Wisconsin Veterans Home1907

Waupaca Post

September 12, 1907

THE WISCONSIN VETERANS HOME

[Waukesha Freeman)

If you are a resident of Wisconsin, a veteran of the civil war honorably discharged after honorable service, if you can present a clean bill of character, and if you see old age approaching without any means of support, then you are eligible to bed and board in the Wisconsin Veterans’ Home at Waupaca, where you will be very comfortably provided for, and may pass your last days in a more beautiful spot, I dare say, than you have lived in before in all your life.

Best of all, you may take your wife with you – that is, you may if she was the wife of your youth as well of your old age – not if you married her subsequent to 1890, and you and she may have a tiny little cottage all to yourselves, with a pleasant porch in front and a yard full of flowers. It won’t be quite like your own house because you and she will eat at the common table in the large dining room, and it won’t be quite like your own house because the butcher and the grocer wills end no bills and your winter’s coal is put in without any of the unpleasant after consequences which most householders have to consider. These two facts go a long way toward balancing each other.

If you are not a veteran nor man person at all, but only the widow of a veteran, or the mother, or an army nurse, you are, under suitable rules, also eligible for admission to the home. There are many widows there now, the widows’ dormitory being over the large dining room.

Especially For Women

It was the women, the wives and widows of veterans, who erected the Veterans Home at Waupaca. Not directly, of course, but in the usual indirect, unrecognizable way women have of soing things. Said Col. J.H. Woodnorth, who has been commandant at the home for a number of years and who was instrumental in founding it: “It did not seem to us fair for the veterans to be taken good care of, as they are at the national homes, and for their poor old wives to go to the poor house or keep body and soul together over the wash-tub. This home was founded that the veteran might keep his wife with him as long as he lived. Wisconsin was the first to undertake this care of women, but many states have followed our example during the twenty years since this home was started. We now have 285 women at the home.”

At our visit last week there were about 340 men in the home, making a total of 625. This number increase to 700 during the winter months, since many go out on furlough for the summer. One of them, who has a fancy for camping, habitually spends his summer in camp somewhere around the Waupaca lakes. This summer he has pitched his tent on the precipitous side of an island in Rainbow Lake, perhaps half a mile from the home, directly facing it. If his companions at the home have a good field glass, they must be able to see what he has for breakfast in his dining room under the tent fly.

Has Beautiful Location

The Veterans Home is quite a little village, as it must needs be to accommodate six or seven hundred people. It is magnificently located on the south side of the first of the Chain o’ Lakes, Rainbow Lake as it is called. The bank is high, thirty or forty feet above the water, and steep, as it is around most of the chain. It is finely wooded, wherever there is chance for trees, pine and hardwood being mingled. The island on which the old soldiers camp is conspicuous, rises clean and high and green from the water, like an ideal island in an ideal picture. The air from the lake seems deliciously fresh and pure, and the view from the row of benches on the lake front, which is the old soldiers’ loafing place, is so beautiful, with the gem-like lake in its frame of verdure, with the island in the middle distance, and the many boats, launches and little steamers, canoes and rowboats, plying to and fro, that the observer is willing to swear that no possible scenery of its kind could be more alluring.

The home reminds one of a military post in its arrangement, though there is no parade ground, only a little park where a Waupaca band plays Wednesday evenings and Sunday afternoons. The commandant’s office and residence are very pleasant, all the buildings appear in good repair, the sidewalks are of cement, the yards are neat with many flowers, and the whole place is suggestive of restfulness and comfort.

A trolley line connects the home with the city of Waupaca, four or five miles distant, and the largest hotel on the lakes is the next door neighbor of the home. Over the trolley line stream most of the summer people who have got in the habit of coming to the Chain o’ Lakes, and to see the strangers come and go, to watch them as they saunter about the home grounds, as they all do some time during the stay, makes life less monotonous than it used to be for the old soldiers and their wives.

Designed on Cottage Plan

The home was originally designed on the cottage plan, each cottage being designed for one couple, and all eating in a common dining room. However, it soon outgrew the accommodations that were originally provided, and the trustees thought best to erect large buildings instead of more cottages.

Fairchild Hall, Jerry Rusk Hall and Marsden, all large buildings, each with its own dining room, accommodate husbands and wives, and there are also several buildings for single men. There is a large hospital, which our guide said proudly, covered an acre of ground, and yet it is not large enough. There are no young people in the home, none, I suppose, under sixty. Many are old and feeble, and even when not positively ill, are not able to look after themselves in their little homes. The surgeon, Dr. Bantly, recommends that Rusk Hall be changed into a hospital annex. Last year there were fifty-three deaths among the inmates.

There is an amusement hall at the home, with card tables and billiard tables, no charge being made for those who play. The big laundry, the dining rooms and kitchen, and the power house where a great engine furnishes power for all the heat and light and water at the institution, are interesting but not unlike the same accessories at the state industrial school for boys in this city. The chief baker told me he baked 200 loaves of bread every day, and when everybody has pie it takes 140 pies to go around.

Mild military discipline prevails at the home, and there is a little guard house, where, according to our guide, “when any of the boys get drunk or go to cavorting ‘round’ they are placed to cool off.” As the guide expressed it, they “get in the dump”, and then they “work out the dump” – at the wood pile.

Fine Garden at Home

There are 96 acres of tillable land connected with the home. We saw a little bed of onions four acres in extent, and other vegetables are raised in proportion. Last year vegetables and other supplies to the value of $2,500 were raised on the place. The inventory of the quartermaster included such items as 950 bushels potatoes, 7,729 cabbages, 122 bushels cucumbers, 18,190 pounds fresh pork, etc., raised on the farm and in the garden. Beef is contracted for, 600 pounds every week.

If any old soldiers want to lend a hand at gardening, or any other kind of work, they are paid fifty cents a day.

As to Pensions and Maintenance

They receive and retain their pensions unless the pensions exceed a certain fixed amount, when the remainder must be turned over to the home management.

Single men may retain $8 per month, married men whose wives are members of the home $12, widows $8. Mean and women receiving monthly larger sums than these must pay the excess into the home treasury.

The cost of maintaining the institution last year was $111,848.90, of which sum the state furnished $77,548.90 and the United States, $34,000. The state pays to the home $3 a week for each of its inmates, and in return the state receives from the federal government $100 a year for every man in the home, no allowance being made for women. In his last report to the trustees Col. Woodnorth has this to say concerning the financial situation:

“With the passing of each year it becomes very evident that members of the Home who are now employed in various ways must give way for the employment of civilians. This will necessarily increase the expense of maintenance as there is only appropriated $3.00 per week for the maintenance of each member, and as the cost of maintenance is yearly increasing it is easily seen that some provision must soon be made for an increased appropriation for this purpose. You will note that the average cost of maintenance for the year 1906 was an even $150.00 per capita. This leaves only the margin of $6.00 per annum for each member maintained. With this amount we are expected to maintain the buildings and keep them in proper repair, besides other contingencies that may confront us at any time. The cost per capita for maintaining patients in the hospital is constantly increasing, owing to the amount of additional work required. It must be borne in mind that $3.00 per week is all that is allowed for the maintenance of hospital patients, while we are caring for them there at a cost of for $10 to $15 per week. Thus far a little saving for maintenance of the members outside the hospital pays the extra expense of the hospital patients.”

Trustees and Officers

The Veterans Home was founded by the Department of Wisconsin, Grand Army of the Republic, and is managed by a board of seven trustees elected for that purpose at the annual encampments. The meeting which resulted in the founding of the home was held in Milwaukee in February, 1887, and the buildings were erected and the institution started as soon as possible after. Trustees seve three years. The present board of trustees consists of:

Benj. P. Bryant, Pres., La Crosse.

O.F. Chase, Vice Pres., Oshkosh.

C.H. Henry, Sec., Eau Claire.

D.G. James, Treas., Richland Center.

H.E. Mann, Marinette.

F.A. Wilde, Milwaukee.

F.A. Copeland, Department Commander (ex-officio), La Crosse.

Maj. T.L. Jeffers, Adjutant.

Maj. Barth Bantly, Surgeon.

Capt. A.G. Dinsmore, quartermaster.

Capt. Thos. McCafferty, inspector.

Rev. W.R. Brown and Rev. Wm. Mortell, Chaplains.

Miss Cynthia Osborne, Matron.

Since the home was established nineteen years ago 1515 men have been cared for and 798 women. The average net cost to the state for the institution has been $39,751.17 annually. Only one man so young as 57 has been received, and one was received at 90 years of age. The average age of those who enter the home is a trifle under 70. Seventy-two per cent of all the inmates, men and women, are of native birth.

In the certified list of members the following Waukesha county names appear:

Betsy S. Baker, Buel F. Hanks, Jane A. Hanks, Jacob A. Krater, Mary E. Marshall, Horatio K. Mosher, Lewis B. Nichols, Julia A. Nichols.

During our recent visit we received most courteous treatment from the commandant, Col. Woodnorth, A.E. Mantz, who served as guide, Charles McIntosh, who, as a small boy sixty years ago, resided in this county, and all others whom we met.

The Chain o’ Lakes

The Chain o’ Lakes at Waupaca includes a dozen or more names – Hicks and Rainbow and Round and Long and Beasley’s and others that I can’t remember. Sometimes you don’t know where one leaves off and another begins. As a general proposition if there is much of a bend in the shore line you are in another lake when you have passed the bend.

All the lakes are little – the whole chain of them not much longer, I should think, than Pewaukee Lake. None is more than a mile across. All are pretty and picturesque , the shores generally high and covered with a growth of trees often very thick and dense. Occasional giant pines stand like patriarchs protecting the lesser growth. There are many graceful, white-barked birches – the fine lady among the trees as it has been called.

Beyond the main chain, in which the power boats move and have their being, is the little chain, accessible only to canoes and rowboats, and these have at some point to be hauled and pushed along by the oarsmen wading in the water. There are several beautiful little streams running into the lakes at different points, and the exploration of these, for fish, for water cress or water lilies, or just for fun, is part of the serious business of every visitor. A nice clean canoe, with a tanned youth in one end of it, an equally tanned maiden in the other end, possibly a lunch basket between them, bound for Otter Creek, or Beasley’s Creek, or Crystal River, is about the most common sight you can see on the chain.

There are many cottages around the lakes and there is yet room for many more. The cottages are in fact just what they are called, and are very little like mansions at Geneva and Oconomowoc which masquerade under the name. The people who go to Waupaca are evidently sensible folks w ho want rest and comfort and who are not putting on any great amount of style.

There are just three hotels on the chain – which are not strictly speaking hotels at all, but rather “resorts” of a kind that has become deservedly popular, a cluster of cottages surrounding a big central dining room. The largest of these resorts accommodates 200 guests, the others 80 or thereabouts apiece.

The special charm of the Waupaca lakes, it seems to me, is the boating. There are many lakes in the state which have good bathing and pleasant shores and beautiful scenery, but I have never seen any other lake where there was such a flock of boats to be had for the hiring, at such reasonable rates. If you are muscular, or wish to become so, there are row bots and canoes galore, of excellent model and in good repair. If you prefer your pleasures less strenuously, you have only to signal and a little steamer or gasoline launch comes puffing up , anxious to take you anywhere you wish to go and just bursting with information of all kinds. Of course the steamers revile the launches and declare triumphantly that they, the steamers, continue to go when they get started and don’t spend their time drifting around the lake. And of course the launches revile the steamer, calling them torrid and old fashioned and generally antediluvian. We patronized and approved of both kinds and have pleasant recollections of the Alice R. and the Queen and the Marbell (short for Marble heart) and the Glide and several others. I am going to give one of them a free advertisement, not because I preferred the boat to all other boats, but because the poetry, which appears on its advertising card, seems worthy of a place in the choice budget of Freeman verse.

Here it is verbatim and literatim:

Come take a Ride on the Steamer Glide;

She won’t get stuck on shoals;

We don’t use any poles;

And she won’t blowup and sink in holes.

Take a ride on the Steamer Glide.

T.W.V.