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- Avon's Urban Dreams Blasted
by Railroad
- How often do railroads make or break
the destinies and hopes of towns and
- communities!
- Fifty years ago the people of the town
and village of Avon had hopes and ambitions
- that their town would become a communal
and trading center. They had a good water power site and they
could see no reason why advancement and progress should not come
to them.
- Believing all this, A. B. CARPENTER,
Beloit, platted a village here in the center of
- a large piece of land which he had
purchased of the government, and the lots were sold to hopeful
speculators and others who had faith in Avon, both as a township
and village. About 1879 William BROWN built a grist mill,
which for several years did a fine business, despite the fact
that the spring freshets of the Sugar River swept out the mill
dam every year or so and it had to be rebuilt at considerable
expense.
- Later, however, the Albany mill was
built and this, together with the competition of
- the Beloit mills, worked against the
Avon mill, which was finally sold by Mr. BROWN to Mr.
KIRKE, who sold it in turn to John and Charles WOOLSEY.
They disposed of the property to August WINKLE, and he
sold to F. FINCH, who, after the river had torn out the
dam for the last time, transferred it again to Mr. KIRKE,
who had built it originally. It was then sold to Will BLUE,
who later tore down the building, leaving Avon with a dam by
a mill site, but "no mill by a dam-site."
- For years the hopes of the community
were centered upon the promised coming of the
- Sugar Valley Railroad, which was to
run from Shirland, Ill., to Brodhead. This road was actually
surveyed and part of the grading done, when came the news that
the road had been bought by the Milwaukee and Mineral Point Railroad
and that the project would be abandoned.
- Still the town struggled on. A store,
blacksmith shop and a cheese factory were built,
- while three churches, Adventist, Methodist,
and Baptist, took care of the religious needs of the community.
These churches, with the exception of the Baptist, are now memories,
the buildings having been used for other purposes. The Baptist
church has survived and its members still have a church just
east of the village, where Rev. J. W. ZIMMERMANN, Brodhead,
holds services every Sunday. [Note: There is an error in this
article. The surviving church was the one east of town, but it
was the Methodist Church. A history of that church appears later
in Early Avon History. - J.R.S.]
- In the days when Avon aspired to be
on the map, a store was built by the BLUE
- brothers, Harry and Will, Harry taking
the active management. Twelve years later it was destroyed by
fire. It was rebuilt and run by Lee BLUE and Chan HOPKINS.
Later, a Durand, Ill. banker bought the store and put in a large
stock. One day it was discovered that the store had been cleaned
of its stock, the banker missing, and the funds of his bank gone.
The bank depositers foreclosed on the store and it was purchased
by A. B. CARPENTER. The store is now run by John GILBERTSON,
who was born and raised in this community.
- About 1844 [I do not know if this date
is correct, it seems a little early to me.
- - J.R.S.] a stock company was organized
and a cheese factory built, which under the management of Stephen
GARDNER, did a fine business until his death. Then the
business ran down and the building was finally sold for a barn.
- Since the first days of civilization
the village blacksmith, in song, story, and reality, has
- been a potential part of every village
and for over 50 years Avon has had its worthy smiths in the persons
of William WATSON, Henry MEYERS, and others who
have helped keep Avon on the map. [Saturday edition]
-
- Courtesy of John Sill
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- County's First Print Shop is in Newark
- Orfordville - There may be "nothing
new under the sun" but there are things which
- historians sometimes dig up which are
new to many people.
- The fact that back in 1851 there was,
in the town of Newark, a settlement called
- Inmanville [Inmansville], named after
one of the early settlers, which was also known as Torkap or
Bornitz, the meaning of which in Norwegian is "burnt up"
or "dried up," and that here was published the first
Norwegian magazine in America, is not known by many.
- The town of Newark was settled in the
early forties by a colony of Norwegians, many
- of them highly educated and all of
them fervent members of the Lutheran church. To be without a
church was more of a hardship than being homeless in a strange
land. So here was organized the Luther Valley church, a church
which a few years ago had a membership of over 1,100.
-
- Make Three Attempts
- This new and growing church felt the
need of a press to present principles of the
- Norwegian faith to the world and to
its own people. Three unsuccessful efforts were made by various
individuals to publish church magazines. First of these was known
as the Maanedstidende, edited by three ministers, A. C.
PREUS, C. L. CLAUSEN and H. A. STUB, CLAUSEN
being the main editor.
- Later the name of the magazine was
changed to Kirketidende. The change of name,
- however, did not bring prosperity,
so Nov. 15, 1851, a meeting was called to organize a society
to refinance the publication. R. D. REYMERT, member of
the territorial legislature which framed the state constitution,
was chosen chairman of the meeting and the society organized
under the name of Den Aktie Society, or Den Norske Presseforening.
-
- Pledges Are Received
- At this meeting the 73 members of the
society pledged themselves to give $10 each to
- place the publication on its feet financially.
The name of the publication was then changed to The Emigrantin,
and C. L. SLAUSEN [CLAUSEN] made editor, a position
he held for several years, the publication being made more of
a general newspaper than a church magazine.
- Later the Emigrantin was moved
to Madison, where, after several years of publication
- it was again moved to Minneapolis where
it is still published under the name of The __dende.
- C. L. SLAUSEN [CLAUSEN],
last known editor of the Emigrantin, when it was
- published in Newark, later organized
a Norwegian colony and settled in Mitchell county, Iowa.
- R. D. RAYMERT, chairman of the
society after his term in the legislature had expired,
- became an attorney in Milwaukee, moved
from there to New York, later becoming territorial governor of
Arizona. [Friday edition]
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