Vacationing: A Bit of History Part Swei

With the first history museum in Black River Falls down, The Dulcinea and I drove through sheets of rain over to Main Street for museum nummer swei. It is housed in an original Carnegie library that was built in 1915. We walked into the main room and were greeted by a kindly older woman. She was a bit hard of hearing so we didn't get anything approaching a tour. Instead she just let us poke around.

There was a lot of stuff to see. While the museum on First Street focused on the larger picture of Black River's history, this one zoomed in and gave a view of the quotidian lives of area's inhabitants via clothing, furniture, and ephemera.

One area featured a desk used by the post office long before automated sorters.



Notice that the display is not hidden behind a glass case. Everything was out in the open which meant that you could walk up and touch it. So, say, you wanted to feel the fabric of an Indian dress like this one…



…you could do so.

One section was devoted to churches. There was a pew and several 100+ year old Bibles. The Bibles were huge with covers nearly ¼" thick and well over 1,000 pages. These suckers needed a sturdy lecturn. In addition, there was a really neat old organ.



Part of the room was devoted to all things military. It included an ammunition display, uniforms, a war ration booklet, etc. But perhaps the most interesting item was a letter that a local soldier had sent to his family. It's dated 26 August 1944.

Dearest Folks
Well I had the fever again which sort of laid me up and I was unable to write for awhile. I'm still in the horse pital but I'm on the road to recovery so there is nothing to worry you about. Boy, anyone that has fought in the jungles of New Guinea have really went through something. They can talk about the mud in Italy and the cold in Alaska but New Guinea takes the prize. Well at least we ought to be getting out of here pretty soon as we've got the Japs pretty well cleaned out.

I was just thinking that I could eat a whole quart of those dill pickles with ham and tomato sandwiches and about a quart of milk to wash them down with.

Good ol' Wisconsin boy! Seriously though, it was very stirring to read this letter. It was much more powerful than hearing an actor read it in a Ken Burns documentary or something similar.

There was even more stuff downstairs. The basement was watched over by a very friendly woman who wasn't hard of hearing and so she would explain what we were looking at as we wandered around.

First we stumbled onto a Victorian era bedroom.



The woman asked us what was missing. A closet. Folks didn't have that much clothing at the time, hence no closets.

I have to admit that I was surprised to learn that Black River Falls had a Chinese laundryman. His name was Yep Ging.



His laundry was on Main Street in Black River for many years starting in 1900.

The history of Coulee Region kitchen was, unsurprisingly, featured prominently. Here's Black River's first electric stove. (Or was that Jackson County's?)



If you think your stove is for shite, just imagine when that puppy was the bleeding edge of culinary technology. Adorning the stove top are an ancient pressure cooker and a kerosene toaster. I'd imagine the pressure cooker was from the 1920s but didn't think to ask. Nor did I inspect it very closely to determine whether it was made by Presto just north of Black River in Sawdust City, i.e. – Eau Claire.

Sandwiched between old rusty food preparation tools and almost a complete dentist's setup from back in the day, was a bit of morbidity.



The museum had a whole setup for viewing a body at home. You've got a curtain in back, a wicker coffin for displaying the earthly remains of your loved one, a couple candles, and a deluxe kneeler. I'm not sure when these items date from but the concept of sending dear dad's body to an undertaker and letting a funeral home do all the work is, relatively speaking, new. Early settlers in Black River would have washed the body themselves, put it on display, and then buried it in the back 40. If you should have any interest in this sepulchral subject, check out A Family Undertaking which documents "the growing home funeral movement".

Moving past the dentist accoutrement, we found this:



It's a section of a tree from the area which was born in 1876 and felled 90 years later in 1966. Someone from the DNR adorned it with some tags which noted important events in the town's history and linked them to the ring from the corresponding year.

Of particular significance was the flood of 1911. Out in one of the hallways was a display which included two panoramic photos of the town – one before and one just after the flood. The torrent essentially wiped out the downtown and sent countless buildings downriver. I can't find these photos online anywhere but you can see one flooded street here. Black River flooded again in 1980 and most recently in 1993.

Next to the photos of a waterlogged Black River Falls was this oddity:



It took The Dulcinea by surprise. Our docent told us that it was one of three "original" Klan robes remaining in the state. (The other two are in Madison and Dunn County, respectively.) The KKK was active here in Wisconsin in the 1920s but died out before the decade was up. You can find more info here.

We were told that it was originally on display in a more prominent spot in the museum but complaints had led to it being tucked away in a corner.

Taking in the history of the Black River area left us exhausted and in need of a drink. And so we headed over to a place where we could wet our whistles and fulfill part of our mission on this vacation.