Old Wade House, Wisconsin Historic Site

By Brian D'Ambrosio

Where stagecoaches stopped a century ago, Wisconsin motorists can visit this summer. The park, centered by the Old Wade House inn, was opened in 1953 by the Kohler Foundation. It lies about 90 miles north of Racine on Highway 23 between Sheboygan and Fond du Lac, route of the old plank road once followed by stagecoaches and covered wagons.

To link the eras of stages and streamliners, 75-year-old Lincoln Biographer Carl Sandburg was principal speaker at the June 7, 1953, dedication attended by some 2,000 invited guests.

Gesturing toward the inn, where legend says Abraham Lincoln was a guest, Sandburg paid tribute to Sylvanus Wade, builder of the old stagecoach stop and founder of the village of Greenbush which surrounds it. Then, the poet-folk singer picked up his guitar and set the grounds ringing with songs they hadn't heard in half a century.

Tribute was paid, too, to the late Mrs. Herbert V. Kohler, who directed restoration of the buildings and their furnishings on the four-acre plot along the Mullett River before her death in March 1953.

In addition to Wade House where Sylvanus and Betsy Wade settled with their nine children, the park shelters Butternut House, home of Charles Robinson and his wife, the Wade's daughter Julia Sylvanus' old blacksmith shop, built before the inn was completed in 1851; and the split rock maple sugar cabin.

When the Kohler Foundation bought the site in 1950, both buildings and their appointments were in disrepair. Today, visitors will find the 20-room inn and other buildings just as they were seen by visitors of an earlier day. Many of the original furnishings, together with heirlooms from other old Wisconsin homes, were gathered and restored for the park by Mrs. Herbert Kohler in memory of her sister-in-law, Marie Christine Kohler.

There is a collection of fantastic old stoves, Betsy Wade's "best" china of rare peafowl pattern Spatterware and her "everyday" sets of ironware and coin silver spoons. On the tables and highboys are fine pieces of early glass and chinaware and objects of pewter and silver. In the parlors where guests waited for dinner at the inn, there are long chair-benches or "settles" and blackened pots used by the inn's first mistress, hang in the fireplace kitchen. Off the kitchen is the Wade's small bedroom where portraits show Betsy with hair parted in the middle and drawn into puffs at each side and Sylvanus with a Lincoln-type beard.

A summer kitchen with an old well in one corner also opens off the formal kitchen. Here a mannequin in period costume is posed ironing and her finished work on a clothes rack nearby includes the wedding nightgown of Allie Wade, wife of Hollis, who succeeded his father as operator of the Wade House.

There are spinning wheels, four poster beds and a large loom, and in the tavern is the original back is flanked by tiny cubicles and the bar, the dry sink, the registration desk, tables and chairs where tired stagecoach passengers slagged the dust in their throats.

In the second and third floor rooms are document cases containing the original land grants, copies of old newspapers and magazines and Wade family records. The "grey parlor" on the second floor and the adjoining room displays a wall paper reproduced from a design brought from Scotland around 1842. The paper in the "green parlor" dates from about 1845. A melodeon in this parlor was among the original furnishings and was bought for $60 at Fond du Lac in 1864 for Allie Stannard. Allie, then employed at Wade House for $12 a month and "keep," later married Hollis Wade.

The ballroom on the third floor served as bedrooms for the stage' coach drivers. On the wall is a big American flag with 30 stars, the 30th representing Wisconsin. The flag was made by Mrs. Chester Rhea, a resident of Greenbush, between 1848, when Wisconsin achieved statehood, and 1850.

Many of the costumes worn by mannequins posed at work and play about the house were found in the old inn. Others were donated by friends of Mrs. Kohler and are more than 150 years old. Much of the furniture for both the inn and Butternut House is believed to have been made by

Charles Robinson in his shop at the sawmill. Butternut House, which takes its name from the native wood used in its building, also retains some of its original furnishings. The blacksmith shop is equipped with all the tools used to reshoe the stage horses, including a bellows and anvil more than 150 years old, and its walls are hung with horseshoes and ox yokes. And up the little river from the smithy, the remains of the old dam that provided power for Robinson's mill are framed by the park's old trees, forming a picnic site for visitors of today.