Wisconsin Magazine of History; September 1949
The Okauchee House by the Rev. Lincoln F. Whelan
Much praise has been put into songs
and stories about the advantages of living in a house by the side of the road
and from that peaceful point of vantage to watch the remnants of the world
rushing madly past your door. Maybe the high time has come for some structure
to speak for itself, such as the century-old Okauchee House in
Any flair this substitute chronicler might have for romancing about the food old days is put to silence by the somber colonial interior of the Okauchee Stagecoach House with its sturdy plank walls that have stood in the background for 100 years watching the roadway evolve from an Indian trail into a plank road and finally stretch out into a federal highway. The word “sturdy” defines the house, and a description of it is strictly a job for plain prose that should have been done long before so much pleasant local history faded from the memory of our older Okauchee villagers.
The thirty-one room structure is
owned by the demure and polite Mrs. Fred Faulkner. She lives alone in the house
that history passed by and keeps the place neater than the proverbial pin.
However, it is made very plain that her house is a private residence and not a
curio shop for sight-seers. The interior is much the same as it was a hundred
very odd years ago. There is one faded photo of the exterior, taken in 1911,
shortly after the Faulkners purchased the property. This snapshot show the once classic cornices dangling at a
very menacing angle. For the protection of posterity passing by, these
ornaments had to be removed. For three quarters of a century the five square
windows on the top floor looked out on a fancy high veranda. This was also shorn
off, and in the 1930’s the old house was sheathed with modern siding. The late
Dr. Peters, from near-by
The sturdy old house occupies a 200 by 300 foot lot that is fronted by the remains of an ornamental iron fence, once standard equipment for elegance in the past century. A half-dozen tall trees whisper in the wind as they stand sentry duty around the house by the bend in the road. The usual barns and the three-sided shelter for the horse and carriage trade have been demolished. There are readers who may recall those once familiar open-side shelters, buggy whips, and the sweaty horse blankets with the big steel safety pins. The deep holes beneath the manger were pawed there by spirited horses tethered for long hours by thoughtless owners who were lingering inside and getting outside spirits of another brand. To do a sly bit of cribbing is one way of passing a stiff examination, but the cribber of other days meant the equine sin of gnawing on the manger. In the course of some very guarded conversation a clerical visitor may guess that the two small out buildings have been rendered irrelevant by the march of science and sanitation.
For a time John Gietzen owned the house, and in 1913 his men moved the last carriage barn over to the corner of Road Q where it became the first garage in Okauchee and is now rebuilt into an up-to-date food mart. This first garage was a death warrant for the Okauchee House as a wayside hostelry. The horseless carriage had come to stay. Nowadays the house stands alone, longing for the return of those grand old days when stagecoaches lumbered down the plank road to unload a cargo of gay guests at Istael McConnell’s open door.
Ingelbert
Nelson took up the land from the government in the early 1840’s, but the
fabulous Israel McConnell took charge and stayed on as owner and operator until
1874. These were golden years when the house reached its peak of popularity for
Taverner McConnell had many characteristics of Bailey
the keeper of Tabard Inn, plus a few traits of the lesser lights in Chaucer’s
pilgrimage to Cantebury. “In
Some months ago I enjoyed a unilaterian chat with the deaf but very definite Mr. Hildahl. Vividly did he describe a bgone
day when a large crowd of immigrants “put up for the night at Stagecoach House.” He told that the “gang was heading for the lead
mines around
Said he, “They came from all over Hell, I guess.”
His decanonizing guess was final if not historically and geographically accurate. Al Hildahl’s highly descriptive conversation somehow seemed to do more with the lesser adjectives than all the current magazine editors who lately have learned how to modify a noun and adorn a tale.
The Okauchee House property has shuttled back and forth among half a dozen owners during these last 100 years and also has made the inevitable appearances in the county court. In August, 1884, Vesta, the widow of Israel McConnell, went to law against her son Albert about a foreclosure note amounting to more than $1,000. This unimportant suit was settled quite peacefully, and the house again settled back into its quaint and quiet ways. Samuel and Harriet Hooker owned the house of dying fame but soon sold to Esther Peters. The 1906 records show that the senior John Gietzen purchased the property at a foreclosure sale. The late Fred Faulkner bought the house in 1911, and his widow occupies the old place at the present time. A “For Sale” sign dangles around the neck of a great tree out in the front yard. Much of the original survey work was done by William Purvie or Purveau. All of his plats and recordings are letter perfect except the signature. The hallmark of ability.
A narrow Lannon stone walk is an invitation to the friendly front door that is cased-in by a framework of rippled windowpanes of hand-blown glass the like of which can be found in many other sashes in the house…and in very few other swellings in our broad land. This rare glass is lovely to look at but not so satisfactory to look through. The erstwhile parlor pastime of peeping out from behind the curtains at the passers-by is of little comfort when the curious must contend with the wavy hand-blown windowpanes.
A tiny vestible offers you the alternative of turning to the right through an arch that once wore the label “Tap Room for Men Only.” This slogan dated back to those trying times before female suffrage had attained to the heady altitude of a chromed perch in a pub. A more ladylike left turn from the vestibule leads into the long dining room and the more secluded “sitting parlors.”
There are eleven rooms on the first floor, the most interesting being the huge kitchen where many a tasty meal was prepared for the gourmets and gourmettes who heeded Israel McConnell’s booming invitation to “pitch in and make out your supper.” Either of the adjacent pantries could comfortably contain a brace of modern kitchenettes. The king-size kitchen is reminiscent of the good old days when the “maid” was just a hired girl who never heard of Thursday afternoon and Sunday off, but was seldom paid accordingly. However, it did behoove any hired girl to keep a sharp eye on the trapdoor in the kitchen floor that was often left open after a careless someone drew rain water from the cistern in the cellar.
There never was a furnace in the old house, and I am reminded of listening to a local philosopher discuss and cuss our modern central heating systems. To him the furnace was a menace to the family circle. His picturesque language dealt with the days when “the hull family gathered of an evening around the kitchen stove to keep warm and to keep posted on the latest neighborhood gossip.” Then these newfangled furnaces came along to break loose the family circle into every “blasted room in the house, even into the parlor on the weekday.” Such was the torrid thesis of his fireside chat, and there may be some truth in what the man said. Next door to the kitchen is a brightly windowed compartment that seems out of joint with the darkling surroundings. To listen is to learn that the small room rose in the ranks from the humble status as a woodshed, later a mending room, and now a sunroom. Thus does the sun and science shine on.
The many meandering old houses in
I was advised in advance “Not to
pass up the downstairs.” So, obediently is not enthusiastically, I followed the
dozen tread-worn steps down into the cellar that is partly paved with bricks of
various size. The ceiling is low and so was I because this side excursion
seemed a cobwebbed waste of time. I was in error again. Here was interesting
evidence of random digging having been done under the brick floor. The rubble
made me recall the usual rumors of buried monies that are invariably associated
with all such old and odd places. But here it was plain that someone had taken
the foolish story about Israel McConnell’s buried gold seriously enough to
swing a pick in search of a cache. Failing to find either the
end of the rainbow or the pot of gold, the useless tack was given up for the
bad job that it was. Historically, this vain search must have antedated the
current crop of telephone prospectors who wait on the radio giveaway programs.
However, there is some dusty and gusty gossip about a gold digger of another
stripe whose prospecting in the old house did pay off far more profitably than
the pick and shovel approach to Easy Street. If the walls of the old place
could talk, they would in all probability say nothing about this episode, being
of the solid and sturdy type that is not given to such stories. Even a short
search through the old cellar will uncover some history of a better sort. Gaping
holes in the plastered ceiling expose
A small story from the Monches locale tells about the family that numbered four fine daughters and one unrefined son. This thoroughly spoiled brat was the pride of the family and definite neighborhood nuisance. One quiet Sunday afternoon the fond parents were entertaining friends in the front parlor while all the children played in the kitchen which contained a cellar trapdoor that usually was open. A sudden shriek interrupted the youngsters’ shouting and laughing. Invariably this was a signal that someone had tumbled through the trapdoor. A distraught father dashed into the kitchen, glanced down at a crumpled little figure at the foot of the cellar steps, sighed with relief, and then casually announced, “It is only Martha.” Meanwhile the favored son stood off a safe distance from the disaster blithely wearing the triumphant look of a pint-size Macbeth advising the world to have men children only.
In the “fur co’ner” of the cellar is a bricked Dutch oven about ten-foot square. One look at this oven can make a fellow taste the homemade bread our mother used to make with raisins and without benefit of vitamins. The old oven might be a stage property for a Hansel and Gretel stage production. Surely the size of the oven gives credence to the local tradition about the wondrous dinners served to the house guests who paused in their travels up and down the old plank road.
Returning to the first floor, one is anxious to explore the upper regions and ascends the fancy staircase with the black walnut handrail and the finely carved scroll along the baseboard. A minor labyrinth of narrow corridors leads to the eleven bedrooms on the second floor. The rooms vary in dimensions to suit the size of the party and the pocketbook. It is interesting to note that none of the rooms had clothespresses; a row of nails in the wall seemed sufficient to hold any excess wardrobe. There are a few windowless storage compartments along the corridor that were very exactly called the “dark rooms.”
While wandering from room to room the proprietress made mention of two beds that had been pensioned off and placed in a side storeroom. Investigation disclosed an old style cherry bed and a very fancy black walnut bed with the usual carvings and slots on the side for a canopy. Either of these beds would warm the heart and possibly open the tight purse of any antique dealer. But a short visit into each bedroom leaves one with the chilly thought that there is no provision for heat other than a small vent near the ceiling that had the dubious duty of catching any vagrant warmth that might creep up from the first floor stoves. Small wonder that a popular ballad of those old days sang the merits of “The Down Feather Bed.”
Another walnut railed stairway with hand-turned spindles leads to the third floor and “not a squeak in any step even after all the uping and downing of a hundred years.” There are a dozen rooms on the top floor, including the large ballroom with its neatly coved ceiling and the wide chimney at the end suitable for a fireplace if any added heat were required to make the dancers merry.
Half a wisp of imagination is all that is needed to conjure up a gay ghost scene out of the past with pioneer fold tripping what the poet called the light fantastic. The ballroom, with only one exit, could not meet the safety requirements of our modern Industrial Commission; but you can “bet you bottom dollar” that such worries never entered the heart or the head of the young fellow with this invitation in his pocket:
Open Party
At the Okauchee House
New
Years Eve.,
Your company is respectfully solicited
Homer Hurd
D.H Rockwell..Room Managers..D. Inglesby
Tickets $2.00…Music by Carr & Parsons Cotillion Band
(Starr’s Print, Milw’k)
It was the duty of these room or floor managers to quiet any
guest who might be inclined to get a bit agog or agrog.
The
The final business at hand meant
taking a last look at the smaller rooms on the top floor that were reserved
“for the help.” There long hours of labor made a stagecoach stop at the
Okauchee comfortable and memorable for every guest. Appropriately enough, a big
brass megaphone was used “to call a square dance” or to summon the fishermen
from lovely