On a weekend in 1953, the Village of Cooksville conducted
its first of many historic open-house and garden tours. And 1953’s was a bigger
success than expected.
During those two days, June 6 and 7, 1953, the crowds came for
a chance to tour the historic village and visit some interiors of the historic 1840s and
1850s brick and clapboarded homes and to stroll through their flower gardens.
The Village of Cooksville in Rock County was established in 1842
on land first sold by the U.S. government in 1837 to John and Daniel Cook. It was
expanded in 1846 by a second larger village, named Waucoma, established next
door. Waucoma was platted by Dr. John Porter who bought the land from the
famous U.S. Senator Daniel Webster. Porter’s village featured a New
England-style Public Square or Commons and locally-made vermilion-colored brick
houses and locally-sawn clapboard houses from the 19th century. The
two villages are now known collectively as Cooksville.
By the 1950s, with no railroad to stimulate commercial
growth, Cooksville had been resting, preserved, on its early architectural
laurels of mid-19th-century Greek Revival and Gothic Revival styles
of homes. Nick-named a “Wee Bit of New England in Wisconsin,” the village featured
a General Store (now the state’s oldest), an early schoolhouse on the Commons, two
early churches, two
blacksmith shops, an old cemetery, and many carefully-tended flower gardens.
Interest in the village had been growing in the 20
th-century,
thanks to Ralph Warner (1875-1941), who beginning about 1912 opened the door of
his old home to visitors. He named his handsome Cooksville-brick Duncan House
(built in 1848) the “House Next Door.” He had filled it with extensive and
varied collections of antiques from the 18
th and 19
th
centuries. And he also gave guests tours of his elaborate gardens.
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| "House Next Door" |
Warner’s antiques and his old-fashioned setting—and his
simple home-cooked meals that he served guests—were an unusual accomplishment
at the time, which enticed more visitors to Cooksville. His enthusiastic “antiquarian”
efforts attracted local, state and national attention .Eventually it was a bit
more attention than Warner actually wanted.
Several decades later, on June 6 and 7, 1953, the first, ambitious
two-day, open-house tour of historic Cooksville took place sponsored by the Cooksville Mothers’ Club
(a precursor of the present-day Cooksville Community Center organization). The
event was to serve as a fund-raiser for the “mother-teacher association” of the
Cooksville School, the village’s one-room schoolhouse built in 1886, and a popular
location for community events then, as it is today.
Attendance at the two-day 1953 village tour almost
overwhelmed the organizers—and earned more money than expected. Over 1,300 visitors
attended the tour—many more than the 200 or 300 that were expected. The
organizers had to scramble after the first day, spending the night printing
more 6-page tour booklets, mixing more punch, and baking more cookies for the
bigger crowd anticipated on Sunday, the second day of the event.
For the 50-cent ticket price visitors received tours of five
of Cooksville’s historic homes and gardens situated around the village’s
historic Public Square. And refreshments were included in the ticket price. The
homes and gardens open to the public were the Morgan House (1848) owned by
Helen Naysmith, the Longbourne-Robertson House (1854) owned by Miles and Beth
Armstrong, the Duncan House (1848) owned by Chester Holway, the
Backenstoe-Howard House (1848) owned by C.S. Atwood, and the Benjamin Hoxie
House (1852) owned by Arthur and Dorothy Kramer.
One of the organizers, Chester Holway, whose house and
garden were on the tour, wrote a story after the successful tour was completed.
It was published in the national “Pathfinder, the Town Journal,” Washington,
D.C., magazine the following year.
“Our village of Cooksville in southern Wisconsin has fewer
than one hundred persons, including small children and two neighboring farm
families,” wrote Holway. “Yet on a weekend last June we entertained more than
1,300 visitors who came—some from as far as 125 miles—just to see our old homes
and gardens. And they paid 50 cents for the pleasure… Although almost every
house in Cooksville is curiously interesting for its age and architecture, five
houses were chosen to be shown because they have been either kept in their
original state or restored and because their furnishings are largely the same
age as the houses…”
Holway’s description continued: “At the door of the school, two
of our college girls accepted the 50-cent payments for each person. To each
they gave a yellow admission tag on a string and a six-page mimeographed
booklet containing a map of the village (and) our historian’s account of
village doings since Daniel Webster owned it, and biographies of the five
houses that were open. It also pointed out our church, our beautiful cemetery,
our fine general store, and urged all to take their time and savor our village
atmosphere.”
Holway wrote that after the unexpectedly large crowd on the
first day, even more were expected on Sunday. “Mothers rushed off to their
kitchens and after supper, started baking more cookies. Some were still
watching their ovens after midnight… Sunday noon the cars started coming even
earlier… visitors lined up in front of the schoolhouse a half-block long… It
took the first comers almost two hours to reach the fifth and last house…”
“That Sunday night, the Mothers’ Club was richer by $603.
Expenses, including the guide booklets and the punch (cookies, signs, publicity
materials were donated) totaled only $43, making the net profit for the school
fund $560.”
“In all our homes nothing was broken, nothing stolen,
nothing marred…there was not a mark on the floors or rugs to show it.”
Since that first village house tour in 1953, Cooksville has
had a total of eight other open-house or garden tours over the years— in 1957, 1982,
1984, 1986, 1990, 1996, 2000, and 2005— all well-attended and profitable, with no
litter or other problems encountered. In addition, many small-group, non-open-house walking tours have been arranged.
The Village of Cooksville’s early rural charm and its
historic heritage, preserved over the years, continues to attract attention, as
the “Town that Time Forgot.” And the community continues to share and celebrate
its past with others.
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[The Cooksville
Community Center, located in the historic Cooksville Schoolhouse, is available
for special events, and small group tours of the village may be arranged. Contact Bill
Zimmerman (608-628-8566) about renting the Community Center or Larry Reed
(608-873-5066) about non-open-house, group walking tours.]
Known as Van Vleck’s Hall, the Cooksville Opera House was
located above Van Patten’s and Newkirk’s meat market on the corner of Main (now
hwy 138) and Dane Streets. At the time, the second-floor opera house was used
by local and traveling performers as one of Cooksville’s social gathering
venues, which also included the schoolhouse (now the Cooksville Community
Center), the Congregational Church, and the Masonic Lodge above the General
Store. Although no pictures of this structure have been found, Cooksville
resident Chris Beebe has created an artist’s rendering of what this structure
may have looked like in the 1890s.
