Sharp's Travels

Today we went to Cassville, about 40 miles from here, the location of Stonefield State Historic Site. It is located on land once part of Governor Nelson Dewey’s agricultural estate. It was developed in the 1860’s and encompassed 2,000 acres.

We got a personal tour of the governor’s estate room by room. Many of the furniture pieces were original to the house. It was interesting to see some of the old kitchen items too. Their version of a bread maker and crock pot!

Also located on site was a 1900’s farm house. Our guide took us through the house and explained all the furnishing and gave us the history of the house. It was all so interesting. It’s great to see all those old furnishings in such great condition.

There was also a 30-building recreation based on Wisconsin villages of that century that provided the farm families with access of goods, services and social services. The mercantile was neat as well as the doctor’s and lawyer’s offices. Their collection of artifacts to fill these building was superb!

The Agricultural Museum has an extensive collection of superb examples of 19th century agricultural machinery, including the 1896 McCormick Auto-mower, which is the oldest tractor in North America. The collection of all that old farm machinery was very interesting.

After we completed our tour we headed into Cassville to get some lunch. We stopped at a corner bar and had soup, pulled pork sandwiches and fries. When we got back into Boscobel we headed over to the folks to hook up our cargo trailer so we would have it ready to leave for Randolph in the morning.

For more information on Stonefield go to their web site at www.wisconsinhistory.org/stonefield

To see pictures click on photos and then on Stonefield.