Another month is ending and I haven’t decided if March is going out like a lion or a lamb. It definitely came in like a lion but today it is actually warm enough for rain at the moment so could be a lamb. But the ground is still buried under snow and the rain is supposed to switch to snow later tonight so doesn’t seem to lamb like to me. And some areas are being impacted with a blizzard so March is going out for a lion for them.
End of March
Located on Highway 29 in Western Wisconsin, St. Matthews Lutheran Church was built in 1897 to serve the local German speaking Lutherans. The church was originally named St. Matthaeus Evangelisch Lutherische Kirche. Each hour the church has music sounding which is heard at a fair distance through the countryside. I wonder what music it will play to melt the snow and let spring arrive.
St. Matthews Lutheran Church
The barn styles often change from one area to another. The foundations may be field stones, limestone or cement depending on available materials. The roof may be rounded, have several pitches or single pitch.
Weathervanes or cupolas may adorn the roofs. Cupola, meaning little cupo or little dome, allowed light in and hot air to escape and have been a part of wooden barns history. Farmers have often referred to a cupola as a roof over a hole in the roof. This barn, built in 1893, proudly displays a pretty cupola.
Cupola Barn
I don’t have faith anymore. People keep telling me spring is coming but it sure doesn’t look like spring to me – not when it keeps snowing!
The Winter That Won’t End
The blacksmith, Tom Jones Sr., who worked in Hyde stone blacksmith shop built in 1883, which has been restored now, was also the blacksmith at Hyde Mill for many years following the Civil War. He also did veterinary work for area farmers. The Hyde Mill blacksmith shop could use a repair job now too.
Hyde Mill Blacksmith Shop
Near the Hyde church, mill and blacksmith shop, this barn sat on the valley floor and has an odd appearance with all the extra additions on the end of the barn which seems to go on and on. Just like this winter which is going on and on with snow drifting on the road again.
Endless Barn
A small green sign stating the word ‘Hyde’ is all that gives a slight hint of an unincorporated community located rolling hills of southern Wisconsin. In the 1898 Turner’s Hand Book and Gazetteer of Wisconsin, it lists the population of Hyde as 95 and states “is in Ridgeway township, Iowa county, 9 miles from Arena, the nearest shipping point on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Ry. Arena is reached by tri-weekly stage. It has a cheese factory, a grist mill, shoe shop, blacksmith shop, general store and a Congregation church.”
I didn’t spot the cheese factory which was built in 1891 but did see the the Hyde Store which housed a post office and was a mail and supply stop for a stage coach between Sauk City and Mineral Point. Lena Olson and Annie Johnson operated the store for half a century. Today it is a small country bar.
The old 1883 Hyde Blacksmith Shop was deteriorating and it was donated to the Hyde Blacksmith Shop Territory committee and torn down piecemeal in 2000. In 2008 stone mason Art Kirch offered to rebuild the shop for a lower sum than committee projected and the blacksmith shop was rebuilt on a new location. Each year since it was rebuilt, the blacksmith committee has held an open house to familiarize the public with this icon from the history of the valley.
Hyde Blacksmith Shop
Just down the road from the Hyde Chapel, the Hyde Mill sits on Mill Creek. The mill was built in 1850 by William Hyde who settled in the area. The mill burned in the 1870s but was rebuilt and the Ted Sawle family has owned the mill since 1931 and it has been a working mill, even generating electricity.
Ted Sawle made the water wheel for his mill as well as other water wheels for other mills, including an 18 foot wheel for a mill in Indiana that originally was built by Daniel Boone’s younger brother, Squire Boone. But now Hyde Mill is currently for sale as Ted passed away at the age of 103.
Hyde Mill
In the rolling hills of Iowa County in Wisconsin, and originally known as the Mill Creek Church, the Hyde Chapel was built in 1862. Notes in records stated, “no place needed a church and preaching more than did the Mill Creek Valley”. Whether they needed preaching or not, the people of the valley held a meeting at which they “unanimously resolved to build a house for public worship if they in any way could” and they did build their church.
The Covenant and Confession of Faith by the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches of Wisconsin were adopted but the church was always open to people of various faiths and Congregationalists, Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists and Catholics are buried in the adjacent cemetery.
The Hyde Congregational Church continued until 1957 when it was disbanded and the church doors were thus closed except for the occasional funeral. Although it appeared the church would fall into decay, a non-profit corporation, the Hyde Community Association, was formed to preserve and maintain the Hyde Church as a historical landmark and memorial to the pioneers of the community in 1966 and inducted into the National Registry of Historic Places on October 13, 1988.
Hyde Chapel
Spring may officially be here but winter is still hanging on with lows around zero again tonight.
Still Hanging On
