House comes with a history of Port

After purchasing stately home, Greg and Keely Welton discover the autobiography of John Eva and his stories of growing up in the city nearly 150 years ago

STANDING IN THE HOUSE on Port Washington’s west side they recently purchased, Greg and Keely Welton held the piece of history that came with it — an autobiography of John Stephan Eva, who lived in the home, as well as copies of some of his family’s photos. Photo by Sam Arendt
By 
KRISTYN HALBIG ZIEHM
Ozaukee Press staff

When Greg and Keely Welton bought a stately old house on Port Washington’s west side recently, they knew they were purchasing a piece of the city’s history.

After all, the house at 1027 W. Grand Ave. had stood as the area was developed from farmland to a neighborhood.

But when they walked into the house after purchasing it, they discovered another piece of history — the autobiography of John Stephen Eva, who was born on Dec. 16, 1880, and raised in the home.

Eva Street, which runs next to the house, is named for Eva’s family.

“It’s just amazing,” Greg Welton said, especially considering the family that owned the house before them had no ties to the Eva family but kept the book with the home. “We said this is the best part of buying the house, having the story.”

The book was a gift from Eva’s granddaughter Diane Erickson to former owners Roy and Jeanne Protzman in 1994 after the couple allowed Erickson and her family to visit the house. It was accompanied by family photos and a rundown of his mother’s family lineage.

Written by Eva in 1931 when he was 51, it provides a personal look at life in Port almost 150 years ago, Welton said.

“Keely said it reads like a novel, and it really does,” Greg said. “Think about how many people don’t write things down. He did, and he had a really good memory.

“It’s an interesting read. I love hearing all these old stories. You can recognize some of the names, which is pretty neat. You can almost see a movie being made from this.”

The first chapter covers the bulk of Eva’s childhood, ending as he sets off as an adult for a career with the railroad.

John Eva was born in Port to Sarah and Peter Eva and raised on the family home on 12 acres on the city’s west side — 10 acres were within the city limits while two were in the town.

Eva wrote about how his family lived in Madison for a couple years when his father, a mason, worked to build the State Capitol.

“The capitol building proper crumbled and fell while the dome was being erected,” he wrote. “There were a number of lives lost, and mother has told me many times that father saved a number of men that were entrapped on scaffolding by climbing ladders and taking them off, while others were afraid to do the things that father did.”

The family returned to Port shortly after with “relics” of the fallen capitol, Eva noted.

Eva wrote about attending “the old Hill School,” which he noted was later moved and a large brick schoolhouse erected on the site — a job his father was contracted to do. He also mentions the men who taught there, including a Lt. Charles Towsley, a West Point graduate who was “a bad actor for discipline” and would strike the students with a billiard cue.

He wrote of hunting in the woods and along the Milwaukee River in Saukville, of digging clams and hunting for pearls in the river and “at what we called Cold Spring located between Saukville and Newburg.”

He wrote about swimming in the lake “on the old south side commonly called the Canada side. Swimming suits in those days were not thought of by the boys, and it being an out of the way place along the bluffs, birthday suits were all that were required.”

Eva wrote of the city’s lakefront, diving from the boats moored in the harbor, of making fishing trips with the “Smith boys to lift their nets ... DeLos Smith always gave me some caviar. If you do not know what this is, look it up in the dictionary. The Larson boys also ran a fish house and when I went there I was always sure to get a nice smoked herring for my trouble.”

When he was 17, he noted, “it was a grand winter for skating.” The lake froze off shore for about a mile, he wrote, and he and his friends went out skating down to Ulao in the Town of Grafton, only to hear later that the ice had broken off at the shore the previous night.

“Thus was another very close shave ... that it did not break off while we were out on it and floated us out on the lake.”

  He wrote about working at the Gilson foundry for 35 cents a day to earn money to buy a bike. Bikes, he noted, cost $100 to $250 new, so a summer of work only allotted him enough money for a $45 second-hand bike.

He recalled visiting family in Chicago and seeing a car for the first time while biking through Lincoln Park.

“It was coming toward me ... and when I saw it coming I dismounted from the wheel and stood with my mouth open, I presume, watching it go by, chugging as it went. To me that was the most wonderful invention of the age to see a buggy going by with no horses attached. It was indeed a novelty, and I stood watching it until it went out of sight.”

The book continues through Eva’s adult life in northern Wisconsin, his marriage and children to his retirement, ending on March 6, 1932, as the Great Depression continued.

Welton said he will likely give a copy of the volume to the Port Historical Society, keeping the original with the house so its history will remain alive.

“Once you take a house as yours, you don’t think about how many generations had it before, and they each had their own story,” he said.

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Wisconsin’s largest paid circulation community weekly newspaper. Serving Port Washington, Saukville, Grafton, Fredonia, Belgium, as well as Ozaukee County government. Locally owned and printed in Port Washington, Wisconsin.

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