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| Village of Waucoma, 1846 plat map |
The Cooksville Public Square has
been the heart and soul of the historic19th century “Yankee” Village
of Cooksville since it was established 170 years ago in 1846. That is when Dr.
John Porter of Massachusetts platted his fourteen block “Village of Waucoma”
next to the smaller Village of Cooksville, which the Cook brothers had
established in 1842.
Porter’s new village was laid out
on land that he purchased from the famous Senator Daniel Webster, who had
bought it in 1837 from the U.S. Government when the land first went on sale in the
Wisconsin Territory. Porter named his new village “Waucoma,” the Indian name of
the present creek, which the American government’s land surveyors had named
“Bad Fish” in 1833.
The Public Square was in the center
of Porter’s village. He hired surveyor Alanson B. Vaughn of nearby Union (the
only other village between Janesville and Madison) to draw up the plat of the new
village south of the Badfish Creek immediately next to Cooksville. Waucoma’s
layout contained a total of 162 lots within 14 blocks, with the middle Block 8 reserved
for the public.
Sometimes called the “village green”
or the “common” or the “park,” the central Square was dedicated for common use,
which was the practice in Porter’s home-state of Massachusetts, and he included
one in his Wisconsin village. The individual lots were arranged along streets
that Dr. Porter named Main, Rock, Webster, Wisconsin, Dane, South, Water and
Fourth streets. All the lots were for sale, of course, but not all were ever sold
for building purposes.
Since 1846, Porter’s New
England-style Public Square has been the focus of the little community. It
provides a natural, partially-wooded, green space open to all, with an elegant virgin
burr oak gro
ve of trees, along with
maple, white ash, elm and hickory, a remnant of the original “oak openings”
once prominent in southern Wisconsin’s wide, rich prairies.
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| Cooksville Public Square |
Many uses have been made of the Public Square in the 19th,
20th and 21st centuries. Where once sheep, cows and horses grazed on
the “green,” now people and dogs enjoy strolling, gamboling and picnicking. And the Square has been put to other uses. It
has served as the scene for horse races and baseballs games, for Old Settlers
Reunions, for family and community picnics, for Fourth of July celebrations, and
for “Play Day’ for the children of the Town of Porter’s nine one-room schools.
It’s also been the setting for Civil War re-enactments, Cooksville School
reunions, family reunions, weddings and wedding receptions in tents, and for
events of the Cooksville Community Center housed in the old Schoolhouse on the east
side of the Square.
For example, in 1876, on July 4th, Anne Eliza
Porter sang two patriotic songs at Cooksville’s Centennial Celebration when a
hundred-foot flag pole was erected in the middle of the Square. Three thousand
people gathered to watch the raising of this impressive “Liberty Pole.” To erect
the flag pole, a ten-foot hole was dug, with a forty-foot trench leading into
it, and the flag pole—consisting of two fifty-foot pine tree logs from northern
Wisconsin fastened together by local blacksmiths—was rolled into the trench and
then lifted upright with ropes and pulleys and sheer brute strength. The ninety-foot symbol of American liberty
was a result of the efforts of two local men who disagreed on religion but agreed
on democratic principles as they celebrated their nation’s 100th
birthday.
The event included community singing led by Thomas Morgan
accompanied by his daughter, Nettie playing his popular portable organ-like melodeon.
The program also featured a fife and drum corps and “talks” by local residents Thomas
Earl, Benjamin Hoxie, Joseph Porter, Harrison Stebbins, James Gillies, John
Savage, J.P. Van Vleck and John Dow.
And the Liberty Pole remained in place for six years. In
1882, the Evansville Enterprise newspaper reported that it had been sawn down. (However,
photos from about 1910 show a tall flagpole standing in the middle of the
Public Square, perhaps a new version.)
The Public Square once had a race
track on it, for horses. In 1889, a track was constructed around the perimeter,
“which when completed will be very handy for those who have horses to train,” according
to a newspaper clipping. Tickets to use the track were purchased at the Post
Office (in one of the village’s several stores) or at the Broom Factory across
Webster Street on the west side of the Square.
And in the same year, according to
an Evansville newspaper article, “there will be a base ball ground laid out and
all league clubs including Evansville and Chicago will be invited to play on
this ground.” A 1900 photograph shows
the Cooksville Cornhuskers baseball team posed for a group picture. Local ball games on the Public Square brought
the men and boys of the village and the Town of Porter together on Saturday
afternoons.
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| Cooksville's Cornhuskers baseball team, 1900 |
Beginning in 1901 and for fifty years, Old Settlers
Reunions were formally organized and well-attended on the Public Square in June
of each year. In addition to picnic food—“tables decorated with choice flowers
and fruits, and loaded with the most delectable achievements of the culinary
art”—the Old Settlers Reunions featured entertainments with fond reminiscences
shared by the descendants of the original pioneers with tributes to those who
had passed on. Poetry was composed for the occasion and recited, and short
plays (such as “Grandmother’s Story” and “Why the Cannon Wasn’t Fired”)
depicting Cooksville events were performed.
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Old Settlers Reunion picnic photo c.1945
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Music was an important element in those festive reunions.
In the early 20th century, Jack Robertson provided his award-winning
fiddle music; the Cooksville Lutheran Quartette and the Janesville Male
Quartette sang; Eloise Eager played the violin; June Porter sang vocal solos;
and a Drum Corps composed of men from the Town of Porter, Evansville and
Janesville got feet tapping with their rousing renditions.
The Public Square has been the scene of another famous
annual event: “Play Day.” In the early
and mid-20th century the eight rural one-room school houses of the
Town of Porter (the ninth, the
Stebbinsville Schoolhouse, burned down in 1942) gathered together to celebrate
the end of the school year in late spring with a special event of competitive sports
and games on the Square on Play Day.
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| Map of Cooksville by Dorothy Kramer, 1938 |
An image of the Square in 1938 (a painting of Cooksville
by Dorothy Kramer) shows a dirt road cutting diagonally across the green from
the schoolhouse to the northwest corner, perhaps as shortcut to the “business
district.” This apparently was before Church Street was completed to the north
as a gravel-based road in front of the school, then turning west as Dane
Street, as originally planned.
The Public Square park has hosted many events of the
Cooksville Community Center—and still does. The Community Center was formally
organized in 1962 after the schoolhouse (built in 1886) was closed and quickly
purchased by local citizens to be preserved and to serve as the Center’s
headquarters. The Community Center has sponsored many historic house and garden
tours of the village, wood-carving exhibitions, kite-flying, July Fourth
celebrations, and winter fun in the snow on the Square, as well as events held inside
the historic schoolhouse.
Unfortunately, in August of 1992 it
was evident that some of the old burr oaks were slowly dying. Residents
requested an investigation by Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources’ Rock
County office. The conclusion from samples taken by a forest entomologist and a
forest pathologist was that the burr oaks were suffering from oak wilt disease.
Trenches were dug around some of the trees in an attempt to control the spread
of the disease through root systems to other trees. But since then the disease
appears to have slowly and inevitably spread to other burr oaks. (A couple of
years earlier Cooksville had lost its State Champion Scotch Pine Tree, a large
magnificent pine tree located in the cemetery, to a different fungus disease.)
The Cooksville Public Square with
its open grassy area and the grove of old trees continues to attract people. It
is, of course, an important part of the official Cooksville Historic District,
which was designated as a significant historic area by the federal, state and
local governments in the 1970s. The Square surrounded by original mid-19th
buildings, with a few picnic tables and two out-houses, still features its
stand of burr oak trees, presenting a panoramic view of Cooksville‘s landmarks
(or Waucoma’s landmarks, to be legally accurate!)
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| Public Square and wedding tent |
The Square is maintained by the
Town of Porter and Rock County as a public park. It can be reserved for special occasions, as
can the Community Center’s schoolhouse. An effort to preserve and restore the
trees is underway. (See
the Cooksville News blog posts of Feb.23 and March 26, 2016).
The famous Public Square remains a
quiet, undeveloped oasis surrounded by historic buildings providing a
well-maintained green space with a grove of old trees, always available for
man, beast and birds—and other wild flora and fauna— to enjoy in a special historic
19th century setting.
