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Dane County Wisconsin |
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COMMERCE Goods and Services (Retail Businesses, Hotels, Banks, etc.) General Stores The Town of Perry's two hamlets, Daleyville and Forward, both evolved to serve the Town's first Euro-American settlers, most of whom were intent on making a living through the practice of agriculture. These hamlets served primarily as agricultural support centers and at first provided only the most basic levels of commerce. Both places had just one commercial establishment at first (Forward never had more than one) and these establishments supplied the settlers with those things they could not make or grow themselves and they also served as the area's post-offices as well. The earliest buildings associated with commercial activity in townships such as Perry were, of necessity, ones that often combined several functions under one roof, being typically part residence, part store, and occasionally, even part hotel and part saloon and restaurant. Such buildings were often the first real evidence that enough settlers had arrived in a given area to justify economic activity beyond the most basic subsistence level and they were often the community's social center as well. These pioneer commercial buildings sometimes played a pivotal role in the evolution of rural communities. A particularly striking example of such a building was the first store building built by O. B. Dahle in 1853 on a ridge in the Town of Perry. Since at that time the nearest post office was located at Blue Mounds, some seven miles away, Dahle's new store instantly became the social and commercial focal point for the surrounding area. Within the next five years, the first Perry Lutheran Church was built close by as was the first school in the area, and several houses were also built in the immediate vicinity of the store as well. By 1860, the core of a future community surrounded Dahle's building and by 1870, when Dahle built a new and larger building to replace his original one, what had originally been just one building had become Daleyville, the Town of Perry's principal community, and it still retains this status today.(1) Most of the few remaining commercial buildings that were surveyed in the Town are frame buildings that are examples of the Boomtown style. One of these is located in Daleyville, the Gunhild Thorhaug Dressmaker's Shop. Another is both the only extant commercial building in its respective hamlet and is also believed to be the only store building built specifically for this purpose that this community ever had. This is the Gladen & Hanson Store Building in the Hamlet of Forward, which was built in 1898 on CTH A and which is still in a highly intact state and is believed to eligible for listing in the NRHP.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Perry Historical Center. The Historic Perry Norwegian Settlement. Daleyville, WI: The Perry Historical Center, 1994.
NOTES ON SOURCES By far the best general source of information on the history of commerce in the Town of Perry is The Historic Perry Norwegian Settlement. Daleyville, WI: The Perry Historical Center, 1994. Other sources are nineteenth and early twentieth century Dane County newspapers and published county histories, but the mentions they contain are seldom extensive. One thing these different sources do make clear, however, is that most rural hamlets once had more buildings devoted to commerce than they have today. Changing economic and social conditions have both conspired to substantially reduce the number of buildings that were associated with commercial activities in such communities.
EXTANT RESOURCES SURVEYED The following list includes all the historic commercial buildings surveyed in the Town of Perry's two hamlets. Film Code Address Original Owner Date Hamlet DA 186/20 1079 STH 78 Gunhild Thorhaug Dressmaker's Shop Hamlet of Daleyville
Endnotes: 1. Perry Historical Center. The Historic Perry Norwegian Settlement. Daleyville, WI: The Perry Historical Center, 1994, pp. 25-27, 35 (illustrated). Neither of O. B. Dahle's two store buildings are now extant, the second one having been destroyed by fire in 1920.
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