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Famous Folks of Jefferson County, Wisconsin
Jefferson County, Wisconsin and the surrounding area have been home to many famous folks over the years! Some of these are household names; others may be new to you.
From A (Helmut Ajango, considered to be Fort Atkinson’s own Frank Lloyd Wright and architect of the Fireside Dinner Theatre, The Gobbler Restaurant, and the Fort Atkinson Area Chamber of Commerce building) to Z, here are some of our standout citizens!
Helmut Ajango of Fort Atkinson
Helmut “Mike” Ajango (November 30, 1931 – November 15, 2013) pictured above was an Estonian-born architect based in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin in the United States.
He designed more than 175 churches in southern Wisconsin as well as Fireside Dinner Theatre (1964) and The Gobbler. His work has been described as combining Mid-Century Modern architecture and Prairie Architecture. Fellow Fort Atkinson architect Gene LaMuro worked with Ajango on some of his projects.
He established his architectural firm in Fort Atkinson in 1962.”
Source: wikipedia.com
“Arthur Davidson Sr. (February 11, 1881 – December 30, 1950) was an American businessman. He was one of the four original founders of Harley-Davidson.
Davidson was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to William C Davidson (1846–1923), who was born and grew up in Angus, Scotland, and Margaret Adams McFarlane (1843–1933) of Scottish descent from the small Scottish settlement of Cambridge, Wisconsin, and raised five children together: Janet May, William A., Walter, Arthur and Elizabeth. Arthur’s grandfather Alexander “Sandy” Davidson (from Aberlemno, Scotland) and Margaret Scott immigrated from Scotland to the United States in 1858 with their six children, including Arthur’s father William.
Eventually they settled in Wisconsin, and it was there that, in 1903, Arthur, went into business with William S. Harley, making motorcycles in his family shed.”
Source: wikipedia.com
“Ole Evinrude, born Ole Andreassen Aaslundeie (April 19, 1877 – July 12, 1934) was an American entrepreneur, known for the invention of the first outboard motor with practical commercial application.
Ole Evinrude was born in Hunndalen in the municipality of Vardal (now Gjøvik), in Oppland, Norway. The Evinrude surname, which he adopted in the United States, is an oeconym from the Evenrud farm in Vestre Toten, where his mother was born. In October 1881, his father emigrated to America, followed the next year by Evinrude, his mother and two siblings. Three additional siblings were born in America. The family settled on a farm in Ripley Lake near Cambridge, Wisconsin.
At age sixteen, Evinrude went to Madison, where he worked in machinery stores and studied engineering on his own. He became a machinist while working at various machine tool firms in Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and Chicago.”
Source: wikipedia.com
Genevieve Foster of Whitewater
Genevieve Stump Foster (April 13, 1893 – August 30, 1979) was an American children’s writer who illustrated most of her own books. She was one runner-up for the annual Newbery Medal four times, one of four writers to do so.
Ms. Foster was fascinated by the idea of looking at history “horizontally” and seeing how events and the lives of people interconnected. “History is drama,” she once wrote, “with men and nations as the actors. Why not present it with all the players who belong together on the stage at once rather than only one character on the stage at a time?”
Foster was born in Oswego, New York, to John William Stump, a science teacher, and Jessie Starin Stump. A year after she was born her father died, and her mother moved with Genevieve, an only child, to live with her parents in Whitewater, Wisconsin, where she spent most of her childhood. Foster cited the Wisconsin home and her grandmother as early influences.”
Sources: exodusbooks.com and wikipedia.com
Eva Kinney Griffith of Whitewater
Eva Kinney Griffith Miller (née, Kinney; after first marriage, Griffith; after second marriage, Miller; November 8, 1852 – 1918) was an American journalist, temperance activist, novelist, newspaper editor, and journal publisher.
Griffith was lecturer and organizer of the Wisconsin Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) for several years. Her illustrated lectures won her the name of “Wisconsin Chalk Talker.” She wrote temperance lessons and poems for the Temperance Banner and The Union Signal. She also published a temperance novel A Woman’s Evangel (Chicago, 1892), having already put out a volume named Chalk Talk Handbook (1887), and True Ideal, a journal devoted to purity and faith studies.
In 1891, Miller moved to Chicago where she became a special writer for the Daily News Record, and afterwards, an editor on the Chicago Times, and by this means, she made public her views on temperance.
Source: wikipedia.com
Charlie Grimm of Lake Koshkonong
“Charles John Grimm (August 28, 1898 – November 15, 1983), nicknamed “Jolly Cholly”, was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played in Major League Baseball as a first baseman, most notably for the Chicago Cubs; he was also a sometime radio sports commentator, and a popular goodwill ambassador for baseball. He played for the Pittsburgh Pirates early in his career, but was traded to the Cubs in 1925 and worked mostly for the Cubs for the rest of his career.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri to parents of German extraction, Grimm was known for being outgoing and chatty, even singing old-fashioned songs while accompanying himself on a left-handed banjo.Grimm is one of a select few to have played and managed in 2,000 games each.
After his retirement from baseball, he lived adjacent to Lake Koshkonong, near Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. Grimm died in Scottsdale, Arizona at age 85, from cancer. His widow was granted permission to spread his ashes on Wrigley Field.”
Source: wikipedia.com
William Dempster Hoard of Fort Atkinson
“William Dempster Hoard (October 10, 1836 – November 22, 1918) was an American politician, newspaper publisher, and agriculture advocate who served as the 16th governor of Wisconsin from 1889 to 1891.
Hoard is called the “father of modern dairying”; his advocacy for scientific agriculture and the expansion of dairy farming has been credited with changing Wisconsin’s agricultural economy. Hoard’s promotion of the use of silos and alfalfa for cattle feed, testing for bovine tuberculosis, and single-use cattle herds in his magazine Hoard’s Dairyman led to those practices becoming commonplace throughout the United States. His work with the Wisconsin Dairymen’s Association led to the exporting of Wisconsin dairy products to the East Coast and national renown for them.
As editor of his newspaper the Jefferson County Union, Hoard was one the first county news editors to expand his coverage through the use of local correspondents and to include a strongly voiced editorial page in a small newspaper, which he used to advocate for improved farming practices and dairy farming.
As Governor of Wisconsin, Hoard established the Dairy and Food Commission—one of the first food inspection agencies in the United States—and passed a controversial, short-lived compulsory education law that required all students in the state be taught in English as part of the Americanization process for German and Scandinavian immigrants.”
Source: wikipedia.com
“Jenkin Lloyd Jones (November 14, 1843 – September 12, 1918) was a Unitarian minister in the United States, and also the uncle of Frank Lloyd Wright. He founded All Souls Unitarian Church in Chicago, Illinois, as well as its community outreach organization, the Abraham Lincoln Centre. A radical modernist, he joined the “Unity Men” and stressed a creedless “ethical basis” as the common element for churches. He tried to move Unitarianism away from a Christian focus and became a prominent pacifist at the time of World War I. He was a founder and long-time editor of Unity, a liberal religious weekly magazine.”
Source: wikipedia.com
Robert Kastenmeier of Watertown
“Robert William Kastenmeier (January 24, 1924 – March 20, 2015) was an American Democratic politician who represented central Wisconsin in the United States House of Representatives for 32 years, from 1959 until 1991.[1] He was a key sponsor of the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986.”
Source: wikipedia.com
“Rose Marie “Rosemary” Kennedy (September 13, 1918 – January 7, 2005) was the eldest daughter born to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She was a sister of President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. and Ted Kennedy.
Rosemary Kennedy spent most of the rest of her life being cared for at St. Coletta, an institution in Jefferson, Wisconsin. The truth about her situation and whereabouts was kept secret for decades. While she was initially isolated from her siblings and extended family following her lobotomy, Rosemary did go on to visit them during her later life.”
Source: wikipedia.com
“Matthew Roy Kenseth (born March 10, 1972) is an American former professional stock car racing driver. He drives the No. 8 car in the Superstar Racing Experience. (SRX)
Kenseth started racing on several short tracks in Wisconsin and won track championships at Madison International Speedway, Slinger Super Speedway and Wisconsin International Raceway. He moved to the ARTGO, American Speed Association, and Hooters Late Model touring series before getting a full-time ride in the NASCAR Busch Series (now Xfinity Series) for his former Wisconsin short track rival Robbie Reiser, finishing second and third in the standings.”
Source: wikipedia.com
Thure Kumlien of Lake Koshkonong
“Thure Ludwig Theodor Kumlien (November 9, 1819 – August 5, 1888) was a Swedish-American ornithologist, naturalist, and taxidermist. A contemporary of Thoreau, Audubon, and Agassiz, he contributed much to the knowledge of the natural history of Wisconsin and its birds. He collected and shipped specimens to many investigators in the United States and abroad. He taught botany and zoology, as well as foreign languages, at Albion Academy, and was particularly regarded as an expert in the identification of birds’ nests.”
Source: wikipedia.com
Lorine Niedecker of Fort Atkinson
“Lorine Faith Niedecker (English: pronounced Needecker) (May 12, 1903 – December 31, 1970) was an American poet. Niedecker’s poetry is known for its spareness, its focus on the natural landscapes of Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest (particularly waterscapes), its philosophical materialism, its mise-en-page experimentation, and its surrealism. She is regarded as a major figure in the history of American regional poetry, the Objectivist poetic movement, and the mid-20th-century American poetic avant-garde.
Niedecker was born on Black Hawk Island near Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin to Theresa (Daisy) (née Kunz) and Henry Niedecker and lived most of her life in rural isolation. She grew up surrounded by the sights and sounds of the river until she moved to Fort Atkinson to attend school. The environment of birds, trees, water and marsh would inform her later poetry.”
Source: wikipedia.com
Sterling North of Lake Koshkonong
“Thomas Sterling North (November 4, 1906 – December 21, 1974) was an American writer. He is best known for the children’s novel Rascal, a bestseller in 1963.
North was born on the second floor of a farmhouse on the shores of Lake Koshkonong, a few miles from Edgerton, Wisconsin, in 1906.[1] Surviving a near-paralyzing struggle with polio in his teens, he grew to young adulthood in the quiet southern Wisconsin village of Edgerton, which North transformed into the “Brailsford Junction” setting of several of his books.”
Source: wikipedia.com
“Carlotta Perry (1839 or 1848 – March 4, 1914), the pen name of Charlotte Augusta Perry, was an American writer of poetry and prose.
Carlotta Perry was the pen name of poet Charlotte Augusta Perry, who lived on the corner of Jefferson and Second streets many years ago. In 1850 when she was 11, her father and grandmother died of cholera. Between 1850 and the end of the 19th century, Perry became a nationally known and much published poet. Although she was almost forgotten even before her death in 1914, she was recognized for many years as a noted woman writer and has left a legacy of rich, poignant poetry.
She was a teacher in Watertown, but her writing career began in earnest in the 1860s when she began having pieces published in a La Crosse newspaper. In the 1870s, she began to work and write for the Watertown Democrat. Sometime after she started writing, she took the name Carlotta and was ever after published and referred to by that name. Poetry was popular in her era and the Watertown Democrat printed many of Perry’s poems as did other state newspapers and national literary magazines. She also wrote essays and children’s literature, as well as news stories.
Recognition of her poetry began to grow after she moved with her mother to Milwaukee sometime before 1880. She wrote for the Milwaukee Sentinel and was the center of a well known group of women writers from Wisconsin. After her mother died, she moved to Chicago and again taught. A book of her poems was published in 1888. She did not write for about the last 15 years of her life.
She died on March 4, 1914, and was buried in the family plot in Oak Hill Cemetery, but no headstone marks her grave.”
Sources: wikipedia.com and watertownhistory.org
“Craig Rice (born Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig; June 5, 1908 – August 28, 1957) was an American writer of mystery novels and short stories, described by book critic Bill Ruehlmann as “the Dorothy Parker of detective fiction, she wrote the binge and lived the hangover.”
In 1908, Mary Randolph Craig reluctantly interrupted her globetrotting to return home to Chicago to give birth to her first child, Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig. Mary’s husband, Harry Craig, a Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, native, was nicknamed Bosco. Soon after Georgiana’s birth, Mary abandoned the child to return to her husband overseas, leaving Georgiana to travel from relative to relative. They returned in 1911 to meet their three-year-old daughter but then departed for Europe again, moving on to India when the war broke out. At that time, Georgiana found a permanent home in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, where she lived with her paternal aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Elton Rice, at 607 South Main St. The Rices raised Georgiana. Elton Rice has been credited with stirring her interest in mysteries by reading her the poems and stories of Edgar Allan Poe.”
Source: wikipedia.com
“Jason Patrick Schuler (born February 24, 1972) is an American former stock car racing driver. He competed in the NASCAR Busch Series from 2000 to 2004. He is currently building cars for JJ Fabrication, Inc. (formerly Pathfinder Chassis), the company he owns and operates along with Joe Wood in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.[1]
Schuler made his first starts in the Busch Series in 2000 when fellow Cambridge native and childhood friend Matt Kenseth, a full-time Cup Series driver, offered him a ride for twelve races in the No. 17 Visine Chevy for Reiser Enterprises that Kenseth was driving part-time. His best finish on the year was 14th at both Gateway (where he led two laps) and at New Hampshire. Schuler struggled, only earning four top-20 finishes, leading to his release at the end of the season in favor of Clay Rogers.”
Source: wikipedia.com
“Cora Lodencia Veronica Scott (April 21, 1840 – January 3, 1923) was one of the best-known mediums of the Spiritualism movement of the last half of the 19th century. Most of her work was done as a trance lecturer, though she also wrote some books whose composition was attributed to spirit guides rather than her own personality.
Cora Scott was born on April 21, 1840, near Cuba, New York. At her birth she had a caul over her face, an intact amniotic sac which is thought in some folk religions to indicate special powers.[1] Her parents, though initially Presbyterian, became interested in the Universalist religion, and in early 1851 joined the Hopedale Community, an intentional community in Hopedale, Massachusetts. Led by Adin Ballou, the community was committed to abolitionism, temperance, socialism, and nonviolence. Finding Hopedale too crowded, the Scott family moved to Waterloo, Wisconsin later that year to found a similar intentional community, with the blessings of Adin Ballou. It was there, in early 1852, that Cora first exhibited her ability to fall into a trance and write messages and speak in ways very unlike herself. Her parents soon began to exhibit her to the surrounding country, and in this way she became a part of the network of trance lecturers that characterized the Spiritualist movement.”
Source: wikipedia.com
“William Joseph Sullivan, Sr. (February 1, 1875 – January 28, 1965) was an American professional baseball player and manager.[1] He played as a catcher in Major League Baseball, most notably as a member of the Chicago White Sox with whom he won a World Series championship in 1906.”
Source: wikipedia.com
“Doris Tetzlaff [″Tetz″] (January 1, 1921 – April 11, 1998) was an infielder and chaperone in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Listed at 5’5″, 155 lb., she batted and threw right-handed. Little is known about this woman who played different roles during ten years in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.”
Source: wikipedia.com
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