| A History of STRUM and the TOWN OF UNITY by Roy Matson |
| INRODUCTION | TABLE OF CONTENTS | PAGE BACK | PAGE FORWARD |
| Introduction (as in the original book) Between the time of his stroke in 1970 and his death in 1979, my father spent most of his time researching and writing the story of his town. In many ways his stroke is responsible for this book, since its forcing retirement on him gave him the time needed and its health implications impressed on him the urgency of the project. We all must understand as we read this history that it deals primarily with Strum’s early years. My father was keenly aware that his generation is the last to have some acquaintance with the early settlers of this area. The incident he mentions when as a young man he discovered the actual sign that Ole Kittleson had first written the name “Strum” held, I believe, special significance. He realized that the history of the years before roughly 1920 had to be recorded now lest they be completely forgotten. So we probably won’t see our own or even our parent’s names in this book. It remains for someone younger to record Strum’s more recent story. There will inevitably be some errors in this book. Some of the pictures are not completely identified and I’m sure some buildings and dates will be wrong. I welcome any correction and will see that corrections are printed in one of the local papers for all to see. Lastly, I would like to mention one of my father’s last wishes. He felt that old pictures and other papers should be kept in a place where they would be available for exhibition and for the use of future generations. He always felt that the library was the logical place for these valuable things to be stored and shown off. As I proffed his papers and struggled over the old pictures, I began to realize how important it is that all the old pictures be identified now before no one is left who remembers. Those of us who have old pictures should identify them now and attach written explanations to them. We should consider donating expecially old pictures to the library. Better they be kept there for all to enjoy than to waste away in someone’s attic. Erik Matson Rhinelander, WI December 1989 |
| Preface: About this Version of the Book Note: My Brother Erik's original introduction to "A History of Strum and the Town of Unity" follows this preface. > Exact same word content as original book. > Typos may be from the original or from my re-type. > Pages of this "book" begin and end with the same words of the original book. That should ease cross reference to the original book. > Paragraph structure is one column vs. two. Internet reading works better with single column. > Pages of the original book were not numbered, these pages are. > You can quickly move from page to page of the this narrative. I have set links to the pictures and/or scans of original pages. If there are no links then there were no pictures on that page of the original book. That gives you the option to read, look at pictures, or both. Pictures load more slowly than text. > Use your browser BACK or the Return to Reading link options to return to reading. > Each section can be reached from the Table of Contents and you can reach the Table of Contents from each page. When available, pictures that appeared on specific pages in the original document can be reached from that page or section in this on-line book. > You may see some ? marks where there should be " ". This is a file transfer error. I am removing these little by little. > Over time I will add links to new material that is relevent to events or people in the original book. This will give this on line version of the book even more value. My brother Erik finished writing and organizing a book that our Father researched for years but was unable to publish before he died. I remember looking through our Father's material soon after his death in 1979 and wondering how we would complete the task. Erik had the skill, the vision and a very good sense of how Dad would organize and write the sections that were incomplete. Fred Matson March 2002 (updated 22 May 2003) |