Wildermuth Family - Louisa Olive Wildermuth page 1 - Ivy Fisher's typed letter

   This letter is in my personal history collection that was started by my mother, Lorna Lee Triplett Winch. I do not know who typed this - it could have been my mother. It was originally written by Ivy Carpenter Fisher many, many, years ago. This biography was sent to my great-grandmother Winnie Gladys Carpenter Leonard and Winniefred Olive Leonard. The transcription is as follows:

Louisa Olive Wildermuth-Carpenter

Written by Ivy Carpenter Fisher

The subject of this sketch was born July 9, 1851, in the township of Fayette, LaFayette County, Wisconsin, being the ninth child and third daughter of David Clinton And Anna Newkirk Wildermuth. As is usual the history of her childhood and early youth is one with the history of her family - the life of a pioneer's child in the wilderness was hers in company with the rest of the children and each shared in the prosperity or lack as the year brought forth. The privations were many and seasons of pro[s]perity few but with a disposition to make the best of everything, in all her stories of childhood the good times seemed to have predominated in her view of life. 

Sharing the abundance of labor she learned to spin, weave, knit and the various other branches of domestice learning that were put into daily practice in the pioneer home. Most of her labor was performed at home but I remember hearing her tell of picking hops sway from home where she was called Olive as there was another Lou in the group of pickers. During the war when her older brothers John and henry were away in answer to their countrys call she had her hair cut and donning male attire, worked in the field with her father and younger brother, Daniel who was her constant companion and confidant in joy and sorrow until years of maturity gave each their home with attendant cares and responsibilities. In the community where her youth was spent, as in most frontier settlements, the pioneers planted a schoolhouse with their first crop of corn and Lou, as she was familiarly known, being ambitious to learn, accumulated as large a stock of booklore as was possible in the country schools of the day - - When about 16 or 17 she was baptized in the little spring branch near her father's home. At the same time and place and by the same eleder was baptized the young man who afterward became her husband-Zenas Gurley was the afficiating elder, I believe.

She was married Dec. 24, 1868, to Dryden Henderson Carpenter, at the home of his parents, Halsey and Sarah Ann Carpenter, near Rockbridge, Richland Co. Wisconsin, by justice of the peace Richard Pratt. The young couple took up housekeeping with his parents, renting the farm for the coming season. The next fall-1869 they moved to her father's home about 3 miles from Loyd, and remained there until the fall of 1871-during which time her parents and younger brother were in Iowa. Here their first boy Claude Irving and first girl, Constance Ivy, were born. In the fall of 1871 late in September the family which now consisted of father, mother and two small children, one nearly two years old, the other a tiny bebe of eight weeks, started overland in "prairie schooners" for Kansas which was the pioneer's Mecca at that time. They drove 1 Yoke of milk cows-one yoke oxen-Milked the cows on the way. They were accompanied by [L]Ou's sister Cordelia and her husband, Jott Stout also her brother Daniel who drove a horse team. On the way to Kansas they stopped at Anamosa, Iowa to visit Polly Alspach, who was Lou's aunt, being a sister of her father David.-Some time between their marriage and this trip to Kansas, I think during their first summer Lou and Dryden made a trip to Bertram, Lynn Co. Iowa, to visit Lou's Clarissa Berry and her family. It was during this visit that the small photo of her was taken-the one with curls and a striped dress.-The family remained in Kansas until the fall of 1874 during which time they entered a homestead and lived on it for some time, until the drouth and grasshoppers drove them out. While here the second son and third child, Oscar Melburn, was born. Their post office while here was Matfield Green Chase Co., Kansas. - The crops utterly destroyed by the drouth and grasshoppers they decided to give up the homestead and drove back to Richland Co., Wis., spending part of the winter with his parents and part with her parents. The summer of 1875 was spent operating his fathers farm. That fall they purchased a 40 near her folks and lived here for a while. The place had but little cleared and only a tiny log cabin for buildings. Here Clinton Shipman, was born. In the fall of 1876 they moved to Plum Valley, south of Wonemoc, Juneau Co., Wis. where he hauled logs for a mill all winter and in the spring of 1877 moved to Union Center, [see page 2]

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