ORGANIZED SOCIAL LIFE: COOKSVILLE’S CLUBS by Larry Reed

Formally organized groups and clubs abounded in 19^th century America, even in the Village of Cooksville. These organizations provided entertainment, amusement and sometimes intellectual stimulation for the residents in this small, isolated village by-passed by the railroad — “the town that time forgot.” 

Wilder Newell, c.1880, farmer

The Cooksville Debating Society spoke out on a number of subjects. For instance, on February 27, 1860, the debate at the schoolhouse by six local men was on the subject, “Secret Organizations are contrary to the spirit of Free Government,” which was decided in the negative. Another debate on March 5, 1860, was on the subject, “Woman’s Rights should be identical with Man’s”; six men and women debated, but the records do not indicate which side prevailed. The debate still goes on in some circles.

Dinner party: Margaret Rice, daughter and dressmaker, Anna Belle, and friends, c.1890

On February 16, 1864, the Stoughton Reporter announced, “The young ladies of Cooksville have a ‘Grand Leap Year Party’ [planned] at the Masonic Hall in that place, Friday evening. The tickets read ‘yourself and gentleman are respectfully invited.’ Room managers, Ellen Galt, Stella Savage, Melvina Howard, and Electa Johnson. Music by Love’s Band. Tickets 25ȼ.”

The Masonic Hall above the General Store was the scene of many such social gatherings, as was the Schoolhouse and the new Cooksville Congregational Church and its basement. Van Vleck’s Hall (the Opera House) on the second floor of the meat market was another venue for certain events, but the record of its use is sparse, except for the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Troupe—which was performing there when the Opera House burned down in 1893.

Fred Miller, farmer, Evansville hotel owner, c.1895

The Cooksville Dramatic Club was a very active cultural institution.  Its first productions, presented at the schoolhouse on Saturday evening, January 25, 1873, were “Miriam’s Crime,” a “glowing comedy,” and “The Irish Tutor,” a “laughable farce,” according to the handbill. Performances began promptly at “7½” and admission was 15 cents, 10 cents for children. So well-received were the plays that the Club had new “scenery painted in Evansville, which will aid in rendering their life-like plays more real still,” and took the productions on the road to Eagle School (Porter Township), and to Stoughton and Fulton. “Down by the Sea” was performed at the Cooksville Congregational Church in 1882, at which “Anderson’s Band will furnish the orchestra music and also for a dance which is to follow at Masonic Hall,” all this after an oyster supper in the church basement. The newspaper reported that the event and “social hop” dance raised “over 60 dollars… towards the church debt.”  Other plays performed were “The Irish Tutor,” “Lost in London” and “Nevada, or the Lost Mine,” which were taken on the road to Stoughton, Brooklyn and the Stebbensville Church. A very busy group of local thespians.

Myrtle Dow, actress, Buenos Aires, London, c.1895

In early 1881, the Cooksville Glee Club gave an entertainment in the new Congregational Church that consisted of “a concert of vocal and instrumental music to conclude with that inimitable play ‘Cool as a Cucumber!’” Later in 1881, the Glee Club, assisted by Porter’s Orchestra Band, presented another concert which concluded “with that mirth-provoking play: “Who is Who? or, All in the Fog.” Most of the funds raised by the ticket sales went to pay for the furnishing in the new church built in 1879, the first and only religious structure in the village for almost 20 years.

The Jolly Club of Cooksville (about which little is known, unfortunately) gave “a rousing New Year’s Party at the Masonic Hall” in early 1886, with about thirty couples in attendance at its first dance. The Evansville newspaper reported it was “a very pleasant party” and also announced that there would be another dance party in February at the Hall and that “arrangements are in progress for the laying of a new canvass so the ladies can wear their Cinderella slippers. Music by the Albion Band, four pieces.” (Rough wooden floorboards with splinters may have been a problem for the dancers.)

Avis, teacher, and brother Paul Savage, farmer, c.1900

In November 1893, the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Troupe arrived in Cooksville for a three-week stay at the Cooksville Opera House, otherwise known as Van Vleck’s Hall, located on the second floor above Van Patten’s and Newkirk’s meat market on the corner of Main and Dane streets. Led by Dr. Red Wolf, the Medicine Troupe performed a series of lectures and entertainments, with “a crowd of small boys are on hand every time,” according to the Evansville Enterprise newspaper.  Dr. Red Wolf had a large display of “old and rare coins, medicines, paraphernalia, etc.” as well as musical instruments used by himself and his two assistants.  Unfortunately, a fire broke out on December 5, 1893, and the Cooksville Opera House and Meat Market burned to the ground. Not one article of Dr, Red Wolf’s paraphernalia was rescued from the devastating fire.

Joseph B. Porter, farmer, c.1884

Beginning in 1901 and for fifty years, Old Settlers Reunions were formally organized and took place on the Public Square in June of every year, weather permitting. (Previously in the late 19^th century “Pioneer Reunions” had taken place now and then.) In addition to the 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 descendents of the old pioneers and 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.  Music was an important element in the festivities. Jack Robertson provided his award-winning fiddle music as well as tricks with his violin in the 1930s; the Cooksville Lutheran Quartette and the Janesville Male Quartette sang; Webster Johnson played his bagpipes; 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 rendition of “Marching Through Georgia.” By the 1950s, the descendents of the 19^th century pioneer settlers had mostly marched on to other locales, and the Reunions ceased.

Later, in the mid-20^th century, the Cooksville Mothers’ Club and the Cooksville Community Center continued the tradition of providing the village with social events, educational programs, and organized activities, in the old Schoolhouse and in the old Congregational Church, as well as in the Cooksville Lutheran Church, which had been constructed in 1897.

Anna Graves, teacher, c.1888

All in all, the Cooksville community embraced their pleasures, enjoyed their leisure, and had a good time. In fact, in 1885 the Evansville Enterprise newspaper concluded that, “The Cooksville people seem to enjoy themselves about the best of any community we know…they have had some delightful gatherings where all joined together as one family without any jealousies or hard feelings, and no scandals or brawls have their starting place there. As a progressive, literary, talented people we think they are above the average.”

[These bits of Cooksville life and history—and many more— are found in the diaries, written memoires, newspaper clippings, letters, personal interviews and stories told to me, all of which are contained in the Cooksville Archives. The Archives is available to interested persons. Donations of photographs, clippings, anecdotes, family histories, etc., are welcomed. Contact Larry Reed, (608) 873-5066 or email lreed@chorus.net.]

Cooksville’s Blacksmith Shops By Larry Reed

Besides grocery stores and meat markets, blacksmith shops appear to have been the most popular businesses to inspire the entrepreneurial spirit in 19^th century Cooksville.

Indispensable in their time, Cooksville’s many blacksmith shops were operated in various locations and for various lengths of time in the village, although in some cases the records are not clear as to the exact location or duration of the businesses. With their red-hot forges and anvils, blacksmith shops were the all-around manufacturing and repair shops— for farm equipment,  wagons and carriages, for horse shoes and harnesses, for household objects and metal work of every kind—and the shops served their purpose on into the 20^th century.

Robertson’s Blacksmith Shop, c.1895

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Chapel for Cooksville By Larry Reed

It’s a little-known fact that in 1934, Frank Lloyd Wright designed a chapel for Cooksville, which he named the “Memorial to the Soil Chapel.” The chapel was commissioned for the Gideon Newman family of Cooksville, one of the early families to settle in the village.

According to Wright, the small Prairie School style family chapel was to be a “Chapel Cast in Concrete” that was inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem, “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”

Wright’s Cooksville Chapel drawing

However, the project was never built, and its exact proposed location is unknown. The only existing evidence of the chapel is an exquisite prospective elevation and plan drawn by Wright, as well as several brief mentions of the project in the Madison Capital Times newspaper in 1934.

Wright’s plan for the Cooksville Chapel became better known in 1992 when it was featured on the cover of the catalogue for an exhibit in Milwaukee celebrating the 125^th anniversary of Wright’s birth. The exhibit was titled, “The Wright State: Frank Lloyd Wright in Wisconsin.”

Apparently, the chapel was designed for the side of a small hill, and, as a Milwaukee newspaper described it in 1992, “[The chapel] breaks from the brow of a hill—a smooth-walled, flat-roofed jewel of parallel lines. Molded from cast concrete, the building both accentuates and pays tribute to the land it embraces.”

On the only existing drawing of the chapel, Wright wrote a description of his design as a “Memorial to the tiller of the ground making the earth a feature of the monument or vice versa.” The plan is a Wrightian design, very horizontal, with very simple geometric shapes inside and out.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Unfortunately, not much more is known about the project. The proposed location near Cooksville is not known, nor is the story behind the Newman family’s commission known. And the reason it was not built is likewise unknown.

The family of Gideon Newman commissioned the chapel. But which family member(s) actually dealt with Frank Lloyd Wright is not known. And the “Gideon Newman family” was a large family that included two “Gideon Newman” members: one, the original pioneer settler of Cooksville and the second, his youngest son with the same name.

The elder Gideon Ellis Newman (1823-1911) and his family settled in Cooksville in 1850, where he lived in what is now the Cooksville Farmhouse Inn on the northwest corner of State Highways 59 and 138,. Newman was a prosperous farmer on land northwest of Cooksville and north of the Badfish Creek.

His youngest son, who may have instigated the project, was also named Gideon Ellis Newman (1860-1944). He attended the University of Wisconsin in the 1880s, taught at the Cooksville School, and owned the family farm for a while and was a lawyer in Nebraska, a banker in northern Wisconsin, and an operator of an orange grove for a time in Alabama. He also lived in Chicago, Dallas, Janesville, Evansville, and San Francisco, where he died.

This younger Gideon Newman may have known Frank Lloyd Wright at the University of Wisconsin, where both were in attendance in 1886, and Newman most likely knew of this famous architect by the 1930s. It seems very likely that he initiated the 1934 Wright commission for the family. (Of course it is possible another member of the “Gideon Newman” family—children or grandchildren—may have played a role in commissioning the design of the “Cooksville Chapel” for the pioneering “Gideon Newman family.”)

And it seems reasonable that the proposed location for the Cooksville chapel may have been on the old Newman farmland north of the village on the north side of the Badfish Creek.

Unfortunately, the “Memorial to the Soil Chapel,” was never built in or near Cooksville. It would have been a unique addition to the architecture and the history of “the Town that Time Forgot.”

A Wright-designed window

COOKSVILLE’S SOCIAL LIFE: PARTIES, PICNICS AND PRANKS (PART TWO) by Larry Reed

Cooksvillians found many ways to entertain themselves, according to newspaper clippings, diary entries and remembered anecdotes found in the Cooksville Archives.

Jack Robertson, award-winning fiddler, c. 1920

The Centennial of the U.S.A. in 1876 was celebrated in several ways. In Cooksville a 100-foot flag pole was erected on the Public Square with appropriate patriotic music, songs and speeches. Also, in 1876, as the Evansville Review reported, the people of Cooksville were “celebrating the 17th of June, in Mr. Dow’s beautiful grove, with some appropriate national jollification ….with a fine breeze, excellent music…They always have a good time over there.”

An “Apron and Necktie Supper” party in Cooksville scheduled for December 11, 1886, was announced in the Evansville Review by its Cooksville Correspondent: “The Good Templars [a temperance group] will give an Apron Sociable in the basement of the [Congregational] church Sat. Evening, Dec. 11th. Each lady will please make an apron leaving six inches unhemmed and a necktie of the same material as the apron. The neckties will be placed in envelopes and sold. Each gentleman is to finish hemming the apron like his necktie. Two prizes will be given, one to the best hemmer, and one to the poorest hemmer. Each lady will provide supper for two. Apron, necktie and supper all for twenty-five cents. It is astonishing how patiently and perseveringly the boys are practicing sewing in preparation for this event. There promises to be quite a strife for the best prize—and for aught your humble correspondent can tell, the prize may be the neatest little housekeeper in town, providing of course, that the winner is not already married, in which case a wig may be substituted.” (Two weeks later it was reported in the newspaper that, “The first prize at the Apron Social was a moustache cup, and a young fellow won it who hadn’t a sign of down on his lip!’)

In 1888, an unusual kind of party popular in Cooksville was reported in the Evansville Tribune of Feb. 4, 1888. Apparently, folks would burst into someone’s home, unannounced, to instigate a party. “They call ‘em surprise parties, one came to our house last Tuesday as we were gathered around our evening meal, with our favorite dish of raw onions and vinegar for desert (sic). We ‘riz right up’ and made them welcome, then we played all the kissing games from Copenhagen to ‘spat ‘em out’ and finished up with a good old fashioned codtillion (sic), while the good Deacon looked on and wished, alas, that he was young and could trip the ‘light fantastic toe’ its way home to the music of the ‘bells, bells, bells.’” Wild times in Cooksville, with this party probably at the home of one of the Danish Hansens. (Maybe you had to be there.)

Pony cart on the Square with the flag pole, c. 1900

The Cooksville Public Square was the scene of many community events, especially picnics. In 1889, a race track was constructed around the perimeter, “which when completed will be very handy for those who have horses to train.” Tickets to use the track could be purchased at the Post Office (in one of the Stores) or at the Broom Factory across Webster Street on the west side of the Square. And in the same year, according to this 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.” The ball games on the Public Square brought the men and boys of the village together on Saturday afternoons. A 1900 photograph shows the Cooksville Cornhuskers baseball team posed for a group picture. And in the winter, “The boys had fine sport skating on the mill pond.”

The Cooksville Cornhuskers baseball team, 1900.

There was even a wrestling match in Cooksville reported in 1858: “The contest between Graves of Cooksville and Lane of Fond du Lac came off at Cooksville Tuesday—Graves won the stake of $100. Everything went off pleasantly.” In the late 1880s, the circus came to Cooksville—or, at least, it passed through the village. As a child, Lillian Graves remembered it: “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 up on 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 wagon 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 quiet sufficient. We would talk about it for days.” Another form of entertainment, occasionally presented at the Cooksville Schoolhouse for the children, was the ‘panorama show.” This was an early form of a “picture show” in which a series of scenes or pictures, sometimes of Civil War battles, that had been painted on large, rolled-up canvases were slowly unrolled in panoramic succession before the audience, like a moving mural. In 1886, the children eagerly watched the pictures unfold before their eyes, although the adults apparently were not so fascinated by this old-fashioned “class of entertainment.” “Play Day” was an exciting and eagerly-anticipated event for the Cooksville School children and for the kids from the other Town of Porter schools who came to the Public Square to compete in sports and other events, and those happy Days were fondly remembered long after all those one-room schools closed in the early 1960s. In the mid-20th century out-door movies arrived in Cooksville. In 2012, when the Cooksville General Store was being re-painted, it was reported that, “Jerry [Julseth] is enjoying watching the store being painted and now that they are painting the north side, he plans to go over and tell Mr. Imhoff [the painter] about how the Cooksville store showed movies on that side of the store on Saturday evenings in the summer. The village kids remember going into the store and getting pop corn and watching Roy Rogers and other cowboy movies which were projected on the side of the store. They would bring their blankets along and enjoy the show.” Life in old Cooksville also included its share of “fun” pranks that amused the village, or at least pleased the pranksters. One of the more “popular” and frequent pranks reported was the stealthy late-night opening of the gates on the mill pond, which lowered the water level and left the Cooksville mill inoperable and the miller unable to grind that day.

Making apple cider with Ralph Warner, 1917

Other pranks recorded included the Halloween-night tarring of Ralph Warner’s front stoop—sticky steps that may or may not have amused the owner. At another time, the rope was taken from the flagpole on the Public Square and stretched across the road and broken into pieces (either by horse-drawn carriages or Model-T Fords). And William Porter’s water pump got filled with sand, and Mr. Newell’s hay-mower mysteriously ended up on top of his blacksmith shop one night. “Who did it?” The answer given in the reports was often, “The Boys.” Asked one reporter, “Is it ‘The Boys’ that lower people’s woodpiles in the night?” Another prank—really, a turning of the tables on young Halloween pranksters who loved tipping over outhouses— was the moving of his out-house by Mr. Van Wormer himself, about three feet off its foundation and away from its hole-in-the-ground, so that the nighttime pranksters who approached the outhouse, no doubt to turn it over or steal it, had an unexpected and unpleasant “drop-in” down the hole— much to Mr. Van Wormer’s great delight, no doubt. In the 1890s, village boys played an elaborate prank on William and Marshall Ray. The Rays were two middle-aged bachelor brothers who lived on the Square and owned farmland outside the village, which they worked with a pair of mules. The ownership of mules was unusual at the time. The Rays brothers were well-liked and the local boys would often visit them. According to Lillian Graves’ reminiscences, one evening, village boys, including her two younger brothers, Wayne and Willie, “managed to get the two mules out of the barn and changed their colors from brown to white by administering liberal coats of whitewash. Then Wayne and another boy went to call on the Ray brothers who were sitting on their front porch. Two other young pranksters had been delegated to hitch up the mules and drive them by the Ray home. As they came into sight, one of the [Ray] brothers remarked with some surprise, ‘Other folks have mules as well as we.’ This simple yarn was repeated over and again in Cooksville, and almost became a folk legend.” Even Cooksville’s young pranksters helped to entertain the village.

[These bits of Cooksville life and history—and many more— are found in the diaries, memoires, newspaper clippings, letters, personal interviews and oral histories, all of which are contained in the Cooksville Archives. The Archives is available to interested persons. Donations of photographs, clippings, anecdotes, family histories, etc., are welcomed. Contact Larry Reed, (608) 873-5066 or email lreed@chorus.net.]

Cooksville Lutheran Harvest Dinner 11/11/12

Cooksville Lutheran Church, Harvest Dinner November 11th Members of the Cooksville Lutheran Church are busy preparing for the annual Harvest Dinner, scheduled for Sunday, November 11th, noon-3 PM. Church services will precede the meal, commencing at 10:15 AM. Tickets will be on sale the day of the event in the new church addition, the Fellowship Hall, which is handicapped accessible and air-conditioned. . Individuals /families are invited to eat at the Church; or carry-out meals are available. The meal will consist of the traditional homemade Thanksgiving meal: turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, baked squash, cranberries and lefse, and pie. The church building is handicapped accessible and air-conditioned. The Cooksville Lutheran Church is located in northern Rock County, at the junction of state roads 59, 138 and Tolles Road, between Edgerton, Stoughton and Evansville. The mailing address for the Church is 11927 West Church Street, Evansville, but it is located in the village of Cooksville. The website address is www.cooksvillelutheranchurch.org Please call me if you have questions, 1-608-302-1722; Hopkins@litewire.net

COOKSVILLE’S 19th CENTURY SOCIAL LIFE: PARTIES, PICNICS AND PRANKS (PART ONE) by Larry Reed

Entertainments of various kinds—parties, community gatherings, occasional pranks—were part of the active social life of 19th century Cooksville. They were the highlights in the hard-working, semi-isolated Cooksville community, before small villages were “hard-wired” with telephones, radios, televisions, the Internet, and the internal combustion engines of the 20th century.

Being neighborly and sharing simple pleasures were important attributes in small towns in the mid-and-late-1800s, with self-organized activities serving as sources of social interaction, individual pleasure and sometimes intellectual stimulation. As recorded in journals, diaries and local newspaper gossip columns, the village tea-time parties and supper-parties that lasted until the wee hours were frequent events, often with music, singing, dancing and lively discussions. At one party at Mr. Duncan’s, “we fell into a pleasant little discussion upon the sounds of the vowels.” (Maybe not all the talk was lively.) Recipes, home remedies and plants were exchanged and gossip shared at house visits in the afternoon or the evening. Picnics, especially school picnics, were popular gatherings on the village Public Square or in Dow’s Grove west of the village by the Badfish Creek. And Waucoma House, the village’s stagecoach inn and tavern, was the site of social interaction (and alcoholic refreshments) before it was demolished in 1915. Card-games, especially euchre and whist, were enjoyed and holiday parties and family festivities usually involved friends and neighbors. The Porters, just east of Cooksville, once gave a party gathering for eighteen guests where fresh oysters— a popular dish to serve— were to be featured; however, the barrel of oysters, shipped in from Milwaukee or Chicago and stored in the cool basement, had spoiled, and the hostess, Ann Eliza Porter, had to improvise on that occasion. But, she wrote in her journal, “we got along quite well without them” and at 3 a.m. “our company went home under a mellow flood of moonlight.”

Ann Eliza Porter and Joseph K.P. Porter had arrived in 1847, and Ann brought the first piano to the community. She was a well-trained musician and was the moving spirit in the many musical events in the community, including productions of “H.M.S. Pinafore” and “Laila.” She was also a popular one-woman “elocutionist,” dramatically reciting poems and stories. She was also remembered as shocking the community by sitting beside her husband in church instead of sitting on the side reserved for women. Village neighborliness sometimes took the form of “donation parties.” Such parties, the fund-raising charities of their time, were common, especially to assist the elder and were usually held at the Masonic Hall or the Congregational Church basement. At one such party, for the Widow O’Brien and her five children who faced a bleak winter, neighbors who had little money to donate came with gifts of pork, flour, and vegetables. At the Widow’s party they danced and played games, one of which involved a large flat pan half-filled with raisins and half-filled with whiskey, which was then set afire. The players had to pick the raisins out of the burning whiskey with their fingers. One little boy remembered crawling around on the floor beneath the crowd of adults and snatching up the hot raisins that were dropped. “Black berrying” was turned into pleasurable social outings. In the 1860s many diary entries by the Dow family recorded outings into the woods near Bellville and Dayton where black berries were picked, picnic suppers were eaten, and partiers camped overnight in the woods or in a nearby barn if it rained, and came home in the morning. “Had a fine time,” the diarist wrote. In 1876, a major July 4th celebratory project was undertaken by two Cooksvillians, who otherwise had extremely different religious beliefs but shared very patriotic feelings. Gideon Newman was a Maine Protestant, and John Savage was a Vermont Puritan, They argued frequently about religion, wasting time and energy, until finally both men decided to cease discussing religion and divert their energies into something constructive. Both men decided upon a project to raise a “liberty pole” in the Cooksville Public Square to celebrate America’s 100th birthday on July 4, 1876. (Liberty poles were erected during the Revolutionary War as protests against British rule, and continued to be popular public expressions of American freedom in the 19th century, as are flag poles today.) The community supported the idea of a Cooksville liberty pole wholeheartedly, and Newman and Savage were selected to secure the logs. The two men took their horse teams and journeyed to northern Wisconsin and brought back two fifty-foot logs. William Graves, a local blacksmith, and John Fisher, a local carpenter, went to work to taper the two logs together from 36 inches at the base to 8 inches at the top, with a splice at the center fastened with steel bands and bolts to connect the two fifty-foot sections. On July 4, 1876, it was reported that three thousand people gathered on the Public Square to watch the raising of this impressive Liberty Pole. A ten-foot hole was dug, with a forty-foot trench leading into it. The pole was rolled into the trench, and then slowly raised with ropes, pulleys and sheer strength. The Liberty Pole, a ninety-foot symbol of the American Spirit, was a result of the efforts of two men who disagreed on religion but agreed on democratic principles. As part of the ceremony, ten little girls, “Future Mothers of America,” raised the flag. Ann Eliza Porter, Cooksville’s talented soprano, sang two patriotic solos, and John Savage sang a song, “Tenting on the Old Camp Ground.” Community singing was led by Thomas Morgan accompanied on the portable melodeon, a small organ, by his daughter, Net. The program that day also included a fife and drum corps and “talks” by Thomas Earl, Benjamin Hoxie, Joseph Porter, Harrison Stebbins, James Gillies, John Savage, J.P. Van Vleck and John Dow. The Liberty Pole remained in place for six years, towering over the village. In 1882, the Evansville Enterprise newspaper reported that the Liberty Pole had been sawn down. (However, photos from about 1910 show a tall flagpole standing in the middle of the Public Square, perhaps a replacement .) (TO BE CONTINUED.)

“The Best Dam Man in the World!” by Larry Reed (PART TWO)

John Savage grew up in the small village of Cooksville (“a wee bit of New England in Wisconsin”), attended school there, as well as the nearby Evansville High School. He then attended the Hillside Home School at Spring Green for two years, a private academy operated by Frank Lloyd Wright’s aunts. In 1898 his family moved to Madison and he completed his junior and senior years at Madison High School, and then studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin for the next four years, graduating in 1903. Here is Savage about 15 years old.

His first job in civil engineering was with the U.S. Reclamation Service “Temporary Force” as an engineering aid at a salary of $60 per month to work on the Minidoka irrigation project in the Snake River Valley of Idaho. Thus began his life’s work, advancing in his profession with many impressive achievements and awards to come, although he modestly called himself just “one of Uncle Sam’s employees.” Savage always had great affection for his hometown of Cooksville on the Badfish Creek with the nearby Yahara River with their dams powering the four grist mills from their flowing waters. His father was Edwin Parker Savage (who served as chairman of the Town of Dunkirk in 1889) and his mother was Mary Therese Stebbins. He grew up on the family farm, which had been established by his grandfather who came to Wisconsin in 1842 settling in the Town of Dunkirk north of Cooksville. (Unfortunately, the historic farmhouse that he grew up in was destroyed by fire in 1996.) He first married Jessie Burdick Sexsmith of Milton Junction, Wisconsin, in 1918; she died in 1941. He later married Olga Lacher Miner in 1950. He had no children. When Savage died in 1967 at the age of 88, he was lauded for his designs of the world’s great dams, for his many impressive water project-related accomplishments throughout the world and for his dedicated service, his modesty and his self-effacement. As one person wrote, “Perhaps the final irony of his life was that John L. Savage, a man who hated publicity and was dedicated to public service, had actually left to posterity monuments as permanent as any created in the entire history of mankind.” No doubt: John Lucian Savage (1879-1967) was the best dam man in history. [Excerpt from “The Village of Cooksville: A Chronicle of the Town that Time Forgot,” by Larry A. Reed.]