Orton C. Little

My post about the Onward Manufacturing Company yesterday made me realize I'd neglected to address Mr. Little, above, the owner and president of that firm.  Mr. Little was a noted inventor, with 22 patents to his name, to include the sliding furniture shoe and air humidifying device we discussed yesterday. His obituary below, gives some biographical details of the man:

   May 10, 1927 Appleton Post-Crescent

Onward Manufacturing

  advertisement from the 1919, The Nicolet, Menasha High School's annual

This company manufactured and sold glass sliding shoes which were placed under the legs of heavy furniture to make it easier to move as well as a celebrated humidifying device.  Located at 128 Main Street, it was right next door to the City Hall/Fire Station.  In later years, the property was sold to the concern that became Gibson Chevrolet.  

 1920 Modern Hospital Year Book

 

November 1, 1919 Engineering World

E.V. Treleven

Mr. Treleven's tailor shop was located at 132 Main Street, approximately where the old Gibson Chevrolet dealership later resided.  This biographical sketch, from the June, 1898 Semi-Centennial edition of the Menasha Press featured his likeness, which for the time, showed a rising trend in the tonsorial trade- the clean-shaven gentleman.  By 1911, newspaper accounts place him in the employ of the Onward Manufacturing Company, coincidentally the employer located next door to his tailor shop.  More on it tomorrow.

RUD's Waverly Beach

April 13, 1946 Billboard Magazine

Various matchbooks items for sale on eBay.  It's cultural memorabilia from Waverly Beach in the 1930s and 40s.  An online search for Rudolph "Rud" Fischer netted the above article. 

Oak Street Kids

This is a found item during my photo search in preparing the book in 2012 and never used.  But I wish I knew the circumstances of this photo.  At least, some of their names were written on the back of this reprint of what somebody considered an important photo.  Was this a neighborhood party or a picnic?  Or just an excuse for a neighbor to try out his new Brownie?  Here is a slice of life from 1934- a bunch of Depression-era kids with their whole lives ahead of them. The little one in the very front reminds me of Spanky from the Little Rascals.  One wonders if they had similar adventures.  Do you recognize some of these names? 

The Girls in the Boat

 

This is the companion piece to yesterday's offering- two young ladies thought by me to be the sisters of the man in the boat, "Dixie."  With both postcards addressed to a Miss Carrie Hoffman in Fairchild, and "Little Carrie" admitting to having attended the "Soo" picnic, I theorized that a relative of these women was an employee of the Soo Line. And indeed, a simple Google search DID turn up a T. Hoffman who was documented as a conductor on the Soo Line.  Was he the man in the boat yesterday?  Or was he, like the girls, a relative of the employee?  Or is this all just a coincidence?  Sometimes history just provides clues with few definitive answers. 

Boater

This "real photo" postcard from August,1909 features a young man seated in a boat outside Smith Park, then known as Menasha Park, or City Park.  The St. Mary's steeple is a dead give away.  Notice the floating logs on their way, presumably, to the Wooden Ware for processing. The boat's name seems to be "Dixie," based on this postcard's message and a second postcard I will save for another time.  That one features two girls (his sisters?) sitting in the same boat in the same location and the addressee is the same as well.  They mention "Dixie" too.

Paul Paper Company

Seeing this envelope for sale on eBay led me to wonder about this Paul Paper Company which I didn't remember ever hearing about.  The following news articles provide a timeline of sorts of its quite short history in the 1890s. 

March 6, 1893 Oshkosh Northwestern

 

October 18, 1893 Oshkosh Northwestern

 

June 22, 1894 Oshkosh Northwestern

 

December 4, 1896 Oshkosh Northwestern

 

August 9, 1897 Oshkosh Northwestern

 

November 6, 1897 Oshkosh Northwestern

 

One might infer that the warehouse fire in 1894 was the death knell for the paper company, but the "Panic of 1893," the worst depression that the U.S. had seen in its history up to that point, might have been a more punitive factor.  Though no local banks failed, the ripple effects of that depression might have been drastic enough to affect business.  As the August 9, 1897 Northwestern article stated, the plant was "forced to the wall." 

 

The U.S. economy began to recover in 1897. After the election of President McKinley, confidence was restored and the economy began 10 years of rapid growth, until the next economic crisis, the Panic of 1907.

Mom's Diploma

 

I found this at the bottom of a box labeled "Mom's Things."  It's a little worse for wear, but after almost 77 years, is that a surprise?  The blue cover has that fuzzy feel of felt, adding, what must have seemed like a sense of elegance befitting the occasion.  The pastor who signed it, Monsignor John Hummel, had baptized my Mom in 1920 and then presided at my parents' wedding in 1940.  Father Joseph Becker, the principal, was still around some thirty-odd years later, a monsignor by then himself, and the pastor of St. Mary's.  He taught catechism and religion classes during my various grade school years.  Lots of history attached to those names.   

Tobogganers

 January 6, 1969 N-M Northwestern

Finding this photo evoked memories of long afternoons with friends out in the brisk cold on a favorite hill.  And, near or far, what typical Wisconsin kid didn't partake of this activity every winter? 

Milling Story

This 1969 Northwestern article gives the capsule version of the short history of the flour industry in the Twin Cities.  Most of the action was in Neenah, but Menasha did have four flour mills of its own, to include the Symes Mill, first documented in this blog post:  http://menashabook.blogspot.com/2012/09/symes-flour-mill.html.

There'll Be a Grand Opening Soon!

A matchbook recently spotted up for bid on eBay heralding the soon-to-be-opened, new and improved First National Bank in 1964.  Notice the "politically incorrect" workman smoking his pipe!  And that five digit phone number; I'm surprised it's lacking its prefix, PArkway.  That's a fact lost, I'm sure, on our younger readers who've always had seven digit phone numbers.   But that whole telephone discussion is better saved for another day.

An Investment in Good Appearance

ad from the 1922 Nicolet, the Menasha High yearbook

 

1922 is about the time this clothing store appeared on the scene downtown.  Situated at 184 Main Street (the order of Odd Fellows was upstairs), the downstairs portion of the address was listed as "The Army-Navy Club" in the 1920 city directory.  But by 1924, its presence in that year's directory was listed as "Bevers and Schmalz Clothing" along with the alternate name, "The Clothes Shop."   I would surmise that "The Clothes Shop" rolled off the tongue better in the eyes of the owners.

You Get Service OUT Because We Build It IN

 

Featured today are a couple of 1920 print ads for the Uncle Sam tractor, built in Menasha at its facility at 344 Sixth Street.  The first ad targets farmers and the second ad targets dealers in farm machinery and implements.  We first met US Tractor last year:  http://menashabook.blogspot.com/2014/04/us-tractor-company.html and http://menashabook.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-harris-six.html when we discussed how its demise led to a brief year or so of auto manufacturing.  Eventually, the US Tractor property, by 1931, fell under the auspices of Wisconsin Container Corporation.

Service in Printing

This ad from the 1920 City Directory provides a nice photo of Banta's modern Ahnaip Street plant on Doty Island.  Having moved from downtown's Main Street the decade before, Banta continued to tout itself as "The Collegiate Press" in its advertising, capitalizing on its sterling reputation as a fine publisher of annuals and other publications related to colleges and Greek life.

The Bradleys

The back of this photo states the subjects as George W. Bradley and his daughter, Inez Olive Bradley. Mr. Bradley was better known as G.W. Bradley, a prominent photographer in Menasha for many years and a justice of the peace.  Inez Bradley graduated from Menasha High in 1897 and went on to become a telegrapher in Oshkosh.  She married James Gibb Currie on June 27, 1905 and they moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan.  She lived to be 88, passing away in 1966. 

More on James Island

November 28, 1959 Appleton Post-Crescent

 

Many thanks to those who comment on the blog posts, to include Suzanne Winz who clued me in to the above article.  I apologize for the right side being cut off but there's enough there to make sense of it all.  Lots of good factual info, to include the old wooden bridge that once extended across LLBDM. 

At the Narrows

a 1887 rendering of a placid scene on Little Lake Butte des Morts

 

I'll admit that I know nothing about boating and water and navigation.  And, I have no idea where the "narrows" are in relation to Menasha.  But while I like this illustration, the hills in the background seem pretty high for the area.  Plus, with the passing steamboat, won't the fishermen in the rowboat be a rockin' quite soon? 

James Island

While seldom talked about, sitting at the mouth of the Menasha channel of the Fox River where it meets Little Lake Butte des Morts, is James Island. It's 1.81 acres remain a heavily forested piece of wilderness.  The island was once considered as a candidate for a nature preserve.  For whatever reason, the state's Bureau of Land Management once had its eye on the property in the late 1970s and threatened to take control but Menasha eventually won out. 

West Menasha Station

This map shows the location of a depot in "West Menasha" which was, at the time, a name for what later became the Town of Menasha.  You can see that the Wisconsin Central shared track with the Chicago & NorthWestern until it made it across the lake.

 

Note:  In reference to last week's post about Lake Street (seen above in this map, also), I may have been out of line in implying the street was some "fanciful" representation by a far-away mapmaker.  A reader pointed out numerous maps to me, (to include the famous Sanborn fire insurance maps) dating from the city's earliest days until about 1913/1920 which show this mysterious Lake Street.  And this is not be confused with the present-day Lake Street which is just north of Fourth between Tayco Street and LLBDM.  My apologies for dismissing this so easily.