Biography: Winnebago County, Wisconsin: John STRANGE

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Submitted by Kathy Grace, <gendiva@charter.net> December 2007

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Transcribed from 
Lawson, Publius V.  History, Winnebago County, Wisconsin: its cities,
towns, resources people. Chicago: C.F. Cooper and Company, 1908. v.2 p.680

Mr. John Strange, the original organizer [John Strange Paper Company], was
born near Oakfield, in Fond du Lac county, on June 27, 1862.  His father,
the late Thomas Strange, came to Menasha in 1850, but it was not until John
was six months old that his father brought his wife and little boy to what
was then but a hamlet in the backwoods.  Thos. Strange was one of the
rugged pioneers, who had to do with the very beginnings of the place.  John
Strange attended the public schools until the age of sixteen, and then
entered Beloit College, which he attended for some time, leaving it to
teach school two years.  At the age of nineteen he went to Minneapolis,
where for about a year he clerked in a store.  In the winter of 1874-5 he
kept books for the Eagle flour mills and bought wheat on the streets for
Mr. Alexander Syme.  In the following winter he went to Dale and built the
first store erected in that place.  On July 11, 1876, he was married at
Neenah to Miss Mary M. McGregor, of that place, and in the fall of that
year went to Rosehill, Iowa, and bought a lumber yard, which, after
conducting a year, he traded for a yard at Monticello, Iowa, where he
carried on the lumber business one year longer, when he sold out and came
back to Menasha, and entered into a partnership with Mr. Henry Sherry, the
Neenah lumberman.  In the fall of 1879 he bought Mr. Sherry's interest and
closed out the business very soon after.  In 1880, Mr. Strange formed a
partnership with the late Mr. P.V. Lawson, Sr., in the sawmill and lumber
business, the firm operating the mill which Mr. Lawson had just completed
on the site now occupied by the plant of the John Strange Paper Company.
Within a year Mr. Lawson died, and the interest of the estate in the
property was bought by the surviving partner, Mr. Strange, who ran the mill
for several years and in 1884 built in connection with it a woodenware
plant which he operated successfully until 1887 when the machinery and
other personal property was bought by the deal left the buildings and water
power on his hands, which the same year he converted into a strawboard and
wrapping paper mill.  A year later he added a print paper machine, and at
the same time replaced the wooden buildings with substantial structures of
brick.  In 1891 he organized the John Strange Paper Company, with a capital
stock of $100,000, and served as its president and general manager until
January 1, 1895.  In the summer of 1896 Mr. Strange was nominated in the
Republican county convention for register of deeds, and at the general
election in the fall was elected by one of the largest majorities ever
given a county officer.  For several years he engaged in the brick and real
estate business in Alexandria, Indiana.  He returned to Menasha in 1906, to
assume the management of the holder in the Mirror works at Oshkosh, and
director in the Fox River Paper Company of Appleton, and administrator of
the McMillan estate at Oshkosh.