Freeland Dexter

Before history can be written it must be lived. “The News From Lone Rock” is history reported in real time. It consists of dispatches of Freeland Dexter of Lone Rock as reported in the Weekly Home News of Spring Green, Wisconsin from 1884-1912. Though a small southern Wisconsin today, in Dexter’s time it was a growing railroad town where people lived and loved, laughed and cried and reflected the events of the nation and the world.

Freeland was a beekeeper, farmer, drummer, teacher, small business owner but most charmingly observer of his family and neighbors with wit and humor, hope and compassion. His short, weekly entries talk of local debates over building a bridge or a new school and banning of alcohol and tobacco. He chronicled marriages and parties, the coming of bicycles and cars, the production of brooms and honey and the stringing of corn for the Christmas tree. He shares the agony of children dying from whooping cough and fire, men injured at work and the painful humor of a six-year old getting her tongue frozen to the pump handle.

Lone Rock was not a world unto itself. It had Civil War veterans, including Dexter, and their recruiting post to preserve. It honored Warren Babcock, its hometown soldier in the Spanish War and laid him to rest when he came home. Its citizens mourned the death of President McKinley, felt saved by the election of President Taft and voted for Sen. LaFollette.

“The New From Lone Rock” is a collection of delightful snippets of life, supplemented by photographs, from a by-gone era. Whether you read it straight through or savor it in small in small doses it is a treat not to be missed.

I did receive a free copy of this book without an obligation to post a review.… (más)

I received this book from LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review:

The News From Lone Rock is about Freeland Dexter who was a authentic journalist from Lone Rock, Wisconsin. The book has a very nice introduction by Deanna R. Haney which talks about whop Freeland was as a person. The book is a combination of articles that Freeland wrote, which gives incites into how much he cared for his town.

I loved how the articles were short, so you could easily tell what was going on. In each article you could tell just how much Freeland loved his town. I loved how there were pictures throughout the book to make you feel you were included in the town.

I would strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in the history of journalism or anyone interested in small town history.

5 out of 5 stars… (más)

Freeland Dexter - what a Great Name!

And how welcome that this incredible newspaper saga of his small Wisconsin town of Lone Rock has so remarkably and carefully been restored to us.

"Good and bad, happy and sad," this newspaperman (how we have come to miss them!) relates all the town tales interspersed with his own funny opinionated views.

His updates on the leaping progress, from telegraph to telephone, from muddy spittoon sidewalks to concrete, from self-ferrying trips across the mighty and often
tumultuous Wisconsin River to steel and stone bridges, from no firemen to an entire fire brigade...and so much more...are woven with stories of his growing family.
Their successes and travails are gently offered.

And great tenderness is given to all who deserve it, along with some rousing reprimands to slackers and thieves.

(We hope he would be happy with the progress made in caring for stray dogs,
as well as for the penalty for adultery in Madison,
though he'd likely be astounded with the "progress"
evidenced by the addition of pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and GMOs to his lovely Organic Crops and Bees.)

Page 13 offers some of the original Fake News.

His stories inspired many online searches, from Lone Rock
(2010 Population 888!
with .3% African Americans, the same as 2017's Social Security rise,
which I think he would have enjoyed)
through the Wisconsin River and maps to Foster Brooms and The Dexter Family.

Many may be in tears at the end of the book, as though we have just lost a wonderful friend.

Thanks to the authors for a totally incredible written and photographic record of rural and town life in Wisconsin's late 1800-early 1900s.… (más)