| A History of STRUM and the TOWN OF UNITY by Roy Matson |
| THIS IS PAGE 29 | TABLE OF CONTENTS | PAGE BACK | PAGE FORWARD |
| County Trunk B. Both branches begin about 1142 feet above sea level on either side of this ridge, but less than 1/4 mile apart. The Osseo bench mark where the forks merge reads 958 feet above sea level. The river drops to 892 feet ASL at Strum, 872’ at Eleva, is 812’ at Mondovi and enters the beef sloughs at 682 feet above sea level. French explorers and traders are given credit for the original name, Riviere Des Beauf. Their language had no name for buffalo at that time (1685), the(y) called these large animals “bof”, meaning beef. A few bison had crossed the Mississippi and were roaming these lower river valleys and the Trempealeau prairie at that time. Residents of this valley use the literal English translation. The stream had been the “Beef” for well over a hundred years. Now to municipal names - Mondovi was visited by Napoleon’s army on an early foray into Italy. The first settlers here used “pancake valley” for a short time. The 1877 Tucker map has “New Chicago” at the Eleva location. The first merchant, R. P. Goddard, and E. S. Carpenter platted the “Eleva addition to Albion” in December, 1877 and filed the paper in January, 1878. From that time the place was known as Eleva and was a lively, strictly dry, trade center. The first elevator was erected some 14 years later, refuting another story. The first inkling of any movement that eventually established a community center that resulted in “Strum” began when Sumner supervisor Even Evenson laid out a town road parallelling the present County D into the Big Creek area. His sole objective was additional membership for St. Paul’s Norwegian Lutheran Church, which was erected later that spring and ready for its first worship service on May 18, 1877. The wheel tracks were known as the Carter Creek Road which continued south of the river and became the main street of Strum. A two acre plot for a church and cemetery was donated by A. J. Lyon with an agreement that he and his family have a burial site. The old pioneer’s marker can be easily seen next to the present day Woodland Drive. This area was a sparsely settled part of Unity when it formed in 1878. A year later Pastor C. J. Helsem came to serve the two-year-old St. Paul’s congregation and erected a small home on the present Boehne property. Later Per Bonkrud built a blacksmith shop on what is now Woodland Drive, then known as the Osseo road. In late 1883 Thor Holden and Ole Kittleson each set up two small general store buildings on this same road. Kittleson’s place of business still stands at 313 Woodland Drive and was the site of considerable sign painting for several years. Kittleson received a postal appointment of February 20, 1885. It must have been a big day for the Norwegian settlers. No longer was it necessary to hike 3-4 miles to Hamlin where they dealt with crusty Russell Bowers for any mail. The local community was small, the brush line was broken by only six buildings. Besides Holden’s and Kittleson’s stores, the church, Finstad’s blacksmith shop, a small one room school and Pastor Helsem’s residence comprised the whole town - and it needed a name. Kittleson had a shingle to paint. “Price” for congressman W. T. Price was suggested but he had been accorded that honor further up river. A note somewhere credits Kittleson with suggesting Strum, but there is agreement the choice was made by Pastor Helsem. A news story by two local men published in the Skandinavian, a Chicago Norwegian daily, reveals that Helsem had suggested “Strum” in honor of Louis Strum, the Eau Claire County Register of Deeds. He had been speaker at local Temperance Society meetings, was interested in youth and served on the board of directors of the first YMCA in Eau Claire. Pastor Helsem was a promoter of the society and Mr. Strum had been his house guest on several occasions. So Kittleson painted “Strum P. O.” on a board. The honored gentleman was rather unaffected and had, in fact, made a remark, “It wasn’t much of a place to have named for one”. It was either this remark, or Kittleson may have had sympathy for Samuel Tilden, the Democrat presidential candidate who had received the most popular votes in the 1876 |