Outagamie County, WI - "Spaulding's Heritage"
        
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 Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives
 Subject: newspaper article "Spaulding's Heritage""
 Submitted by: county coordinator 
 EMAIL: jmmarasch@aol.com
 Date Submitted: 15 March 2000
        
 Source: New London Press newspaper article from Bicentennial issue, undated.
 
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                     Spaulding's Heritage
                        by Diane Montz
                               
      Dwight Spaulding got an early start in the newspaper business.
      When he was five years old he emptied Charlie Carr' s waste basket. Carr was publisher of the New
 London newspaper.
      Dwight didn't get rich from the job because Carr only paid him a penny.
      Spaulding's history in New London goes back beyond his own 77 years.  His great grandfather was Ira
 Millerd Jr. -reportedly the first white settler in the New London area.
      The headline on Millerd's obituary claimed he once owned all the land New London was built on.
 Spaulding believes it.
          "I have to believe everything it says, because it was in the Press," he said, laughing.
          Spaulding has another story of his great grandfather.  His mother told it to him, and Spaulding says she
 wasn't one to brag or exaggerrate, so he thinks it must have been true.
          The first bridge across the Wolf at New London was a toll bridge.  Millerd was on his way home one day
 after hauling logs or feed -- Spaulding doesn't know which -to market.
          The bridge attendant couldn't make change for Millerd's $20 bill and Millerd didn't have any small change. 
 The attendant refused to let Millerd cross. (Spaulding says the bridge attendant was  the town loafer -- given the job because it wasn't much work and it supported his family.)
          Millerd got mad, hitched his rig to the chain on the toll gate and jerked the gate off the bridge.
          "And that was the end of the toll bridge," Spaulding said.
          Some of the land Millerd once owned is Rasmussen canal today.
          Spaulding has a document signed by his grandfather, Rasmussen and two witnesses that deeds a parcel of
 land to Rasmussen for the canal for one dollar.
          In 1863 the civil war reached into the midwest for soldiers.
          Spaulding's grandfather paid the Green Bay draft board $300 to avoid conscription.  Because he farmed 160
 acres and had three children, he was exempted from military service.
          Spaulding says the practice was common during the Civil war.  But he doesn't think single men were allowed
 to buy their way out.
          Spaulding says his father was the "first and probably only cartoonist the Press ever had."
          Editions of the New London Press in 1903 and 1904 featured his father's cartoons.  Spaulding's father was a
 telegraph linemen, but broke his leg and was temporarily off the lines.
          So he worked for Charlie Carr -- and the work included drawing cartoons.
          Spaulding got into the newspaper business from the ad department.
          In 1922 and 23 he was the first classified man at the Post Crescent.  He increased the classified section from
 40 inches to a full page.
          Then he sold ads for papers in the southwest.
          In 1937 he came back to New London and the Press.
          In 1932 he put together the first New London city directory.  The directory has a collector's item limited
 edition map of the City - drawn by one of Spaulding's cousins.
          "He was the city engineer," Spaulding said.
          In 1937 Spaulding worked at the New London Press.
          "That wasn't too good," he said.  "It was during the Roosevelt depression."
          A year later he printed an updated city directory.
          Along with his ad sales, Spaulding wrote a weekly column for the paper.
          In 1937 he was on the country circuit, so he titled the news briefs "Around the Circuit."
          "It was my first serious writing," he said.
          A later column was "From the Adman's Typewriter" and featured a caricature of Spaulding poised over a
 typewriter.
          Today Spaulding lives at Manawa.  His drawers and closets are full of old pictures and newspaper clippings
 and head is full of New London history.