The editor and photographer provide the photographs. Circulation is 4,000 copies.

The newspaper also analyses local politics, draws intelligent lessons from the different elections of November 6. Its article was written “hot” and owes nothing to the major newspapers of the East coast. It carries an echo of an anxious America: unemployment, poverty, and above all, international tension. An echo muffled by provincial life, but strong enough that it can be expressed without fear.

One journalist colleague learned I had come and wanted to meet me. A visit by a “French Marxist” to this area is, apparently, an event. He questions me for nearly an hour: “Are you a Communist first or a journalist first?”  “French first or a Communist first?”  Politely provocative questions. My answers interest him because, he tells me, “We have a great need to know what is happening elsewhere.” The interview he has published is a model of honesty in its information.

America’s far away, but it's beautiful... when we find it...

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[Jean George’s article is in the Cooksville Archives. As of this past June, Jean George was listed as L'Humanite's permanent correspondent in Moscow, according to an article from L'Humanite in June 20, 2016. He is probably retired by now. Jean’s hosts in the village, Maurice Gras (1928-2003) and Hank Bova (1936-2013), had lived in Cooksville since 1968, and were very active, generous, democratic Cooksvillians—and excellent hosts on many other occasions. Jean was interviewed for an article published in the Stoughton Courier-Hub on November 23, 1984, written by Steve Ehle, which is also in the Cooksville Archives.

Thanks to Jim Danky and Christine Schelshorn for their help preparing this Cooksville story, and many thanks to the translator, Jim’s friend, Imogen Forster. Also, thanks to the University of Wisconsin Memorial Library for its assistance. Larry Reed]

Memories of Cooksville: Lillian Graves Smith (1875-1977)

Lillian Graves, 1892

 Lillian Graves Smith’s memories of growing up in Cooksville were recorded by her son Marlowe G. Smith in an interview in 1973 and titled “Cooksville Vignettes.” He wrote that these were his mother’s “random reminiscences…that relate the simple day to day experiences as seen through the eyes of childhood.” The copy is in the Cooksville Archives and covers about 25 years of Lillian’s early life in the village. And she lived a very long life, dying close to age 102.

Lillian Graves was the daughter of Anna Brown Graves (1855-1920) and William Gardiner Graves (1825-1903), a prominent blacksmith in Cooksville with a large and apparently happy family.  Here are some excerpts from her childhood reminiscences:

            “The fine old sugar maple trees that were planted by my father are still flourishing, and I recall as a native Vermonter, he always tapped the trees for their maple syrup. There were the usual childhood activities such as wading and swimming the Badfish. Of course, we owned no bathing suits in those days and an old dress had to suffice.”

            “On one of our jaunts into Porter’s Woods, Avis Savage and I found a nest of turkey eggs… so we gathered them up in our aprons and took them home. My mother was very quick to realize that the eggs should not have been molested, and insisted that I return mine to the nest at once…. When Avis brought her eggs home, her mother decided to set them under one of her hens, probably with Thanksgiving in mind.”

Graves Blacksmith Shop, 1886

             “My father was the Village Blacksmith and soon earned a considerable reputation as an expert in horse shoeing…. During the heat of the summer, the flies would swarm around the shop…Father would experience considerable difficulty when flies began biting the horse, and I remember standing near the horses and shooing the flies away with a large stick to which cloth streamers had been attached. I did not especially enjoy this duty, but it never occurred to me to refuse his request for help…”

            “While I cannot recall ever being taken to a real circus during my childhood, the circus did come to us…Circuses would perform in Stoughton and then travel overland to Evansville by way of Cooksville. My Father would get us up at 4 a.m. on circus day, and we would line the main street to see the animals and circus wagons as they went by. The calliope would play in parade and horses, elephants and camels were led on foot with the cages displaying the more ferocious beasts. It never occurred to us that we might attend a circus performance, and this brief glimpse of circus life was quite sufficient. We would talk about it for days.”

Unidentified Cooksville Children in a Garden

            “John Robertson came to Cooksville from Scotland and operated one of its two general stores…. In Roberson’s Store, you could purchase almost anything from rubber boots to pickles and molasses, and when John Robertson’s back was turned, village boys would take special delight in knocking a pair of rubber boots off into the molasses. However, he never complained about it.”

            “What I do remember most was that time when Mrs. Fisher passed away, and there being no family, Avis Savage, Ernest (Doc) Miller, Chet Gilley and I were asked to go down there and sit up all night with the deceased who was laid out in the adjoining downstairs bedroom. We were in our early teens, and the situation did not exactly call for enthusiasm, but no one ever refused such a request. My Mother insisted that poor old Mrs. Fisher must not be left there alone over night. In those days, mortuary techniques had not been too far advanced, and it was required that a damp cloth be laid on the face of the deceased once every hour. Neither Chet Gilley nor I could bring ourselves to perform this necessary function, and it was left for Doc and Avis to do the honors.”

            “The Van Vleck Family lived in the house now owned and modernized by George and Eunice Mattakat….. John Van Vleck, the father, had a shop nearby where he patented a potato planter. Regretfully, the patent was infringed upon by the McCormick Co. in Chicago, and John never realized his just return on this useful bit of machinery.”

Pony Cart on the Public Square, with Unidentified Children

             “The only real conflagration that I can recall was the time that the Lutheran Church was struck by lightning and burned to the ground [in 1896 Ed.]. We had full benefit of the fire as our lot practically backed up to the Church. My Father quickly led the family cow from the barn at the back of the lot. Obviously, with no water under pressure, it was impossible for the bucket brigade to put out the flames .In fact, I often wonder that more buildings in Cooksville were not destroyed, especially when heating and lighting arrangements were on the primitive side. I recall that there was considerable discussion about rebuilding the church on the original site for fear it might happen again.”

            “One amusing incident comes to mind when for some reason, I opened my mouth too wide and could not close it. Apparently, I had succeeded in unhinging my jaw. Dr. Colony was called and had to administer chloroform in order to manipulate the jaw sufficiently to close it. This was really embarrassing in as much as Dr. Colony was my current boyfriend at the time. My good neighbor Belle Stebbins was on hand to be of some help, and she often reminded me that the only person who could shut my mouth was Dr. Colony.”

[A copy of the entire 24-page “Cooksville Vignettes” is available in the Cooksville Archives. Also in the Archives is 22-page“Rice-Graves Genealogy” written and edited by Marlowe G. Smith in 1973.]

The Brickyards and Brick Houses of Historic Cooksville, by Larry Reed

Brick Houses of Cooksville

The historic Village of Cooksville is well-known for a number of reasons—for being a “Wee Bit of New England in Wisconsin,” for  being the home-town of “John Savage the Best Dam Man in the World,” for having the Oldest General Store operating in Wisconsin—and,  to a lesser extent, as the site of the proposed Frank Lloyd Wright “Cooksville Chapel” (which was never built) and for the actress Sigourney Weaver’s suggestion that Cooksville  would be “a wonderful place for a Summer Little Theater” (which never happened, either).

But Cooksville is probably most famous for its early architecture— its historic homes, barns, churches, Store, Public Square and a one-room Schoolhouse—and especially for the many historic houses constructed of its distinctively-colored, locally-made brick.  

Wisconsin’s premier architectural historian Richard W.E. Perrin greatly admired Cooksville’s brick houses. He wrote that the brick houses were of “excellent vermilion color” and were “all treated with domestic feeling, individuality and simplicity not always evident in this period.” (Perrin also suggested that “Cooksville is the sort of unspoiled community that would lend itself admirably to a historic preservation project for which specimens from the surrounding area could be brought in to join with the existing structures in an open-air historic museum.” That didn’t happen at Cooksville, of course, but instead near Eagle, at what is now the large and impressive “Old World Wisconsin” outdoor museum.)

Cooksville in its hay-day (or perhaps its “clay-day”) had two very productive brickyards, thanks to the thick pink-orange clay that ran just beneath the surface of the village. It became the source for the distinctive vermilion brick used in the 1840s-1850s to construct the brick residences, the first schoolhouse, and for several nearby farmhouses.

Longbourne House

 One brickyard, operated by Hubbard Champney (1808-1879) from Maine and later by William Johnson, was located just south of the village across South Street (or now, Church Street), and remained in operation until about 1860. The Champney site has been farmland since 1875.

The second brick factory was located west of Cooksville, on the John Dow Farm between the farmhouse and the Badfish Creek. It was initially operated by Champney for a time, but like the earlier brickyard, it was abandoned by1865. That was when Mr. Dow and his farmhands filled in the old deep, dug-out brickyard holes with brush, weeds, and soil, and then scraped and plowed the site that summer. Shards of bricks can still be found at both brickyard locations.

Brick-making took time, about three months, to produce a batch of bricks. First, to dig and prepare the reddish clay, to mold the clay in the wooden molds, and to air-dry the bricks. Then the raw bricks were stacked in a circular tower inside a large kiln in the center of which was built a huge fire that was kept constantly burning for seven days and nights, or longer, to bake the bricks. The fired clay hardened into the distinctive pink-orange color; parts of some bricks closest to the fire were partially glazed and burned to a darker, glassy color. A total of about 24,000 bricks were produced at a time in each batch, enough for about a half a house

A modern Cooksville fireplace with old bricks

Some bricks did not bake hard enough to withstand weathering on the exterior of buildings.  But they were put to good use as “brick nogging” inside the walls of several of Cooksville’s wood-framed houses. These softer bricks, mortared together, served to insulate and solidify the wooden structures. Lath and plaster were applied on the inside walls and clapboards on the exterior. 

Some of these “soft” bricks discovered in the walls doing 20^th-century rehabilitations have been replaced by modern insulation, and these under-baked bricks have been re-purposed to construct interior fireplaces in new additions.

Brick nogging in a wall

The village’s historic vermilion brick houses include the Duncan House (1848), the Longbourne House (1854), the Backenstoe-Howard House (1848), the Isaac Porter House (1856), the Chambers- Porter Cottage (1856), the Collins House (1856), and the Frank Seaver House (1850) Also, the first Schoolhouse was brick (replaced in 1886 with a wood-frame school,) and a village blacksmith shop, long-gone, was apparently constructed of local brick.  (The recently reconstructed Grave’s Blacksmith Shop from the 1880s was re-built using its original lighter cream-colored imported brick.)

Frank Seaver House

Just outside the village are three additional historic Cooksville brick houses: the Lovejoy-Dow House (1850), the Cooper-Gillies House (1850-53), and the Miller House (1853-56).

Talented local masons and brick-layers such as Charles Howard and Richard Houfe are credited with constructing these sturdy brick houses in and near the village.

The first settlers in Cooksville were multi-talented and versatile men and women—they had to be in these isolated first settlements. They knew how to use the raw materials—the clay, the limestone from quarry hill,  the tall trees for lumber, the water to power the sawmill on the Badfish Creek—that were at hand to build their new frontier village in the 1840s and 1850s.

This brief period of brick construction played a major role in the development and character of Cooksville. The village, founded in 1842 by John and Daniel Cook and added to by John Porter’s next-door Village of Waucoma in 1846, owes its distinctive appearance to the excellent examples of early pioneer construction in Wisconsin, especially those featuring locally-made bricks. 

And as time went by, these early architectural efforts and construction techniques gained greater appreciation by succeeding generations of family members, new-comers, architectural historians, historic preservationists and visitors to historic Cooksville. Their pioneer work has stood the test of time.

Concert This Sunday

 Duet Concert

Sunday, October 23, 4:00 p.m.

Cooksville Lutheran Church

This special event is in honor of the 125th anniversary of the church.  Music includes hymn arrangements for audience and the duet along with music selections from Brigadoon,

The Fantasticks, Carousel, Gigi, and

Phantom of the Opera.

The concert is free and a

reception with goodies will follow.

 

Cooksville Songs and Stories, 10/14/16

Join us in the English Barn at Cooksville Farmhouse Inn, 11203 N. State Rd 138, Evansville, WI, Friday, October 14, 7 p.m. for music, stories, treats, and an evening of October fun.  Folk, bluegrass, old country western, and classical Bohemian as well as stories of Halloween pranks and dark nights from the archives of 175 years of Cooksville history.  Refreshments follow.

Join us at 7.  Dress for the weather and bring a flashlight.  Free admission.  All are welcome.

The “Good Templars” in Cooksville

The Independent Order of Good Templars—an early American organization promoting alcohol abstinence— granted a charter to a group in Cooksville in 1861 to form its own Lodge, Number 123, named the “Rising Tide” Lodge. The signed charter, in poor condition, is in the Cooksville Archives with the faded names of about 31 “charter members” hand-written on the fragile paper document.

Cooksville's Good Templars Charter of 1861

In addition, a “Juvenile Temple” of the Independent Order of the Good Templars, apparently for younger people, was established on December 13, 1894, as Temple Number 63 named “Rising” with names of 37 young Cooksville members. This large, ornate, handsomely-framed charter is in excellent condition and is also in the Cooksville Archives. (It is unclear exactly what the special age qualifications were for “Juvenile” Temple members, if any.)

Cooksville's "Juvenile Temple" Charter of 1894

The minutes of Cooksville’s “Rising Tide” Lodge from October 10, 1885 to January 25, 1896, hand-written in a secretary’s ledger are in the Cooksville Archives and provide a glimpse of its activities.

The Good Templars Order, named after the crusader knights of a 12^th century religious order in Jerusalem, was started in 1851 in New York State as a secret, ritualistic  society committed to a life-style totally free from alcohol. The Order was committed to “friendship (later changed to faith), hope and charity,” and it reflected the tradition of other early social, self-improvement, spiritual groups of the time. And it was politically charged to achieve its goal of freeing society of the “evils” of alcohol. (Apparently, Americans were consuming an average of almost 2 bottles of liquor per person per week by 1830.)

Evils of Alcohol cartoon, 19th Century

Cooksville’s Good Templars appear to have been very active, meeting almost every week, socializing and supporting members in their temperance cause, entertaining and educating themselves, and sharing their goals and their activities with others in the community. And they continually recruited new members. Generally, in the early years, 15-20 members attended the weekly meetings.

According to the existing local minutes, the Good Templars had a good time. They met regularly, free from alcohol, had lengthy programs, were very strict about everybody paying their dues, adhered to meeting rules and rituals, with all participating as officers or as various committee members. The Templars appears to have been very well-run, following rigid national rules of order and ritual, and was socially-active with enlightening cultural and educational programs. And lots of tea and lemonade were consumed.

The Cooksville chapter initially met in Van Vleck’s Hall above the Farm Implement Factory (Wisconsin’s first, demolished c.1928) that once stood on the corner of Webster and Dane streets. (The Hall was used for many occasions at various times, including as the Waucoma Academy for advanced learning and for some community meetings and parties, as well as for announcing breaking news about the Civil War from its second-story porch.) The group also met in the Masonic Lodge above the present General Store and in the second-story room of the existing Cheese Factory. Eventually in 1879 the new Congregational Church basement parlor became its headquarters, which the Good Templars helped to furnish with lanterns, an organ and firewood. The group held popular Oyster Suppers (at one such supper 80 tickets were sold) as well as seasonal Maple Sugar Dinners for themselves and for the public, with “entertainments” to raise money for their needs.

For instance, the minutes for meetings in1886 indicate that one “Maple Sugar” supper was enjoyed at a meeting with 16 attending and $1.45 contributed, and that the Cooksville Lodge sent greetings to the newly-formed Lodge in Fulton, and that the Lodge accepted 75 cents from the Cooksville Library Association for its “use of the Lodge’s wood and lights” for the Library’s meetings. At the end of the Good Templar meetings there were entertainments: songs and “choruses,” instrumental music, recitations of poems, posed tableaus, readings of newspaper clippings by members and other such contributions by members, all done after the business portion of the meeting, which indicates very full and enjoyable evenings.

The brief formal minutes do not indicate any special prohibition or temperance projects, but, of course, the main purpose of the Good Templars was to support each other, to improve and enhance members’ lives and to generally promote their ideals of abstinence, no doubt by setting good examples for each other and for the community.  Perhaps the Good Templars may have succeeded in tempering the alcohol drinking habits of some citizens in Cooksville.

The members did provide funds for refurbishing (and heating and cleaning) the various meeting halls they used, with monies from their dues and funds received from their public parties and entertainments. Perhaps other charitable efforts may have been undertaken now and then but were not described in the existing minutes.

A comment in an unidentified (Evansville?) and undated (c.1876) newspaper clipping applauded the local Good Templars’ efforts for another special reason: “Old folks sometimes say that the Good Templars lodge is a sparking institution for the young folks, and here are some of the facts: Our lodge has had a good healthy existence for a little more than fifteen years, and there has been married from its ranks fifteen couples, besides quite a number of odd halves, or, as the Quakers say, marrying out. Can any lodge show a better record in this respect? And possibly it is better for the girls to pick up husbands here, than from the grog shops.”

The membership grew greatly in the late 19^th century, apparently assisted by the new younger “juvenile” Good Templar members.(If male and under 16 years old, they had their quarterly dues lowered from forty cents to twenty-five cents; no indication if females paid more or less than that amount.) At a meeting on January 12, 1895, “8 gallons of oysters were disposed of and a barrel of crackers was cleared.” And on February 16, 1895, “Members present 83. Lodge closed in ritual form.”  Attendance in winter was always greater.

Waucoma House, 1850, inn and tavern, recent sketch

The Village of Cooksville had two taverns during the past 175 years of its history. The first was the stagecoach inn named “Waucoma House” (built c.1850 and demolished c.1913), which served as a tavern and hotel and, later in the 19^th century, as a harness shop and a dressmakers shop, and was located on the corner of Main and Rock streets (Highways 138 and 59). The second later tavern was a small frame building erected on the same site about 1915 as a meat-market, then a liquor-licensed tavern, and finally used as a residence until about 1947 when it was moved to the western edge of Cooksville as a home for Paul Savage, later to be remodeled in the 1970s by Karl Wolter as his home.

The Archives records do not reveal the activities of the Good Templars of Cooksville as the 20^th century began—and as the older original members and pioneers of Cooksville’s settlement passed on. The Good Templars’ minutes in the Archives end on January 25, 1896, thirty-five years after the “Rising Tide” Lodge first was organized in Cooksville. Undoubtedly, the efforts of the group continued on into the 20^th century, perhaps more vigorously because the national temperance and prohibition movement succeeded in the passage of the 18^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting the production and sale of alcohol in 1920.

Prohibition photo, unidentified

However, Prohibition lasted only 13 tumultuous years and was repealed by the 21^st Amendment to the Constitution in 1933. There are at present no taverns in Cooksville, but apparently consumption of wine, beer and whisky occurs now and then in the village.

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[The Cooksville Archives welcomes additional materials. Contact Larry Reed (608) 873-5066.]