old street photos

The January weather this year did not lend itself to much work at the Historical Society library, but once in a while I brought home some photos to go through and want to post a few here.

If you look at the building on the left, behind the stop light, that is the old Fond du Lac Dry Goods Store, on the corner of Main and Second St.  This view is looking down Second St with the photographer standing on Macy St.  Note the tall chimney on the right, which also appears in the second photo.

This is the old Alhambra building, facing Macy St.  All of the buildings in these two photos were demolished to make way for the present National Exchange Bank building and parking lot.

Tallmadge Bible

Accidents happen. Sometimes preserving something from the past, takes a little effort.
One of the storage facilities for the Fond du Lac County Historical Society is the second floor of the Adams House, located on the Galloway House grounds.

Several years ago, the roof on the Adams House sprang a leak and needed to be replaced.  The leak was serious, and water poured onto some of the stored material, mainly 'books'!  Some were damaged beyond repair, and could not be saved.

Several years later, as I am moving some of the material, I encountered a large book, wrapped in archival paper, that was still stuck to the floor.  Obviously it was missed in the previous cleanup.

I opened up the book, and discovered that it was a family bible, and there was black mold along the bottom edges, but the mold had not penetrated into the paper.  I brought the bible home, and after a frantic call to the State Historical Society, carefully followed their suggested procedure for removing the mold.

I was determined to salvage this bible, because it had been the bible of Joel Tallmadge, the father of Territorial Governor Nathaniel Tallmadge.

The bible contains valuable Tallmadge family information, including an inscription on the inside cover where Joel wrote down who he bought the bible from, and how much he paid for it, as well as who should receive the bible upon his death.

Here is the inside cover:

It states that it Joel paid $9.00 for this bible.

The bible contains information about Joel Tallmadge, and his wife Rhobe Potter, as well as the births and marriages of their nine children.

 A copy of these pages will be available at the Historical Society Library for viewing.

Sisters of Mercy in Fond du Lac

Happy New Year!

In the course of taking an inventory of the books in the Historical Society Library, I came across a series of books that were published by the Capuchins of Mt. Calvary.  I have previously written about the Journal of Fr. Fidelis Steinauer in an earlier post.

There are two more books in this series:  Bonaventure's Memoirs, a translation from the German of the 1904 memoirs of Fr. Bonaventure Frey, OFM Cap., one of the cofounders of the first permanent Capuchin foundation in the Americas; The History of Mount Calvary, A translation of the book written for the 50th Jubilee of the Province of St. Joseph in 1907 by Fr. Corbinian Vieracker OFM Cap. 1857-1907.

Both of these books are of interest to any local historian.

I then found an even more valuable book, a biography of Bishop Henni, who was the first Bishop of the Milwaukee Archdiocese.

I did find a surprise notation in this book, when I noticed a reference to The Sisters of Mercy as being affiliated with St. Joseph Church in Fond du Lac, running an orphanage.  Wait a minute......the Agnesians have always served St. Joes (my home parish) and this has to be a mistake.  I have never heard of the Sisters of Mercy.

Luckily, the book  is very well referenced, and the 'Sisters of Mercy' information came from The History  of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, published in 1880 by Western Publishing, page 606.  Well, off I zoomed to my copy of that book, and I was surprised to read:

• St. Joseph's Convent of Mercy and Orphan Asylum - In January, 1876, the Sisters of Mercy purchased the S.E. Lefferts place on East Second Street, for $4,500, and converted it into a convent and asylum. In each of the years 1876, 1877 and 1878 the county voted $300 aid to the Sisters.  With this, and the personal means belonging to each, the building was raised another story, fences were built and other improvement made. .....Sister Mary Agnes is the Mother Superior, in whom rests the title to all property. She has sixteen associates. There are twenty-four orphan children now being clothed, fed and educated at the asylum. They are taught whatever trade they seem best adapted to follow. Thirty have found good homes through these Sisters...........The amount of good they quietly and secretly do is incalculable....They are, of course, Catholic.

Of course, I had to dig a little further.  The first reference indicates that the Sisters of Mercy remained at St. Joseph's until 1906, when they moved to Milwaukee.  I checked out the 1880 census for the city of Fond du Lac, and sure enough I found them listed under the heading of St. Joseph's Convent of Mercy and Orphan Asylum, with a Mother Superior, an Assistant Superior, a Mistress of Nurses, eight teachers, five housekeepers and twenty-eight young girls, most between ages 2-12.

I could find nothing in the 1900 census, but then found a second reference to the Sisters of Mercy, which indicated that they moved to Milwaukee in 1896, not 1906, which would explain why they are not found in Fond du Lac in 1900. 

You never know just what you will discover when you browse in a library!

Moving Day

With more probate records on their way to the library, I had to redo the furniture arrangement in the library, to make room for at least 8 more filing cabinets.  Oh goodness, we were already pretty full, and now I have to squeeze in even more records!

I redesigned the room layout, putting all shelving and files in the back of the library,  and moving the work tables to the front of the room.  Then, those wonderful baseball players from Marian University came over, and suddenly, a dream that was only on paper, became a reality!  In one hour, all 41 cabinets are in their new location!

Cabinets and bookcases getting moved

Moving books with an assembly line!

New line of cabinets.

New photo area

There is still a lot to be done, but now its looking good, and the library should be opening soon.

Thanks to those hard-working players on the Marian University baseball team!

tracy reinhardt

JFK in Fond du Lac

Presidential Candidate John F Kennedy made a stop in Fond du Lac, Feb. 17, 1960 while campaigning for the Democratic nomination for President.  Found one really good photo of him, taken at the Retlaw Hotel. (from the photo collection of the Fond du Lac Co. Historical Society)

German Newspaper

When digging in the archives, I came across "Nordwestlicher Courier", a German language newspaper from Fond du Lac.  It appears to be a special edition, dated 8 April 1896.  There are 12 pages to this issue, and the first column, written in English, gives a summary of the past 60 years of Fond du Lac history.  The balance of the paper contains photos and biographies of city officials,including P. J. Van Blarcom, 'Urkundenreg', A. E. Richter, 'Countyrichter', Owen Ferguson, 'Countyclerk' and Simon Schafer, 'Unterscheriff', among other.

There are also pictures of various buildings in the county, and one of them caught my eye.

Even though I thought this looked like the Church of Peace on Military Rd., the steeple looks a little different.  And since I can't read German, the text that accompanied the picture was of no help to me. It seems to me that I remember my cousin, who still attends this church, mentioning a re-build of the steeple, so I will have to check with her to confirm.

Since this is an early commemorative history of the early days in Fond du Lac, I truly hope that I can find someone willing to undertake a translation of all these wonderful articles.

more digging in the archives

For the past several weeks, MaryBeth Hayes and I have been digging in the archives of the Adams House, opening boxes, moving boxes of books, creating pathways into all the archive rooms on the second floor of the Adams House.  And thank goodness for MaryBeth, since she could do all the heavy lifting that I am unable to do, until my back heals.

Every day was like Christmas for us, since we never knew just what treasure we would find when we opened a box.

In the newspaper room, we made a startling discovery.  We found a bound newspaper book, which contained the very first issues of the The Daily Union newspaper, starting with Vol. 1, No. 1 dated March 8, 1856 and continuing through Nov. 7, 1856.   Astonishing.

But right under that book we found another.

This was the first issues of the Fond du Lac Journal, starting with Vol. 1 No. 1 dated Feb. 21, 1857 and continuing through April 17, 1858.(Vol II, No. 61).

It was totally enlightening to carefully glance through these early issues.  There was very little, if any local news in that era.  The issues contained national news, and local advertising, on four pages.
What a wonderful glimpse into the past.

Another treasure that we found at the bottom of the pile, was a box that contained the actual hand-written WWI veterans census, taken in Fond du Lac county.  The entire state of Wisconsin conducted this census, and these are the actual forms that were filled out by the veterans, listing their unit, the names of their parents, any wounds or illnesses incurred during service, dates and places of enlistment and discharge, etc.  What is wonderful about this census, is that Fond du Lac county made a concerted effort for each veteran to include a photo of himself with his form.  Those WWI veteran pictures are all cataloged in the society's photo collection!  Now here were the original forms!

Needless to say, it feels like Christmas every time we open a box!
Next step is to inventory all these boxes, and assign them a permanent shelf location.