An Eagle Service Project, the culmination of a Scout’s
commitment to an intensive advancement program, must demonstrate leadership of
others while benefitting the scout’s community, school or another non-profit
organization. It is estimated that Eagle
Projects contribute approximately 3 million hours of community service every
year.
Local veteran’s-service organizations have loyally marked the graves of servicemen at Lakeside for many years but the lists they use to locate the graves are incomplete, inaccurate and confusing. With the guidance of local UW-Madison Division of Extension Positive Youth Development Educator and Historical Society president, Michelle Gobert, Bradley reviewed those outdated materials and lead family members and his fellow Scouts from Crandon Troop 649 in confirming and correcting information on-site. He then developed an online database that includes the block and lot location of each veteran.
The main point of Bradley’s presentation was that his
project is not a finished product, rather it provides a base for more
information and corrections to the existing list. “There are actually people that are on the
list who don’t belong there and a LOT who should be on the list but are not”,
he said. The Society is hoping to
schedule some organized efforts to continue Bradley’s work. In the meantime, we encourage the public to
visit the site. Visitors can search for
friends and family members and will find a form on which they can provide
additions and corrections.
Searching the database is easy. The database is online and veterans are listed by lot number but can be easily searched by last name. While the primary goal of the list is to provide a more accurate and complete tool for locating graves, the database has future potential to store biographies, obituaries and other documents pertaining these brave men and women. The database also includes a suggestion form for capturing information that may be missing from the database. Please direct any questions about the project and/or the database to Michelle at 715-478-7797 or forestctyhistory@gmail.com
The biographical sketch below was part of the Crandon Public Library’s 2016 Cemetery Tour featuring WW1 soldiers laid to rest in the Crandon Lakeside cemetery. Research for the sketch was conducted by Library staff using original documents and newspaper resources found within our Local History room. We welcome any additional historic information on our soldiers, including photos. Please contact us at forestctyhistory@gmail.com to submit this information. –Thank you.
Hello, my name is Lynn Paul. I
was born on December 2, 1893, in Lincoln County, Wisconsin. When I was a
few years old, my parents, James and Agnes Paul, moved my sisters and I to the
town of Prentice, in Price County. My father was a traveling insurance
agent and in 1910 he traveled to Crandon. He must have liked it here an
awful lot because he decided to stay here and raise us kids in Crandon.
United States, Selective Service System. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. M1509, 4,582 rolls. Imaged from Family History Library microfilm.
I was 23 years old when I registered
for the draft. I was working in Karlberg’s grocery store in Crandon at that
time and was a member of the Wisconsin National Guard. After I was
drafted and trained in the Army I was sent to an artillery camp in
France. While I was at the camp I saw a lot of German
prisoners. They were real young fellows. Some of them were actually
Hamburg University students who really didn’t seem to side with the Kaiser as
much as other prisoners did. I talked to a few prisoners who had lived in
the States for awhile but unfortunately our superiors gave us the order
forbidding us to talk to them so I never found out if they liked living in
Wisconsin.
My buddy “Sloppy Weather George
Gifford” came to my camp before his trip to Paris. I wish George could
have been in the artillery unit with Ben Ferguson and I as he was a blame good
scout. We were all proud and glad to fight for Uncle Sam especially after
seeing the conditions of France and the Germans. We were sure the
Americans would bring home the bacon because us Sammies showed more pep in a
minute than those Germans did in a week. In fact, I told Art Carpenter in a
letter I wrote to him that was published in the Forest Republican that if “all
the Germans and French are as slow as the ones I seen, it is no wonder that the
war was lasting so long. It takes the German prisoners longer to fix a bath
house or dig a sewer than it took Forest county to build the court house”
When I got back from the War, I
married my girl Adah Moe and become a brother-in-law to Colonel Himes.
Ada and I had three children: two daughters and one son, Mary, Ellen and James.
Many of you might recall that I was the owner and operator of Paul’s Grocery
Store in town for 43 ½ years. My family and I lived above the store that is now
the chiropractor’s office on Main street. I always had candy to give to
kids who came in my store, as well as candy to throw to kids at parades.
People said I was a very nice guy, highly thought of in the community. During
the great depression I gave two bags of groceries to 7-year-old Homer Rosa at
no charge shortly after his family moved to Crandon and had very little
money. After that, Homer’s mother never shopped for groceries anywhere
else.
Crandon Street Scene. Crandon Area Historical Society Archives. Crandon Community Building Collection. 2013.1.1.138-2
I guess my patriotic feelings for our grand country must have made an impression on my own son James because during WWII he enlisted and as part of the 717th Bombardment Squadron and flew combat missions over enemy targets in southern Europe, Germany, Austria, France and in the Balkans. Our family was devastated when he plane was shot down on February 19, 1945 and he was officially declared “missing in action”
My wife and I and James sister’s Mary and Ellen had a headstone placed here in our family’s plot in memory of him. I guess his name is also listed on a plaque in Florence Italy along with the names of the other soldiers missing in action and assumed dead. We were real proud when the Government awarded Jim with the purple heart for his ultimate service to our country.
Find A Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 03 June 2019), memorial page for Corp James Lynn Paul (24 Nov 1925–19 Feb 1945), Find A Grave Memorial no. 143606612, citing Crandon Lakeside Cemetery, Crandon, Forest County, Wisconsin, USA ; Maintained by Kevin Jackson (contributor 47952677) .
My wife and I spent our last days in Crandon. I died in 1975 at the age of 81.
In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words:
“To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…”
This morning I spent some time with the 1944 edition of the Forest Republican. Not a week went by in 1944 that Forest Republican readers were not told about a local boy missing in action, or one that had fought and died for our country. The clippings below only offer us a glimpse into the lives of these soldiers and does not give justice to their time served, nor their sacrifices given. It does allow us to pause, remember and to share.
If you are interested in helping us preserve these stories as they deserved to be told, please contact Michelle at the Library.
Here’s a follow up, written by local historian R.T. Krueger, about Forest County’s Civil War veteran James Beulen. R.T. has spent many hours researching and documenting Forest County’s civil war veterans and over the years he has managed to track down photos of the veterans. A photo of James Beulen and some of his contemporaries is included in this post as well.
I’d never make a good academic historian – I’m too eager to fill in blanks with my own opinions. Create personalities for people from the shreds of documentation. I’ve done this with far too many of the folks I’ve researched and James Beulen is no exception. He seems to me to have had the classic “bark is worse than the bite” personality. Serious, civic-minded, even gruff when the situation required, but never too full of himself to take things too seriously. Never afraid to be made fun of respectfully and to do the same to others. Quietly generous with his time and money.
Shirley Coleman, of Crandon, provided me with a page of hand-written notes her mother had put together on memories from her childhood. This is what she said of Mr. Beulen, “Civil War veteran, often visited my folks, told us war stories, every other word was a curse, we loved it.”
Jim Beulen was born in the east, but came to the frontiers of Wisconsin as a kid, along with a wave of New York farmers who made the journey in the 1840’s and 1850’s. He and several of his brothers enlisted in the Union service during the Civil war and Jim rose to the rank of sergeant by its close.
Like so many other young men from Central Wisconsin, Jim hooked up with logging crews working in the northwoods and, by 1884, was employed at a new mill on the north shore of Lake Metonga. When Forest County was created a year later, Governor Jeremiah Rusk, himself a Civil War vet, named Buelen to be the first sheriff. Governor Rusk was probably looking for a man with some natural sense of authority and leadership and Buelen’s wartime experience would have made him a prime candidate. Jim Buelen resigned as sheriff after only a short time, but would later serve the community as an alderman and in other civic roles throughout his years in Crandon.
While these things make him noteworthy as a pioneer settler in Crandon, it is the informal paper trail that he left that makes him interesting to me. He seems to have been one of the local newsmen’s go-to guys on those slow news days. A man who always had some ridiculous cause, complaint, or issue to keep the typesetter busy. These are some of my favorites:
Fine Cut Club Resolves
That the Rights of the American Citizen are Being Trampled Upon
At the last meeting of the Fine-Cut Club a resolution was passed authorizing the president of the order to appoint a commission to investigate the workings of that unholy combination the tobacco trust. To the members of the Club, tobacco is the staff of life, and the article put upon the market in these degenerate days is something fierce. Brown paper, sawdust, bootlegs, and supernuated German socks, it is believed are ground up and sold as “Duke’s Misery”, “Dub’s Delight” and other popular brands, while plug contains things unmentionable.
A prominent member of the club said he bit off a chaw of plug once and immediately thereafter found a rat’s tail between his teeth. He said on more than one occasion the hired girl had complained about his breath and he would like to know how he could have a violet breath on a diet of rat tails. What?
One of the veteran members of the Club advocated a boycott upon all Crandon merchants who refused to keep “poor boxes” in a prominent place in their stores. He said he had patronized Crandon merchants liberally for many years, running large accounts, some of which he had been forced to pay, and he thought any self-respecting dealer should willingly furnish free tobacco to such as he, as well as free cigarette papers to tallow-faced dudes. The brother’s remarks were uproariously cheered.
The next meeting of the order will be held on “All Fool’s Day”, April 1st. A special program is being prepared.
Sporting News
Col. James Beulen, president of the Crandon Euchre Club and Fine Cut Chewers Union arrived home Saturday from a trip to Seattle. In an interview with the sporting editor of this paper he stated that prospects look good for some interesting games this winter and with the knowledge he had picked up on his trip he could easily trim anyone brought forth…. Mr. Beulen expects to meet all comers and convince them that they do not know anything about the game… Hereafter, spectators on the sidelines will be charged a nickel a piece, the fund to be used in buying chewing tobacco for the players… Thomas Walker, he of little words, has been chosen by James as a partner. When the score gets too close for comfort and the opposing players go over the top and out upon no-man’s land, Walker and Beulen will give them a gas attack. Mr. Walker will quote a few of the ten commandments and little Shakespeare and Mr. Beulen will use a few chose words that go something like pbzqtohellwiththem. This method of attack is sure to rattle their opponents and win the game. Since leaving Crandon, Mr. Beulen has learned to swear in French and Dago which feature will be introduced whenever necessary.
Beulen spent time out West with old buddies and his brother, but reported not being impressed and always returned to Northern Wisconsin. He passed away in 1926 after over 40 years on and off in the area.
