When the sun finally breaks out and shines down on the rolling hills of southwestern Wisconsin, the rural landscape emerges with crop land, barns and livestock on a summer day under the white clouds above.
Rural Wisconsin
Picture of the Day for March 24, 2014
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
Picture of the Day for March 23, 2014
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
