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    Brookfield and Elm Grove
    Brookfield and Elm Grove
    Brookfield and Elm Grove
    Ebook195 pages57 minutes

    Brookfield and Elm Grove

    By Thomas Ramstack

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    About this ebook

    The old town of Brookfield provides an ethnic microcosm of what makes Wisconsin s settlement story so unique. As Native Americans, primarily the Potawatomi tribe, were forced out of the region, in came large numbers of Protestant farmers from New York State. A step and a half behind the New Yorkers came distinct colonies of families from western Europe Catholics from near Nuremberg, Bavaria; Evangelical Lutherans from Canton Bern, Switzerland; Methodists from Lincolnshire, England; Zion Evangelicals from Sulzback, W rttemberg; as well as Catholics from County Sligo, Ireland.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJun 22, 2009
    ISBN9781439621110
    Brookfield and Elm Grove
    Author

    Thomas Ramstack

    Thomas Ramstack teaches special education for Milwaukee Public Schools. He holds bachelor�s degrees in history and psychology from the University of Wisconsin�Stevens Point, as well as a master�s degree in special education from Cardinal Stritch University. As a child, his father took the time to tell personal tales, dating to the 1920s and 1930s, describing various neighbors he encountered as a boy while growing up in the then very rural communities of Elm Grove and Brookfield. Through these images, Ramstack hopes modern-day residents, too, might capture something of the life experiences of the town�s earlier inhabitants.

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      Book preview

      Brookfield and Elm Grove - Thomas Ramstack

      2008.

      INTRODUCTION

      The book title describes a history of the city of Brookfield and the village of Elm Grove. However, this book is designed to encompass all the municipalities combined within the old township of Brookfield in Waukesha County, the present-day town of Brookfield, and the village of Butler.

      There have been two important photograph studies of Brookfield and Elm Grove published in recent years. The first, Historic Landmark Tour: Brookfield & Elm Grove, Wisconsin, published in 1991 by Arline Kirkham, evolved out of a tour of historic local buildings and farmsteads organized by Kirkham and others during the 1980s. One of the greatest accomplishments of the second work, Following the Trail, by Stephen K. Hauser and Jean R. Stackpole, published in 1998, was in adding visual attention to several dynamic residents from Brookfield and Elm Grove’s more recent past. In this third visual account, Brookfield and Elm Grove, the author discovered a wide assortment of wonderful, previously unpublished images that hopefully will entertain the reader with early-day visions of local railroads, baseball, transportation, ethnic groups, farm work, schools, churches, family gatherings, roads, and farmsteads. The primary emphasis was placed on securing an assortment of visual images from Brookfield and Elm Grove in its earliest years, the 1850s to early 1900s. Most significant is a pattern of images displaying everyday people. Close-up images were coveted. One can read a lot about people by looking at their faces, their smiles, their wrinkles, their youth, their thoughtfulness, and their sadness or joy, and by looking close enough, something of their true character might be seen as well.

      Much of the content for the captions was taken from information given by the individuals who shared their images. Content also came from a large collection of local historical newspaper accounts that the author has been gathering for several decades. The great majority of these quotations are substantially abbreviated due to their length. The author also would like to apologize in advance for any identification mistakes that might be related to family names appearing in this work. The author went out of his way to get the names right, but, as no work is perfect, he is certain this one will not be either.

      At first notice, the people seen in these images might appear peculiar in their seemingly strange dress and overall appearance. Modern life experiences are vastly different than theirs.

      Do not be fooled. Local residents today might have more in common with their early-day neighbors than one might suspect. Look at how many of the same social issues just mentioned remain today. Moreover, they experienced the same internal emotions of depression, sadness, foolishness, joy, grief, silliness, fatigue, exhilaration, love, contentment, despair, and hope in exactly the same way people experience them today. Furthermore, people today might want to take a moment to appreciate the strengths and humanness of these families. They set the foundation for present-day inhabitants of Brookfield and Elm Grove to possess the possibilities of living extraordinary lives.

      One

      IMMIGRANTS IN TOWN

      A CATHOLIC ORDER OF SISTERS, C. 1859. By the 1830s, Brookfield had become populated by people with quite divergent traditions, including the School Sisters of Notre Dame, led by Mother Caroline Friess, who came to Wisconsin from Bavaria. In this image is an extremely rare view of the actual planking on Watertown Plank Road just beyond the fallen fencing as well as an early view of a train run by the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad, which later evolved into the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad. (Courtesy of School Sisters of Notre Dame.)

      HEINRICH MIEROW, C. 1856. This is one of the earliest identifiable photographs of a resident from the town of Brookfield. Heinrich Mierow was born in Maderow, Mecklenburg (Germany) in 1835. During the 1860s, Heinrich and his wife, Sophia Wilhelmina Kruse, born in Harmshagen, Mecklenburg, immigrated to Wisconsin, first settling in Milwaukee, and then Wauwatosa. In 1892, a son, Henry Mierow, purchased an 80-acre Brookfield farm (section 21). The father, Heinrich, passed away while residing on his family’s Brookfield farm in 1905. (Courtesy of Arline Kirkham.)

      MOTHER OF LAURA INGALLS WILDER, C. 1858. One of Henry and Charlotte (Tucker) Quiner’s seven children, Caroline, was born on the family’s Brookfield farm (section 31) on December 12, 1839. As an adult, Caroline married Charles Ingalls, and it was their daughter Laura Ingalls Wilder who achieved wide acclaim for her Little House series of books. (Courtesy of Charles Joseph Haig.)

      EZRA CHAPIN, C. 1852. The 1907 Memoirs of Waukesha County states, In the fall of 1842, Ezra Chapin, of Prattsburg, Steuben County, N.Y., and his wife, Mary Ann (Davis), emigrated to Wisconsin. Mr. Chapin [shown in this illustration] purchased one hundred and sixty acres of government land in Brookfield [section 21], of which one acre had been broken and had a growth of potatoes on it. (Courtesy of Waukesha County Historical Society and Museum.)

      BROOKFIELD, NEW YORK. The families of Nathan Farr, John Fosturing, Charles Leland, David Merrill, S. G. M. Putney, Moore Spears, Jacob Stamm, Dr. Harmonious Van Vleck, and Gideon Wales from Madison County, New York, arrived in the town during the 1830s. They brought with them the name of one of their own townships to name their new town here in Wisconsin—Brookfield. This image comes from the 1875 Atlas of Madison County, New York. (Courtesy of the

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