Whitehall in 1880
By Mrs. Will Rogers, Jan. 14, 1940
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 Earle in the interest of his father-in-law, Henry Ketchum, who was then the president of the Green Bay and Minnesota (later Green Bay and Western) Railroad, and C.M. Kelly, capitalist, interested in the railroad, and to two small additions; Ketchum’s 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 Blacksmith 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 Street and Mill Street. Dewey Street and the portion of the town west and south were not added until more than 15 years later, nor was the east side platted, though it has been growing rapidly in recent years.
The business section of 60 years ago was confined almost entirely to the present main 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 an 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 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 Dr. 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 versatility and pure cussedness was the worst week ever experienced here to our knowledge.” He was also a merchant and operated a combination general store and grocery store on the present site of the Farmer 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. 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.
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) 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 and Taylor store.
Whitehall was not yet officially the county seat, as the three-cornered fight for the courthouse, 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 courthouse 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. Melby and Company 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.
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.
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 and 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.
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.
Dan Tucker was engaged in watering milk to the wants of the families of Whitehall in 1880. Today, in 1940, 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. 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 as to the rightness of it 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 G.B.&M. during Christmas. They run every day now.
Telephones must have been scarce in those days, but a statement in the paper says that on the average, 3,000 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; partridge were easily shot and sold for $1 per dozen. Dr. Floyd had taken to trapping quail as a sport and got 23 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.
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 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 Blacksmith 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 Street and Mill Street. Dewey Street and the portion of the town west and south were not added until more than 15 years later, nor was the east side platted, though it has been growing rapidly in recent years.
The business section of 60 years ago was confined almost entirely to the present main 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 an 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 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 Dr. 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 versatility and pure cussedness was the worst week ever experienced here to our knowledge.” He was also a merchant and operated a combination general store and grocery store on the present site of the Farmer 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. 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.
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) 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 and Taylor store.
Whitehall was not yet officially the county seat, as the three-cornered fight for the courthouse, 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 courthouse 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. Melby and Company 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.
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.
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 and 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.
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.
Dan Tucker was engaged in watering milk to the wants of the families of Whitehall in 1880. Today, in 1940, 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. 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 as to the rightness of it 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 G.B.&M. during Christmas. They run every day now.
Telephones must have been scarce in those days, but a statement in the paper says that on the average, 3,000 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; partridge were easily shot and sold for $1 per dozen. Dr. Floyd had taken to trapping quail as a sport and got 23 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.
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.