Images from the Cooksvillle Archives

The historic Village of Cooksville has an extensive collection of photographs, biographies, newspaper clippings, books, genealogical information, paintings, pottery, furniture and other items. These comprise the Village's "Archives and Collections," begun informally more than a hundred years ago and maintained today by the Historic Cooksville Trust, Inc.

Here are some of the historic images from photographs, magazines, scrapbooks and other documents illustrating the Village's people, places and activities.

This early, fold-out, 3-dimensional Valentine's Day card is unsigned and undated, but is labeled "Printed in Germany" and "10."

A map from the 1830s  surveys, with the "Bad Fish River" (Sugar River), the Four Lakes, and the "Gooshkehawn" (Yahara) and Rock rivers. 

Tin-type of three unidentified men, perhaps from Cooksville.

The Chambers Store, the first in Cooksville, changes hands in 1846.

Chester Gilley (1873-1944), who lived just east of Cooksville, where the Gilley Farmhouse still stands.

Caledonia Springs Railroad Bridge to Cooksville, constructed in 1857. But soon became the bridge to nowhere when the RR never came to the village. Photograph from the 1950s.

Isaac Hoxie (1825-1903), born in Maine, came to Cooksville in 1846, operated a sash and blind (shutter) factory and a broom factory in the village, then founded the Stoughton Reporter and the Evansville Review newspapers in the 1860s and 1870s.

          St. Michael's Cemetery near Cooksville on Caledonia Road, next to the site of its church, which was demolished in 1948.

The fancy invitation  to the Cooksville Unity Society Supper and Ball in 1885 included the assurance of "Good Stabling for Teams" of horses, as well as supper and dancing, all for the price of $1.50.

Malvina ("Vie") Howard Campbell (1846-1922), born in Cooksville, was an active leader and lecturer in several movements in Wisconsin including the W,C.T.U., Wisconsin Woman's Suffrage Society, as well as in agriculture and horticulture issues.

A map of Cooksville (and Waucoma) in 1891.

A landscape by Leila Dow (1864-1930), Cooksville artist, teacher and co-founder of the Madison Art Guild.

The early Hoxie barn served several purposes including this blacksmith shop and, eventually, Dorothy and Arthur Kramers'  pottery studio until it burned down in 1956.

The Cooksville School Class of 1925.
 

A 1939 photograph: left to right, Tommy Osgood, Standley Naysmith, his son Jim, Dorothy Kramer, Arthur Kramer, and Vicki, at the Morgan House.

The Old Settlers Picnic at the Cooksville School, a newspaper clipping about 1945.

Some Cooksville School students,1947.

Cooksville School students in the one-room school: Class of 1952-53

Cooksville School's basement gym games, from the Class of 1953 Year Book.

Cooksville Community Center's First Dinner Meeting, May 6, 1962, which 90 people attended and where a school-house-decorated cake was auctioned off.

John Wilde (1919-2006), Cooksville, was a University of Wisconsin professor and "Magic Realist" artist, with his Wildeview II print, 1985.

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