Menasha Historical Society

09/02/2026

Doty Island was an ideal location for circuses and picnics at the turn of the 20th Century. I wonder what kind of a card game AI imagined this was--everyones' hands are all over the place! Original photo comes from the Neenah Public Library collection.

08/30/2026

TRUE CRIME OVERSHADOWED BY A DOUBLE MURDER AND A HAUNTING

Henry Calvert Alden was among a list of Menasha’s first families. He and Thomas Mitchell had a dry goods and grocery business on Tayco Street until 1867.

When 45 years of age, Alden and his wife Eliza awoke to the rings of their doorbell to find a basket on their porch—a foundling of about two years old. The girl was called “Myrtie” and raised as their daughter in Menasha until she was 17 years old.

In 1867, Alden was in ill health. He and his family were forced to move to a southern climate at Carbondale, Illinois where Alden had a large orchard farm. At Carbondale, Myrta Alden married traveling salesman J.C. Hundley of that city.

On December 14, 1887, Mr. Hundley shot and killed his pretty wife’s paramour, a lumberman and music teacher, Webb H. Weller, at Carbondale where Myrtie lived with her now widowed foster mother and a child. The husband had set a trap. Although Myrtie blew out the matches as fast as he could light them to find his target, Weller was fatally wounded.

J.C. Hundley was acquitted, becoming a wealthy man and even a mayor of Carbondale. On December 12, 1928, 41 years almost to the day that Hundley murdered Webb Weller (which no one else seems to notice), J.C. Hundley and his second wife, Luella, were shot to death at their mansion. The double murder remains unsolved . . . the Hundley’s home is considered a haunted attraction. The mysterious porch swing moving when the air is still, clattering cookware in the kitchen, and echoes of doors slamming and gun shots.

The Discovery Channel aired a story about the Hundley House on January 8, 2011.

Postscript: Myrta remarried in October 1891. She died in 1930.

08/29/2026

HEWITT'S HILL

Between the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad Tracks, just west of Washington Street, and near Garfield Avenue existed a landmark called Hewitt’s Hill—and it was a hazardous hill. In 1880, Street Commissioner Stein and his men worked on the grading for a week in July at the southern entry to Menasha. He declared that the street along “Hewitt’s Hill” looked much better.

In November 1882, a frightened horse driven by Mrs. L. Schubert started at a terrific pace down Hewitt’s Hill. At the long bridge, the horse collided with Mr. Reuben Scott’s buggy. A wheel was broken and Scott and two ladies were thrown.

Four months later, a team drawing a light sleigh panicked while crossing the Northwestern train tracks and raced down Hewitt’s Hill. The horses jumped a bob sleigh loaded with wood. The light sleigh broke from the team. The horses were stopped when they struck George Schrage’s hack, in which mourners from Mrs. Glenn’s funeral sat—the daughter Mrs. Burk was cut with a piece of glass. She was the only one injured.

In January 1884, Miss Annie Buboltz’s horse became unmanageable at Hewitt’s Hill. She broke her ankle. Henry Tuchscherer was able to stop the horse and took Buboltz to Henry Hewitt Sr.’s residence for aid. Yes, Henry Hewitt the president of the Bank of Menasha. He and his wife, Mary, had sold the Hewitt Addition to the City of Menasha many years before these accidents.

Throughout the 1880s efforts were made to grade and lessen the incline. In December 1889, an elevated sidewalk was installed to reduce the steepness to lessen people sliding down the walk when it was covered with snow or ice.

08/27/2026

08/26/2026

The First Church Bell in Menasha Rang for Those of Many Faiths

The First Congregational Church was established in 1859 and was recognized as having the first church bell in Menasha.

The steel cast, 750-pound bell must have been a marvelous sight, when it arrived in 1861 and was installed in the belfry at the little white church on the current site of St. Mary’s between 2nd and 3rd streets. It was forged by Naylor, Vickers & Co. of Sheffield England--a gift from a committee headed by Elisha D. Smith and William P. Rounds. Upon its arrival at Boston, the memberships’ prize traveled by railroad to Oshkosh then by the steamboat “Petonia” to Burrough’s Wharf at the end of Appleton Street (near the Old Grog). Once in place, the bell pealed for Sunday services, weddings, fires and funerals for many years to come. It rang to recognize the demise of Abraham Lincoln.

The first to ring the bell was James DeWolf, a young carpenter and painter, who came to Doty Island at the age of 11. Subsequent bell ringers were male. The giant bell became the property of the German Catholics, when the First Congregational Church moved to the corner of Broad and Milwaukee streets after 1866.

The bell survived the church fire of 1883. But, by 1890, there was a fatal crack and it was replaced. According to the Menasha Record, March 1907, it was then exposed to the Wisconsin elements while sitting against the church fence at the rear of St. Mary’s. However, in December of 1906, the veteran bell was spruced up for Christmas with bronze-colored paint. It was displayed in the window at George Loescher’s Hardware Store (now Club Liquor).

*RePost from July 2023.

08/24/2026

Jeff Seymour, formerly of Menasha, dabbled in remote-control helicopters at Great Lakes Helicopter—later, he would move to Neenah where he operated SWB Turbines, becoming connected with NASA.

From race car enthusiast and auto repair to mini-turbine technology. Anything is possible!

08/22/2026

Seth and Rhoda Read (Reed) had accomplished adult children when they moved to the Milwaukee area between 1836 and 1838. In these parts, we know a lot about their sons: Curtis Reed (father of Menasha), Harrison Reed (co-founder of Neenah), and George Reed (father of the Wisconsin Central Railroad and co-founder of Reedsville). But, unless your are from Milwaukee, you may never have heard of the Reed sisters, Martha, Mary, and Julia.

Martha (1817-1902) married Milwaukee banker, Alexander Mitchell. Martha came to the wilderness of the Wisconsin Territory when she was 17 years old. It is said that her family’s plans disrupted a trip to Europe. Not to worry, she married the "wealthiest man in Wisconsin" and had a winter home near Jacksonville, FL. But Martha was well known for her charity and art philanthropy—values that her parents, Seth and Rhoda, instilled in their children. Her grandson, Billy, is remembered as the father of the United States Air Force. (Billy was said to have foreseen the bombing of Pearl Harbor.)

Mary Augusta (1811-1866) married Judge Abram D. Smith, a justice of the supreme court from 1853-1859. In 1862, the couple moved to South Carolina. They had four daughters—all with names starting with an “M”. According to a documented family tree on ancestry.com, the daughters were Mary Frances, Maria Cecilla, Marius Augustus, and Marion Augusta.

A third sister, Julia Ann (1806-1881) was the eldest. She married a physician, Thomas Jefferson Noyes, one of Menasha's first doctors. He got "gold fever" and went West where he died. Julia lived out her life in Milwaukee with her only daughter Frances.

*For more about Billy Mitchell see the Court Martial of Billy Mitchell and other sources. https://www.filmaffinity.com/us/movieimage.php?imageId=754592507https://www.filmaffinity.com/us/movieimage.php?imageId=754592507

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08/21/2026

It happened in Menasha August 20, 2026, as we enter our RECOVERY stage.

08/19/2026

In 1951, Mayor John Scanlon recommended that the new bridge at the end of Racine Street be named after Curtis Reed—the Father of Menasha. Reed and Cornelius Northrup came to Menasha in 1848. Instead, while the bridge was dedicated to Reed, the name “the Racine Street Bridge” prevailed in August 1951.