USA > Wisconsin > Wisconsin, its story and biography, 1848-1913, Volume V > Part 14
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In 1884 oeeurred the marriage of Mr. Sutton to Lizzie C. Hanson, of Shawano county, Wisconsin. Their four children are Walter, Flor- enee, Edna, and Harold. Fraternally Mr. Sutton is one of the leading Masons in this section of the state, having taken thirty-two degrees of the Scottish Rite, also the degrees of the York Rite ineluding the Knights Templar, and belongs to the Mystie Shrine. He is treasurer of the Blue Lodge of Masons at Rhinelander.
E. R. MURPHY, M. D. Throughout practically all his career as a physician and surgeon, Mr. Murphy's practice has been in the extreme northern seetion of Wisconsin. He is now located at Berlin. in Green Lake county, with offices at Dr. De Voe's former location. Dr Murphy began practice at Rhinelander in the spring of 1912, and prior to that for eight years was located at Crandon, in Forest county. In the fall of 1913 Dr. Murphy left Rhinelander to locate at Berlin, Wisconsin, where he took over the practice of Charles A. De Voe, M. D .. the doctor firmly believing that there was an unusual opening at this point for a surgeon as there had been a new hospital started there of late. The sue- cess of Dr. Murphy has been won on the basis of exceptional native tal-
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ent, and an unusually extensive training and equipment for his chosen work, especially in surgery. He is a graduate of Marquette Medical Col- lege of Milwaukee, with the class of 1903. After leaving medical college he was First Assistant at Milwaukee County Hospital during 1903-04, where he received his surgical training. This was followed by six months in the Germania Clinical Laboratory and then for six months he was in research work at the Milwaukee Branch of the Summit Sanitarium. While there most of his study and experience were connected with dis- eases of the thorax. With this extended equipment, Dr. Murphy went to Crandon, and engaged in practice there until locating at Rhinelander.
Dr. E. R. Murphy was born in the city of Milwaukee, June 24, 1876, a son of G. C. and Frances (Ferris) Murphy, both of whom still reside in Milwaukee. Dr. Murphy grew up in Milwaukee, had his early edu- cation in the public schools, and previous to entering medical college was a student in St. John's Military Academy at Delafield, Wisconsin. Dr. Murphy gives most of his attention to surgery, and he has made a record as a skillful and careful operator. He was a member of the surgical staff of St. Mary's hospital in Rhinelander. He has member- ship in the Oneida county and the Wisconsin State Medical Societies, and the American Medical Association.
In 1906 Dr. Murphy married Marie Cummings, of Chicago. Fra- ternally he is a member of the Knights of Pythias.
ISAAC H. MOULTON. As president of the La Crosse Telephone Com- pany, I. H. Moulton occupies a place of prominence in business circles of this city, where he has been established since December, 1864. He has had a long and varied business experience, and success has attended his efforts throughout his career. A man of the most excellent busi- ness sense and possessing the worthiest traits of character, his life has been one of significance to the city with which he has so long been identified, and his position today in La Crosse is sure, and marred by no element of disfavor.
I. H. Moulton was born at Foxcroft, Piscataquis county, Maine, on November 28, 1828, and there he attended the common schools in his boyhood days, finishing his academic training at the Foxcroft Academy. He was twenty-one years old when in 1849 he removed to Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, where he was engaged as a clerk and bookkeeper until 1852, when he went to New York City. He was - there engaged in a similar capacity, and after three years removed to Providence, Rhode Island, and established a grocery business on his own responsibility. He conducted the place for some eight months, then disposed of the business and returned to Nashua, New Hamp- shire. In the spring of 1857 he went to St. Anthony Falls and opened a dry goods, and crockery business, but the financial crash of 1857 closed him out. The next year he ventured into the steamboating
2.S.Moulton
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business, which he continued in until the 1st of August, 1869, when he accepted the ageney of the C. M. & St. P. Railway Company at La Crosse. He continued thus until 1894, when he resigned. He was appointed United States Surveyor at the port of delivery, La Crosse, and he held the office for two years, in later years being re-appointed and holding the same office for seven additional years. He served under Grant's second administration and also served through Pres- ident Hayes' administration. In 1869 Mr. Moulton engaged in the eoal business in La Crosse, which he has condueted with all the success from then until now. In 1895 he beeame connected with the Eureka Chemieal Manufacturing Company, in which he has continued to maintain an active interest sinee that time. He was appointed Com- mereial Agent in August, 1912, for the Erie Railroad in this city, and was one of the original promoters of the La Crosse Telephone Company, and in 1895 was made president of the concern, an office which he has sinee maintained. In 1879 he became director of the Oak Grove Cemetery, and for a number of years was a director of the National Bank of La Crosse. His life has been a busy and active one, and few, if any, worthy enterprises have been inaugurated in La Crosse that have not felt his influenee and his aetive eonneetion therewith.
Mr. Moulton is well advanced in Masonry, and became a Master Mason on April 1, 1857, at Rising Sun Lodge, Nashua, New Hamp- shire. He took his Royal Areh degree at St. Anthony Falls, Min- nesota, now St. Paul, and his Knight Templar degree in La Crosse.
All his life Mr. Moulton has been a stanch Republican and has given worthy support to the activities of that party. He has served his eity as alderman from the 4th ward, and his connection with munic- ipal polities has always resulted in the best good of the city. Mr. Moulton has been a member of the La Crosse Board of Trade for a number of years.
On April 4, 1852, Mr. Moulton was married to Miss Hannah Max- well, the marriage taking place at Salmon Falls, New Hampshire. Five children were born to them,-two of whom are living today : Abbie M. Burton, the wife of Frank Burton of Milwaukee. and Harriet E. Skinner, the wife of J. W. Skinner, of this eity.
GUST SWEDBERG. Among the substantial citizens brought by the lumber industry into northern Wisconsin and who have sinee remained as important factors in different communities, is Gust Swedburg, present city elerk of Rhinelander, and by his services probably more closely identified with public affairs in that city than any other man. He is now in his twelfth consecutive year as city elerk, having first taken up the duties of that office in 1902. The city council appointed the clerks, under the municipal law, up to 1911, and since that year the office has
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been an elective one. He was elected city clerk in 1911, and his services in the position were again approved by local citizens in the spring of 1913. Mr. Swedberg has been a resident of Rhinelander since 1891, em- ployed as a lumber grader until he took his present office. He also served two years from 1900 to 1902 as deputy clerk of the circuit court of Oneida county.
Gust Swedberg has been a resident of Wisconsin since 1891, coming here from Big Rapids, Michigan, where he was a lumber grader, and his early career was in the woods and about the lumber camps, and by hard work and application he was advanced from the position of a common laborer to one of the responsible places in the lumber in- dustry. Gust Swedberg was born in Sweden, September 1, 1869, a son of John and Mary (Olson) Swedberg. His father, who was a butcher, was killed by a bull, when the son Gust was a year and a half old. The son was reared in Sweden, attended school there, and came to America at the age of seventeen in 1886. From his early years he has had to depend upon himself for his advancement and success, and his prosperity is very creditable. He was employed at Big Rapids, Michigan, from 1886 until he moved to Rhinelander.
The city clerkship is not the only important relation of Mr. Swed- berg to the community of Rhinelander. He is secretary of the board of education, secretary of the board of review, of which he is now a member, is a member and secretary of the Rhinelander Cemetery Com- mission, and secretary of the Rhinelander Board of Public Works.
In Rhinelander in 1893, Mr. Swedberg married Alma Nelson, who died in March, 1911, leaving five children, as follows: George, Clarence, Mildred, Carl and Chester. On June 13, 1912, Mr. Swedberg married Anna Stywald, of Rhinelander. Their one child is Vernon. Fra- ternally Mr. Swedberg is affiliated with the Fraternal Order of Eagles, is secretary of the local Fraternal Reserve Association, belongs to the Modern Woodmen of America, and the S. H. & E. F. of A. He is a mem- ber of the Varden Singing Society of Rhinelander, and for twenty years has been a member and secretary of the Swedish Lutheran church. Mr. Swedberg's home is at 1015 Mason street.
HON. SAM S. MILLER. One of the most successful members of the bar of northern Wisconsin, and one who has been in active practice for forty years, Mr. Miller is now senior member of the law firm of Miller & Reeves, of Rhinelander, in which city he has practiced for a quarter of a century, and was one of the early members of the bar of Oneida county. The junior member of the firm is Harry L. Reeves, who is now city attorney for Rhinelander. The offices of this firm are in the First National Bank Building, and Mr. Miller is a director in the First Na- tional Bank and its attorney. Sam S. Miller was admitted to the bar
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in Wisconsin in 1873, in the year of his graduation from the law de- partment from the University of Wisconsin.
The Miller family have lived in Wisconsin since it became a state, and Mr. Miller was born on a farm in Dane county near Christiana on July 17, 1850. His parents were B. S. and Martha (Coon) Miller, both of whom were natives of Madison county, New York state, where they were reared and married. They moved to Wisconsin in 1847, locating on a farm in Dane county. The father, who was a cabinet- maker and joiner by trade, spent most of his active years and energies on the Dane county farm. IIe then moved to Wausau in 1880, and there worked at his trade for many years in the Curtis & Yale Sash, Door & Blind Factory. Coming in 1911 on a visit to Rhinelander, he one day wandered away from his son's home, and has never since been heard of. He was eighty-seven years of age at the time, and it is sup- posed that he was drowned in the lake.
Sam S. Miller is proud of the fact that he had a country rearing and training, and grew up in the vigorous discipline of a farm, attend- ing the district schools every winter term. He finished his literary edu- cation in the Albion Academy, and then for several years taught rural schools. During vacation he read law in law offices in Madison, and in 1873 was graduated from the law department of the University. His first practiee as a lawyer was at Whitehall, in Trempealeau county, Wis- consin, where he was one of the successful and highly honored attorneys until his removal to Rhinelander in 1887. Just prior to his removal he served one term in the State Assembly, representing Trempealeau county. Mr. Miller has had, in addition to his successes as a lawyer, many publie honors. In 1890 he was elected district attorney of Oneida county, taking offices in January, 1891. He served two terms. In 1898 he was again elected to that office and served until 1909. Each time his election came on the Republican ticket. For several years Mr. Miller served as secretary of the school board of the town of Pelican, prior to the incorporation of the city of Rhinelander.
His first marriage in 1878 was to Anna Mosher, who died in 1899. Her four children were: Elizabeth, a teacher in the schools at Seattle, Washington; Florence, wife of Dr. L. T. Sidwell, of Glenwood, Iowa, and they have one child, Margaret Elizabeth; Margaret, who died in 1904 at the age of ten years; and Anna M. In 1901 Mr. Miller was united in marriage with Mary Oakey of Madison, Wisconsin. For sev- eral years she was a teacher in the schools at Sheboygan.
CHARLES ASMUNDSEN. The present sheriff of Oneida county. Wis- consin, represents a family which has been identified with this state for more than thirty years, and which in the years since eoming strangers to a strange land, its members have won substantial places in their various communities, and have in several instances been honored with
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official position and responsibility. Charles Asmundsen was elected to his office as sheriff in November, 1912, and took office on January 6, 1913, succeeding Charles S. Crofoot. Mr. Asmundsen was under-sheriff to Sheriff Crofoot from January, 1911, to January, 1913. In 1901-02 he also served as under-sheriff to Former Sheriff Kelley. Sheriff As- mundsen has been a resident of Rhinelander since 1890. His first em- ployment in this city was in a lumber yard. He worked for two or three years as a sawyer in the woods, and then became a member of the local police force, doing duty in that capacity five or six years. That was followed by his service as under-sheriff to Mr. Kelley, and after that he was again on the police force for one year. He then resigned and en- gaged in farming a quarter of a mile west of the city limits on the Cas- son Road. At that place he owns a farm of eighty acres and was a pros- perous farmer citizen in that locality until his removal to the city to take up his duties as under-sheriff in 1911.
Sheriff Asmundsen is a native of Norway, where he was born April 14, 1869, a son of Asmund and Andrea Asmundsen. In 1881 the family all immigrated to America, settling on a farm six miles from Sturgeon Bay in Dorr county, Wisconsin. The father and mother with five brothers of Mr. Asmundsen, are still living in Dorr county. One of the brothers, Al Asmundsen served as sheriff of Dorr county in 1911-12.
Charles Asmundsen was twelve years old when the family moved to America, and he grew to manhood on the home farm in Dorr county, where he spent about five years. With a practical education, and an ambition to make a place for himself in the world, he then left home, and found work in the lumber camps of upper Michigan, spending about two years there. His next location was in Elcho, in Langlade county, Wisconsin, where he was employed a couple of years in a veneer factory. From Elcho he moved to Rhinelander, and has since been closely identified with the local affairs of this community.
At Taylor, in Jackson county, Wisconsin, in 1893, Mr. Asmundsen married Anna Amundsen, who was born in Jackson county, Wisconsin, a daughter of Louis Amundsen, who with his wife was a native of Nor- way. To the marriage of Mr. Asmundsen and wife have been born nine children as follows: Albin, Myrtle, Roy, Enoch, Cora, Dock, Eva, Edna, who died at the age of six months; and the next child, the youngest, was also named Edna. In politics Mr. Asmundsen is a progressive Re- publican.
HON. WEBSTER E. BROWN. Among the significant names in the lum- ber industry of northern Wisconsin, especially along the Wisconsin River Valley, none has been more prominent during the last forty years than that of Brown. The late Edward Dexter Brown was the man whose energies and remarkable business ability first gave the name its wide-spread importance in the state, and during his lifetime and since
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his death his son has taken up and extended the various activities which are familiarly associated, in the minds of all old-timers, with this name.
One of the sons of the late Dexter E. . Brown is Hon. Webster E. Brown of the firm of Brown Brothers Lumber Company at Rhinelander, a member of other industrial and financial concerns, and a former con- gressman, serving as a member of the Fifty-seventh, Fifty-eighth and Fifty-ninth Congresses, from 1901 to 1907. He was first sent to Wash- ington as representative of the Tenth Wisconsin Congressional District, and while he was in the office the district was reorganized, and his be- came the Eleventh District.
Webster E. Brown was born in Peterboro, Madison county, New York, July 16, 1851, a son of Edward Dexter and Helen M. (Anderson) Brown. When Webster E. Brown was five years old the family moved to Portage county, Wisconsin, locating on a farm near Stevens Point. His father at once became identified with lumbering operations in that section of the state, and from that time forward the name has always been potent in lumber circles in Wisconsin. On the home farm in Portage Webster E. Brown was reared until he was sixteen years of age, and in the meantime attended the country schools. His education was advanced by attendance for a year and a half at Lawrence Uni- versity, at Appleton, after which he entered the University of Wiscon- sin at Madison, and was graduated in the class of 1874.
Mr. Brown has been actively connected with himbering in all its departments since 1875. In that year with his elder brother. A. W. Brown he went into the business at Stevens Point, and in 1882 these two brothers moved to Rhinelander, where their father had entered land direct from the government, including the site of the present city of Rhinelander. Their industrial plant established at Rhinelander was one of the first and the most important of local enterprises. Their younger brother E. O. Brown joined them in 1881, and since that time the three brothers have been very extensively interested in lumbering. banking, manufacturing, and other development work in northern Wisconsin.
During the early eighties, the Brown Brothers, then under the firm name of E. D. Brown & Sons, established at Rhinelander, a private bank, which in 1890 was incorporated under the name of the Merchants State Bank, of which Mr. E. O. Brown is now president, and of which Webster E. Brown has been a director since its organization. Mr. Brown is vice president and treasurer of the firm of Brown Brothers Lumber Company, concerning whose operations more is said in the sketch of Mr. A. W. Brown elsewhere in this work. Mr. Brown is a director in the Rhinelander Refrigerator Company, a director in the Rhinelander Paper Company, is president of the Rhinelander Power Company, presi- dent of the Wisconsin Valley Improvement Company, the headquarters of which concern are in Wausau, Wiseonsin.
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On December 26, 1877, at Lancaster, Wisconsin, Webster E. Brown married Juliet D. Meyer, a daughter of Richard Meyer. They are the parents of five children : Ralph D., Edna M., Dorothy, Richard M., and Allan C. Mr. Brown is a member of the Masonic Order, and throughout his career since casting his first vote has been a stanch supporter of the Republican party and its basic principles.
AUGUST H. STANGE. The career and personality of a strong man are always interesting subjects of study. The scope of accomplish- ment by such men is almost unlimited, and it is a fascinating occu- pation to observe how far and in what directions an individual possessing the innate qualifications that belong to real strength of manhood will go. The city of Merrill has had such a man for the past thirty years, in fact since Merrill was a frontier lumber camp. A. H. Stange is a business man whose record would be creditable not only as measured with his immediate contemporaries and asso- ciates, but in any group of men of accomplishment and great success.
Mr. Stange's career is another proof that the circumstances of early childhood and youth are never a condition to large and successful achievement. In his own case, he was born near the city of Stettin, Germany, October 10, 1852, and was the son of poor parents. His father and mother were C. F. and Carolina Stange, who when their son was about a year and a half old came to the United States and located in Watertown, Wisconsin. The father was a laboring man, and was unable to give his family more than the ordinary necessities and comforts of life. The son thus grew up without any of the trim- mings of college education or of influential connection. His school- ing was limited to the common branches, and when little more than a boy he began earning his own living. At Watertown he got his first experience as a lumberman in a lumber yard and planing mill. At the age of eighteen we find him in Racine as foreman of a sash and door factory, planing mill and lumber yard. The years spent in Racine were a valuable preparation for the larger field of operations which opened to him when he came to Merrill.
Mr. Stange came to Merrill in 1881 in company with the late Henry W. Wright, and soon after became a member of the Wright Lumber Company. A few years later Mr. Stange started in business under his own name, and in 1895, organized and incorporated the A. H. Stange Company with a capital of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This business now is the largest of its kind in the Wis- consin River Valley. The company manufactures lumber, sash, doors, blinds, boxes, etc., and its goods are sent not only all over the United States and Canada, but there is a large export of its products to foreign countries, principally to the British Isles and South Africa. The saw mills have a capacity of over one hundred and fifty thousand
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feet of lumber daily. About eleven hundred men are employed in the company's mills, factories and logging camps. The monthly payroll averages between thirty-eight and forty thousand dollars. The Stange Company gets its raw material from land of their own, and at this writing there is a sufficient supply to meet the demands of their mills for many years to come. The company owns its own logging railroad, and a complete equipment of the varied apparatus needed in logging and lumber manufacture.
The upbuilding of such an industry as that just described and outlined is not the result of chance. A mind capable of planning and a will equal to the heavy responsibilities involved in materializing ideas into results are necessary precedents to any such achievement. No doubt thirty years ago Mr. Stange had the vision and the ambi- tion which all these years of work have enabled him to realize. Large and satisfying as the business of the A. H. Stange Company is, that has by no means been the only avenue through which his career has been worked out. In 1897 he was chiefly responsible for the organization of the Lincoln County Bank at Merrill, an institution of which he has since been president. This bank was opened on August 1, 1897, with a capital stock of fifty thousand dollars, and the capital has since been increased to one hundred thousand dollars. With its large surplus and undivided profits, it is one of the largest and most substantial financial institutions in the Wisconsin River Valley. At the organization fifteen years ago a fine bank and office building was erected on Main Street, but the increasing business caused the erection of a new building in 1912-13, the new structure being devoted exclusively to banking purposes, and is one of the best equipped banking houses in the state. Mr. Stange is president of the E. W. Ellis Lumber Company of Grand Rapids, Wisconsin, and president of the Mount Emily Timber Company of LeGrande, Oregon. He is also interested in a number of other timber, land and lumber companies, as well as banks.
Men who bear the largest and most complex responsibilities have often been observed to perform a great variety of functions in civic life with a minimum of worry and bluster. Men of small caliber create much noise in attending to duties half as great and important. Long known as one of Merrill's most public-spirited citizens, Mr. Stange has again and again taken time from his business in order to serve the public. He was mayor of the city four successive terms. In fostering and supporting movements for the betterment of Merrill, he has done as much, if not more, than any one man in the city. He erected the beautiful Badger Opera House in 1907, an amusement house that compares favorably with any in the country. In the same year he built the magnificent Badger Hotel, one of the most modern in the state. It is an evidence of his firm faith in the city's future
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that he founded these two institutions, for at this time Merrill has not advanced sufficiently to support through normal patronage a theatre and hotel of this size.
However, perhaps the finest memorial to his public spirit is beau- tiful "Stange Park," lying along the banks of the Prairie River. It was named in his honor, the title having been adopted by popular vote after many other names had been suggested. Stange Park contains forty acres, donated to the city by Mr. Stange. Within its limits have been erected the handsome Merrill high school and the T. B. Scott Free Public Library. The remainder of the park grounds are used as a public playground.
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