USA > Wisconsin > Wisconsin, its story and biography, 1848-1913, Volumr VI > Part 2
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On October 15, 1859, Mr. Mansfield married Miss Caroline Mosher, of Janesville, Wisconsin, and to this union were born three children : George D., president and treasurer of the George C. Mansfield Company of Milwaukee; Fred C., a representative business man of Johnson Creek, and vice president of the George C. Mansfield Company; and Grace R., wife of Charles D. Pearce, in the insurance department of the real estate, loan and insurance business of Chris Schroeder & Son Company of Mil- waukee. Mrs. Mansfield died October 23, 1872. She was born October 31, 1857, in Vermont, and like her husband was by nature and training a "dyed-in-the-wool" Yankee. On October 15, 1873, Mr. Mansfield mar- ried for his second wife Miss Kittie Winnick of Lake Mills, Wisconsin. Their four children were: Frank, of Lake Mills; Philip, of Watertown ; Flora, now Mrs. Boardman of Lowell, Massachusetts; and Mildred, of Johnson Creek. All were born at Johnson Creek, and educated in the public schools there. Flora spent one year at the University of Wiscon- sin, and Grace R. finished her schooling at Rockford Seminary for Girls al Rockford, Illinois. Frank Mansfield enlisted for service in a Wis- consin regiment of Volunteers during the Spanish-American War, but after reaching Jacksonville, Florida, was taken ill with typhoid fever. His life was saved through the bravery of his mother who made the
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journey to the southern city to nurse him back to health, but at the sacrifice of her own life, since on her return to Johnson Creek, she was stricken with the same disease and died November 18, 1898.
GEORGE D. MANSFIELD. The career of George D. Mansfield, oldest son of the late George C. Mansfield, and now president of the great George C. Mansfield Company of Milwaukee, has from earliest boyhood been one of self-reliant industry and constant advancement. In him was apparently implanted the spirit of adventure, and he was quite ready to face the world when at an age which finds most boys still cher- ishing the protection of their parents . As a boy he traveled to nearly every part of the country, was in different lines of work, met and over- came obstacles which steadied and gave him power for the substantial accomplishments of his later years.
George D. Mansfield was born at Johnson Creek, Wisconsin, July 11, 1863, a son of George Curtis and Caroline Amanda (Mosher) Mans- field. He had practically no education when a boy, leaving school at the age of thirteen. Such advantages as he had were only those fur- nished by a country school, attended by from eighty to ninety boys and girls, presided over by one poorly equipped instructor, and he ad- mits that he probably learned more mischief than writing and reading and arithmetic in that institution of learning. At the age of thirteen he ran away obsessed with the desire to see the world. During the next few months, he saw a great deal of it, and was by no means on the rosy side of fortune, finding out what it was to be hungry, and also to be ex- tremely homesick. He possessed a large measure of that boyish pride which prevented him from returning like the prodigal and asking for- giveness, and resolutely determined to get along without assistance. In the course of his wanderings he arrived at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, during the time of grape harvest and found employment in a vineyard. The couple for whom he worked and in whose home he lived, took no little in- terest in the lad, and the wife, a kindly, motherly woman, seeing that he had been reared among refined surroundings, frequently questioned him as to his home and people. For a long time the boy refused to give any information regarding himself, but finally, during a spell of home- sickness, divulged the name of his home town. The old lady, who had given him many talks in an effort to make him see that his family needed him and were worrying as to his whereabouts, wrote to his parents, and it was not long before an answer came, accompanied by a check to pay his transportation home. Finding the boy in the vineyards, the old lady informed him as to what she had done, telling him also that she would like to have him remain with her for another week to assist her in selling the grapes. But now the lad's homesickness overcame him completely, and on the very same day he left for home. On reaching the Wells Street station in Chicago, he took a seat in the depot while awaiting the
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train that was to bear him to Wisconsin, to Johnson Creek. He had hardly sat down when he noticed a gentleman next to him reading a paper. He could just see the side of his neighbor's face, but a peculiar twitching in the cheek told him that it was his father, who, it developed, had been awaiting his coming, but who had not expected him so soon. This twitching is a characteristic of Mr. Mansfield at this time while reading. Once restored to his home, George D. Mansfield was content to remain until sixteen years of age, and then again was seized with the wanderlust, and this time went to Fargo, North Dakota. It was mid- winter, and he secured a position as a brakeman on the Northern Pa- cific Railroad, running between Fargo and Bismarck. Subsequently he was engaged in railroading in various capacity, as brakeman, switchman, yardmaster, and conductor, and in this way saw a greater portion of the United States, chiefly through the western states. He entered the service of the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railroad, now the Great Northern and was a fireman. During the nine years of his railroading he was in San Francisco and Monterey, did switching for the Southern Pacific in train yards at San Francisco, was in Montana at the time of the driving of the famous golden spike connecting the links of the North- ern Pacific, was employed as a conductor of freight trains on that line, worked in the switch yards in St. Louis during the Knights of Labor general railroad strike, and his career as a railroader came to an end in the Forty-eighth Street yards of the Wisconsin Central Railway in Chicago in 1891.
In 1890 Mr. Mansfield became connected with a produce commission firm on South Water street as a buyer and salesman. After three years, in 1893, he moved to Edgerton, Wisconsin. At Edgerton he took over the management of ten creameries belonging to the Edgerton Creamery Com- pany, in which concern his father was interested. During his seven years of residence at Edgerton, he so firmly established himself in the con- fidence of the people that he was twice elected mayor, each time being elected while absent from the city. Mr. Mansfield then returned to Johnson Creek to become general manager of the George C. Mansfield Creameries and wholesale butter business. In this way he continued until his father's death, when he became president and treasurer of the George C. Mansfield Company, in which offices he continues at the pres- ent time.
In the fall of 1907 the George C. Mansfield Company started the erec- tion of a plant at Milwaukee, costing two hundred thousand dollars, and regarded as one of the finest of its kind in the country. This plant was completed April 17, 1908. The concentration of the business at Mil- waukee and its expansion on such generous proportions was a logical de- velopment of the enterprise under the management of the Mansfield Brothers, who had laid out many new lines for improving the industry and succeeded in realizing their ideals in so happy a manner that the removal of the headquarters to Milwaukee became a necessary part of
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their plan. About the time the Milwaukee Plant was completed, one of the Milwaukee papers published, under date of March 12, 1908, a sketch of the business and a description of the plant, and with a few changes to bring the article down to date, it is herewith reproduced.
"The experience and business concentration of forty years may be said to be represented in the present magnitude of the butter and ice- cream manufacturing and storage business of the George C. Mansfield Company of this city. It was forty years ago that the late George C. Mansfield founded at Johnson Creek, Wisconsin, the business today man- aged by the two sons, George D. and Fred C. Mansfield. During the past year the company conducted a trade which aggregated one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in sales. Twelve years ago the sons of the founder opened a Milwaukee branch, where they could get better railroad facilities for handling their large and increasing business and where butter from every part of the state could be brought in on the var- ious railroads for reshipment and for city trade, and they subsequently added the wholesale manufacture of ice-cream to that of butter making. Moving from one large building to still another larger one as a result of their rapidly increasing trade, this company, whose famous brand of creamery butter is known in all parts of the country. is now the largest and most perfect plant in all appointments of any in the country. This is located at Fourth and Poplar Streets. The four-story main building is constructed of reinforced concrete, known as the "Mushroom" Sys- tem of that construction idea. The main manufacturing building is sixty by one hundred and fifty feet in size with a brick and concrete cold storage addition at the rear, eighty by forty feet, and of the same height as the other, making the entire building one hundred feet wide in the rear. This building was erected after a personal inspection of all build- ings for similar purposes to be found in the United States.
A tour of inspection of the new plant shows it to be a marvel as to the magnitude of output here made possible. Within its walls the Mans- field Company is enabled to take care of between five and six tons of its famous butter every working day in the year, while at the same time and in the departments devoted to that work the company here had modern machinery which has a capacity for freezing and properly keep- ing five thousand gallons of ice-cream a day. In the basement is modern refrigerating and ice-making machinery, which manufactures and handles twenty tons of ice a day, and refrigerates the entire plant.
In the Mansfield plant every precaution and safeguard is taken for sanitation and the observance of the rules of hygiene. The offices have been equipped with no less care than the plant, and every convenience has been installed for the comfort and convenience of the army of em- ployees. The presence of such an enterprise adds materially to the pres- tige of Milwaukee as a manufacturing center, and its officers are men widely known in the business world. George D. Mansfield is now presi-
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dent, treasurer and general manager; Fred C. Mansfield of Johnson Creek is vice president, and Arthur Graszel of Jefferson, Wisconsin, is secretary, the business being practically a family enterprise. The capital and surplus now amounts to $300,000. In addition to the well known Jersey brand of butter, and the famous Mansfield pasteurized ice-cream, the company handles the finest selected eggs, where the public cold stor- age is doing a constantly increasing business, two hundred carloads of this produce being handled yearly, as well as the product of thirty-five creameries. The company holds membership in the Business Men's League and the Merchants & Manufacturers Association of Milwaukee.
Mr. George D. Mansfield is a Republican in national politics, but has never aspired to office, his only public service being when he acted in the capacity of mayor of Edgerton. He is an active member of the Civic Committee and of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, belongs to the Travelers' Protective League, has a life membership in the Illinois Athletic Association of Chicago, and is also a member of the Milwaukee Athletic Club. He is not a member of any religious denom- ination, but has been liberal in his support of the movements of the Lutheran church, to which his wife and children belong.
On April 25, 1889, Mr. Mansfield was married at Johnson Creek, Wis- consin to Miss Hulda Amelia Geesa, who was born on a farm in Farming- ton township, three miles from Johnson Creek, a daughter of Louis and Amelia (Schutz) Geesa, natives of Germany, who were early settlers of Johnson Creek. For some time Mr. Geesa conducted the old Union House, but subsequently moved to Wittenberg, Wisconsin, where he conducted a sawmill until his death. His widow passed away at Jefferson, Wiscon- sin, at the home of a younger daughter. Mr. and Mrs. Mansfield have two beautiful daughters: Ethel Catherine, born in Chicago, Illinois, a graduate of the Fort Atkinson high school, for one year attended Mil- waukee-Downer College, and graduated from the University of Wiscon- sin in June, 1913; and Esther Amelia, born at Edgerton, Wisconsin, a graduate of the East Division high school of Milwaukee, spent one year at Milwaukee-Downer College and one year at the Milwaukee State Normal, and is now a member of the class of 1916 in the University of Wisconsin. Both girls belong to the Alphi Phi Sorority, and Miss Ethel was the stewardess of that organization.
A. CLARKE DODGE. To the members of no one family have the thriv- ing little city of Monroe, and the county of Green, owed more for their substantial development, their civic and social welfare, than to the Dodge family, one of whose prominent members was the late Joseph T. Dodge, and still living and active in the citizenship of the locality is A. Clarke Dodge, who for virtually half a century has been one of the most resourceful and public-spirited citizens of the
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county. His influence has touched many movements and measures that have conserved the civic and material prosperity, and he is still the executive head of the Dodge Lumber Company, of which he was the founder. Through service in various positions of public trust he has likewise been one of the upbuilders of Monroe, and it is as a pioneer, a business leader of splendid ability as an organizer, and as an honored and useful citizen that this name is introduced to the readers of this publication.
A. Clarke Dodge comes from the staunchest New England colonial stock. The first of the name to locate in America came from England in 1629. During the successive generations many of the family rela- tionship have contributed no unimportant services in the development of New England, and there were soldiers of the name in the Continental line during the War of the Revolution. Mr. A. C. Dodge was reared to the sturdy discipline of a New England farm, early learned the dignity and value of honest labor, and throughout his long and active career has exemplified the best traditions of the old Green Mountain State, which he is proud to state as the place of his nativity.
At Barre, Washington county, Vermont, A. C. Dodge was born November 6, 1834. In his seventy-ninth year he is one of the venerable citizens of Monroe, and has a retrospect of many long and useful years. He is a son of Joseph and Lorenda (Thompson) Dodge, who spent all their lives in Vermont, where the father was a substantial farmer, a man of prominence and influence in his community. Up to the age of twenty A. C. Dodge lived on the home farm, and contributed his labor to its cultivation, in the meantime availing himself of the advantages of the common schools. He also took a course in the Barre Academy, of which Jacob S. Spaulding, LL. D., was then president. He was eight years old when his father sold the old homestead, which had been the family residence for more than twenty years, and bought a place of two hundred acres nearer the southeast corner of the same town, in Washington county. With the increase of the farm area, additional demands were placed upon all members of the family, and as A. Clarke was the oldest of those still remaining under the parental roof, he had plenty of occupation both for mind and hands. There was also no lack of vitalizing influence to quicken his ambition, and before he reached his majority he had definitely determined to seek his fortune in the west. In the fall of 1854, the farm just mentioned having been sold, Mr. Dodge left Vermont and went west. After a short time in Chicago, he came on to Wisconsin, and joined the engineering corps at the head of which was his brother, engaged in work on what is now the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad. He also found employ- ment in bridge building and at farm work, and spent several years as a teacher, being for three years in the village of Monroe. Later he looked after his brother's planing mill at Monroe, and in 1865, when
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a young man of about thirty, engaged in the lumber business at Mon- roe. That was then a pioneer village in a little developed section of the state.
During the many years which have elapsed since Mr. Dodge first came to know Monroe, he has been continuously connected with the retail lumber trade in Monroe, and his operations in that line have been of constantly broadening scope and importance. In 1881 he bought of his brother Joseph an interest in the Monroe Planing Mill, and thus amplified his field of operations. He still continues one of the interested members of the Monroe Planing Mill Company, though the active management of this plant is now in the hands of his older son, Charles S. The enterprise was first established in 1858, and its history has been one of continuous and well-earned success. The business gives employment to a force of about fifteen expert work- men. Concerning the company and its operations, the following sen- tences from a previous publication are quoted :
"The plant occupies several lots in the heart of the city, and here are located the office, the perfectly equipped saw and planing mill, operated by steam power, and ample storage sheds for lumber and other products handled. The main building is fifty by fifty feet in dimension, is a substantial brick structure, and is two stories in height, besides having a basement that is fully utilized. The company manu- facture cheese boxes, staves, windows, doors, screens, mouldings, all kinds of interior finish, etc., and draw a trade from a large area of the county-in fact, the company are prepared fully for effective con- tract work in this and neighboring states. A. C. Dodge has been an honored and influential citizen of Monroe for the past fifty years, during which time he has played a leading part in enabling Monroe to meet all promises of commercial supremacy."
In the year 1865 Mr. Dodge founded the substantial business now conducted under the corporate title of the Dodge Lumber Company, and has been president of the company since its incorporation in 1894. His younger son, Lewis, was secretary and treasurer until his acci- dental death in 1911. The Dodge Lumber Company are among the heaviest operators in lumber in this part of the state, and their facili- ties for conducting the business represent exceptional advantages. The lines handled include lumber, coal, salt, cement, flour, feed, etc., and the large stock proves adequate to meet all demands. The plant includes some nine warehouses and coal sheds, besides a block of land for lumber storage. Both of these concerns have enjoyed their great success largely because of their reputation for fair and honorable dealing, the best of commercial assets.
Practically every phase of community activity and civic advance- ment has felt the influence of Mr. Dodge. While a busy man all his career, his many interests absorbing his time and energy, he has never Vol. VI-2
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lacked that public spirit which is so essential to the continued welfare of any democratic community. In addition to his local activities in Monroe, he has owned and operated a fine farm since 1884, a place of three hundred and seventy acres in Monroe township. His farm is especially well known for its high grade live stock, and in many respects is a model place, both a source of pride and of profit to its owner.
Mr. Dodge was a member for twenty-six years of the Monroe Board of Education. For twenty-one years of this time he was president of the board. No one has been more interested, nor has translated his interest in the more practical efforts to promote the cause of local education than Mr. Dodge. Eight times he was elected a member of the Board of Supervisors of Green county, and five times served as chairman of the board. In 1877 he was chairman of the building committee which bought the present county poor farm and erected its excellent buildings. In 1886 he was chairman of the Committee of the Board of Supervisors that erected the present insane asylum of the county, an institution of a superior type, and a matter of special satis- faction to all those concerned about the public institutions of the county. In 1890 Mr. Dodge was chairman of the committee which secured plans for the present fine courthouse, and was secretary of the building committee, supervising the erection of that structure. While president of the Board of Education, Mr. Dodge took the lead and really became instrumental in establishing the Monroe Public Library in 1872. Since that time his personal interests and means have prob- ably been the largest single influence in the development of that institution of local culture and education, and it is now one of the best libraries to be found in any Wisconsin town of its size, receiving annual appropriations from the board of education, and possessing a large collection of books.
Mr. Dodge became of age in 1855. That was one of the crucial years in the political history of America, and in 1856 the Republican party first entered the national field with candidates for the offices of the national government. Mr. Dodge voted for John C. Fremont in that year, and has voted for every Republican presidential candidate down to William Howard Taft in 1912. He has been more than a voter, has also been prominent in the political councils of his party in Wisconsin. He served two terms in the lower house of the Wisconsin legislature, elected in 1898 and again in 1900. In 1880 he was an alternate delegate from Wisconsin to the national convention in Chicago that nominated General Garfield, was a delegate to the con- vention of 1884 in which he supported James G. Blaine as standard bearer of the party, and in 1888 was a presidential elector from Wis- consin, casting a ballot which contributed to the placing of General Harrison in the white house.
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On November 4, 1860, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Dodge to Miss Sarah E. Kidder, who was born at Liberty, Ohio, a daughter of the late Joseph B. Kidder. Mr. and Mrs. Dodge have had three children, mentioned as follows: Charles Sumner, born July 31, 1861, in Rock county, Wisconsin; Flora E., born February 25, 1874, in Monroe, and now living at home with her father; and Lewis, born August 13, 1877, who died in 1911, having been killed in an accident and having been for several years previously secretary and treasurer of the Dodge Lumber Company. Mrs. Dodge died of pneumonia, April 15, 1911.
JOSEPH T. DODGE. Few men were more prominently identified with railway building in the west than was the late Joseph Thompson Dodge, who was a pioneer in this all-important domain of enterprise and an influential factor in the construction of several early railway lines in the middle west. He was specially prominent in the develop- ment of railroads in Wisconsin, and achieved a high reputation as a civil engineer. He had charge of the location and construction of the line that resulted in great benefit to the now thriving little city of Monroe, in Green county, and altogether was one of the strong and resourceful men who contributed much to the early progress of Wis- consin.
Joseph Thompson Dodge, who died at Madison, on February 6, 1904, was born in the southeastern part of Barre township, Washing- ton county, Vermont, May 16, 1823. His parents, Joseph and Adubah (Thompson) Dodge, spent their entire lives in the Green Mountain state, and represented good old colonial stock. The late Mr. Dodge in the latter years of his life gave much time and labor to the com- pilation and publication of a work to which he gave the title "Geneal- ogy of the Dodge Family."
Reared as a New England farmer boy, Mr. Dodge early acquired a definite ambition to exercise his powers of mind and body to the furthest possibilities, and his early inclinations were for constructive enterprises. In a district school near his home he gained a rudi- mentary education, later studied under a private instructor, a well- educated woman whose services were given for a dollar and twenty- five cents a week, board included, that fact being mentioned as show- ing the meager wages paid for first-class instruction in that period. By close application and much private study, Mr. Dodge gained a really liberal education. He qualified as a teacher, and earned the money for his expenses while a student of historic old Dartmouth College, where he spent one year and was graduated three years later from the University of Vermont with an excellent technical knowl- edge of civil engineering. Two weeks after graduation he found work as a civil engineer, under the president of the Vermont Central
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