A treasure trove of town history

When Town of Port Washington Chairman Mike Didier decided to investigate documents in a safety deposit box held by the township, he wasn’t prepared for what he would find.

Inside the box at Port Washington State Bank were bound volumes and loose-leaf binders of town records, primarily minutes of meetings, that dated back to 1873.

“I knew there were old minutes in there, but I didn’t realize exactly what,” Didier said. “They were forgotten over time.”

The records were likely moved to the bank vault after the Town Hall burned on April 1, 2000, Didier said.

“It’s climate-controlled, fire proof and humidity controlled,” he said.

The records don’t just include minutes but also some ledgers of town payments and receipts.

Didier, a history buff, has since “read every page of them,” he said, gleaning hints of the township’s past.

It wasn’t always an easy task.

“Some of them are in beautiful, elegant script, and some are unrecognizable scrawl,” he said, adding it wasn’t until the late 1950s or early 1960s that typewritten minutes became common.

He said the early meetings were far simpler than today’s Town Board meetings.

“It was very simple,” he said. “Back then, people took care of themselves. The town was responsible for road, schools and the poor — I don’t know exactly what that meant.”

The earliest minutes generally reflected the town’s annual meetings, held once a year, when residents typically approved the budget and tax levy and authorized the Town Board to “handle town business as necessary.”

These minutes, he noted, often didn’t even include the names of town officials except for the clerk, listing instead items as “The town chairman called the meeting to order.”

It was only after about 1950 when the Town Board held monthly meetings and delved into more than that, Didier said.

While the town has no records pre-1873, it does have a “hodge podge” of copies of minutes made by the late Bea Krier of Belgium, a local historian who in 1987 borrowed these records and made copies of about 137 pages that interested her, Didier said.

While he doesn’t have a complete listing of town chairmen or supervisors, Didier said in the early years it generally seemed that residents served a term or two before stepping down. He said his grandmother told him that’s because people felt an obligation to take a term to serve the community, then pass it on.

It wasn’t until the 1950s and later that officials seemed to serve multiple terms, he said.

One exception seems to be Nicholas “Nic” Winkel, who Didier said based on his reading of the minutes may have been the longest serving town clerk. Winkel  was in office from 1935 to 1965.

Didier said that many minutes were simple recordings of town business with little character to them, others were embellished and read like stories.

He talked about Winkel’s minutes of an Aug. 2, 1961, meeting when the town considered but ultimately turned down a petition to close the two beer bars in the community. Not only does the three-page typed minutes include quotes from residents attending, it sets the scene with comments about the weather and environment.

For example: “Leading the argument against the resolution as he rose into the hot, muggy and now smoky air was Ivan ‘Smoky’ Ten Haken, Middle Road, Town of Port Washington. ‘Eighteen is old enough to fight. Why isn’t it old enough to drink?’ The crowd, now double in size, roared its approval...

“‘I’m a mother,’ shouted Mrs. Melvin Schinker. She said her children were subjected to an immoral atmosphere because of the beer bars.’”

Town meetings were held at a number of places, Didier added, including private homes. After that, many were held at Arcade Hall in the Village of Port Washington, which he believes was the former opera house that was built on the site of today’s Port City Hall.

Didier said he was particularly interested in town road issues, but found it was a challenge. That’s because typically they weren’t noted by name but by district.

One tidbit he did find — the town paid $3,500 to build its half of a bridge on “the road near the George Kolbach farm — today Dixie Road — which separates the towns of Port and Belgium, in 1950. This year, that bridge is expected to be replaced for about $500,000.

Didier noted that zoning, one major issue towns today deal with, didn’t come into being until 1952, when residents authorized the town to create a zoning code. Because of questions raised with the construction of Highway 141 — today Highway LL — it took until 1966 to formally enact the zoning code, he said.

“That was kind of a big thing,” Didier said. “Before that, you could pretty much do what you wanted.”

Didier noted that the volumes include virtually all the minutes from 1873 to 1984, noting there are some significant gaps before and after that time, likely because they burned in the Town Hall fire.

“I actually think we have more than a lot of towns do,” he said.

Didier and Town Clerk Heather Krueger brought the volumes to the Town Board’s July 7 meeting, showing supervisors what they had found with one particular goal in mind — “You guys know about this now,” Didier said. “These shouldn’t be forgotten about.”