11/05/2019
Hello again, everyone. I have spent the day thinking about where to start the discussion on this page with today's post and I have decided to start at the beginning in the place where I grew up-the Town of Emmet in Marathon County, WI.
The story of this township is one of settlers from Ireland who came to this country fleeing famine back home and searching for the hope of a new one.
According to the town's centennial book from 1989, much of the present-day Town of Emmet's land area had been presented by an act of Congress in 1855 to surviving veterans of the War of 1812. The war had ended 40 years earlier, so most of these elderly veterans did not feel inclined to take up farming in the unsettled timber lands of North Central Wisconsin. So they opted to sell their holdings off via land agents to mainly the new immigrants from Ireland that were pouring into the country at that time.
One of these men was Robert Freeman from County Caven in northern Ireland who came to this area with his wife Ellen nee McSherry whom had accompanied him and his aging aunt on their voyage across the Atlantic to America, tending to the aunt's, who took ill on the voyage and died.
In spite of this tragedy, a romance blossomed and Robert and Ellen were wed in Milwaukee. They then moved west to Green County, WI, living there for one year with their first child, a girl named Margaret Ann.
It was then that Robert heard about the vast timber lands of Central Wisconsin, so him, Ellen and little Margaret Ann left Green to settle at what was then known as Little Bull Falls-the present-day city of Mosinee.
Finding the land near the fledgling village not only heavily timbered but also sandy and not overly fertile, he became a timber cruiser for the local logging interests such as the Joseph Dessert Company. Approximately 7 miles (according to Google Maps) to the west of the village, he discovered a creek which today bears his name.
Robert would go on to develop this area with it’s huge timber resources and potential for farming once the land was cleared and would become, according to the Centennial Book “One of the most prominent citizens and probably the most prominent Irishman in the county.” Other Irishmen would follow in his wake,and by the late 1850s, there would be Maguires and McHughs, O’Connors , Fitzgeralds and Kennedys to name just a few of the Irish surnames, which in time would come to include my ancestors, the Clarks as I’ve mentioned in my earlier posts.
In time, the area where these people settled in the present-day Town of Emmet as well as parts of the neighboring towns of Cleveland and Mosinee would become known as the “Irish Settlement.”
As mentioned above, there was much work to be done upon arrival by these new settlers in what was then a dense wilderness, full of the enormous white pine trees which seemed to touch the heavens with their tops. One such of these tree is still to be found on the Maguire family farm along Eau Pleine Park Road, which is a local landmark, very visible from the west along County Highway S, sticking up above the rest of the forest like a “sore thumb” as my mother used to describe it to me as a small child when we would be coming back from visiting my cousins who lived on the other side of the Big Eau Pleine flowage.
There was also much dense brush and undergrowth to be cleared as well. However, the timber proved to be a valuable resource as it was harvested and shipped by sled to the sawmills at places like Mosinee and Stratford or floated down both the Big and Little Eau Pleine rivers to market. Later on, the Connor logging company would build a rail spur from the Chicago & Northwestern rail connection at Stratford west through the area to reach the local logging camps, but that’s another story that I can tell another time here.
As more Irish came into the area , a post office would be established at the home of a Mike Connor in the close vicinity of Freeman’s Creek and this would be given the surname of George Halder, a gentleman from Iowa who operated a small sawmill on the east bank of the creek in this immediate vicintity.
And so the village of Halder was born and in spite of modern developments, the village in many ways remains the same as it was at the time of it’s founding-a small rural village, serving the needs of the surrounding community. Well sort of-the two feed mills that once were running full-tilt in the village, grinding feed for the local farmers have both been closed now for many years, with one of them having been torn down. But Halder still remains as the seat of town government with the town hall located there as well as offering recreational/social opportunities with a very popular baseball diamond located next to the town hall. And St. Patrick’s Catholic Church dominates the skyline on it’s hill east of the village.
As a small anecdote, it is also known to Dr. Henry Kissinger, former United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. His experience with the Halder area came when his limousine struck a deer along State Highway 153 in the immediate vicinity of Freeman’s Creek, just north of the village, while enroute to Marshfield for the dedication of the new Melvin Laird addition to the hospital there.
He was picked up, along with a few other members of his party, by our neighbor Meldon Maguire, who was just leaving a town board meeting in Halder and rode in Meldon’s pickup truck to Marshfield.
Dr. Kissinger was later quoted as saying that it was very interesting getting to tour Wisconsin by pickup truck, he was so tired of riding in limousines all the time.
So the area would grow, and as shown by the letter below from the 1888 minutes of the Marathon County Board, the Town of Emmet-named after the great Irish patriot Robert Emmet, would be formed from part of the Town of Mosinee on December 20th of that year, with the first official town meeting being held at Halder on April, 2nd 1889.
The huge timber forests would eventually be cleared and farming would take over as the dominant industry in the township. And as years passed, other ethnic groups would move into the township, such as Polish and Germans, but the area would still retain it’s strong Irish identity.
Even today, there is still a yearly St. Patrick’s Day dance held at the town hall in Halder on that date. The old-timers from the community that I knew as a boy have passed on and sad to say, as a youth, I never took interest enough in these people and their stories and both have now passed on. However, it is fortunate that a Centennial book was printed in 1989 and much of the information that I gleaned for this posting came from that publication.
And so, with all that said, I would like to wish everyone here a happy Erin go Bragh from a native son of the Town of Emmet and end with this famous Irish blessing:
“May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.”
