THE WAUPACA REPUBLICAN POST

June 5, 1913

 

LETTERS FROM WAUPACA RESIDENTS

 

            Waupaca, Wis., May 26, 1913.

To the Home Coming Committee:

            My father, S. S. Chandler, Sr., came to this county (Indian Land; it had not been surveyed at that time by the Government) in the fall of 1849 and moved his family here or near here, about the last of March, 1850, by ox teams from Racine County, Wis.  We lived on the south bank of Waupaca River about three miles this side of Weyauwega, although it was five miles by the wagon road from our house and six miles to Waupaca.  Father went to Berlin and bought hay to keep the cows and oxen on until the grass was large enough for them to live on, and the oxen would eat nearly one-quarter of his load and the brush scratch off another quarter before he reached home, making the load very small by the time he got home. Sugar at that time cost about fifteen cents per pound, and was yellow or brown at that; tea and coffee two to three times as much as it does now and clothing, shoes, etc., more than at the present time while a man only got about seventy-five cents per day for ten to twelve hours work; and no complaint of the High Cost of Living either. The first school we children attended in this county was held in the cottage home of A. H. Chandler and taught by Aunt Susan A. H. Chandler, his wife.  The first fourth of July celebration held in the county was held on Lone Pine Hill, about two miles south and three-quarters of a mile east of the court house.  The first top carriages that I remember of seeing were in 1856, or, I think when we were living at what is now the village of Iola.  Ours was the first white family there, September, 1854, when we moved from the farm in Lind. Before the Civil War there was talk of a railroad, the Wisconsin Central, now the Soo line.  In 1865 we had two mails a week each way between New London and Stevens Point at Iola, where we lived until 1872 when we moved to the town of Waupaca.  The people who do most of the kicking about the high cost of living at the present time know but very little of hard times.  They think they should be waited on and ride in autos and flying machines free of charge, I suppose – go to Panama one day and to Europe the next.  When Daniel Nickel was married his wife rode home with him in a humble wagon.                                        S. S. Chandler.