by Suzy
WE’RE IN QUITE A STATE!
Footnotes in Wisconsin History
The rivalry between athletic teams of the University of Wisconsin and the University of Minnesota dates back many years. In 1898, after the Gophers had suffered a series of miserable football losses, a university professor urged students to focus positive energy in the players’ direction, and cheerleading was invented. His suggested rallying cry: “Go to Madison! Go to Madison! Apply the summation of stimuli!”
The Gophers lost to Wisconsin 28-0.
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In 1869 the name of Dallas County was changed to Barron County in honor of Henry D. Barron of St. Croix Falls, a transplanted New Yorker, editor, lawyer, judge, assemblyman and state senator.
The village of Barron, once known as Quaderer's Camp, was also named for him after it became the county seat. The powerful Knapp Stout Lumber Company, which owned the land upon which Rice Lake had been founded, was naturally anxious to have Rice Lake made the county seat, and the citizens voted their approval of that plan in 1873. Fearing the company's domination of county affairs, John Quaderer, Woodbury S. Grover and others led a campaign to restore Barron as the county seat. The 1874 election did just that, and Grover was elected clerk, but the matter was far from settled. This excerpt from The Rice Lake Chronotype of March 3, 1875, indicates the reaction:
“We will continue to fight to keep the county seat here. This strife within the county stems from a deep and deadly hatred of the settlers for the great and powerful monopoly called Knapp Stout & Company. But if this firm was guilty of wrongdoing in manipulating county affairs causing much of today's financial embarrassment, changing the seat will not right the wrong.”
To forestall an injunction, Grover hid the records in the seat of a chair hewn out of a log and, on a cold winter night, driving a team of horses with their feet covered so as not to make any noise, spirited the records off to Barron and deposited them with John Quaderer. The chair - the “county seat” - is still kept there.
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James D. Doty, who served as Wisconsin’s territorial governor’s from 1841-1844, was an extremely aggressive and impulsive man who aroused bitter feelings even in his first address to the legislature. When an offended member voiced opposition to the governor’s choice for sheriff of Grant County, a heated debate followed. James Vineyard, of Grant County, and Charles Arndt, of Brown County, the warmest of personal friends, began to quarrel angrily. Insults were exchanged and Arndt struck Vineyard in the face. Vineyard drew a pistol and shot his friend, who died within five minutes. Vineyard surrendered himself to the sheriff and offered his resignation to the legislature, which refused to accept it and expelled him instead. At his trial he pleaded self-defense to a manslaughter charge and was acquitted by the jury.
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In 1817 Wisconsin introduced the use of the highway marking system that we now take for granted. For the first time numbers were used to designate highways. North-south roads were given odd numbers, and highways with a primarily east-west orientation were even-numbered, The system was eventually adopted by the Federal Highway Control Board and is now employed throughout the nation.
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With a humble beginning in Vilas Hall on the UW-Madison campus, 9XM-WHA began broadcasting in 1917. The programming consisted mainly of Morse code and crackly voice transmission by way of an unruly tangle of wires, tubes and bulky transmitters. WHA has the distinction of being the radio station with the longest record of uninterrupted broadcasting in America.
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Oskosh by the early 1900s, had become the world’s leading producer of wooden doors and sashes for the building industry.
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Sources include The Minneapolis Star Tribune; 1922 History of Barron County; The Making of Wisconsin, by Carrie J. Smith & John Callahan; & Wisconsin, The Way ,We Were, by Mary A. Shafer.
