UNPUBLISHED CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF
WHITEHALL AND THE WHITEHALL TIMES
By Mrs. Will Rogers
January 14th, 1940
With this issue the Whitehall Times celebrates its 60th anniversary. With care and tenderness we opened the time-worn first volume of this newspaper’s bound copies to find the salutation:
January 14, 1880. With this, the first appearance of the Whitehall Times, we make our best bow to its readers, and clear the stage preparatory to greeting you weekly, bringing local news and intelligence from all parts of the county and territory adjoining.
Dan Camp, Editor
Fred Beach, Proprietor
Whitehall in 1880 was an unincorporated village of 267 population. Its area was confined to the 19 city blocks of the original plat laid out in 1874 by Theodore H. Earle in the interest of his father-in-law, Henry Ketchum, who was then president of the Green Bay & Minnesota (later Green Bay & Western) railroad, and D.M. Kelly, capitalist, interested in the railroad, and to two small additions, Ketchum’s in 1877 and Kelly’s in 1879; of five and seven blocks respectively. The 1880 village extended from the intersection of Blair and Main streets to Marsh on the south, which is the block-long street separating the Joe Matchey machine shop and the Mobil Oil station, from the W.S. Lieberg house and the Methodist Episcopal church. From Main street west through Ellis and Hancock streets to approximately the Ralph Wood residence. East to include Abrams and Mill street. Dewey street and the portion of the town west and south were not added until almost 15 years later, nor was the East side platted, though it had been growing rapidly in recent years.
The business section of 60 years ago was confined almost entirely to the present business portion, by which we mean the block including Erickson’s and the Farmer’s stores on the east side of Main and the Isaac Nelson building and the old Scott Hall lot on the west, with the area in between. At least three landmarks remain in this section that were centers of trade in 1880, They are the Theo. B. Olson building on the east side of Main street, now divided into three sections and occupied by Beck’s Lunch, a storeroom for the Olson hardware, and the Risberg Tavern. On the west side of the street remain the Fortun Drug Store and Wright’s cafe. The Olson building, a. frame structure, was erected by the late H. E. Getts, father of our contemporary, E. C. Getts, as a mercantile establishment. A second story was raised over the middle section by Mr. Getts for living quarters, and a search through the old Times files reveals that the Getts home was probably the greatest social center of the community back in those days. One of the many gatherings reported there was a surprise event for “Eddie” Getts when he was home from somewhere (it didn’t say where) on a brief vacation. Among those present were Hattie Olds, (now Mrs. H. M. Beach of Whitehall); Marcia Staples, who has for many years resided in Washington, D. C.; Phil Lambert, Independence merchant; and George Scott, whose death occurred only last fall. There were others too, and all had been classmates in the village school. The present structure housing Wright’s cafe on the first floor, and the Wright families on the second was the Best Hotel of 60 years ago. The C. E. Scott building on the corner of Main and Scranton streets, which was razed by D. A. Bensend, owner of the property, just a few years ago, was also an 1880 landmark. The second story of this building, called Scott’s Hall, gradually replaced the old Opera Hall, located on Scranton a few feet west, as the community center. Here all manner of entertainment was held, ranging from concerts by blind musicians and dramatizations by traveling companies imported for a night, to local dances and masquerades which, according to the files, were very happy affairs. One unique entertainment held in Scott’s hall was a lecture course given by one Doctor Humphrey to packed houses.
Dan Camp, editor of The Times, was a versatile Irishman. As a sample of his writing, we quote from the Jan 14, 1880 issue of the newspaper; “Gloom and fog, mud and slush, rain, sleet and snow, ice and bare frozen earth to wind up with, are the weather statistics for the past week, which we are bound to say for versatality and pure cussedness was the worst week ever experienced here to our knowledge.” And from the issue of Jan. 21, “Camp (himself) has put up an ice house and is filling it with large block of the cool crystal. It is 18 inches thick and as cold as your mother-in-law’s smile, and as slippery as a lightning rod exhorter.” This year (1940) the ice being harvested by the Briggs Transfer company is 16 inches thick and “very cold” according to Herman D. But Mr. Camp was more than a writer and humorist; he was a pencil artist. His sketch of early Whitehall, made on a letter-size piece of paper as he sat on the high hill north of the Trempealeau river bridge, is excellent art for an amateur and may be seen at the House of Memories, where it is preserved. He was also a merchant and operated a combination grocery store and grocery store on the present site of the Farmer’s store.
At the opposite end of the block from Camp’s location, stood the Exchange Hotel, operated by Moses Ingalls and his wife, parents of our townsman J. M. Ingalls, and grandfather of Mmes. J. E. Rhode and Anton Vold. Mrs. Ingalls was a pillar in the Methodist church in those days for she is mentioned as entertaining the M. E. Ladies Aid at a New England supper. There was another Ingalls in town at that time, one J. B. Ingalls, a jeweler, but so far as is known he was not a relative of the Moses Ingalls family. J. B. was a Seventh Day Adventist, according to local people who remember him.
Besides the Exchange Hotel (which was erected in 1874 by Sam Alexander and was first known as the Alexander Hotel), and the Best Hotel, in 1880, there was the Whitehall House on Ellis street, later called the Allen Hotel, erected by J. O. Allen and now abandoned as a hostelry. Later in 1880 the Times mentions the American House, whose proprietor was P. S. Price. This latter building was put up in the early part of 1874 by H. C. Stratton who called it the Empire House, and later sold to M. White who was proprietor in 1875-76.
The names of Whitehall’s 1880 residents were principally of British origin, contrasted with the present-day predominance of Scandinavian surnames in our village. C. A. Adams took advantage of the opportunities offered by this pioneer village by engaging not only in the meat business (he had a slaughter house near the river that was robbed one night in January, 1880) but in the merchandising of groceries, crockery and glassware as well. He opened his first store where the Clover Farm and Rollin Drug stores are now located, in a building to which, from time to time, he had to make an addition in order to make room for his growing stock. Which building today rests on Scranton street and is known as the Frank Larson place. Adams’ volume of business soon grew so great that additional space was needed, and he (with John Taylor, whom he had taken in as a partner) purchased the corner lot which years earlier had housed the Camp Block, burned out in the winter of 1894, and erected thereon a two story brick structure to be known as Adams & Taylor store. Mr. Taylor was the husband of Jessie Taylor of Dewey Street, whose death occurred about three years ago. Mr. Taylor dropped dead in Wright’s Cafe but a few years before.
Mr. Adams and his children, Maud and Charles, Jr., who grew up in Whitehall, are dead, but his widow is living in the city of Eau Claire with her sister, Miss Sheeley.
O. G Graham was the G. B. & M. station agent and his wife had one of the two millinery stores in town at that time, the other being operated by Mary Allen. A. J. Cady had a store where he sold fancy and staple groceries. H. G. Newell was the druggist in competition with Dan Camp. The Whitehall Flouring Mill was jointly owned by C. E. Scott, H. E. Getts, T. H. Earle, and E. J. Carpenter. Early day Whitehall had an elevator mentioned as Cargill & Van’s, and no doubt through this establishment passed the 1500 bushels of wheat that was marketed in the village in one week. At the beginning of the year wheat was bringing $1.10 a bushel but at the end of the year the price had sunk to 85 cents. Nevertheless, much grain was shipped, compared with the sprinkling of the present day. Patent flour brought $7 in 1880; butter was 16 cents a pound; hogs were bringing $4.50, compared with the present market; eggs were 15 cents the dozen, not much less expensive than the price today at 18 cents; corn was 35 cents, oats 30 cents and potatoes 35 cents.
Whitehall was a wheat field when the Green Bay tracks were laid down the Trempealeau valley, and indeed grain was the mainstay of agricultural income at that time.
A LaSalle street firm of commission merchants in Chicago, W. T. Saule & co., advertised in The Times that they were grain speculators in large and small amounts, $25 or $25,000. Livestock was also a big item in the farmer’s income.
The C. N. Paine & Co. lumber yards were located where the Hegge feed store on Main street now stands. T. H. Earle was the manager of the company. Farther south and across the tracks on the opposite side of Main street, were several small buildings. One of them housed The Times and the other was the establishment of M. C. Olson, merchant-tailor, who was the father of Alfred Olson, present courthouse janitor. “Slippy” finds it amusing that throughout his life he has hardly moved a block from his birthplace, for Mr. Olson’s family resided in rooms back of his shop. These two buildings, The Times and the tailor shop, have been moved to the east side of the same block and now face Abrams street. They house at the present time the Matchey Blacksmith Shop.
Taylor & Lawrence were the 1880 blacksmiths. Anderson & Larson, bachelors, had a shoe store at that time; E. H. Warner and J. L. Knudtson were hardware merchants. A. Fossegaard was a tanner. Robert S. Wilson was a confectioner.
G. H. Olds was Whitehall’s postmaster in 1880 and the post office was in a building that sat just back of where the present post office is located. Mr. Olds was the father of Mrs. H. M. Beach.
R. G. Floyd was the first doctor in Whitehall and in his professional card in The Times he advertises himself as specializing in surgery and obstetrics. Contrast the one physician to the five practicing in Whitehall at the present time, with a 30-bed hospital and a clinic for their convenience. But we find no evidence of dentists located here in 1880, although there are now three.
Another lack in the town early in 1880 was a barber shop, but a November issue of the same year announces that a “tonsorial artist, and a good one too” had located for the time being in the Exchange Hotel.
Two firms of attorneys had their cards in The Times in its first issue; Samuel Miller & Carroll Atwood, and A. J. Allen & P. A. Williams. Both had their offices in the second story of the Camp building in the business section. We are told that Mr. Williams built a small square house on the site of the present Morris Hanson residence on Main street. He married a Southworth girl, sister of the late Charles South-worth of this village and of Ed. Southworth, now of Clermont, Fla., and for many years Whitehall representative for the Cargill Grain Co. of La Crosse.
Mr. and Mrs. Williams later moved to Marshfield and there his widow now resides. Lawyer Miller built the residence at the corner of Blair and Ellis streets, and Dan Camp erected as his family home the cottage at the rear of the Ray Ringstad house, which faces Blair street and is owned and occupied by the Torval Fremstad family.
Whitehall was not yet officially the county seat, as the three-cornered fight for the court house, with Galesville, Arcadia and this village as the principals, was still on in 1880. But in 1877 the town of Lincoln, to which Whitehall belonged before its incorporation as a village in 1887, built a town hall in anticipation of housing the county offices here permanently. It was the present frame building that was erected, and before work on it was actually begun, the Odd Fellow lodge contributed $600 to the funds made so that a second story would be added for their use as a meeting place. Sure enough, at least some of the county officers were occupying this hall by 1880 and remained there until 1884, when the original part of the present court house just across the street was built, with the town contributing $5,000 to the county appropriation as an inducement, and donated the ground on which the present courthouse buildings stand.
One of the county officers installed here in 1880 was John O. Melby, Register of Deeds, who was, eight years later, to found the John O. Meiby & Co. bank as a private venture and later to make a national bank of the institution, the one of today, with his son, Charles B., as cashier. Mr. Melby added to his official income by advertising himself in The Times as a notary public and conveyancer, and as agent for the sale of tickets to and from Europe. A Times story told that one extremely cold day a beggar with his frozen toes protruding from very ragged shoes, called at Mr. Melby’s office asking for alms. With pity welling up in his generous heart, the register gave the beggar an order on a local store for a pair of shoes. Later in the day, the beggar returned, wearing a $5 pair of shoes, and with him was another man in need of shoes. The alms-seekers of today know where they are almost sure to get a welcome too, but they are more sly about passing the word around; they stay in their “jungles” down the railroad track and give descriptions instead of accompanying each other. Mr. Melby built his first home on the present Dr. Anton Vold residence lot and later the Melby home of today.
Judge C. E. Perkins took advantage of his proximity to county records to go into the abstract business as a side issue, doing the same work as the Trempealeau County Abstract Company now operated by Mrs. Wm. Mason with her office in the House of Memories building.
David Kribs, county treasurer, moved here from Arcadia and probably built the Cramers house on north Abrams street where the Gilbert Moen family now resides, for that is where he and his family lived.
R. A. Odell, clerk of court, built the present H.A. Anderson residence at the south end of Main Street and one on the same site that was burned.
Sheriff Dan Hagestad of 1880, uncle of Supt. A. C. Hagestad of the Trempealeau County Asylum today, built himself what is known as the Hans Haugh residence, now occupied by the Albert Petersons, opposite the Alvin Speerstra place on the south edge of the village limits as they stand today. The Speerstra place back in 1880 was owned by the Sherwood family, pioneers, for whom Sherwood’s hill leading into Irvin coulee was named.
In 1880 public sponsored education in Whitehall was limited to a grade school with two teachers. The building stood on the spot now Occupied by the Adolph Olson home, one block west of Main street at the south limits of the village. Alex D. Flemington was the principal and Belle E. McMillan had charge of the primary department. Extraordinary as it may seem today, when the trend is away from publicizing or laying too much stress on school grades, they were made very public in 1880 by printing them in The Times. The students were classed as A, B, and C students. Stephen Richmond of Arcadia visited the schools as county superintendent, in one issue of that year, Mary Brandenburg, secretary, placed a notice calling attention to a meeting of the Trempealeau County Teachers’ Association. The school’s Christmas vacation lasted three weeks.
Advertisements in the files notify the public that various merchants had for sale in 1880 saleratus; organs; steam engines; grain binders; encyclopedias; dictionaries; a million acres of farm land in Iowa; many more acres of government and railroad land in eastern Oregon and Washington; many drugs including cures for the opium habit, rheumatism, and various and sundry other ills such as Tulu Rock & Rye for coughs, colds, and influenza and other ailments. Stomach bitters; sewing machines, giant riding sawing machines; such books as the Koran, the Mohammedan bible translated into English, and “A Fool’s Errand and the Invisible Empire”, a record of the South following the war, for which Amos Parsons was canvasser; carriages in which to go “wheeling over the rough unsurfaced roads” of those days with a smart team at the head; folding beds; handflutes (whatever they were for); apples at $1.75; a 10 cent reduction on teas at Camp’s, to unload over-stock; and what not. One of the few cuts appearing during the entire 1880 volume of the paper was one picturing a corseted mother clothed in ankle-length, high necked and long-sleeved dress, jumping up from her sewing machine in alarm as her amply-clothed small daughter tipped a kerosene lamp unto the floor and fire started at once on the carpet, that kind of floor covering that was taken down again after the fall and spring house cleanings, that the men in the family so deplored.
Another item concerning the schools of the 1880 period was the fact that adults were indulging themselves in extra-school education, as evidenced by the fact that Prof. Ringstad of Pigeon was conducting a class in penmanship at the Scandinavian House, the present Erickson hotel, and Prof. Henry Comstock was conducting a class in business arithmetic. Furthermore, there were the public spelling bees at which the adults acquitted themselves admirably. But most notably among them, perhaps, was T. H. Earle, who in the workaday world operated a hay press in conjunction with David wood on the present Auto Sales Co. site. Hay was abundant and in demand, especially in the pineries which operated during the winter and to which many of the local men went for the season. A local in one of the weekly papers says that Earle & Wood’s crew baled 13 tons of hay in eight hours and 20 minutes one day when their bosses were absent. Little is heard of the hay baling industry nowadays.
Dan Tucker was engaged in watering milk to the wants of the families in Whitehall in 1880. Today, with a population of less than four times that of 1880, we have three dairies supplying milk to Whitehall homes.
Other unique advertisements appearing in the 1880 issues were by two Washington offices, one operated by Geo. E. Lemon, stating that pensions were available upon application to many soldiers and their heirs who were entitled to them. How strange it seems in this day, when pension seekers are manifold, that those entitled to them had to be sought out in 1880.
In the summer of 1880 the Whitehall Baseball Club was active, even as such a club is today. When a Drum Corps was organized, with Gene Webster as drum major, agents were on hand almost immediately to sell the members uniforms. Graham’s Band, a report says, furnished music for a party that was held at Scott’s Hall on Christmas Eve. It seems strange to us today who retire into our homes on Christmas eve or attend church, that any public gatherings should be held on this occasion, and perhaps there was some doubt of the rightness of it even then, for the Times editor suggested that the puritans would not approve of it.
It is strange to us too that the freight trains suspended on the G. B. & M. during Christmas. They run every day now.
A comment by ye editor, with a sly give at the female population, said that silken hosiery were then becoming the rage in Paris, with portraits or medallions of point lace embroidered into their fabric. Silk stockings, unadorned to be sure, are demanded by girls scarcely out of their teens nowadays and up until they are past the age of being self-conscious of their appearance; to wit, old age.
Telephones must have been scarce in those days, but a statement in the paper says that on the average 3000 calls per day were answered at the central office of the telephone exchange located in The Times Block.
Deer hunting was a sport in 1880; partridges were easily shot and sold for $1 per dozen; and Dr. Floyd had taken to trapping quail as a sport and got 23 in one Sunday, with the result that his friends were living on quail and toast all day Monday.
There was one other church in Whitehall in 1880, the Baptist, at which Elder Dissmore preached. The Methodist minister was W. H. Chynoweth.
There was one other secret society besides the I.O.O.F., the N.W.B.A., of which S. S. Miller was president and L. H. Whitney secretary. The I.O.O.F. carried a card in The Times, with J. L. Knudtson as Noble Grand and G. G. Graham as recording secretary.
Hilliard & Demott’s Great Pacific circus, Menagerie, Mardi Gras carnival and Egyptian Caravan played in Whitehall on Saturday, Aug. 14, 1880. It was hinted by the editor in the following week’s paper that certain staid citizens of the town had visited the lottery run as a side issue in connection with the circus.
In July of that year the G. B. & M. had its first serious wreck on this end of the line. A terrific rain, electrical, wind and hail storm struck the area and, among other damage, washed out a culvert beneath the tracks two miles west of town, near the Trempealeau river. The train was derailed and the engineer and fireman were killed.
The fact that Whitehall had a stage line in 1880 must not be overlooked. It was operated by Gene Webster, the livery man. The stage left Whitehall Tuesdays and Fridays at 6 o’clock a.m. for Elk Creek, Chimney Rock, Hamlin and Eau Claire, and returned Wednesdays and Saturdays at 7 o’clock p.m. It left for Pigeon Falls and Hale Saturdays at 7 o’clock a.m. and returned at 6 p.m.
Whitehall had a volunteer fire department even in those days.
A local news item in one issue that year states; “Lutie Quackenbush, who was injured while trying to walk a tight tope, will recover.”
Comes the fall, and politics was in the ascendancy.
At the election early in November, the county went Republican and President Garfield was elected by the nation.
Threshing was not yet finished by election time, nor for some weeks after.
Late in the year J. L. Knudtson got the western fever and started for Colorado, where it was reported that in 1879 $19,110,862 in gold had been mined, to bring the total output to $101,000,000 since mining began there. Publisher Beach hinted in his columns that in the spring he too would be going to Colorado.
In one of the last issues of the year a warning appeared that taxes must be paid by the last day of December or a 3 percent collector’s fee would be added. Today the payment of taxes should be made by Jan. 31, but for several years past the final day has been postponed until July 1.
A late issue of that year also announced that Sitting Bull had surrendered. a notation added, said that “Blueberry Jane” the Indian maiden who had visited Whitehall the previous July, was a daughter of Sitting Bull by a previous indefinite marriage, and that she was the same maiden who had jumped off Sugar Loaf Mountain rather than marry the brave whom she did not love.
Mrs. Will Rogers (1940)
(From the files of Judge H.A. Anderson, House of Memories, Whitehall
Copy courtesy Trempealeau County Historical Society)
January 14, 1880. With this, the first appearance of the Whitehall Times, we make our best bow to its readers, and clear the stage preparatory to greeting you weekly, bringing local news and intelligence from all parts of the county and territory adjoining.
Dan Camp, Editor
Fred Beach, Proprietor
Whitehall in 1880 was an unincorporated village of 267 population. Its area was confined to the 19 city blocks of the original plat laid out in 1874 by Theodore H. Earle in the interest of his father-in-law, Henry Ketchum, who was then president of the Green Bay & Minnesota (later Green Bay & Western) railroad, and D.M. Kelly, capitalist, interested in the railroad, and to two small additions, Ketchum’s in 1877 and Kelly’s in 1879; of five and seven blocks respectively. The 1880 village extended from the intersection of Blair and Main streets to Marsh on the south, which is the block-long street separating the Joe Matchey machine shop and the Mobil Oil station, from the W.S. Lieberg house and the Methodist Episcopal church. From Main street west through Ellis and Hancock streets to approximately the Ralph Wood residence. East to include Abrams and Mill street. Dewey street and the portion of the town west and south were not added until almost 15 years later, nor was the East side platted, though it had been growing rapidly in recent years.
The business section of 60 years ago was confined almost entirely to the present business portion, by which we mean the block including Erickson’s and the Farmer’s stores on the east side of Main and the Isaac Nelson building and the old Scott Hall lot on the west, with the area in between. At least three landmarks remain in this section that were centers of trade in 1880, They are the Theo. B. Olson building on the east side of Main street, now divided into three sections and occupied by Beck’s Lunch, a storeroom for the Olson hardware, and the Risberg Tavern. On the west side of the street remain the Fortun Drug Store and Wright’s cafe. The Olson building, a. frame structure, was erected by the late H. E. Getts, father of our contemporary, E. C. Getts, as a mercantile establishment. A second story was raised over the middle section by Mr. Getts for living quarters, and a search through the old Times files reveals that the Getts home was probably the greatest social center of the community back in those days. One of the many gatherings reported there was a surprise event for “Eddie” Getts when he was home from somewhere (it didn’t say where) on a brief vacation. Among those present were Hattie Olds, (now Mrs. H. M. Beach of Whitehall); Marcia Staples, who has for many years resided in Washington, D. C.; Phil Lambert, Independence merchant; and George Scott, whose death occurred only last fall. There were others too, and all had been classmates in the village school. The present structure housing Wright’s cafe on the first floor, and the Wright families on the second was the Best Hotel of 60 years ago. The C. E. Scott building on the corner of Main and Scranton streets, which was razed by D. A. Bensend, owner of the property, just a few years ago, was also an 1880 landmark. The second story of this building, called Scott’s Hall, gradually replaced the old Opera Hall, located on Scranton a few feet west, as the community center. Here all manner of entertainment was held, ranging from concerts by blind musicians and dramatizations by traveling companies imported for a night, to local dances and masquerades which, according to the files, were very happy affairs. One unique entertainment held in Scott’s hall was a lecture course given by one Doctor Humphrey to packed houses.
Dan Camp, editor of The Times, was a versatile Irishman. As a sample of his writing, we quote from the Jan 14, 1880 issue of the newspaper; “Gloom and fog, mud and slush, rain, sleet and snow, ice and bare frozen earth to wind up with, are the weather statistics for the past week, which we are bound to say for versatality and pure cussedness was the worst week ever experienced here to our knowledge.” And from the issue of Jan. 21, “Camp (himself) has put up an ice house and is filling it with large block of the cool crystal. It is 18 inches thick and as cold as your mother-in-law’s smile, and as slippery as a lightning rod exhorter.” This year (1940) the ice being harvested by the Briggs Transfer company is 16 inches thick and “very cold” according to Herman D. But Mr. Camp was more than a writer and humorist; he was a pencil artist. His sketch of early Whitehall, made on a letter-size piece of paper as he sat on the high hill north of the Trempealeau river bridge, is excellent art for an amateur and may be seen at the House of Memories, where it is preserved. He was also a merchant and operated a combination grocery store and grocery store on the present site of the Farmer’s store.
At the opposite end of the block from Camp’s location, stood the Exchange Hotel, operated by Moses Ingalls and his wife, parents of our townsman J. M. Ingalls, and grandfather of Mmes. J. E. Rhode and Anton Vold. Mrs. Ingalls was a pillar in the Methodist church in those days for she is mentioned as entertaining the M. E. Ladies Aid at a New England supper. There was another Ingalls in town at that time, one J. B. Ingalls, a jeweler, but so far as is known he was not a relative of the Moses Ingalls family. J. B. was a Seventh Day Adventist, according to local people who remember him.
Besides the Exchange Hotel (which was erected in 1874 by Sam Alexander and was first known as the Alexander Hotel), and the Best Hotel, in 1880, there was the Whitehall House on Ellis street, later called the Allen Hotel, erected by J. O. Allen and now abandoned as a hostelry. Later in 1880 the Times mentions the American House, whose proprietor was P. S. Price. This latter building was put up in the early part of 1874 by H. C. Stratton who called it the Empire House, and later sold to M. White who was proprietor in 1875-76.
The names of Whitehall’s 1880 residents were principally of British origin, contrasted with the present-day predominance of Scandinavian surnames in our village. C. A. Adams took advantage of the opportunities offered by this pioneer village by engaging not only in the meat business (he had a slaughter house near the river that was robbed one night in January, 1880) but in the merchandising of groceries, crockery and glassware as well. He opened his first store where the Clover Farm and Rollin Drug stores are now located, in a building to which, from time to time, he had to make an addition in order to make room for his growing stock. Which building today rests on Scranton street and is known as the Frank Larson place. Adams’ volume of business soon grew so great that additional space was needed, and he (with John Taylor, whom he had taken in as a partner) purchased the corner lot which years earlier had housed the Camp Block, burned out in the winter of 1894, and erected thereon a two story brick structure to be known as Adams & Taylor store. Mr. Taylor was the husband of Jessie Taylor of Dewey Street, whose death occurred about three years ago. Mr. Taylor dropped dead in Wright’s Cafe but a few years before.
Mr. Adams and his children, Maud and Charles, Jr., who grew up in Whitehall, are dead, but his widow is living in the city of Eau Claire with her sister, Miss Sheeley.
O. G Graham was the G. B. & M. station agent and his wife had one of the two millinery stores in town at that time, the other being operated by Mary Allen. A. J. Cady had a store where he sold fancy and staple groceries. H. G. Newell was the druggist in competition with Dan Camp. The Whitehall Flouring Mill was jointly owned by C. E. Scott, H. E. Getts, T. H. Earle, and E. J. Carpenter. Early day Whitehall had an elevator mentioned as Cargill & Van’s, and no doubt through this establishment passed the 1500 bushels of wheat that was marketed in the village in one week. At the beginning of the year wheat was bringing $1.10 a bushel but at the end of the year the price had sunk to 85 cents. Nevertheless, much grain was shipped, compared with the sprinkling of the present day. Patent flour brought $7 in 1880; butter was 16 cents a pound; hogs were bringing $4.50, compared with the present market; eggs were 15 cents the dozen, not much less expensive than the price today at 18 cents; corn was 35 cents, oats 30 cents and potatoes 35 cents.
Whitehall was a wheat field when the Green Bay tracks were laid down the Trempealeau valley, and indeed grain was the mainstay of agricultural income at that time.
A LaSalle street firm of commission merchants in Chicago, W. T. Saule & co., advertised in The Times that they were grain speculators in large and small amounts, $25 or $25,000. Livestock was also a big item in the farmer’s income.
The C. N. Paine & Co. lumber yards were located where the Hegge feed store on Main street now stands. T. H. Earle was the manager of the company. Farther south and across the tracks on the opposite side of Main street, were several small buildings. One of them housed The Times and the other was the establishment of M. C. Olson, merchant-tailor, who was the father of Alfred Olson, present courthouse janitor. “Slippy” finds it amusing that throughout his life he has hardly moved a block from his birthplace, for Mr. Olson’s family resided in rooms back of his shop. These two buildings, The Times and the tailor shop, have been moved to the east side of the same block and now face Abrams street. They house at the present time the Matchey Blacksmith Shop.
Taylor & Lawrence were the 1880 blacksmiths. Anderson & Larson, bachelors, had a shoe store at that time; E. H. Warner and J. L. Knudtson were hardware merchants. A. Fossegaard was a tanner. Robert S. Wilson was a confectioner.
G. H. Olds was Whitehall’s postmaster in 1880 and the post office was in a building that sat just back of where the present post office is located. Mr. Olds was the father of Mrs. H. M. Beach.
R. G. Floyd was the first doctor in Whitehall and in his professional card in The Times he advertises himself as specializing in surgery and obstetrics. Contrast the one physician to the five practicing in Whitehall at the present time, with a 30-bed hospital and a clinic for their convenience. But we find no evidence of dentists located here in 1880, although there are now three.
Another lack in the town early in 1880 was a barber shop, but a November issue of the same year announces that a “tonsorial artist, and a good one too” had located for the time being in the Exchange Hotel.
Two firms of attorneys had their cards in The Times in its first issue; Samuel Miller & Carroll Atwood, and A. J. Allen & P. A. Williams. Both had their offices in the second story of the Camp building in the business section. We are told that Mr. Williams built a small square house on the site of the present Morris Hanson residence on Main street. He married a Southworth girl, sister of the late Charles South-worth of this village and of Ed. Southworth, now of Clermont, Fla., and for many years Whitehall representative for the Cargill Grain Co. of La Crosse.
Mr. and Mrs. Williams later moved to Marshfield and there his widow now resides. Lawyer Miller built the residence at the corner of Blair and Ellis streets, and Dan Camp erected as his family home the cottage at the rear of the Ray Ringstad house, which faces Blair street and is owned and occupied by the Torval Fremstad family.
Whitehall was not yet officially the county seat, as the three-cornered fight for the court house, with Galesville, Arcadia and this village as the principals, was still on in 1880. But in 1877 the town of Lincoln, to which Whitehall belonged before its incorporation as a village in 1887, built a town hall in anticipation of housing the county offices here permanently. It was the present frame building that was erected, and before work on it was actually begun, the Odd Fellow lodge contributed $600 to the funds made so that a second story would be added for their use as a meeting place. Sure enough, at least some of the county officers were occupying this hall by 1880 and remained there until 1884, when the original part of the present court house just across the street was built, with the town contributing $5,000 to the county appropriation as an inducement, and donated the ground on which the present courthouse buildings stand.
One of the county officers installed here in 1880 was John O. Melby, Register of Deeds, who was, eight years later, to found the John O. Meiby & Co. bank as a private venture and later to make a national bank of the institution, the one of today, with his son, Charles B., as cashier. Mr. Melby added to his official income by advertising himself in The Times as a notary public and conveyancer, and as agent for the sale of tickets to and from Europe. A Times story told that one extremely cold day a beggar with his frozen toes protruding from very ragged shoes, called at Mr. Melby’s office asking for alms. With pity welling up in his generous heart, the register gave the beggar an order on a local store for a pair of shoes. Later in the day, the beggar returned, wearing a $5 pair of shoes, and with him was another man in need of shoes. The alms-seekers of today know where they are almost sure to get a welcome too, but they are more sly about passing the word around; they stay in their “jungles” down the railroad track and give descriptions instead of accompanying each other. Mr. Melby built his first home on the present Dr. Anton Vold residence lot and later the Melby home of today.
Judge C. E. Perkins took advantage of his proximity to county records to go into the abstract business as a side issue, doing the same work as the Trempealeau County Abstract Company now operated by Mrs. Wm. Mason with her office in the House of Memories building.
David Kribs, county treasurer, moved here from Arcadia and probably built the Cramers house on north Abrams street where the Gilbert Moen family now resides, for that is where he and his family lived.
R. A. Odell, clerk of court, built the present H.A. Anderson residence at the south end of Main Street and one on the same site that was burned.
Sheriff Dan Hagestad of 1880, uncle of Supt. A. C. Hagestad of the Trempealeau County Asylum today, built himself what is known as the Hans Haugh residence, now occupied by the Albert Petersons, opposite the Alvin Speerstra place on the south edge of the village limits as they stand today. The Speerstra place back in 1880 was owned by the Sherwood family, pioneers, for whom Sherwood’s hill leading into Irvin coulee was named.
In 1880 public sponsored education in Whitehall was limited to a grade school with two teachers. The building stood on the spot now Occupied by the Adolph Olson home, one block west of Main street at the south limits of the village. Alex D. Flemington was the principal and Belle E. McMillan had charge of the primary department. Extraordinary as it may seem today, when the trend is away from publicizing or laying too much stress on school grades, they were made very public in 1880 by printing them in The Times. The students were classed as A, B, and C students. Stephen Richmond of Arcadia visited the schools as county superintendent, in one issue of that year, Mary Brandenburg, secretary, placed a notice calling attention to a meeting of the Trempealeau County Teachers’ Association. The school’s Christmas vacation lasted three weeks.
Advertisements in the files notify the public that various merchants had for sale in 1880 saleratus; organs; steam engines; grain binders; encyclopedias; dictionaries; a million acres of farm land in Iowa; many more acres of government and railroad land in eastern Oregon and Washington; many drugs including cures for the opium habit, rheumatism, and various and sundry other ills such as Tulu Rock & Rye for coughs, colds, and influenza and other ailments. Stomach bitters; sewing machines, giant riding sawing machines; such books as the Koran, the Mohammedan bible translated into English, and “A Fool’s Errand and the Invisible Empire”, a record of the South following the war, for which Amos Parsons was canvasser; carriages in which to go “wheeling over the rough unsurfaced roads” of those days with a smart team at the head; folding beds; handflutes (whatever they were for); apples at $1.75; a 10 cent reduction on teas at Camp’s, to unload over-stock; and what not. One of the few cuts appearing during the entire 1880 volume of the paper was one picturing a corseted mother clothed in ankle-length, high necked and long-sleeved dress, jumping up from her sewing machine in alarm as her amply-clothed small daughter tipped a kerosene lamp unto the floor and fire started at once on the carpet, that kind of floor covering that was taken down again after the fall and spring house cleanings, that the men in the family so deplored.
Another item concerning the schools of the 1880 period was the fact that adults were indulging themselves in extra-school education, as evidenced by the fact that Prof. Ringstad of Pigeon was conducting a class in penmanship at the Scandinavian House, the present Erickson hotel, and Prof. Henry Comstock was conducting a class in business arithmetic. Furthermore, there were the public spelling bees at which the adults acquitted themselves admirably. But most notably among them, perhaps, was T. H. Earle, who in the workaday world operated a hay press in conjunction with David wood on the present Auto Sales Co. site. Hay was abundant and in demand, especially in the pineries which operated during the winter and to which many of the local men went for the season. A local in one of the weekly papers says that Earle & Wood’s crew baled 13 tons of hay in eight hours and 20 minutes one day when their bosses were absent. Little is heard of the hay baling industry nowadays.
Dan Tucker was engaged in watering milk to the wants of the families in Whitehall in 1880. Today, with a population of less than four times that of 1880, we have three dairies supplying milk to Whitehall homes.
Other unique advertisements appearing in the 1880 issues were by two Washington offices, one operated by Geo. E. Lemon, stating that pensions were available upon application to many soldiers and their heirs who were entitled to them. How strange it seems in this day, when pension seekers are manifold, that those entitled to them had to be sought out in 1880.
In the summer of 1880 the Whitehall Baseball Club was active, even as such a club is today. When a Drum Corps was organized, with Gene Webster as drum major, agents were on hand almost immediately to sell the members uniforms. Graham’s Band, a report says, furnished music for a party that was held at Scott’s Hall on Christmas Eve. It seems strange to us today who retire into our homes on Christmas eve or attend church, that any public gatherings should be held on this occasion, and perhaps there was some doubt of the rightness of it even then, for the Times editor suggested that the puritans would not approve of it.
It is strange to us too that the freight trains suspended on the G. B. & M. during Christmas. They run every day now.
A comment by ye editor, with a sly give at the female population, said that silken hosiery were then becoming the rage in Paris, with portraits or medallions of point lace embroidered into their fabric. Silk stockings, unadorned to be sure, are demanded by girls scarcely out of their teens nowadays and up until they are past the age of being self-conscious of their appearance; to wit, old age.
Telephones must have been scarce in those days, but a statement in the paper says that on the average 3000 calls per day were answered at the central office of the telephone exchange located in The Times Block.
Deer hunting was a sport in 1880; partridges were easily shot and sold for $1 per dozen; and Dr. Floyd had taken to trapping quail as a sport and got 23 in one Sunday, with the result that his friends were living on quail and toast all day Monday.
There was one other church in Whitehall in 1880, the Baptist, at which Elder Dissmore preached. The Methodist minister was W. H. Chynoweth.
There was one other secret society besides the I.O.O.F., the N.W.B.A., of which S. S. Miller was president and L. H. Whitney secretary. The I.O.O.F. carried a card in The Times, with J. L. Knudtson as Noble Grand and G. G. Graham as recording secretary.
Hilliard & Demott’s Great Pacific circus, Menagerie, Mardi Gras carnival and Egyptian Caravan played in Whitehall on Saturday, Aug. 14, 1880. It was hinted by the editor in the following week’s paper that certain staid citizens of the town had visited the lottery run as a side issue in connection with the circus.
In July of that year the G. B. & M. had its first serious wreck on this end of the line. A terrific rain, electrical, wind and hail storm struck the area and, among other damage, washed out a culvert beneath the tracks two miles west of town, near the Trempealeau river. The train was derailed and the engineer and fireman were killed.
The fact that Whitehall had a stage line in 1880 must not be overlooked. It was operated by Gene Webster, the livery man. The stage left Whitehall Tuesdays and Fridays at 6 o’clock a.m. for Elk Creek, Chimney Rock, Hamlin and Eau Claire, and returned Wednesdays and Saturdays at 7 o’clock p.m. It left for Pigeon Falls and Hale Saturdays at 7 o’clock a.m. and returned at 6 p.m.
Whitehall had a volunteer fire department even in those days.
A local news item in one issue that year states; “Lutie Quackenbush, who was injured while trying to walk a tight tope, will recover.”
Comes the fall, and politics was in the ascendancy.
At the election early in November, the county went Republican and President Garfield was elected by the nation.
Threshing was not yet finished by election time, nor for some weeks after.
Late in the year J. L. Knudtson got the western fever and started for Colorado, where it was reported that in 1879 $19,110,862 in gold had been mined, to bring the total output to $101,000,000 since mining began there. Publisher Beach hinted in his columns that in the spring he too would be going to Colorado.
In one of the last issues of the year a warning appeared that taxes must be paid by the last day of December or a 3 percent collector’s fee would be added. Today the payment of taxes should be made by Jan. 31, but for several years past the final day has been postponed until July 1.
A late issue of that year also announced that Sitting Bull had surrendered. a notation added, said that “Blueberry Jane” the Indian maiden who had visited Whitehall the previous July, was a daughter of Sitting Bull by a previous indefinite marriage, and that she was the same maiden who had jumped off Sugar Loaf Mountain rather than marry the brave whom she did not love.
Mrs. Will Rogers (1940)
(From the files of Judge H.A. Anderson, House of Memories, Whitehall
Copy courtesy Trempealeau County Historical Society)