HTS Hometown Stories Old World Stories Transcript

The Wisconsin Collection is a partnership of the Wisconsin Historical Society and Wisconsin Public Television.

Are we all set? Yeah! On your mark, get set, go! 
§ §

Narrator: For more than 25 years thousands of school children from around Wisconsin have learned the rules and the fun of an old-fashioned game of hoops.

A modern generation that has learned that shoes were once hand-made in a local shop. And once this is dry and you take all those nails out the leather will hold that shape wrapped around the last... You take the iron off, it's very hot. 

Narrator: And others who gained new respect for their grandmothers and great-grandmothers and the job of ironing clothes. It's pretty heavy, isn't it? Yep. And of course, back then, they ironed everything.

Narrator: This is a world beyond modern imaginations because it is the old world but still accessible at Old World Wisconsin the unique historic site located near Eagle, Wisconsin.

A place where visitors can step back in time and learn the crafts of Wisconsin's first pioneers. Now you choose your skirt... 
(horse whinnies)

Narrator: Or reminisce bout how life used to be or visit the actual homes of their ancestors buildings now part of the painstakingly researched and reassembled exhibits at Old World Wisconsin.

Each of the buildings tells a story tales from Wisconsin's first century of immigration of the people who left other places to start a new life on what was once the western frontier. Their stories are Wisconsin's stories told and retold in an outdoor museum that brings history to life.

Funding for Old World Stories is provided in part by the Halbert and Alice Kadish Foundation with support from the Bergee family; and by member contributions to the Wisconsin Program Fund.

"As the farmer's son, Knudt Christiansen Fossebrekke "intends to leave his native village "and his fatherland, the Kingdom of Norway "in order to emigrate to North America. "He is hereby released from the congregation "with the best wishes for his future "and with assertion "that nothing but good is known to me about him. The Minister Johannes Reinhardt."

This is our Fossebrekke cabin. We're taking you back to the year 1845. And at that time, Knudt and Gertrude Fossebrekke were living in this cabin down in Rock County near Beloit.

Narrator: Knudt Fossebrekke came to America in 1839. According to his travel documents he was at the time, single, age 25 a farmer, blonde, blue-eyed, slender and cross-eyed. No known pictures of him exist but his cabin does and everything it tells us about him. 

Guide: He found the land he wanted, marked off 40 acres. He didn't have money to pay for it. He was a squatter. And he didn't have time to build a house that first winter so he lived in what we call a dugout where he lived in the side of a hill. 

Narrator: The Fossebrekke cabin is the oldest of 69 historical buildings at Old World Wisconsin architectural artifacts relocated to almost 600 acres outside Eagle, Wisconsin where visitors can enter the museum's display.

Guide: Now, in the kitchen we do have many things here. Norwegian people made a lot of their own kitchen utensils. Why do you think they would do this rather than buying them? Yes? Because they didn't have a lot of money? That's true.

Narrator: The earliest immigrants often led secluded lives bent on mere survival. Among them were the Nattestad brothers who Knudt had met in Norway. "On July 1, 1838, I, Ole Nattestad arrived at the place I now live. Herds of deer and other wild animals were seen almost daily and the weird howl of the prairie wolf disturbed by sleep until habit armed my ears against it. The next summer, I built a cabin and received a group of emigrants from my home district who came with my brother Ansten from Norway.

Narrator: Ansten's group of more than 130 included none other than Knudt Fossebrekke who later returned the favor to others also looking for a home on the Wisconsin prairie.

Guide: Knudt supposedly housed17 people in this building one winter. Knudt probably never forgot his first winter in Wisconsin having to live in a dugout.

Narrator: There were so many new things to learn here even eating pigs was a new concept. But as winter came the Norwegians introduced a few new ideas of their own like skiing. "When the first snow had fallen that autumn "another Norwegian and I went on skis "over the prairie to Beloit to buy flour. "The Americans later saw our tracks in the snow "and the matter aroused much talk. "The most learned naturalist in town "finally delivered the verdict "that in the forests out west "there must be some unknown monstrosity. "But even he could not give any satisfactory information "as to whether this 'freak of nature' attacked and devoured human beings." Ansten Nattestad, 1841.

Jacob 

Conrad: When we walk into a cabin like this today it looks very poor to us. But I often tell people that they can think of a house like this as a starter home.

Narrator: After five years the 31-year-old Fossebrekke took a wife. This is a later picture, as Gertrude Vikers was only 17 when Knudt added windows and a stove to the cabin as a welcome for his young bride. This particular trunk here has the name of a woman on it. The script is kind of hard to make out but it says "Grunild Knudsdatter Binstir" gives her date of birth and the date when she was married. She was born 1818, married 1836. So, she evidently got married when she was 18 years old.

Narrator: An immigrant's trunk held the few things a person could bring to America. Only the most important possessions took up such precious space. 

Conrad: We know that people who lived in this cabin brought both Bible and a prayer book with them. This, of course, is a Lutheran Bible in the Norwegian language. A traditional curator looking at this object would probably disregard it. It's really quite commonplace. Here at Old World, we tend to focus more on what the object meant to the people who owned it.

Narrator: When he accepted the role as Director here Peter Arnold was impressed with the depth of research pursued at Old World Wisconsin. What struck me here was the degree of authenticity. They don't leave any stone unturned in terms of trying to replicate really, what life was like in the 19th century.

Guide: If you look where my thumbs are at you can see how it's twisting the fibers. 

Arnold: You really are able to immerse yourself in that period whereas you can't when you're looking at a static exhibit no matter how good it is.

Guide: I'm going to pass come wool around so that you can feel how nice and soft it is and you can kind of feel the lanolin that's still in it. Now, the Kvaale's did very well during the time of the Civil War because they had sheep. What do you suppose they did with the wool during the war? What did they make out of it, then after they made it into cloth? The uniforms? Yes, the uniforms for the soldiers and also, the soldiers would need blankets.

Narrator: It's now 1865 20 years after Fossebrekke's arrival. And Anders Ellingson Kvaale, a well-to-do farmer who came here for a better life for his eight children has already fulfilled his dream. He bought 160 acres in Dane County stocked his pens with sheep built a home in the style of his homeland and started filling it. 

Conrad: On the one hand, there is that desire to hold onto the old ways which is reflected in the traditional objects and in the traditional crafts. On the other hand, people also want to take advantage of the wonderful things the wonderful opportunities that the new world that's taking shape around them offers.

Narrator: Store-bought stoves machine-cut chairs, factory-made things now available in the growing towns. The Kvaale's probably traveled to the nearby town of Stoughton. "On the streets, a newcomer's ears "will easily recognize "the familiar sounds of his mother tongue. "On the store, signs are Norwegian "and at the merchant's desk, are customers who dicker "exactly as the custom was in Old Norway. "I do not believe there is in all America another town "with such clear-cut pure Norwegian characteristics as Stoughton." Sveim Nillson, 1870.

Narrator: This was a time of change, with new machines and products. And with wheat and wool for the war effort, the Kvaales prospered. But it meant the spinning wheels, and the women, worked full time. 

Woman (Gjerde): The men weren't use to milking cows in the Old Country, and everybody thought it was only proper that she did it here, too. So, when evening came, her program was to milk, care for the calves and pigs, prepare supper for herself and family and then get the children to bed. But if she had a lot to do, she got paid for it. Usually, she got one or two calico dresses a year, a pair of shoes that cost $1.75 and a hat that cost $1.50 every third year. 

Conrad: I think we often have an excessively idyllic vision of what life in those times would have been like. At the same time, there are undeniable benefits that the modern world has brought to all of us. So, it's always a trade off. And I hope that when people walk into a space like this, they would think about it in a more complex way than just kind of settling into an idyllic past where nothing ever changed. 

Johann Diefenthaeler: From the beginning, I was not disappointed, and not now either. One must work hard with all one's strength and zeal. But I believe if my brother were here, he and his family would fare better than in Germany. 

Johann Diefenthaeler. 

Interpreter: Okay, this is our 1875 Schottler Farm. And the Schottlers are from southern Germany, and they're coming over here from around Bavaria. And they would settle in Germantown. That's up in Washington County. And they had two little girls here at the time in 1875, but they will eventually have 11 kids on this farm. Can you imagine? That was a lot of kids, wasn't it?

Narrator: Family, hard work and land, were the keys to the success of Mathias Schottler. Here, the picture of a prosperous family patriarch, a far cry from the 12-year-old whose parents sold what they had in Germany, and bought 40 swampy acres northwest of Milwaukee. 

Interpreter: We have animals out here. We have a cow. We have a sheep. And we have a hog. And this hog we have here can grow up to 850 lbs. She's probably about 450 right now.

Narrator: The Schottlers led a pioneer life in the wilderness, as they called it, doing everything needed for themselves. 

Interpreter: That bacon is what we're going to use to pack down in the salt pork barrels.

Narrator: Their animals and crops did well, as did the land, rising quickly in value, and providing the profit and collateral to buy more. Within 20 years of his arrival, Mathias' father retired, dividing his acquired 320 acres between his four sons. Mathias received an 80-acre farm, complete with a cabin. A cabin later called, by Richard Perrin, Old World's founder, one of the best and completely unspoiled specimens of German log architecture in Wisconsin. 

Marty Perkins: Some of the buildings that Mr. Perrin had located, had documented and had a strong knowledge of became the first acquisitions for the State Historical Society. So, this started happening as early as 1968. And by the early 1970s, construction had started here at Old World.

Narrator: From Old World's beginnings, Marty Perkins was part of the original team assigned to find, photograph, disassemble, then reassemble Wisconsin's pioneer buildings, all under the expert guidance of Richard Perrin. An architectural historian, Perrin once served as Milwaukee's Director of Development. But it was his part in an American survey of historic buildings that gave him the idea to showcase Wisconsin's architectural heritage. "It has a character entirely its own," Perrin wrote. And even such commonplace structures as log cabins and cattle barns bear the hallmarks of the Wisconsin building tradition, sound design, appropriate materials and painstaking craftsmanship. 

Marty Perkins: Just to have the opportunity to be on the ground floor, to develop a museum of this magnitude was a wonderful experience for all of us that were involved at the time. Wisconsin is very unique in that regard in terms of the number of groups that were coming in the 19th century, and in terms of what they brought with them to the state. So, here was a perfect opportunity to capture this and to preserve it, and to share with people in the 21st century what life was like for these various ethnic groups. 

Narrator: Once the buildings were in place, the next job was finding out what went into them. For that, curator Ellen Penwell's investigations led her to ask why the Schottlers still small family produced an excess of butter. 

Ellen Penwell: From a study of the agricultural census, we know that they're producing 200 lbs of butter a year. This churn was patented in 1868. And it was known at the time of its patent as "Whipple's Can Churn." Samuel Whipple was from California, and he registered his patent at that early date. It was manufactured in Fort Atkinson. So, we have a family like the Schottlers, who it would probably be a smart move on their part to invest in a butter churn, a style of churn that produced a greater quantity of better quality butter more efficiently. We didn't choose to restore this original piece because we don't have another like it. Instead, we did a one-on-one copy work. So, we took elements, a sample of every different piece of casting, we had these pieces recast up at Tomahawk Foundry in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. And then, we completely reconstructed the cream chamber, the frame. The steel lid was even fabricated. So, it became a very complete re-created object that's functional and ready for us to use.

Narrator: Through her research of butter churns, a bigger picture emerges of the start of Wisconsin's fledgling dairy industry, as well as a look at how the Schottler's fortunes grew. Ellen 

Penwell: So now we know that they're probably utilizing the butter they make to sell at what would probably be Milwaukee for them, being the closest, nearest urban center, and then getting cash for that, taking that cash, going back into the consumer world and acquiring other real energy- saving material objects, like a coffee grinder or maybe a sewing machine. Things that would then eventually and over time, give them more leisure time and improve the quality of their life in general. 

Interpreter: That's a butter churn. That's bread. Rye bread. 

Narrator: The Schottler family prospered, raising their own vegetables and livestock, and their 11 children, who worked as hard as their parents to support the family. 

Interpreter: So, here we are. We have a family member right here, a family member of the Schottler family.

Narrator: Members of the Schottler family owned and lived in this house for 112 years. Mathias and his wife Caroline, until their deaths in 1914. Then, Fred Schottler, one of their younger children remained in residence until he passed on in 1968, just at the time Old World was collecting its first buildings. So, even though Fred was a bachelor, he left a legacy that guaranteed his family would be remembered, studied and admired for years to come, as state pioneers and part of Wisconsin's many old world stories.

Narrator: At the Heikki and Maria Ketola homestead at Old World Wisconsin, visitors can experience the way a family mixed ancient traditions from Finland with progressive, early 20th-century dairy farming. 

Conrad: It's 1915, and here are these people living in northern, Wisconsin, in a log cabin. The way that it's constructed, the way that the logs fit together, the craftsmanship that went intofitting these logs together is ancient. But when we walk in through the door into this primitive log cabin, what do you see, but the products of this modern, industrial, technological civilization.

Narrator: Heikki Ketola immigrated late for a pioneer farmer, arriving in northern Wisconsin just before the turn of the 20th century. By that time, lumberjacks had cut through much of the north woods, and left behind a devastated landscape. Land speculators began various schemes to lure new immigrants to farm the large area known as the "cut-over." 

Conrad: They actually tried to recruit people from Europe. They printed ah brochures in European languages, distributed them to Europeans who were thinking of emigrating in order to attract them to this cut-over region. And the Ketola's were part of that migration.

Narrator: Newcomers faced many problems. In addition to clearing the land of trees and huge stumps, farming up north was difficult. It was cold, the growing season was short, and the soil poor. But to landless Finnish immigrants, the dream of owning land, and carving a farm out of the wilderness, was worth any amount of back-breaking work and personal sacrifice. 

Conrad: Most of the people who settled up there, after a couple of good years, abandoned farming there because it is just so tough. The Ketolas and other Finns, seem to have stuck in out.

Narrator: Heikki Ketola Americanized his name, changing it to Henry Getto, and staked a claim to an 80- acre homestead in what would become Oulu township, in Bayfield County. His land had not been logged, so he set about the back-breaking work of clearing both the trees and their stumps. At the rate of about an acre a year, it took eight years before he cleared enough land and earned enough money outside the farm to send for his wife and children to join him. While Ketola struggled in the wilderness, it was a period of great change in the rest of the state. A sweeping political movement launched "Fighting Bob" LaFollette's efforts to create a new, progressive form of state government. In Milwaukee, electricity began to power street cars and businesses. In Kenosha, Thomas Jeffery built the first Rambler automobile, and would soon begin mass production on more luxurious models. It was a progressive era in farming also. At the University of Wisconsin's new College of Agriculture, scientists revolutionized the state's dairy industry with milk processing breakthroughs like Steven Babcock's butterfat test, and research into new and more efficient cropping and feeding practices. In Oulu, Heikki Ketola kept up with the latest advances through Finnish-language publications. In 1906, the university established an experimental farm in nearby Iron River, and ran trials of a red clover, which proved to grow well in the northern clay soils. Ketola planted clover, and continued to clear more land. Like other area farmers, he bought a mower for his hay and grain crops, saving the labor of cutting the fields by hand. To earn more money for machines, Heikki Ketola, now known as Henry Getto, became an entrepreneur, and began selling coffee, sugar, flour and other dry-goods out of a small store on the farm. And seeing great promise in new technology, Ketola also became a sales agent for farm machinery, and a device called the De Laval cream separator. Ketola sold hundreds of the separators, which became standard equipment on most dairy farms. 

Conrad: The De Laval cream separators came in in the 1890s, and most Wisconsin dairy farms had them through the early part of the century.

Narrator: A demonstration model stood for years in the Ketola's kitchen, and remains in the log cabin at Old World Wisconsin today, a symbol of a family that spanned two worlds. At Old World, visitors can visit the Ketola's Finnish sauna, built from hand-hewn logs using traditional methods. 

Conrad: That ancient way of living in the world was still very much a part of their lives, at the same time they had another foot in the modern world. When you walk into this house that they built, according to very ancient and traditional methods, you find that the things they have are, for the most part, products of a modern, industrial, technological society, very similar to the world that you and I live in today. The people who were living in these houses, and the people who were farming this land were living through a revolution. They were living through the midst of a whirlwind that we're still living in today.

Narrator: The Pedersen farm at Old World Wisconsin was reconstructed from a Danish pioneer homestead in the town of Luck, Wisconsin. In 1873, one year after building this cabin, Kristen Pedersen's wife Christiana, died of childbirth complications. Her parents took the baby girl to raise on their farm, and Kristen was left alone to finish carving his farm out of the woods. Pedersen eventually returned to Denmark, where he met his second wife, Mette. He brought her to his Polk County farm, where they plowed hayfields with oxen, raised chickens, milked two cows, churned the cream into butter and made cheese. For cash, Kristen became a well-digger, digging 60-foot wells by hand, and lining the sides with wooden planks. But tragedy soon struck again. Shortly after giving birth to their second daughter, his wife, Mette, also died. This time, Kristen took on the task of raising the two young girls on the homestead, as well as taking care of his parents, whom he brought over from Denmark. 

Interpreter: So, let's step into the household, shall we, where it's a little warmer.

Narrator: At Old World Wisconsin, it is the interpreter's job to escort visitors on their journey into the past, to guide them through the experience of seeing, hearing and feeling a bit of Wisconsin history. 

Interpreter: However, the wood burning stove is a good source, obviously for heat today, and for cooking. And on my, in my pot there is my pea soup.

Narrator: In an historically accurate setting, interpreters carry out typical household chores and practice traditional crafts, bridging the gap of time, creating impressions and connections. 

Kathleen Lashley: The kids always ask, "Do you live here?" And really, we take that as a compliment because of the authenticity of the clothing, and that we are presenting a picture of being part of the house that we're in. 

Suzanne Peters: When people say, "Do you live here?" I say, "I live here eight hours a day." I live here during the daytime. And I'm proud to say that. And I try to make that experience as authentic for people as possible, and to be cooking and cleaning, and working on the rugs that I braid and doing all those things, because people really like to see that. They want to see how people actually lived. 

Kathleen Lashley: We, of course, always explain that we're working here and this is a museum, because that's another thing that's kind of hard for children to understand, because when usually, when you go to a regular museum, everything's in cases, you don't touch. And here, it's part of a home. 

Suzanne Peters: A lot of people come out and they'll say, "Wow, I would love to live like this." And then there's the small minority of people that come and they look around and their eyes sort of glaze over and they say, "I could have never lived like this. If I was back then, I would have just died."

Narrator: The job of the interpreter involves a continuing process of learning about period-appropriate crafts and tasks. Interpreters study a library of research about the farmsteads, the buildings, the settlers and the times and places they came from. 

Marty Perkins: Good morning! The rain is going to stop, but the bad news is the snow is going to start. It's going to be a chilly day out there today. We do have one tour addition which I wanted to remind you about...

Narrator: The roles the interpreters play are based on years of painstaking research, but it all begins with looking the part. 

Astrid Pfeiffer: This is the basement of the Four Mile Inn, and it's where we keep all of our period clothing. We don't want to call them costumes all the time, because they are accurate representations of what people wore. So, we call it period clothing. And we store our hats in here. We have the men's summer or straw hats in here. And these pretty much go across the time periods. As far as the women's hats, these are a bit more expensive and a little bit more detailed. Velvet was a common material that was used. And all out hats are lined. And there's wire going underneath the brim, so the brim can be shaped to how you'd like to wear it. 

And we go from the mid-1840s all the way through 1915. We do the best we can with dressing as many people as we have. I clothe probably over 130 people a year out here. I have 1915 dresses back here. I have simple house dresses that women would wear on the prairie. This would be late 1880s, just a very simple sack like dress. This is the hoop that Rita will wear underneath her dress. And ours are a bit modern, but they're steel-boned, which is what they had. Steel-boning came out with crinolines in 1857, so it made it cheap so even factory-hands and working women could wear crinolines. But Rita will be portraying Mrs. Sanford in the Sanford house at Christmas. So, she's trying on this dress to see if it fits. The bodice has glass buttons in it. One thing we didn't mention, women wore lots and lots of underwear. So, besides what you saw Rita trying on, under that, she would have a chemise, she'd have a corset, she'd have an under-petticoat, then she'd have her hoop, and then she'd have her over-petticoat. And anything else she wanted to add. 

Suzanne Peters: It's not just how the costumes look that helps create the authenticity that we have out here. But it's how they feel when you wear them. We could cheat and put zippers in the waist, or zippers up the back, or have elastic waists in the petticoats and nobody would know. But we'd know. And it feels different when you're not wearing, if you don't have the hooks and eyes, and sometimes out here some of us actually wear the corsets. We have our own and we just feel that it makes you stand up the way women stood up then and move. It makes the clothing fit properly, and it makes you move the right way and speak a little differently. And you really do give people that feeling of long ago when you feel that you're in the mode yourselves.

Narrator: Much of Wisconsin's pioneer past is tied to the growing of wheat. At first, harvesting wheat was all done by hand. But the ancient back-breaking practice of flailing the grain to remove it was soon replaced by a much faster invention, the horse-powered threshing machine. Horsepower eventually gave way to steam power, ushering in the days of traveling threshing crews on Wisconsin arms. Old World Wisconsin brings history to life by demonstrating the machinery and crops once found on Wisconsin farms. Homestead gardens feature heirloom plants that date back to pioneer times. 

Woman: These are called yellow mangoes.

Narrator: And the site also maintains ancient breeds of animals, like the Cotswold sheep on the Kvaale farm, that once produced wool for the uniforms of civil war soldiers. 

Bryan Zaeske: They were making a dollar a pound for their wool at that time. Now, at that same time, you could buy land in Wisconsin and some areas for $1.25 an acre. So, they had some good times then.

Narrator: Over time, farmers replaced the ancient breeds with bigger, more productive animals. Old World Wisconsin keeps the memory of these early livestock animals alive. 

Bryan Zaeske: We're stopped in time here. We don't want to see those improvements. We want to stay the way things were. We're looking for some of the traits that farmers have wanted to breed out of animals, so that when the people come out here to visit, they can visualize what a 19th-century animal looked like. And they are different. They are different. When you look at that pig, you can tell that it doesn't look like a modern day pig. It has a lot of unrefined characteristics. It carries its weight up in the front shoulders, the nose is real long. These kind of pigs that we have out here, the Tamworth, the Brookshires, the Ossabow, are called grazers. In the 1840s, you would just let the pigs out into the woods and let them forage. You fed them for free, basically.

Narrator: While farmers let their pigs run free, their trained cattle, called oxen, were harnessed for another use: clearing and plowing the fields. 

Bryan Zaeske: A lot of the animals that we have out here, we use the term dual-purpose animals. When you're talking about oxen, you not only have meat animals, you have animals that produce milk. And then, if you need an ox or a team of oxen, then you've got draft animals also. Oxen can be any breed of cattle, if you teach them how to work. These are milking shorthorns. And you can have Holsteins. You can have Herefords. You can have Jerseys. Most of the people that were coming here that were creating new farms really had their work cut out, because the first thing they had to do, if they weren't buying nice prairie land, was to cut the trees down, haul the logs out, pull the stumps. Oxen fit into that. They had the strength and they had that slow-motion kind of movement, but a lot of power that you needed for getting the things out of the woods, getting the stumps pulled, and then breaking the new ground, so that you could get a crop in. And after a number of years of breaking the land, they might have enough cash where they could make that advance to horses.

Narrator: Each fall at Old World Wisconsin, at a special harvest event called "Autumn on the Farms," visitors can see volunteers demonstrating horse-drawn plows. At other times of the year, Old World operates horse-drawn equipment first developed to save labor during the Civil War. Bryan 

Zaeske: Horses were more versatile. At the time of the civil war, there was a labor shortage. Men were fighting in the war. Farm work still had to get done, so you had agricultural engineers, then, that were developing machinery. Things like hay mowers were being created, reapers. The horses went fast enough to make the hay mower work, or make the reaper work. When we make a repair, we make it as authentic as possible. Tony's working on a grain binder. They came into existence in probably the 1880s. They kind of replaced the reaper. And the neat thing about the binder, is that when you go through wheat, or oats, or barley, or whatever, the machine cuts, and then falls back on to a conveyor, and it's taken up through the machine. It's packed and it's tied, and a nice bundle comes out. Where with the reaper, it would cut it, it would sweep it off, but then you had to have a bunch of people come around and tie it by hand. So, it was a pretty revolutionary invention in the 1880s. There was still a lot of hand labor, even with the bundles tied. You had to bring them out of the field on a bundle wagon, and then pitched into the threshing machine, or into a barn, or put into a stack, probably handled it two or three times until you actually had your grain into the bag. People think that people in the 19th century, that they lived in the dark ages. But almost all of the things that are on modern equipment today, the theory behind it was developed back in the 1850s, the 1860s, the 1870s. When you see some of this equipment, it's amazing. It's amazing.

Narrator: Many small villages once dotted the Wisconsin countryside, located where two roads met. They were often called simply, the crossroads. And there, people from different places and backgrounds crossed paths. At the crossroads, could be found the shops and craft workers that served the needs of local farm families, a blacksmith, a general store, a shoemaker, a wagon maker. In 1869, an advertisement in the Dodge County Citizen announced the sale of a hotel that once served as a stop on the stagecoach line between Fond du Lac and Watertown, in the village of Rolling Prairie. "Valuable property for sale. The well-known hotel property, formerly owned by Ranslow Smith, situated at Rolling Prairie Station. The house is 26 x 40, containing 15 rooms, and as good a garden of three acres land as can found in the county." Peter Worthey, an Englishman, purchased the hotel, and took his place among the business owners of Rolling Prairie. The Four Mile Inn now serves as the centerpiece of the crossroads village created at Old World Wisconsin. 

Interpreter: Welcome travelers! And we know by the 1870 census just exactly who lived in this inn. There was the innkeeper and his wife, his five children, a dressmaker and her nine-year-old daughter and a bachelor blacksmith. We know that by reading the census. We even know how much money they made.

Narrator: In the 1980s, the Four Mile Inn was moved to Old World Wisconsin, where the building underwent extensive restoration. 

Marty Perkins: The buildings that we were looking at generally were structures that were no longer going to survive, so we were able to save many buildings. And we were able to preserve those buildings, and to use these buildings as teaching tools for the museum audience that we see at Old World Wisconsin today.

Narrator: Research into the history of the hotel revealed how the large hall on the third floor served as a social center, including plays, meetings and social events put on by the local lodge of the good Templars, an anti-alcohol organization. 

Marty Perkins: Here at Old World Wisconsin, we really looked at different crossroads villages that developed in the state, primarily in the 1840s and 1850s. Then, we've created one that takes us to about 1880 in time. And through the use of census documentation and 19th-century period plat maps, we've been able to put together a plan and identify the types of occupations that were common in crossroads villages. And then find the appropriate buildings that are associated with those activities.

Narrator: Other buildings in Old World's crossroads village include the home of Anton and Marie Sisel Bohemian immigrants who moved to the town of Slovan in Kewaunee county. They built a shoe-making shop on the front of their house, where now, over 100 years later, schoolchildren can view demonstrations of an old craft. 

Interpreter: Now once you have everything cut out, you'll want to put it back on the last, just so. And you'll determine where you're going to sew it together.

Narrator: Anders Pederson Helgerud, a skilled woodworker and ironworker from Norway, built this shop on his Whitewater farm. There, he produced custom-made wagons and sleighs, and repaired wagons and farm machinery. Griffith Thomas, the son of welsh immigrants, grew up on a Waukesha County farm. In the 1870s, he moved to nearby Waterville, a thriving village on the main road between Madison and Milwaukee. He opened a general store there, offering the basic necessities, and a few luxuries. Marty Perkins: He occupied the store from the late 1870 period until the early 1880s. It was a type of typical general store operation that you would have found in a crossroads village. It's a wonderful building that's made of limestone. The building was very painstakingly disassembled and reassembled here at Old World Wisconsin in the early '90s. 

Interpreter: Does your coffee look like this at home? Okay, how are we going to get this coffee look like our coffee does?

Narrator: James Sanford migrated to Wisconsin from New York state in 1845. Like many Yankees, as those from the northeast were called, Sanford and his family knew the ways of frontier life, and how to get ahead. He purchased 80 acres of land in the town of La Grange in Walworth County, and started a grain farm and a family. In their log cabin, Rebecca Sanford gave birth to five children, and within ten years, she and James built up one of the most prosperous farms in the area. By 1858, it was time to build a new home. And like many of their neighbors, the Sanfords put up a frame structure, in a Greek revival style very popular at the time. Over a hundred years later, the owners of the Sanford house donated the building to Old World Wisconsin. It was trucked it from its location in La Grange, to the historic site in Eagle. The home was placed in the crossroads village and completely restored. A visit to the restored Sanford house at Old World Wisconsin takes us back to a time when prosperous Yankee farm families made their homes in a crossroads village, a place where they would come together with more recent immigrants. 

Marty Perkins: This is a place where they would have come together. This is a place you would have had different families interacting, regardless of whether they were Bohemian, or Yankee, or Norwegian. I mean, they would have come together in a community. They would have traded. They would have interacted. Sometimes conflict, sometimes not. They would have done all the sorts of things that we do in our communities today. The community represented here does have a nice melting pot effect of people coming from different countries. And that's the way the communities were typically developed in Wisconsin. I'm trampin' Lord, I'm trampin' Tryin' to make heaven my home I'm trampin' Lord, I'm trampin' Tryin' to make heaven my home

Narrator: At Old World Wisconsin, you can find a reproduction of the United Brethren Church, a reminder of a unique community of African Americans formed around the time of the civil war. 

Ellen Penwell: It was an open, rural community. There was no town called Pleasant Ridge. So, this church, when one approaches it, as a visitor coming on site here, there was great effort taken to site it with a stretch and reach of wonderful open landscape, to get that sense that one'sin the middle of a very open space, and that there's not a sense of anything more organized than what they brought together in community by the institution of church and school.

Narrator: The community was established by Charles Shepard, a Virginia slave, who in September of 1849, received his freedom papers following the death of his owner, Sarah Edmonds. Free, but with few prospects in Virginia, Shepard and his family set off for the Wisconsin frontier with Sarah Edmond's nephew, William Horner. Horner's family, hoping to cash in on Wisconsin's lead mining boom, bought almost 3,000 acres of land in southwest Wisconsin. With the mining rush dying out, William Horner and the Shepards moved to the area, to see what else he could do with the land. After a few years working in the Lancaster area, Charles Shepard and his brother Isaac earned enough money to buy some of the land from Horner, 200 acres, in a place that would come to be known as "Pleasant Ridge." 

With help from their white neighbors, the two Shepard families built cabins and began farming and living off the land. Less than ten years later, with the civil war in raging, young men from around the state would train at Camp Randall in Madison before shipping out to join the war effort. The African Americans at Pleasant Ridge, however, were prohibited from joining the military. But in 1863, President Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation, freeing all slaves. Shortly after, black soldiers were allowed to join the union army. Charles Shepard and his son John walked to Prairie du Chien to enlist. Today, their names can be found on the civil war monument in Lancaster. Charles Shepard died during a southern campaign. His son John died of disease on his way back to Pleasant Ridge. The family was devastated. Caroline Shepard, seen here in a later photo, did her best to keep the pioneer farm going. Her 13-year-old son Ed assumed responsibility for the farm and his nine brothers and sisters. After years of clearing the land and farming, Ed Shepard became well-known for his tremendous strength. On the other Shepard farm, Ed's Uncle Isaac became the most prosperous farmer in the area, and a community leader. The Shepards were joined by John Greene and his family, slaves from Missouri who escaped during the chaos of the civil war, and headed up the Mississippi for the free state of Wisconsin. John Greene's son, Thomas, also fought in the civil war, and returned to Pleasant Ridge to farm. He married Hattie Shepard, the daughter of Charles and Caroline, and together they raised six daughters and three sons. Growing up as a slave, Thomas Greene had been eager to learn, but was denied any chance to read or attend school. One of his top priorities was the education of the children of Pleasant Ridge. In 1870, white and black settlers pooled their resources and built District Number 5 schoolhouse on land donated by Isaac Shepard. It was one of the first integrated schools in the country. Over the years, both teachers and students were black and white. Sarah Greene, daughter of Thomas and Hattie Greene, was born the year the school was built. After finishing Pleasant Ridge school, she went on to graduate with honors from Lancaster High School. And from there, Sarah attended Western College in Macon, Missouri. She returned home briefly to teach at Pleasant Ridge school, before going on to teach at other rural schools in Wisconsin and Missouri. 

Interpreter: Now, how do you think parents and grandparents who had been raised as slaves feel about a young girl who now can teach other people how to read and write? Extremely proud.

Narrator: Alongside the church at Old World Wisconsin, is a replica of the cemetery at Pleasant Ridge. Here, interpreters tell the stories of the Shepards, the Greenes, and several other African-American families attracted to the community at Pleasant Ridge. The pioneer farmers of the area, black and white, needed each other to survive. They joined together for fieldwork, for harvests, for threshing, for barn raisings, home building and for church building. In 1884, they built the log church reproduced at Old World Wisconsin today. 

Interpreter: How many of you attend church, or have been to a church? Any have pastors? This church didn't have a pastor. This church had what was called a circuit rider. A circuit rider. He was a pastor that had about five different churches on his route. And he would travel from area to another.

Narrator: Both Ed Shepard and Thomas Greene, sons of the original settlers, lived into their '90s and saw big changes at Pleasant Ridge. The settlement had been a good place for former slaves to make a new start, to own land, to raise a family, to provide an education. For many years, the families lived off the land. And many had fond memories of life in the small community. But the pioneer farms couldn't offer the much to the children, and they began to move away, in search of better opportunities. Olive Greene Lewis, seen here with her father Thomas, began with her sisters to collect the history of the fading community. When she died in 1959, she was the last of the black settlers living on Pleasant Ridge. But the history she collected lives on at Old World Wisconsin, along with the stories of other early Wisconsin settlers. The stories of how they survived, the clothes they wore, the work they did, the homes they lived in, the adversity they faced, are told and retold to new generations of visitors who journey back in time and experience a glimpse of a past brought to life and the pioneer heritage that helped make us who we are today.