USA > Wisconsin > Sauk County > A standard history of Sauk County, Wisconsin, Volume II > Part 27
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The old homestead furnished the seene for the rearing of James Brennan, for he was but one year old when brought to Sauk County, and his boyhod was passed amid the surroundings of country life. He was reared to habits of industry and frugality and secured the usual country school education in Baraboo Township, and when his studies were completed applied himself to the vocation of his father. Eventually he became the owner of a farm of eighty acres of his own, of which he has himself cleared twenty-eight acres and on which he has erected good buildings and made many improvements. He uses modern methods and appliances in his work, and has made a study of the science of farming, so that he is able to gain a full measure of profit from the labor which he extends upon his land. In addition to his general farming operations, in which he has been very successful, he carries on also the breeding of thoroughbred cattle, making a specialty of Holstein animals, for which he finds a ready and profitable market. Mr. Brennan is a stoekholder in the Excelsior Co-operative Creamery Company and has an excellent reputation in business circles. He is an adherent of democratie principles in his political views, but has not entered actively into political life, uor has he been a seeker for public preferment. With his family he belongs to the Catholic Church, which he attends at Baraboo.
Mr. Brennan was married October 7. 1902, to Miss Clara Hawkins,
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who was born in Winfield Township, Sank County, October 22, 1876, a daughter of Albert and Catherine (Casey) Hawkins. Mr. Hawkins was born near Burlington, Vermont, in 1844, and was fourteen years of age when, in 1858, he accompanied his parents, Albert and Eliza Hawkins, to Sauk County, the family settling in Winfield Township, where Mrs. Brennan's grandparents both died. Albert Hawkins still owns the original Hawkins farm, but is now retired from active pursuits and makes his home at Reedsburg. He is a democrat in politics and while living in the country was a man of importance in local affairs, several times filling the office of chairman of Winfield Township. He and the members of his family belong to the Catholic Church. Mrs. Hawkins, who also survives, was born in New York City, in 1851, and was a girl when brought to Wisconsin by her parents. She and her husband had three children : Clara, who is now Mrs. Brennan; Nellie; and Albert, who is operating the farm that was the original home of the family in this state. Mr. and Mrs. Brennan are the parents of four children, namely : Alice, Grace, Ella and James.
ยท ROBERT M. DICKIE represents a family well known in Freedom Town- ship. His parents were both born in Scotland, where they were married. In 1850 they settled in Milwaukee and five years later in Freedom Town- ship, where Robert M. was born in 1861. In 1890, having owned several farms and becoming "well fixed," the father moved to South Dakota to make his home with a married daughter. There were eight children in the family, of whom Robert M. was the sixth. He owns 100 acres of the old homestead and is engaged in both general farming and stock raising.
MRS. ELLA A. COOPER. The Cooper and Cummings families have been known and honored in Sauk County since pioneer times. Member- ship has comprised faithful men and devoted women, worthy workers in whatever vocation life has ealled them, and the community is the better for the presence of such excellent families.
It was in the Village of Prairie du Sae, in which she now lives, that Mrs. Ella A. Cooper was born in 1851, a daughter of Albion Paris and Cynthia Cummings. Her father was a native of the State of Maine and her mother of Vermont. Mrs. Cooper grew to womanhood in Prairie du Sac, was liberally educated in the local schools, and for one year attended a private school in Jefferson, Wiseonsin. In 1880 she married Mr. Jesse Cooper.
Mr. Jesse Cooper was born in New Hampshire, son of Willard and Amelia (Perry) Cooper. Both parents were natives of Vermont, and they moved to New Hampshire when Jesse Cooper was about eighteen years of age. He had a district schooling and for two years attended an academy, at the same time working on the farm. He finally became engaged in merchandizing and was postmaster in his New Hampshire town for ten years. After his marriage he took his bride back to New Hampshire, but in 1885 returned to Prairie du Sac and became active manager of Doctor Cummings' drug store. That business he conducted with suceess until his death in 1897. Mr. Cooper served two years as county assessor and one year as town clerk, and was also a member of
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the board of review. He was a republican and attended the Presby- terian Church.
Mrs. Cooper's father was born at Albany, Maine, in 1820, a son of Mr. and Mrs. John Cummings, both of whom were natives of Maine. Albion P. Cummings grew to manhood in his native state, attended school there and by private reading and work in hospitals acquired a thorough proficiency as a physician and surgeon. He began practice in Vermont, and lived in that state two years and was married there. He then moved west and located at Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin, where he began the practice of medicine and continued it actively until about six months before his death. Doctor Cummings was for years perhaps the most familiar figure in his section of Sauk County. Every one esteemed him for his ability and loved him for the kindness and wholesomeness of his character. He practiced over a country many miles in extent, and in the early days endured countless hardships in making his professional calls. He was always looking after the welfare of his patients, not alone in physical health, but in a material and moral sense. He was a democrat, but was liberal in politics and fair-minded and broad in all the relations of his life. Doctor Cummings' wife was born April 21, 1822, in Temple, Massa- chusetts, but moved to Canaan, Vermont, when three years of age. She received her education there and it was her home until her marriage. She came west to Wisconsin and located in Prairie du Sac in 1850 and remained a resident of that village until her death on December 26, 1914.
Mrs. Cooper has one son, Louis Albion Cooper. He was born in New Hampshire in 1881, but when about four years of age came to Sauk County with his parents and grew to manhood in Prairie du Sac. He attended the local high school and common schools and for two years was in college preparatory work at Morgan Park Academy. In 1901 he entered Harvard College at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was graduated in 1905. For two years he taught at Rockford, Illinois, and then after a year in the University of Chicago he became professor of English liter- ature in the Ohio State University at Columbus. He is a man of brilliant intellect and of high qualifications as an educator. He was connected with the Ohio State University six years, and his seventh year was spent in study at Columbia University of New York City. He has since returned to Columbus, Ohio, where he is now located.
GUSTAV FEDERMANN. One of the heavy landowners and successful farmers of Sauk County is Gustav Federmann, who operates and owns 375 acres situated in Troy Township. He was eight years old when his parents brought him to Wisconsin and he has lived here ever since and long has been one of Sauk County's excellent citizens.
Gustav Federmann was born in Germany in 1865. His parents were William and Wilhelmina (Hoppe) Federmann, who came to the United States and to Wisconsin in 1873. For the first three years the father worked at the mason's trade but he wanted a farm and selected land in Sauk County, purchasing eighty acres in Troy Township, which his son now owns. To this first tract he later added forty acres and still later bought 160 acres. Later he sold 120 acres, but all the rest of his land he cleared with the assistance of his sons. There was a large amount
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of grubbing to be done and only oxen were strong enough to use in breaking up the virgin land. In that section and at that time there was comparatively little farm machinery in use and Mr. Federmann can remember the early years on the farm when the scythe and the cradle were the main harvesting implements. Both parents died on the home- stead, the father in October, 1906, and the mother on April 1, 1917. They were worthy people and faithful members of the Evangelical Church. They had four children, namely : Albert, who resides with his family in Spring Green Township ; Bertha, who lives in Troy 'Township, is the wife of Frank Schuknecht; Gustav; and Lizzie, who is Mrs. Robert Fuchs, lives in Troy Township.
Gustav Federmann has always lived on his present farm and has made many improvements here. He helped his father clear the land and was his main dependence for many years. He has acquired a large amount of land, all of it valuable, and now owns in addition to the homestead another farm of 280 acres. He has always carried on general farming, has done some dairying and raises first-class stock. For a couple of years Mr. Federmann also operated a lime kiln. In all his undertakings he shows good judgment and is rated with his township's most substantial men.
Mr. Federmann was married in 1892 to Miss Frederika Schaefer, and they have a family of nine children, as follows: Gustav, Minne, Bertha, Edward, George, Samuel, Benjamin, Alfred and Verna, all of whom are living. Gustav is managing a farm that adjoins that of his father. Mr. Federmann has given his children all the advantages in his power and his sons and daughters have developed into men and women who are credits to their parents and the community. The entire family belongs to the Evangelical Church. Mr. Federmann has not at any time been active in politics, but in neighborhood affairs, when soinething must be done to benefit the whole community or immediate help must be given in case of poverty or sickness, his fellow citizens know he can be appealed to and that his help is certain and his advice timely and practical.
SIDNEY E. WAKEFIELD. Upon commerce rests the prosperity of nations as well as communities. Buying and selling, meeting the demands of producer and consumer and so regulating trade that injustice be done to neither and that progress and contentment result, make up so large a portion of the world's activities and engage the efforts of so many people that the business man in commercial fields is one of the most necessary units in the scheme of things. The lumber business, with its various connecting industries, is a commercial relation absolutely necessary to the development of any section. At Baraboo one of the leading industries in this field is the Deppe-Carpenter Lumber and Produce Company, much of the success of which is due to the sterling abilities of its vice president, Sidney E. Wakefield.
Mr. Wakefield represents the type of business men who have been the architects of their own fortunes. He was born on a farm in Adams County, Wisconsin, August 7, 1862, and is a son of Thomas S. and Emily (Temple) Wakefield, natives of Reading, Massachusetts, who came to
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Wisconsin in 1860 and located in Adams County. The little family eircle was broken up by the demands of the Civil war, for on August 12, 1862, Thomas S. Wakefield enlisted for service in the Union Army, joining a Wisconsin volunteer infantry regiment. After fighting for several years he was granted a furlough and visited his home, but that was the last seen of him by his loved ones, for after he had returned to the front he was captured in battle by the enemy and east into the awful prison stoekade at Andersonville, where he succumbed to starvation and disease and died in August, 1864. There were four children in the family : Marian, who is the wife of H. L. Cornell, of Chicago; Arthur, deceased, who as a lad of seven years was taken by his grandmother to New York, and then on a trip around Cape Horn to Oakland, California, living there until twenty-one years of age and then returning to Kilbourn City where he died in 1888; Sidney E .; and Thomas, who is a well-known pharmacist of Oak Park, Illinois. Mrs. Wakefield, who came to Sauk County, Wisconsin, in 1866, died at the home of her son, Sidney E., at Baraboo, in 1914.
Sidney E. Wakefield was only two years of age when his father died, and he and his brother were reared on the farm of their grandparents in Adams County. He was educated in the publie schools and reared to agricultural pursuits, and when not yet eighteen years of age, March 1, 1880, began working for his stepfather, Charles Pelton. He remained in the latter's employ until his marriage, December 25, 1888, to Alice Davenport, who was born in Sauk County. They began their married life on a rented farm in Sauk County, on which they resided for ten years. At the end of that time they changed their residence to Reedsburg, where Mr. Wakefield entered the employ of the Morgan Building Company, a concern with which he was connected for about thirteen years. In January, 1912, Mr. Wakefield came to Baraboo and became identified with the George Carpenter Lumber Company, and in May of the same year, when the organization and incorporation of the Deppe-Carpenter Lumber and Produce Company was effeeted, he became vice president of the new concern and manager of the Water Street yards, the down town department, the West Side yards being on Second Avenue. This company deals in lumber and produce, carries a complete stoek of lumber and building material and buys produce of all kinds. Mr. Wakefield is thoroughly experienced in his line of work and is well known to the trade and an energetie and progressive lumber and produce man. Mr. Wakefield is a prohibitionist, is affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church, and belongs to the Modern Woodmen of America, which he joined in 1889, and to the Sons of Veterans.
Mrs. Wakefield is a daughter of Calvin P. and Mary (Gillespie) Davenport, the former a native of Vermont and the latter of Scot- land. She was brought to the United States as a child of eight years and married Mr. Davenport in New England, from which locality they came to Sauk County as pioneers. Mr. Davenport, who passed his life as a farmer, died about 1910, while his widow still survives and makes her home with her daughter, Mrs. Wakefield, at Baraboo. They had five daughters and two sons. Prior to her marriage Mrs. Wakefield taught
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in the public schools for about six years. She is active in the work of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Sunday school and the Women's Chris- tian Temperance Union. While residing at Reedsburg Mr. Wakefield was superintendent of the Sunday school for about ten years. He was also the first president of the South Side Social Center Club and acted in that capacity for two years. Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield have two sons : Lawrence S., born January 26, 1896, now in Waco, Texas, at Camp Mc Arthur with Company A, One Hundred Twenty-eighth Infantry, U. S. N. G .; and Sidney John, born October 25, 1911.
OTTO J. DAHLKE. Sauk County has been fortunate in the class of citizens who have made their permanent homes here and it can take a special pride in those families who came from Germany. An excellent representative of this class of local citizens, though himself a native of Wisconsin, is Otto J. Dahlke of Excelsior Township. Mr. Dahlke started as a farmer with limited capital and by hard work and good management has made one of the excellent farm homes of his locality. He was born in Milwaukee October 14, 1874, a son of John and Henrietta (Henke) Dahlke. John Dahlke, who was born in Germany December 14, 1836, was the only son of his parents, Christoph and Rose Dahlke, both of whom died in Germany. Henrietta Henke, who was born in Germany July 7, 1842, was the only one of her parents' children to come to the United States. She was a daughter of Adam and Louise (Wintland) Henke. Her father was born December 2, 1812, and her mother in April, 1812. Adam Henke was a shepherd in Germany. The Henke children were: Ernestina, deceased ; Amelia, deceased; Henrietta ; Peter August, deceased; Augusta, who still lives in Germany; William, in Germany, and Julius, deceased.
John and Henrietta Dahlke were married in Germany, September 4, 1864, and on June 1, 1873, they arrived at Milwaukee and from that city moved to Sauk County on April 19, 1875, when Otto was about six months old. Here the father found employment in grubbing out stumps and brush, working as a farm hand, and in 1879 he bought the place known as the David Jones farm of forty acres in Excelsior Town- ship. He was a most capable man and a hard worker and through his efforts as a farmer he provided liberally for his family. He is now living retired at the age of eighty-one. Politically he has identified him- self with the republican party and is a member of the German Lutheran Church. There were eight children in the family: Bertha, deceased ; Henrietta, deceased ; Augusta, deceased ; Hulda ; Otto J .; Emma, at home with her parents; Mary, who died in infancy, and Julius, deceased.
Otto J. Dahlke grew up on the home of his father in Excelsior Town- ship and at the same time benefited by regular attendance at the local schools. Responsibilities beyond his age were early thrust upon him. and when only thirteen he was working on a farm and milking fourteen cows night and morning. It is very evident that the success he now enjoys was well carned. For three years he worked on farms in Illinois, but on February 1, 1905, bought a hundred acres in Fairfield Township. He has since sold twenty acres of this, and his well developed farm of eighty acres has every evidence of thrift and good management. In Vol. II-14
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1912 he built a good country home, and has instituted many other im- provements, all the buildings being the result of his management, except the barn. He is a republican without political aspirations, and he and his family are members of the Lutheran Church at North Freedom.
On February 19, 1902, Mr. Dahlke married Miss Emma Milke, who was born in the Township of Greenfield, Sauk County, December 3, 1879, a daughter of Carl and Henrietta (Dickow) Milke. Her parents were both natives of Germany, married there, and in 1876 came to Greenfield Township of Sauk County. Here her father worked as a farm hand, rented land for a time, and in 1881; bought a place of eighty acres in Excelsior Township. His prosperity as a Wisconsin farmer was gained on that farm and he died there August 4, 1905, at the age of sixty-nine. The old homestead is now occupied by his son Gustave. The widowed mother passed away in December, 1916, at the advanced age of eighty. Their children were: Bertha, deceased, who married Ferdinand Effinger, of Baraboo; Julius, deceased; Amelia, wife of August Killian, of Bara- boo; Minnie, wife of John Ziemke, of Sauk City; Annie, the present wife of Ferdinand Effinger, of Baraboo; Gustave, on the old homestead; Charles, and Emma, Mrs. Dahlke.
Mr. and Mrs. Dahlke have four children, the older ones still in school, and it has been their pride and pleasure to give them the best advantages both at home and in local institutions. The record of this family is: Ethel, born July 1, 1903; Lucile, born July 28, 1905; Lilah, born July 29, 1909, and Floyd, born June 3, 1915.
SAMUEL BABINGTON. A resident of Sauk County nearly half a cen- tury, Samuel Babington earned his position in the esteem of the com- munity by work as a hard headed and practical farmer, and after success came to him in that line and it was possible for him to slacken somewhat the pace he had pursued he was dignified with a number of positions of trust and responsibility, and for many years has almost constantly been engaged in the performance of some public duty. He is now living retired at Prairie du Sac and is mayor of that little city.
Mr. Babington was born in Canada, June 9, 1845, of Irish parentage. John and Ann (Marlin) Babington were both born in Ireland, the father in 1801. After their marriage they immigrated to Canada, where John Babington died in 1871, at the age of seventy. His widow subsequently came to Wisconsin and died in Eau Claire in 1903, at the age of eighty- one. John Babington was a farmer. He and his wife had eight children : John, deceased; Elizabeth; Samuel; William; Ann, deceased; Mary; James, deceased, and Charlotte.
His early years Samuel Babington spent in Canada on a farm. He attended the public schools there, and was about twenty years of age when he came to the United States in September, 1865. His first ex- perience in this country was in the oil district around Titusville, Penn- sylvania, but he soon went west to Illinois, and worked on a farm one season. In November, 1866, he arrived in Wisconsin, at Mazomanie, in Dane County. The date of his arrival in Sauk County was March 15, 1867, when he located in Troy Township. He began as a farm worker and with growing experience and means he subsequently bought a farm
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in sections 33 and 34, township 9, range 5. That old homestead he still owns and it is a highly productive and valuable place, consisting of 380 acres. In the earlier years of his ownership it was practically wild land, and Mr. Babington through this farm has contributed something of lasting and permanent value to the County of Sauk. Besides making the land productive he built substantial buildings and for all time to come this farm is destined to produce crops that will help feed and maintain mankind.
In 1907 Mr. Babington retired from active farming and has since lived retired at Prairie du Sac. He owns a good residence in that town. He is one of Sauk County's prominent men in the creamery industry. he has been one of the officers of the Wisconsin Creamery at Sauk City for twenty-seven years. He was one of the organizers and the creamery opened for business April 1, 1890.
In matters of politics Mr. Babington has always been a democrat. He was chairman of the board in Troy Township for fourteen years and assessor four years, and for three years side supervisor. In 1905 the county board appointed him supervisor of assessments and he served seven years, until the office was discontinued. In April, 1911, he was elected mayor of Prairie du Sac and the people were thoroughly satisfied with his administration of local affairs and kept him in office continu- ously from that date to April, 1917. Fraternally he is a member of the Ancient Order of United Workmen and is a member of the Presbyterian Church.
Mr. Babington was married in March, 1872, to Miss Thomazine Patterson. Mrs. Babington was born in New York City, March 15, 1851, a daughter of John and Mary (Thornberry) Patterson. In 1854 the Patterson family came west and located in Troy Township of Sauk County and soon acquired the farm which Mr. Babington now owns. Mr. Patterson died here in 1877, while his wife had passed away in 1869. Their five children were: John H., Thomazine, Robert A., Mary Jane and William G., all of whom are still living.
The family of Mr. and Mrs. Babington consists of six children, all living and most of them established in homes of their own. Their names are : John T., Robert S., Maud M., Bruce D., Lottie Ann and Edith Pearl.
HERMAN WEINKE has for many years cultivated some of the broadest acres and conducted one of the finest farming establishments in Freedom Township. While he now enjoys a large degree of pros- perity, Mr. Weinke began life in comparatively humble circumstances and at one time rented some of the land that he now owns.
He was born in Germany, July 13, 1851, a son of Christian and Minnie (Schoenke) Weinke. His mother died in the old country in 1869. The father afterwards accompanied his sons to America and spent the rest of his days in Sauk County, where he died in 1896, at the age of eighty-four. There were five children: Charles, Herman, Ernest, Frank and Louisa, the daughter dying at the age of twenty years.
Herman Weinke secured his early education in Germany. He was nineteen years of age when, in 1870, he crossed the Atlantic, and soon
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afterward he came to Wisconsin, spending his first year in Caledonia Township, of Columbia County. He then removed to Freedom Township, and for a time was employed with a construction gang in building the Northwestern Railway through this township. In 1881 he rented the farm he now owns and in 1883 bought it from the firm of Brown & Avery. He carried heavy burdens of debt for a number of years, but each year saw him a little further ahead and nearer to the maturing of his ambitious plans. Under his hands the land was cleared and put into cultivation, substantial buildings arose, and though he is still a hard working citizen he might retire with an ample' competence for all his future needs. Mr. Weinke has done much with thoroughbred livestock, handling high grade Norman horses, Shorthorn cattle and Duroc Jersey hogs.
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