PAGE 12 - INTER-COUNTY LEADER - NEWS SECTION - A - JUNE 13, 2007
T h e June Reverie There’s nothing finer than a June morning. Especially when the wind is calm, which it is this morning after what seems like the windiest spring in memory. The green heron circles the pond, its trademark screech giving it away even when you can’t see it. A doe comes down to the water’s edge. We wait for the fawn, but there is none, at least that we can see. Hummingbirds zoom in to the feeder and away again, their motors running high. Early-season flowers - poppies, irises and peonies - scream their symphony of color. Even with rain in short supply, everything is the greenest green of the year. We’re one week away from the longest day of the year. I remember my daughter’s riddle from years ago, “What’s the longest day of the year, Dad?” - to which I reply, June 21. As I’m about to launch into a minilecture
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and the sub-surface soil. about the summer solstice, I’m always amazed at how far she stops me short. Wrong, north the sun’s arc reaches this they’re all the same - 24 time of year. By sunset, which hours, she says, and she’s reaches its latest time of 9:01 greatly amused that she’s put p.m., on June 21, and stays there one over on the old guy. for 10 days, the sun is over 20 She’s right, of course. We’re degrees north of the east-west talking daylight here, not the axis. We make it a point to longest day. camp somewhere in the Apostle Daylight comes early, just a Islands around the summer solfew short hours after the last stice and I swear that even at light of the previous day has Steve midnight, there is still light in faded. First light is shortly Pearson the sky looking to the northwest after 4 a.m. The earliest sunacross Superior’s waters. It’s rise, which actually falls on not the land of the midnight June 17, is at 5:19 and by 6 a.m., the sun is well above the horizon. sun, but it’s darn close. Twilight Mercifully, the morning air is still cool stretches for hours rather than the 15 even though the afternoon tempera- minutes or so that it will last six months tures are reaching into the upper 80s. from now. In early July, we head north to All the all-time record high temperatures are in July, after summer has had Canada and discover that sunset on the sufficient time to rev its engines and the Manitoba prairie is nearly a half-hour sun has thoroughly warmed land and later than here in northwestern Though the days are water. In mid-June, there is still a Wisconsin. refreshing coolness in the air, the water already growing shorter, this little burst
Crunch Jon D. Songetay, 19, from Danbury, was westbound on Round Lake Drive in Swiss Township when he lost control negotiating a curve. The vehicle went off the road and into a tree. The driver, who reported minor injuries, said that a deer jumped out in front of him. The vehicle was towed due to damages. – Photo submitted by Burnett County Sheriff’s Department
of added daylight helps us forget that we’re in the downward slide to December. As you head north to the Yukon and Alaska, the true land of the midnight sun, the effect is even more pronounced while at the equator, days and nights are roughly of equal length year-round. Drink in these last days of increasing daylight as we tilt ever closer to the sun. As summer moves into July and then August, we begin to turn away from the sun’s rays and the 17 hours or so of daylight dwindles to nine by the winter solstice. But this morning, the green-infused light produces a kind of bliss peculiar to this time of year. There is a carefree feel to these June mornings though in the interests of truth-inreporting, I must tell you that summer vacation began a week ago for this teacher.
Lower inspection cost SIREN – Burnett County’s bridges will soon be inspected and load tested as required by the Federal government. Cedar Corporation will inspect the bridges again this year, but at a greatly reduced rate per bridge than in previous years. Because of the competition of another company trying to break into the bridge inspection business, Cedar Corporation drastically reduced their prices. As a result, Burnett County will enjoy a savings of about $1,200 per bridge. – Sherill Summer
Emerson/from page 1 ing Loyal, Wisconsin. His son, Norman Jr. (Ed’s uncle removed) founded the Tomahawk State Bank and served as its first president starting in 1895. Norman Jr. died in a tragic boating accident at Rice Lake, while rowing across with his son to inspect some timberland. Ed Emerson’s great grandfather, John Warren Emerson, has the dubious distinction of having cut down the last stand of virgin white pine in Wisconsin. John Warren Emerson and his brother, David, formed the Emerson Land Company in the early 1900s, and by 1905 they had founded a logging and sawmill town in southern Iron County which was named Emerson, Wisconsin. There is today a state heritage marker at the site of the former logging town of Emerson. David Emerson resided in Ashland, and ran for governor on the Prohibition Party ticket in 1914, 1918, 1922 and 1926. In 1928 he was a candidate for U.S. Senate, “the only regularly nominated party candidate opposing Sen. Robert M. LaFollette,” said the Ashland Daily Press on Nov. 5, 1928. In Ashland County, David Emerson garnered 173 votes to LaFollette’s 4,867. Ironically, John Warren Emerson – Ed’s great grandfather, also died in a tragic accident – a sudden lightning strike while he and his sons were fishing Bear Skull Lake near what is now the Lac du Flambeau Reservation. Recently, Ed was contacted by a distant relative in Massachusetts who has done extensive genealogy on the Emerson family. It seems this person has a unique, shared connection to Ed Emerson and northern Wisconsin. This person is related to Caleb Cushing, (1800-1879) the Massachusetts lawyer, politician and land speculator who – while never known to have spent any considerable time in Wisconsin – came to own more than 45,000 acres in and around St. Croix Falls in the mid-1800s
Emerson is related to lumberjacks, two of which founded a logging and sawmill town in southern Iron County which was named Emerson, Wis. - Photo submitted and today has the town of Cushing named in his honor. Cushing also created the Cushing Land Agency in 1854 and hired Maj. John S. Baker as his agent. Today, the Baker Building in downtown St, Croix Falls, is beautifully restored and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Caleb Cushing and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) lived in Massachusetts at the same time and were both prominent in the community. It appears that Cushing and Ralph Waldo Emerson were also distant cousins. Ralph Waldo Emerson purchased approximately 125 acres on Bass Lake, near Trade Lake, just north of St. Croix Falls, on Sept. 10, 1859 and continued to own most of the land until his death in1882. Today 25 acres of this original Ralph Waldo Emerson purchase are secured in permanent preservation by the West Wisconsin Land Trust through the dona-
tion of the owners Jack and Coleen Holmbeck. Ed Emerson and Ralph Waldo Emerson both share the same grandfather removed – the Rev. Joseph Emerson, (1620-1679), who was 18 years old when the Emersons immigrated to America from England in 1638. It is an ongoing mystery as to why and how Ralph Waldo Emerson came to own more than 125 acres in the then wilderness of Northwest Wisconsin. Perhaps the connection to fellow Massachusetts landowner Caleb Cushing answers that question. Or, perhaps, at that time, there was a direct Emerson connection to Northwest Wisconsin ? The final odd Emerson connection to Northwest Wisconsin rests with the original founding of St. Croix Falls. In July of 1837 the St. Croix Lumber Company was organized at Fort Snelling, Minn. One of the original four signers to the St. Croix Lumber
Company, which established the city of St. Croix Falls, was Dr. John Emerson. Dr. Emerson (1800-1852?) was the U.S. Army surgeon at the Fort Snelling military post. Additionally, Dr. Emerson also gained historic notoriety for being the slave owner of Dred Scott – the slave who sued for his freedom before the U.S. Supreme Court, a case that indirectly led to the U.S. Civil War. While still to be confirmed, it is possible that Dr. John Emerson is the son of Thomas Emerson, the great-great-grandson of the Rev. Joseph. If proven, this would establish a direct ancestral northern Wisconsin connection to Ralph Waldo Emerson at the time of Emerson’s purchase of the Trade Lake land. Documents related to this story can be obtained from Ed Emerson, PO Box 326, St. Croix Falls, WI 54024. – submitted