Waukesha Daily Freeman from Waukesha, Wisconsin • Page 14

Settlement Church Moved Norway Church Oldest of All By LflHHB NOLAN MUSKEGO was disappointed when they took our old church said Clarence Rotfaon of Lake Denoon. He was telling this summer about the remarkable old log Norwegian church which was moved from Muskego to St. Paul back in 1904. Rolfson was talking about the first and oldest Norwegian Lutheran church in America which was the focal point of the settlement established here in the late 1830s. Here also was conducted the first ordination of a Norwegian minister and the first Norwegian confirmation in America.

The (Northern Light) the first Norwegian newspaper printed in this country began here. According to the marker at the foot of the hill where their first church was built: Muskego became well known as a mother colony to other settlements, schools, and churches springing up on the new frontier. Countless wagonloads of newcomers stopped here before continuing avery, easily slavery a asked the Norwegian church. Because her freedom-loving Norsemen hated slave Col. Hans Christian Heg gathered recruits for hit famed 18th Wisconsin Volunteers in 1881.

Of the 899 men who signed 19 345 either died of disease or were killed in the Civil War. Col. Heg himself was wounded and died. Letters sent home told of the man singing hymns as they marched into battle. these men the Civil War was a said a later pastor, Truman Jordahl, whose great-grandfather fought under Col.

Heg. Cot. Heg was the son of Even Heg, a lay preacher and spiritual advisor of the settlement, who baptized hundreds of persons. His log bam housed hundreds until they found new homes. Claus This old home played an important part in the old Muskego settlement at Denoon.

The Norwegian nawspaper, Northern Light, was printed here. It was the first Norwegian newspaper published in America. School mootings were held hero one year when the old schoolhouse burned down. Clausen, a 23-year-old Danish teacher, was called to serve as pastor and was ordained in bam one October day in 1843 by a German pastor from the village of Milwaukee. Their log church built in 1844 on old Indian Hill was surrounded by tombstones of its pioneers, many who died of the cholera.

When it was replaced by a brick church with a wooden steeple in 1869, they moved the old church down the hill to the Clarence Jacobson farm where it was used as a bam. Old church members finally took it dcWn log by log, planning to reconstruct it on suitable site. they never found quite the right recalls octogenarian Clarence Rolfson, a descendant of those Norwegian pioneers. Finally in 1904 the mother church in Minnesota hauled all the parts away and reconstructed it on the campus of Luther Theological Seminary, St. Paul.

There it stands a shrine of the first Norwegian Church in America. properly documented. In 1837 Ole and Austin Nattestad started out on snowshoes to cross the mountains of Norway to the aeacoast. Their migration to Muskego, tossed about in a sailing ship for several weeks, and more weeks in coming up the Great Lakes, and the letter sent back across the sea, brought the first big group from Telemarken two years later. Jonn Luraas led the group.

Other leaders of Muskego Settlement were Even Heg, Johannes Johannsson, Elling Eilsen, Soren Bache and James Denoon Reymert. Bache, a wealthy young man, came with his friend T. Johanneson and settled on the shores of Wind Lake, forming the south boundary of the Settlement. Bache, Heg and Reymert together published the Northern Light, with Reymert as editor. published first on July 29, 1847, was a four-page three-column folio, eight by eleven inches.

Two hundred copies of each issue were run off on the small press brought from Philadelphia. It was first printed in home and later in home east of the lake. Reymert sold his printing equipment to Knute Langland who became the distinguished editor of Among the later arrivals in the 1840s were Englebret and Ingeberg Rolfson and their six boys and daughter Mary. Their son Lewis who lived to be 95, was the last survivor of Col. Civil War regiment.

Two men from the settlement became prominent in state affairs. Col. Heg was elected State Prison Commissioner about 1859 and was re-elected. James Reymert was elected to the State Senate in 1854. remember many little things significant to the history of the remarkable Muskego Settlement.

Many of the artifacts of those far-away days are preserved in a little triangle of ground called on old Hy. 36. There a log cabin preserves such things as Betsey Haugen wedding dress of 1874. Englebret Rolfson, her father- in-law, owned 400 acres on the east half of Lake Denoon, including the historic house where the Nordlyset was printed and the farm bought by the Edward Wollmers in 1904 and now owned by Arthur Bostater. The old house was part of the Denoon village plat, and later was demoted to the role of henhouse on the Wollmer place.

The Wollmers replaced it with a big square white house in the 1930s. Darrell Wollmer remembers when all the former Rolfson bam buildings were on the west side of the road by the lake and the house and sheep barn were on the east. bedroom in that house was where the old printing press once ground out the Nordlyset. When they took the old hquse down, they found a revolver plastered into the wall and an old musket in the summer kitchen. He remembers when the son of James D.

Reymert came to visit the old house once, and that he stayed at the Clarence Rolfson remembers many incidents as well the tales told by his father. He remembers that Reymert and his wife Caspara buried four infants in the shadow of the old Norwegian church and that his own grandfather was the only survivor of those who sickened with cholera. His grandfather sold forty acre a to McLaughlin at the end of the Civil War for $65 per acre, which McLaughlin platted. Clarence recalls seeing the heavy wooden screws from the old printing press around when he was a boy and he remembers the tales his father told of his harrowing trip across the ocean, folklorists from many parts family was ten weeks try will be held next Friday and Satur on the ocean. I went across recently in day, in conjunction with the National The old Norway chorek staads ea the campus of talker Theological 81.

Paul, Minnesota. It was kuOt aa Indian HOI la Maski Moved sad reooastraoted at Ike somiaary, It oaa ko fl nskogo la mMniwiMV Folklorists Meet A national convention of scholars and folklorists from many parts of tht coun- six he mused. 1111 OLD MU5XFCO -fa Vfajfapfa fa -'IMl fa -fa. fa f.fa» V. 11 fa Wt Ufa Ofa Miv.

to i ifaiili 1 11 'fa. ffafa faTfa.fa< Staff Photo) Indian Hill, also known as Norway Hill, IS the site of tMe ebarek which stands where the ancient relic of 1S44 oaoe rested. A mere modern ekorok stands near the spot. Ike historical msrksr lefts of Ike Malory of tke little community that first erected a Lutkeraa ekarek la tke United States. Folk Festival performances at the Milwaukee Arena.

The folk festival is the first event of Summerfest 68 July 30 to 38, snd is expected to draw about 600 folk singers, dancers and musicians. Since the performances are at night, with the exception of a Sunday matinee at 3:30, the participants will be able to hear and give reports on folk activities in various states, learn folk dance at workshop demonstrations, snd hear folk tale telling in convention sessions. Miss Sarah Gertrude Knott, program director for the National Folk Festival association, who is in Milwaukee to complete plans for the event, announced that interested persons, particularly teachers, librarians, recreation and youth leaders, are vited to take part in special sessions and Those who are interested are invited to register in advance with the NIT office at the Sheraton-Schroeder Hotel. Seating capacity is limited. A Friday morning panel on the status of folk traditions in the United States Museum Recalls Wars MADISON From musket to atom bomb, from fat-burning Betty lamp to electric lights, from ox team to automobile and airplane, from floor- length skirts to bare knees that is the story of the 85 year period between 1860 and 1945, the era depicted in the new gallery at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin Museum which opened June 21.

Descendants of those early settlers Book Review Military Misfit Portrayed COUNT A LONELY CADENCE by Gordon Weaver. Henry Regnery Chicago. $4.95. By JOHN SCHROEDER Freeman Staff For those who have been in the peacetime army in Germany this book will bring back memories; not necessarily good memories. Fairchild Franklin Bean is in the army in Europe in 1956 but Bean is a left footed soldier who could not adjust to the army and fought it all the way.

Bean joined the army after he was thrown out of high school in his home town of Milwaukee when he was caught stealing money from wallets in his gym class locker room. He stayed in trouble while in the army until he finally ended up in the stockade. The fear of most men in the army is the stockade. The army is bad enough, with its discipline and illogical orders, but the stockade must be hell. Staff Sergeant Otis V.

McKinney ran the Wurzburg Subarea Command Post Stockade, and it and the men in it were his. McKinney was a lifer but not the typical lifer. He had combat experience and had proven himself under fire. But he was holding back to keep from drinking too much or from telling off his superiors. McKinney ran a tough stockade but Bean would not give in to him.

The rest of stockade mates were Negros and McKinney had no use for them but seemed to want Bean to show him respect. Bean refused and although McKinney got on him harder than any of the rest, Bean stuck it out until McKinney finally made the big mistake and the boys in the stockade got him Weaver has a good ear for the language of the GI in Germany. His dialouge is real, although those who have never been in the army may doubt that people talk that way. use of army terms without explaining them would give some 2 Saturday Rftviftw trouble to the reader with no military experience. It takes some enjoyment out of a book and frustrates the reader when he cannot understand everything no matter how insignificant.

The use of the first person is a mistake. While Bean shows some intelligence by doing nothing that is not in his best interests, he always ends up in trouble. He is not really smart and the ability of self preservation is innate. Bean's thoughts do not fit his actions. He thinks better than he acts, but then Bean has no one but himself and, like so many in the army, he has no other life.

Among thousands of soldiers, Bean is alone. Among the thunder of a thousand footsteps, Bean counts a lonely cadence. The new gallery in the Museum of Wisconsin History begins with the Civil War and ends with the close of World War II. Between these two years probably more changes took place in Wisconsin and in the world than in any other single historical period, except possibly the last 25 years. Wisconsin was a young, frontier state when the era began.

A pioneer kitchen equipped with a 130-year-old range, a dry sink and a home-made hutch cupboard filled with the family's treasured china symbolizes the homes men left behind when they marched off to fight the South. A slave collar and a spike-studded slave whip are relics of the blight they fought to exterminate. Uniforms, guns, cavalry sabers, and regimental flags are displayed in the Civil War section of the gallery. There is a draft lottery wheel, a soldier posing for his farewell photograph, a surgeon with his field operating kit and an officer with his field liquor cabinet. And then there was peace for 33 years (except for the Indian Wars) and Wisconsin grew with the nation.

Men tilled their farms in the summer and in the winter took off for the lumber camps. The logging exhibits contain the tools of the industry, axes, saws, cant hooks, even what the Society claims is a collection of genuine golly- wampus teeth. Late Victorian fashions for men and women are shown: spats, a gold headed cane, a checked vest and a straw hat for the men, a floor-length dress complete with bustle, a fan, kid gloves and shoes and a tapestry purse for women. Life in this period'when Wisconsin was eliminating its forests and founding its agricultural and industrial economy is depicted by a display of Sweet containing such items as a kerosene lamp and an Ironstone tea leaf pattern chamber set complete to shaving mug. One exhibit, deVoted to children, has and girls' toys: a sled, a doll buggy and doll, a cannon bank, a cast iron train, lead soldiers and a jack-in-the-box.

A general store displays the wide variety of goods with which these treasure houses were stocked. Volunteer and professional protection for the citizens is depicted in an exhibit of a policeman and a fireman and their equipment. Another exhibit contains a foot-powered drill and the instruments of the horse-and-buggy doctor. The period of. peace came to an end, and the rapidly emerging world power flexed its muscles briefly in the Spanish American War.

Life after the turn of the century is told in a display of the ice age-ice cutting saws and an ice box used to refrigerate foods. A kitchen of 1910 contains a hand-powered washing machine manufacutred by Barlow and Seelig in Ripon, forerunner to the Speed Queen company, apd a wood or coal burning kitchen stove manufactured by the Monarch Range Company at Beaver Dam. will include reports by Judge William Yszzie, Windrock, Interests sod Traditions Dr. J. Mason Brewer, of Livingston College Salisbury, N.C., on Folk Lore, Past snd snd representatives of the Hayes Mountain Youth Jubilee of Asheville, N.C.

A Saturday morning Workshop, Dances in will be conducted by Mr. and Mrs. Paul Dunsing, of George Williams college, Wilmette, 111. Folk song and instrumental music demonstrations will be held in the afternoon, with reports and demonstrations by Sonia Malkine, Shady, N.Y., a linger of French songs; Paul Caldwell, Long Island, N.Y., Classic Banjo picking; Maury Bernstein, of the University of Minnesota faculty, Australian folk songs; Mary Agnes Starr, Madison, Wisconsin folk music; Alex Chavez, Albuquerque, N.M., and Mrs. Jenny Vincent, San Cristobal, N.M., Spanish American folk songs; Theodore and Luce Beaubrun, Port au Prince, Haiti, Haitian and Voodoo ceremonies and dance demonstrations; Robert Black of the University of Wisconsin- MUwaukee, Hopi Indian songs, and Miss Nancy Lurie of the UWM on Pan Indianism in Indian Dance.

The folk tale panel will include Leonard Roberts, Wesleyan college, Buckanon, W. Brewer and Thelma Bolton, of the Florida folk festival. Ben A. Botkin, Croton-on-the-Hudson, N.Y., vice-president of the NITA. Arthur L.

Camp a. of the University of Denver modern language faculty and a specialist in Spanish American folklore and Leonard Roberts, NFFA board member, of Wesleyan college, Buckanon, W.V. and a specialist in Kentucky mountain folk tales, will be among the NFFA founders present and participating in business and workshop sessions of the convention. John Putnam, of the U.S. office of education, also a member of the NFFA board and author of Plucked Dul- will be chairman of the business sessions.

Prof. Alfred Sokolnicki of Marquette University is chairman of the local committee. Audubon Camp Opens Freeman Ph oto by D. Chase Siferfoos Wishing Almost Stops The When the rain comes, little girls have to sit quietly in the house end play dolls or Idok at picture books or just sit et the window end watch until it stops. Pamela Erickson, a pretty seven year old from Eagle, wistfully watches from the window of a building on her father's firm.

When the pouring stops, she can stop day-dreaming about playing outdoors, and start doing f. Saturday, July 13, An in natural history has opened its 14th. season this summer at a 330-acre sanctuary in northern Wisconsin. Called the Audubom Camp in Wisconsin, this study workshop is for adults, the minimum age is eighteen. Four sessions of the two week course are scheduled, the first started June 30 and the last will end Aifgust 24.

The camp has been particularly popular with teachers, youth organization loaders and others with a professional interest in broadening their understanding of the natural world around them. Many school systems allow in-service credit or other recognition for completion Of the course. However, no technical background is required. The camp is open to' anyone who it few 8ut- interrelationships between living things and their ehvinmment. There are field trips, on fobt and by yycu.

iv seeks deeper appreciation of th of-doors and to mam about the canoe. One can explore the rocks, soils, plants, birds and animals of forests, bogs, lakes and prairies. The Camp, run by the National Audubon Society, is on the south shore of Devil's take. Scholarships to send teachers to the camp are offered by a number of the Audubon local branches and also by garden clubs, natural history groups and other organizations affiliated with the Society, In this era when study of science so often leads to extreme specialization, the approach helps poll natural science study disciplines back together, the Society believes. The course can thus "add new dimensions to a teacher's counts, as well as adding new enthusiasm and understanding to the teaching of natural history.

Requests for information should be addressed to Camp Department, National Audubon Society, 813 Riversville Road, Greenwich, Coon. 06839. i Prints Printed By JOHN RODERICK TOKYO un In 1962, if you were lucky and somewhat affluent you could have purchased a book by James A. Michener called Modem Japanese for $150. Having the money enough; you were lucky to have had the chance to acquire it.

The limited edition of 475 copies in imperial folio size, done up in handmade Japanese vellum, bound in three colors of fine-weave hemp sold out almost at once. The book, as Tokyo and Rutland, publisher Charles E. Tuttle explains grew out of unique and challenging Michener advanced in 1959, to choose the 10 best original modem Japanese prints, publish them in a deluxe edition and turn over penny the book to the artists. Michener, whose novels have earned more than a million dollars, got the idea after he had picked up 50 prints from his favorite Ginza dealer and tacked them on the walls of his hotel room. I looked at the he recalls in an Introduction, could see behind each one the man who had carved these blocks and pressed that paper down into the splashed colors.

They were-as fine a group of men as I have ever known: schoolteachers, merchants, intellectual hermits, wild, gusty men who loved to drink, mountaineers, factory workers, poets of the most exquisite sensibility, laughing men, sober men, tragic men. And as I saw their facet staring back at me I experienced a real sickness of the soul, and out of that sickness cams this book. Ir by pure accident, worked in a field writing in a society (America) that assured me a decent income, a good living and some security for the future. But those men on the wall, most of them, with a far greater talent than mine, wavs laboring in a field printmaking in country (Japan) that provided only the most meager living, at.