Maple Lane01

EARLY DAYS OF MAPLE LANE

Author and Date Unknown

I chose the community known as Maple Lane as the subject of my talk because it is the one I know best, the one where I had all schooling up to High School and where most of my relatives lived at one time or another. It lies along the southern boundary of Waupaca Township on the Waupaca-Weyauwega Road – Now Hwy. 10 and from Bunker Hill eastward to the Town Line Road which is the boundary between Weyauwega Township and Waupaca Township. The road itself was supposed to be on the townships line, between Lind and Waupaca and is so at the western end but because of a surveyor’s correction the eastern end lies entirely in Lind. The early settlers on the north side of the highway bought their farms in the Town of Waupaca and thought they were building their houses and barns there but as it turned out several of them had houses in Lind and barns in Waupaca or visa versa. I have heard, thought it may not be true, that in Maple Lane School the children’s desks were in Lind and the teacher’s in Waupaca. The place gets its name from the magnificent hard maples planted about 100 yeas ago by several of the early pioneers. The story I have been told concerning them is that an enterprising young salesman went through the country offering to plant young hard maples for 25 cents each and scarce as money was in those days most of the land owners whose soil was suitable for maples had them planted all along the highway in front of their land. Some have succumbed to old age or to lightening, but many still stand, sworthy reminders of the pubic spirit of those long gone pioneers.

How the road itself has changed! Before the R.R., the old Wis. Central was built, practically all the goods shipped into our area and even as far north as Stevens Point came by Wolf River Boats to Gills Landing and Fremont and then by heavy wagons and teams leaving the sandy road looking much like a plowed field – a far cry from the present Highway 10.

From all I can learn, the earliest settlers were the Chandlers from Vermont followed somewhat later by Vaughns, Beadlestons (Beadlestones), Harringtons, Paynes, etc., from New York and Hammonds from Pa. In a local cemetery is one stone for Phoebe, wife of J. W. Chandler, died 1843. Another was for Augustus Chandler, but not the Augustus Chandler who was the father of Dr. Fremont Chandler and grandfather of our Dr. Chandler, Waupaca dentist. His wife, Aunt Susan, was the first school teacher and had the school in her own house on the site of the late unlamented City Club. Later my grandfather Hammond gave an acre of land near his house on which to build a school, Joint District No. 1 between Lind and Waupaca. That is where I went to school and I can well remember the old building, (not the recent modern one) with the big box stove, the pail of drinking water on a shelf at the rear, the long side benches, the children’s double desks and the teacher’s desk on a slightly raised platform. There were always enough pupils to keep the school comfortably filled but in winter more than enough when the big boys were free from farm work and poured in bringing the enrollment up to 40 or more. At last account, I heard that only 7 school age children were on and the school is permanently closed.

Now for the New Yorkers who arrived around 1850-60. The one definite date I have is of the arrival of my grandfather Harrington and his family in 1855. My father was the eldest of the three Harrington children born in New York but later seven more were born in the new home, a square brick house which still stands, occupied now by Mrs. Erichsted and her son Harvey. My grandmother Harrington was Caroline Vaughan, niece of John Vaughan, who acquired from the U.S. Government in 1858 the 160 acre farm Ed Lobiske, South Park caretaker, recently sold to his son Leonard Lobiske.

I believe John M. Vaughan (great uncle to me) came here earlier than 1858 and lived in Waupaca before buying his farm and that he was the sender of good reports back to N.Y. State that induced other Vaughans to come here for the chance to get good government land. John’s brother, Alonzo Vaughan was one and Pollina Vaughan Beadleston, his sister, was another, making four Vaughan related families all living within a mile of each other.

Alonzo Vaughan lived where the tavern across the road from the airport is now and the Beadlestones a half mile or so on the crossroad running south from the old Chandler home. Marcus Burnham, father of the late Dan Burnham bought a big farm on the Lind side of the road across from the John Vaughan farm and a Payne family lived opposite Grandfather Harrington’s farm. Phoebe Payne was my mother’s best friend and later became Mrs. Grover, mother of Edna, Celia, Gussie and Herbert Grover, one time Waupaca residents.

My mother, Lucy Hammond was the youngest of a family of five boys and two girls living in a fairly small house just east of the school house in the spot now known as “The Lilacs”. The house has been gone long since and so has the huge barn that furnished shelter for part of the herd of 30 to 40 cows my grandfather Hommond kept. I hope my Grandmother Hommond didn’t have to care for all the milk and make butter from all the cream. Maybe the cheese factory just east of Bunker Hill School was in operation then and solved the milk problem. I hope so. I can’t find out who ran the factory or when. My earliest knowledge of it was as the Bradway home where Mr. Bradway the neighbor fiddler lived and was always available to play for neighborhood square dances. The building is now Bob’s Garage, the Bob – Bob Thomson – lives across from “The Lilacs” in the house long owned by the Prinks and long before that by my uncle Isham Hammond.

Another uncle, Harrison Hammond, lived where Marvin Pirk does now.

All the Hammond’s eventually moved west, some to Nebraska and some to California and Washington. One, Hiram was killed in the Civil War and 14 year old Daniel was fatally shot while cleaning a gun. His grave is to be seen close to the highway in the southeast corner of the farm.

I am not very familiar with the history of the rest of the area from the Pirk farm to the Town Line Road and Holiday Inn. I think that that is mostly in the town of Lind anyway.

I often wonder how the earliest settlers in a new country find markets for their produce and a way of procuring cash to pay the interest on cash they have borrowed and a hundred other needed things. Butter, cheese, grain and, later, potatoes were salable but at very low prices. The Maple Lane folks had one bonanza crop that must have lifted a lot of mortgages: Hops.

The price was high, the soil was right and nearly everybody began raising hops. One man, I don’t know who, was said to have made $5,000 one year, enough to pay for his whole farm. I came on the scene too late to see anything of the hop boon except the old hop drying house and a few persistent vines stil growing on the Hammond farm, then the property of my father, Orion Harrington. The hop house was a small square building, perhaps 16 ft. square with a steeply sloping four sided roof and a stove pipe hole in the center of the roof. Probably a low fire was kept going to dry the hops. The old building was struck by lightning many times but still stood long after the house was gone. Hop picking time was a busy but fun filled time for the young folks and a way to earn some of that hard to get cash.

The cheese factory just west of my Grandfather Harrington’s house and run by Phil and Ed Kissinger was a thriving going concern during my childhood. My father took milk there for a while and I loved to ride over with the milk wagon, across the river and up the steep slippery clay hill on the cross road, now closed. Inside the factory, the great vat of curd, the many cheddars of two sizes aging on the shelves and the spic-span cleanliness of the place fascinated me.

How many other nostalgic memories I have of that neighborhood! The prairie wild flowers along the cross road; the loaded hazelnut bushes in Granpa’s stony pasture; the deep deep well in his back yard; Mr. Marcus Burnham’s singing school at the schoolhouse; Christmas programs and last day programs at school and many, many others. I wonder if country children aren’t losing more than they gain in this modern consolidated school system.

What of all these early settlers? What became of them? Lets start over at Bunker Hill, that huge glacial deposit left there thousands of years ago at the end of the ice age. It is about the highest point of a long ridge extending westward. It was a landmark for the teamsters of the early days that could be seen for many miles. At its foot is a little pond around which Judge Ogden made a training track for his race horses.

Then comes Bunker Hill school, still in operation, where my father Orion Harrington taught a year or two and went to high school in Waupaca, in between terms. He attended the first year the old high school was used and his son Orion Jr. graduated in 1912, the year the building was torn down. A few names of people in that section linger in my memory but I scarcely knew their owners because they were out of our district. Here are some of them: Bert Robinson, Mr. Bradway, Mrs. Austin, Wally Hazen, Thomas family. I am on more familiar ground when we come to the John Vaughan farm. He had a large family of two boys and several girls. Omar and Herbert were the sons. Omar went west, I believe, and Herbert to Racine where I knew him well. One of the girls became Mrs. Cormican, mother of Dr. Cormican, dentist, and another married Dr. Manchester who lived where the present Methodist parsonage now stands. OF the daughters in Calif. And the one at Beaver Dam, I know little, but I knew very well the youngest one, Ida, who became Mrs. Charles Stinchfield. Two of the Stinchfield children still live – Roswell near Washington D.C. and Mrs. Florence Lea near St. Louis, Missouri.

We come next to the Burnham farm the last to remain in possession of the descendants of the original owners. Dan Burnham lived but a few years on the farm after he owned it but had a long …….. of ……….. he finally sold it. The other children of Marcus and Maria Burnham, Henry and Myrtle both died long before Dan did.

No Kissingers are left on the Kissinger farm which was once the property of John Vaughan, I am told. I remember all of Paul Kissinger’s children; Herman the oldest who went to Oregon and died there only four or five years ago, Phil the bicycle racer, Ed who married my aunt, Cora Harrington and moved to Marion Wisc. Where he had a thriving hardware business; Will who made a fine pure bred stock farm of the home place died in 1939 the last to own the farm. His sons, Erwin and Clarence still live in Waupaca but not on the farm which is now owned by Harry Peterson. The two Kissinger daughters Mrs. Louise Boyce and Mrs. Tana Kelcher are both deceased.

Next comes the Hosea Harrington place. Eleven children were born in that family but only five survived. Orion, my father was the oldest who lived all his life on the farm he bought directly north of the Maple Lane schoolhouse and my Grandfather’s Hammond’s farm which he also bought later when all the Hammonds moved west.

Leroy and Linus inherited equal shares of the farm when my grandfather died in 1895. Leroy lived on his part all the rest of his life, but his children all live elsewhere, two, Perry Harrington and Mrs. Edith Bender here in Waupaca. The farm was sold to Wm. Leopold. Linus kept his farm several years, then sold to the Eichstadts and moved to Abbotsford. His children, Roswell, Harold, Clyfford, and Thornton were all born on the farm but only Harold, of Harrington’s shoe store lives here in Waupaca.

The Chandler’s soon after building a fine big house, this time far enough from the road to be in Waupaca Township, moved to Waupaca and sold the farm to Wm. Goldsmith; and the east half to the Johnson family. Of the several Johnson boys only George, for years the blacksmith at Kreunens, still lives here in Waupaca. The last Goldsmith, Richard, a grandson of Wm.’s lives north of town.

Good old Maple Lane, all changed. Not one descendant of the early pioneers left there, and very few left who even remember them. Most of the farms now belong to Germans, who know good land when they see it and maintain a prosperous community.