The Huffmans: Owners of the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune

Posted on March 26, 2019 by Alison Bruener

by Alison Bruener, Museum Assistant

Today with fewer and fewer newspapers circulating, I’m amazed how many local people over the years owned and published the numerous iterations of our local newspapers. In the days of the Wood County Reporter, the Centralia Enterprise & Tribune and the Grand Rapids Tribune, there were names like Jack Brundage, H.B Philleo, and Drumb and Sutor. But one family stands out for their years spent running the Daily Tribune:  the Huffmans.

Having moved to Grand Rapids in 1919, William F. Huffman purchased the Grand Rapids Daily Leader and the Weekly Leader in October of the same year. By spring 1920, the Tribune had absorbed both Leaders. For almost a year, both the daily and weekly Tribune continued to be published and eventually the weekly was discontinued in favor of the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune.

Alcinda Louise Fey Huffman

A couple years after moving to Grand Rapids, in 1921, William Huffman married Alcinda Louise Fey, or as she was more commonly known, Louise. The two met in college and were engaged, though the wedding was postponed due to his participation in the French Ambulance Service during WWI. Once married, the couple had two children, William Jr., born in 1924, and Mary, born in 1926.

William Jr. (Bill) and Mary Huffman in a photo for Daily Tribune Calendar

 

With his family settling into the growing city, and still at the helm of the Tribune, Huffman in 1940 introduced a new media outlet to the area, radio station WFHR (William Ferdinand Huffman Radio).

After Huffman’s death in 1949, the widowed Louise Huffman served as the president of both the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune and the radio station WFHR until 1950. Then, William Jr. (“Bill”) took the helm, after returning home from receiving a degree in agricultural journalism from UW-Madison. He had also served in WWII. As for Louise, she would spend the next two decades traveling the world. She passed away in 1976.

By 1955, Bill Huffman had co-founded the Forward Communications Corporation with other Central Wisconsin newspaper publishers. The company would later expand to other regional television and radio stations.

In his editorials in the Tribune, Huffman criticized the war in Vietnam and expressed concern for environmental protection.

In 1983, Huffman sold the Tribune to Thomson Newspapers out of Toronto, Canada.

Gannett Co. purchased the Daily Tribune in the year 2000. Gannett also owns Appleton’s Post Crescent, Wausau’s Daily Herald, Green Bay’s Press Gazette,  the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Sheboygan Press, Fond Du Lac’s The Reporter, Manitowoc’s Herald Times Reporter and the Stevens Point Journal. Gannett’s headquarters are located in McLean, Virginia.

I have enjoyed learning the history of our local newspapers and look forward to continued work on our forthcoming exhibit on the papers here at the Museum. We will be open to the public again after Memorial Day, which, as things go, is right around the corner, and we will post our summer hours soon. Hope to see you then!

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Photos of Former Lincoln High School & East Junior High Building

Posted on April 27, 2018 by Alison Bruener

Compiled by Kathy Engel, SWCHC Librarian

The Wisconsin Rapids Public School District will discontinue the use of the East Junior High School building. Here are pictures from the past 115 years.

The original Lincoln High School was built in 1903, on the current site of East Junior High School.

1931 Lincoln High School

The aerial photo shows Lincoln High School in about 1970. The Wood County Normal School, right (formerly the Teacher Training School) was torn down in 1978. In 1979, the Witter building, center, was demolished.

The building became East Junior high in 1979.

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Communal Neglect: More buildings bite the dust

Posted on January 16, 2018 by Alison Bruener

Four photos by David Farmbrough show old houses in Wisconsin Rapids before they were razed.

621 Saratoga Street, Wisconsin Rapids The fine old “farmhouse,” first on that block, was probably built in the 1880s. Neglected for years, tenants and landlord allowed sewage to flood the ground floor and the city demolished it in 2012.

Civil War era house from 1st Street North, Wisconsin Rapids. The city demolished it in 2012, in spite of its good condition and historical importance.

Another Civil War era house from 1st Street North, Wisconsin Rapids, also seen at left in previous photo. The city demolished this house in 2012.

The Love House, or Lamplight Inn, built when railroads arrived in 1872, was demolished in November 2016. (Note that (Uncle) Dave Engel obtained the Lamplight Inn sign when the bar of that name closed.)

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Greeting Cards from Christmas Past

Posted on December 20, 2017 by Alison Bruener

written by Kathy Engel, SWCHC Librarian

Over the years, many greeting cards have been donated to the South Wood County Historical Museum. Here are some examples I have compiled.

Card #1: This Christmas card, from Claude and Ruth Aniol, dated 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression, depicts what was on the minds of many during that time. A quick search for Claude and Ruth Aniol in city directories and online showed Claude and Ruth had lived in and eventually were buried in San Antonio, Texas. Who in Wood County received this card is unknown.

Front

Back

 

#2: A card with a copyright date of 1908 states on the back that it was from Grandma Spade.

#3: “A Merry Xmas To Fred From Mother Lessig” dated September 1920. This homemade card was possibly created by Eliza Lessig for her son Fred. It shows the Lessig family home in the town of Rudolph, where the Lessig family ran a brickyard.

Handmade card 

 

#4: Season’s Greetings from George W. Mead (Florida).

Greetings from George Mead (Florida)

 

Merry Christmas from the South Wood County Historical Museum!

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Connected to One Another with History

Posted on December 11, 2017 by Alison Bruener

written by Alison Bruener, Museum Assistant

As I prepare to welcome 2018, I begin to wonder what items will find their way to 540 3rd St. S. in the coming year. It’s been a busy year for museum staff. We’ve seen items unearthed from the attic and placed into exhibits for the public to see. New visitors ventured in throughout the summer, some with childhood memories of when the building was the T.B. Scott library. I’ve learned names of individuals who make up the history of our county, listened to stories from those born and raised here to those who moved here at some later point in their lives. I never know when someone I meet will have an event or time in their life when they  touched a historic part, not only their community, but the country as a whole.

I’ve countless times walked past a small lap desk on display under the Witter history in the back sun room of the Museum. It was only when SWCHC Director Emeritus Dave Engel gave me a brief history and assignment to find information of the original owner that I realized how interconnected everyone is.

Professor Chittenden, who came to the area in the 19th century, was a man of many interests. He was principal at Howe high school, worked on water quality in the area and discoursed at the Congregational Church.

But it was perhaps his life before Central Wisconsin that gained attention and took some further digging. Before moving to this area, Thomas W. Chittenden was a teacher in New York and possibly taught a young boy who would one day become a great figure in American history.

But, to learn that name you will have to wait for the next issue of Artifacts, where the story can be given in greater detail!

The past couple weekends, the Museum was open for the Christmas Tree Walk.  I am gladdened to see we had even more people walking through than we did for this event last year! Our Museum housed numerous trees in different rooms decorated by individuals, groups and organizations who are making history in South Wood County.

Here are some photos from this year’s event:

Upside-down tree from the 2017 Christmas Tree Walk

 

Billy Parker, military re-enactor, poses in the Buehler gallery

 

The Sun Room

 

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Slip Sliding into the Future

Posted on December 4, 2017 by Alison Bruener

written by Angelica Engel, Website Coordinator

Recently, I have been editing, proofreading, and posting the class of 1965’s “Lincoln High Newsletter,” curated by Kent Vasby, whose wife is a member of that class. Vasby himself graduated from Fort Atkinson High School in 1958.

I graduated from Rapids Lincoln in 2008, so these folks graduated over 40 years before me. And, yes, I am aware that the Lincoln of 1965 was housed in what I knew as “East Junior High,” and that my high school building came into existence in the 1970s, after these individuals were well into their adult lives.

My father, Dave Engel, was a member of the class of 1963. As I was growing up, he interviewed truly elderly people. Now, he has instructed me to preserve historical documents from a graduating class two years younger than him. That would be like me getting old enough to think the class of 2010 has something interesting to say!

But what strikes me most, as someone hurtling toward her 30s, is that my high school years, too, will be considered of historical value someday. In fact, my elementary school (Rudolph Elementary School) is already history, as the building now houses a charter school called “Think Academy.” And, my middle school, West Junior High, is also home to another entity, Wisconsin Rapids Area Middle School.

It’s beginning to dawn on me, a decade out from senior year, that it is actually possible for me to one day have graduated from high school 55 years previous.

I got to thinking about the WRPS schools I attended because Kent Vasby asked about what contributors remembered of their school buildings. Here is an example from Roger Fritz, April 27, 2017:

“Mead school was under construction when I started kindergarten. I had to walk past it on the way to Edison School. (Now the [site of] west side fire station).  We stopped to watch the workers building it [Mead]. I remember talking to one guy who told us he was a stock car racer and only did building for fun (I don’t think it was Dick Trickle).  Also recall the whole Edison crowd marching in line to the new shiny Mead. The Edison was very tall and dark. The Mead was very short and light colored. Both only had two floors. Bet they saved a lot on the cost of bricks and stair treads.”

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The Brazeau Family

Posted on August 1, 2017 by Alison Bruener

written by Kathy Engel, SWCHC Librarian

Recent donations by South Wood County Historical Corp. board member Nicholas J. Brazeau, Sr. contained the following photographs of Brazeau ancestors who made their home in Grand Rapids, Wis., now Wisconsin Rapids.

The first photograph shows Stephen (Etienne) D. Brazeau (back row, middle) with his seven sons: Frank S. and George B. in the back row on either side of their father; front row, left to right, William A., Irving N., James E., Stephen D., Jr., and Theodore W.

 

Theodore W., known later as T.W., became a prominent attorney in Wisconsin Rapids and is the grandfather of current residents, Nicholas J. Brazeau, Sr., and Mary Brazeau Brown. He is the great-grandfather of circuit court judge Nicholas J. Brazeau., Jr.

The second photograph shows the seven Brazeau brothers at a later date. Back row: Theodore W., Irving, Stephen D., Jr. and James E. (known as Ed). Front row Frank, William and George.

 

The Stephen Brazeau, Sr., family included daughters Helen, Margaret and Adelaide. Stephen’s wife, the former Margaret Brady, died in 1882.

Five of Stephen and Margaret’s children remained in central Wisconsin; four lived in Washington State and one in Utah. Frank was postmaster and a merchant in Port Edwards. Helen (Nellie) Quinn supported her two daughters by keeping boarders, cooking and dressmaking. J. Edward was postmaster and a merchant in Nekoosa. Adelaide (Addie) married John Canning and lived all her life in Wisconsin Rapids. Theodore W. Brazeau lived until 1965, his career including District Attorney of Wood County and a term in the Wisconsin State Senate.

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Witter History, Family-Style

Posted on July 19, 2017 by Alison Bruener

written by Angelica Engel, Website Coordinator

On June 28, 2007, my father and I crashed through underbrush in the woods of Hopkinton, Rhode Island, looking for the grave of Josiah Witter, the (how many greats?) grandfather of Isaac Witter, whose 540 Third Street home is now the Museum.

We found Josiah’s gravestone, took photos, and journeyed back to the car, where my mother waited. We washed our legs with soap and water to prevent the onset of poison ivy rashes. We must have done a good job, because neither of us ended up breaking out.

I was 17 and knew the name “Witter” primarily from “Witter Field,” the place I sometimes played tennis with friends and LHS girls’ tennis teammates.

Searching for Josiah Witter’s gravestone in the woods with my dad was business as usual for me. Before I entered grade school, I had accompanied him up to Hibbing, Minn., many a time as he researched the then-washed-up Bob Dylan. I remember falling asleep at Iron World (a nearby historic site) as my parents chit-chatted with pop singer Bobby Vee, who had given then Bob Zimmerman his first paid gig. I also have walked the deserted streets of Calumet, Upper Michigan, a tiny town that once boomed with the business of the copper mines. When we went to Arizona, we made a point to tour multiple old Spanish missions.

I didn’t appreciate until recently that these vacations with my family are part of the reason my worldview has grown to be broad and receptive to new information. That’s what happens when a historian and a librarian take a kid on a trip.

That trip out east in 2007 involved many graves, poet Emily Dickinson’s and Beat-chronicler Jack Kerouac’s among them. I related strongly at the time to the writers and artists and was having all sorts of existential crises involving Kerouac’s On the Road the whole trip. Josiah Witter’s significance remained much more opaque.

Fortunately, the ten years that have elapsed between then and now have taught me a thing or two about money; specifically, ownership. Mr. Josiah Witter is important because he is a close ancestor of Mr. Jere D. Witter, who owned part of most businesses in what is now Wisconsin Rapids at the turn of the 20th Century.

When I was 17, as far as I was concerned, everything that exists is shared, and “ownership” is a fairy tale. Now that I’ve adulted for a while, I see why having a stake in so much of a city such as Wisconsin Rapids at a boom time would mean we would go find that person’s grave in the woods.

At age 17, I did understand that accompanying my father on a quest to find a grave in a strange woods was pretty cool to be doing. Obviously, I still enjoy the memory.

Thanks, Dad!

Josiah Witter’s gravestone in the woods of Hopkinton, Rhode Island.

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Photos from the Museum’s First Two Years

Posted on July 5, 2017 by Alison Bruener

The following photos were captured during the Museum’s first two years of operation, 1972 and 1973. Museum Assistant Alison Bruener is compiling a portfolio of photos taken throughout the Museum’s 45 years at what used to be the T.B. Scott Public Library. She selected this sample of photos to share.

Front of the Museum, 1972

Oct. 18, 1972, Cranberry Room, Mrs. S.G. Corey and friends.

1972, Country Kitchen Stove. Identity of women unknown.

1972, the Sun Room, also known as the Board Room. Identity of individuals unknown.

1972, Mrs. Kay Brazeau

1973, the living room. In 2017, this is now the Grim Natwick exhibit.

1972, Mrs. Emily (Mead) Baldwin (Bell)

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Goodbye Forever

Posted on July 3, 2017 by Alison Bruener

written by (Uncle) Dave Engel, LHS 1963, SWCHC Director Emeritus

When I left town, I thought it was for good.

Late summer 50 years ago, in 1967, I abandoned the Rapids paper mill beater room to motor west from River City in a twin-finned baby blue ’59 Pontiac that could easily cruise at 120 mph. Most likely, I was smoking Salems, drinking Coke and lunching on meat loaf sandwiches from Mom.

Pretty much every time I stopped, whether at a relic gas station on old U.S. 30 or at a truck stop on a completed section of Interstate 80, I bought a picture postcard. Images of Rockford, Des Moines and Omaha were sent like homing pigeons back to from where I came, messaging that I was moving alone across the massive mid-American terrain toward a quasi-academic future I hoped would not include Viet Nam. If the front of the postcard bore the image of the state capitol and “Greetings from Iowa,” the reverse carried my sentiments, “Goodbye forever.”

I may have slept an hour or two at a wayside. I know I steamed late the next day into a ramshackle service station on the outskirts of Sidney, Neb., where a kindly mechanic not much older than myself somehow found a water pump and installed it by sunset.

Somewhere in the middle of that night, I descended Medicine Bow pass into a dusty former frontier outpost a long ways from the green, green grass of home. The front of the last card from 50-years-ago pictures Wyoming’s Ragtime Cowboy Joe and is inscribed, “Greetings from Laramie.” You know what the back says.

Uncle Dave’s “50 years ago” timeline appeared in the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, beginning in 1989 to commemorate 1939’s World War II.

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