This is anarchived post from “The Aroma of Bread,” and it was first published 22 Mar 2015.
Assorted Shamrocks. Old and New
Marie Campbell Fassbender loved her Irish heritage. She was proud to be Irish, and she loved St. Patrick’s day.
As the day would near, she would gather a collection of shamrock pins, and she would keep them handy. If you dared attempt to leave the house, or to walk into the house without wearing green, she would hand you a pin, and expect you to wear it.
It would have been so much fun to sit down with a big map of Ireland, and map out the counties where her immigrant ancestors came from. I think she would have been surprised at the number!
County Cork, County Donegal, County Down, County Louth, County Monaghan, and County Tyron
I was searching for an apple recipe the day that I happened upon a page in the “Tried and True Recipes. Compiled by the Homemakers Organization of Calumet County, Wisconsin,” dated 1974. The page did not have a marker, but did contain a recipe that we have been looking for: Grasshopper Torte. This was a staple on the holiday table. A palette cleanser before or after your piece of pumpkin pie. And there was definitely room for a piece when it was time for sandwiches.
Looking over this recipe filled with Marie’s notes, the one thing I notice is that she did not make a notation that she always made this torte on a graham cracker crust. Maybe it went without saying, as chocolate wafers were not readily available to her in 1974. But her directions for smooth marshmallow are clear and direct. Is this “THE” Grasshopper Torte recipe? I am not sure, but it is definitely one that she had made more than once.
This is one version of the torte, and she (used this for larger torte).
An archived post from “The Aroma of Bread,” first published 3 Mar 2013.
Not every post will be a stellar post, but every post will be tied to a memory. I don’t have any idea what we were talking about, but all of a sudden the memory of what I will call the “Hen Parties” popped into my mind.
The fourth Tuesday of every January was the night for the White Clover Dairy Shareholder meeting. In the early 80s following the buy-back of WCD from the Nestle Company, the meetings were held in the school basement with snacks and of course a few beers following the meeting. By 1985 the meeting was moved to the small dining room of Van Abels. As the company continued to prosper, dinner was being added to the meeting agenda, and the wives were invited to join the men for dinner.
Christmas 1984
So the question became, what to do with the women while the men were meeting, as they would have ridden out to Hollandtown with their husbands. So in the solid tradition of Fassbender hospitality, Marie invited the wives to join her in her home for cocktails, snacks and conversation.
When I joined the party in 1988, the tradition, and the party, was in full swing. I had worked till 5:00 p.m. and then had the 20 minute drive to Hollandtown, so I was a bit late. I still remember walking into the living room as all eyes turned to me, and I looked at them. They were already settled with their drinks. Plates of cheese and sausage, nuts, and assorted other snack items filled the tables. Every last one of them dressed in heels and hose – including me. That is how we dressed in those days. Drinks and conversation flowed until the appointed time when we all got into our cars and drove over to Van Abels to join the men for dinner.
Thankfully this tradition only lasted a few more years, and sometime in the early 90s we were invited to join the men at Van Abels for the Shareholder meeting. It was also a relief for Marie. While she loved to host people in her home, she did not especially enjoy these evenings.
There are very few pictures that fully show the living room as it was in those days. These images hopefully will spark memories of this room, and all of the times gathered for plates of cheese and sausage, beverages and time spent as a family.SaveSaveSaveSave
St. Mary’s Hilbert Cookbook, 1970s, p. 36 (very good)
Archived post from “The Aroma of Bread,” first published 13 January 2016.
In 1938, when Marie was 16 years old, she and her brother, Arthur, would head to Chilton on Saturday, for a 2:00 p.m. music lesson. Marie, piano, and Arthur the violin. While cleaning out her attic in 2013, I discovered her piano report card tucked into a music book. It made me smile.
Stated on the “Student Account and Lesson Record” side of the card, her lessons that year cost forty cents a lesson, and her Book 5 lesson book was sixty cents. Well, to say “that year” is a bit of a stretch. Her report card states that she attended nine lessons between January 7th and April 15th.
The best part of the report card is the reverse side, the “Student Record Card.” From this side we learn that she was interested in playing Popular or Classical music, not Hill Billy or Church. Her ultimate ambition for taking piano: Entertainment. Her report card was mostly “A” for accuracy, concentration, aptitude, memorizing, analyzing, and general playing ability. She received a “B” for her rhythm, and a “C” for phrasing. The definition of phrasing is: “Does the music make sense–is it pleasing?” Hmmm. I would love to know what that means.
My favorite part of the card is her teacher’s remarks: “Exceptional talent. Keep on doing the best. Come more regular.”
Caramel Frosting
1/2 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup milk
2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla
Melt butter in a saucepan on low. Stir in brown sugar, and cook for 2 minutes. Add milk, cook until boils. Cool until lukewarm.
When lukewarm, add mixture to a small bowl. Using a hand mixer on low speed, add the sifted powdered sugar and vanilla. Mix until blended, then increase the speed of the mixer to high, and and mix until a spreading consistency.
I have always loved Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book The Secret Garden. I love the book, I loved the broadway play, (and was lucky enough to have seen the original broadway cast), and I also love the movie that was released in 1993. There is a dream scene in the movie, where a young child is walking through huge fronds of greenery. I have to admit this is not a favorite part of the movie for me, I can just feel the sadness that this child feels as it searches for its mother.
My great-grandfather was a major gardener, the gardens on his property in Wausau, Marathon, Wisconsin were massive. I just wish that there had been color photos back in the early 1900s, so that I could really seen them in all of their splendor. As a side note, he also raised prize winning chickens, had sheep and other animals on his little “farm” in the city. But that is for another post.
As I was adding a few photos to my Legacy Family Tree database this morning, I came across this image of my grandmother, Anola Josephine Cook, age 15 months. She was photographed in September 1911 walking through massive fronds of greenery in her father’s garden. I couldn’t help but be taken to the scene in The Secret Garden. I can be pretty confident though that she was walking straight towards her father who was holding camera. Knowing he would be right there to pick her up if she fell down.
Archived post from “The Aroma of Bread,” first published 13 February 2016.
1942 – Outside the Fassbender home in Hollandtown
Marie met Butch when she was just 19 years of age, and as her brother states, she was in her “hyper faze.”
My in-laws met in June 1941 at the wedding of Butch’s brother, Hubert (Cub), to Dolores Wenzel. It was a small ceremony, taking place in the pastor’s chambers. Butch was standing up for Cub, and as a long time friend of Dolores, Marie had been asked to stand up as Dolore’s witness. The two girls had become friends when Dolore’s father worked as a hired hand on the Campbell farm, and the Wenzel family lived in a small house located on an edge of the Campbell farm. Marie agreed to be Dolore’s attendant, never imagining that her life was about to change.
Following the marriage of Cub and Dolores, the two couples remained friends. When Butch and Marie married in 1946, Dolores attended Marie as a bridesmaid, and Cub was a groomsman. It was into their home in Dundas, that the newly wed Butch and Marie moved, while their own home was being constructed in Hollandtown.
But about Butch and Marie. Shortly after they met, they started dating, and Marie loved to tell this story about herself from that period in time. Although she had met and was dating Butch, she was keeping her options open, and continued dating other men, specifically a man named Bill. On one particular day, she was visiting with Bill in the living room at the farm. They were having a great time, and Marie lost trackof the time, almost forgetting that Butch would soon be arriving to pick her up for an evening out. That is until she heard his car pull into the yard. As he headed to the front door, Marie began rushing Bill out the side door – or vice versa, I never thought to ask. Her father, Walter, met Butch at the door, stalled him a bit so that Bill was out of the house, and Marie could catch her breath, then let him in.
Couple unidentified, but a great shot from the drive of the farm, and both the front and side porch. Notice how close the porches are to each other.
The next day, Walter sat Marie down and said that enough was enough, she had to make a choice, as he was not going to go through all that drama again. She made her choice, and for the next five years she and Butch dated, getting married at St. Mary’s in Hilbert on May 7, 1946. They would have celebrated 70 years of marriage this year!
Marie’s Chicken Dumpling Soup
from Wende
Chicken Broth
1 cup up fryer chicken
Celery, cut into chunks for broth
Salt and pepper
Carrots
Celery for soup
Noodles, cooked
Put chicken in a pot with just enough water to cover it. add the celery and cook for 1 1/2 hours. Remove chicken from broth and cool. When cool, bone the chicken, and skim the fat off of the broth. Season the broth with salt and pepper, or Nature’s Seasons. Add carrots and celery to the broth, cook for five minutes, keeping the broth at a low boil.
Dumplings
5 eggs
3/4 tsp salt
2 cups flour
Mix all ingredients. Using a spoon, drop by small spoon full the dumplings into the low boiling broth. Cover the pot, cook the dumplings for 15 minutes ( do not take the cover off the pot).
After the dumplings have cooked, add the chicken and cooked noodles to the pot. Cook for 5 more minutes before serving.
As I continue to go through files, I continue to be surprised by what I am finding hiding inside of them. Interesting things, printed in the early days of information being uploaded to the internet. My recent find was a printout stating that my great-grandfather had, at the age of 40, enlisted in the newly formed Wisconsin State Guard on August 23, 1917.
After a little bit of internet and newspaper searching, I learned that on July 9, 1917, an announcement was made in Madison, that a state guard would be formed to take the place of the Wisconsin National Guard which would leave the state in August of 1917. This new guard would be comprised of men too old or too young for the WWI Draft. It did not exempt the men from the draft once they became of age, or the draft reached out to men age 31 to 45, which it did with the third draft registration, on September 12, 1918.1 Lewis H. Cook, County Clerk of Marathon County appeared that day at the local draft board in the 1st Ward of the city of Wausau, to register for the draft. He was noted to be of Medium height, Medium build, with blue eyes and light hair.
The new organization was to serve as a Home Guard Unit, and would be called upon in emergencies such as floods, large conflagrations, riots, etc. or whenever the police force of the community needed to keep order, or to meet a situation.2
By this time Wausau had already organized. Following the declaration of war with Germany on April 6, 1917, the men of Wausau came together and organized as the Citizens’ Training camp of Wausau. The purpose was to drill “young men who might be eligible as soldiers of the U.S. army, to foster patriotism and to do police duty if any emergency demanded.” A petition was created and circulated on April 9th, just three days after the declaration of war. It was “quietly signed in two days.” The following Sunday they met, elected a board of governors, and the Citzens’ Training Camp “soon came into being.” “We were a motley array of citizens that met for the first drills, and we knew little about drill work. But all were fired with a zeal to be of service in any small way, that might help our country to bring to a successful issue the mighty tragedy into which we had all been thrown.” “Out of the 293 that have entered the ranks, eighty-one enlisted in the regular army.” Many immediately being “taken from the ranks to become corporals and sergeants as soon as it was learned that they had had military training.” The men of the Citizens’ Training Camp ranged in age from nineteen to fifty-five years of age, and they drilled nights and Sundays.3
Lewis Cook, 1918 Camp Douglas ~ No. 168 in the Cook Photo Book
On August 23, 1917, when Colonel H. M. Seaman, inspector general of the Wisconsin State Guard, arrived in Wausau, enough men from this original training camp enlisted in the new guard to form Company C, 10th Infantry. The Wausau company was the 5th in the state following Milwaukee, Green Bay, Stevens Point and North Milwaukee.4 Fifty-two men signed the role that night,5 and formed a line to respond to roll call. The roll call for forty-six of the fifty-two men were listed in the Wausau Daily Record-Herald published August 24, 1917,6 but unfortunately my great-grandfather’s name was not one of the forty-six. The full roster was published by the coordinator of the Marathon County Rootsweb site, but as of today, Rootsweb is down so I cannot access the information that I printed September 13, 2006. The names included on the webpage were compiled from the actual service records for the 10th Separate Company, Company C, 10th Wisconsin State Guard. These papers (at least at that time) were located at the Marathon County Historical Society. The entry for my great-grandfather states:
Name: Cook, Lewis H. ~ Born: Gravesville, Calumet County, WI, ~ Age at enlistment: 40y 9m ~ Date of Enlistment: 8/23/17 ~ Married ~ Occupation: County Clerk.7
Unlike any other state guard, the companies of Wisconsin were trained, and equipped by the state, rather than rely on the War Department for the donation of surplus equipment. The companies were paid an allowance for Armory rent, and an allowance for the upkeep of clothing and for general expense. They were issued uniforms that were different in appearance than those worn by the Wisconsin National Guard and the United States Army. The men were armed with arms issued to the State by the War Department, specifically for this purpose.8
It was determined that all guards attend a week long training camp the summer of 1918. The Wisconsin State Guards met at Camp Douglas, Juneau County, for week long camps during the weeks between July 6 to August 2, 1918. It was a strenuous week of exercises for the infantry field camp. The Wausau guard, part of the Tenth Regiment, with headquarters in Eau Claire, and which included the guards of Wausau, Superior, Menomonie, Eau Claire, Chippewa Falls, Ladysmith, Neillsville, Mauston and LaCrosse, attended camp during the week of July 27. The schedule for each day kept the guard busy from 6:00 a.m. with First Call, till Taps at 10:30 p.m. Each regiment was required to do guard duty, and spend one morning on the rifle range.9 The members of Company C, First Battalion, and the Tenth Infantry band arrived home in Wausau on August 2, 1918, riding the 4:45 p.m. Northwestern train. They then marched to their quarters at the Y.M.C.A. where they disbanded. The band went on to their headquarters at the Armory, where they also disbanded.
The Wausau guard was honored with a historic guard mount that reads: “Special orders, No. 6, General King, Wisconsin’s foremost soldier, has been pleased to make the following memorandum in a note to the commanding officer, which is published for the information of all concerned: Company C at guard mounting eight a.m. scored next to perfect. It was the finest performance clear through to the posting of the first relief I have ever seen on these grounds. So far as I can recollect and I can recollect pretty well My yearly book will show. The words of commendation from the general are the highest compliment a company can receive. The splendid exhibition was made possible by the earnest hard work done by Captain Becker and C company at the home station and in this camp. No further comment is necessary. By order of Col. Cousins.” Governor E. L. Phillip had this to say about the men of the Wisconsin State Guard at the conclusion of the camps: “These men are not toy soldiers. They come from the rank of the busy men and come here for military training and have made good use of every minute during their stay. There probably is no better training ground than Camp Douglas, dry and healthful, splendid water, in fact just the place to give men real pep.”10
A second camp was held the following year, again in July. Company C maintained its position as one of the leading companies of the regiment during this second week of hard work, and hard play.
The Wisconsin State Guard as a whole was called out 3 times. The first was September 16-18, 1918 in Clark County to assist in the search for draft dodgers. The second time was August 20-24, 1919 as guards during the Cudahy riots. The final time they were called was September 9-12, 1919 when troops were assembled in the armory at Manitowoc as strike riots at Two Rivers started to escalate, but they were not used.
On July 11, 1919, it was reported that Governor E. L. Philipp had ordered for the reorganization of the Wisconsin National Guard. Included in the order was the offer to “Every officer of Wisconsin state guard who passes the examination required by the national defense act and will take the oath of service prescribed by the act, will, on approval by the war department, be also commissioned in Wisconsin National guard reserve.”11
In March 1920 the order was given for Company C, Wisconsin State Guard to be mustered out of service. The company commanders were directed to issue honorable discharges to all men of their commands. The order stated: “The state military authorities desire to express appreciation of the loyal, patriotic and efficient service rendered by the officers and enlisted men of the Wisconsin State Guard during the period of emergency.”12
On the night of April 19, 1920, the men of the Citizens’ Training Camp, and later the Wisconsin State Guard, gathered for a celebratory dinner, to reminisce, and to honor the work that they had done. Following the suggestion to meet occasionally, it was decided to meet annually as the Company C Club. A. P. Woodson stated that “he had formed many friendships as a member of the unit that he would not have made otherwise.”
Henry C. Smith, made the closing remarks: “The life of Company C draws on to its close. If we have helped in any little way and in a workmanlike manner the duties that have been assigned us, we have been fully recompensed. Let us cherish the memories of these three years we have had together, and resolve to profit by the discipline we have received during these dark days of the world’s most tragic period.”
“At the close of the singing of ‘America’ the party ended and the members of the company departed.”13
SourcesSaveSave
“Wisconsin’s Military History,” database, Wisconsin State Guard (www.b-1-105-us/history/wsg/htm\#tables : accessed 10 Feb 2018).↩︎
“Wisconsin Guard Is Formed Here,” Wausau Daily Record-Herald, 24 Aug 1917, Friday Evening, p. 1, col. 3, digital images, Newspapers.com(www.newspapers.com : accessed 10 Feb 2018). ↩︎
“Company C Club To Meet Yearly,” Wausau Daily Record-Herald, 20 Apr 1920, Tuesday, p. 1, col. 7, digital images, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 14 Feb 2018).↩︎
Wisconsin. Adjutant General’s Office, Biennial Report of the Adjutant General, State of Wisconsin (University of Minnesota, 1910, digital images, Google Books (www.books.google.com, digitized 29 Mar 2011 : accessed 13 Feb 2018).↩︎
“Solid Week of Military Life,” Wausau Daily Record-Herald, 25 Jun 1918, Tuesday Evening, p. 1, col. 5, digital images, Newspapers.com(www.newspapers.com : accessed 12 Feb 2018).↩︎
“Band and Guards Come Home Today.” Wausau Daily Record-Herald, 2 Aug 1918, Friday Evening, p. 1, col. 7, digital images, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 13 Feb 2018).↩︎
“Issues Orders for Re-Organization,” Wausau Daily Record-Herald, 11 Jul 1919, Friday Evening, p. 1, col. 1, digital images, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 13 Feb 2018).↩︎
“Company C to be Mustered Out,” Wausau Daily Record-Herald, 10 Mar 1920, Wednesday, p. 1, col. 6, digital images, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : accessed 14 Feb 2018).↩︎
