Excerpt from Tales of TonkaIIII�HIHNIMINI�I��AII�I�II�II�NNIi�lll
3 1972 09_415 7396
A L E S
from
k
774
r
aa' 1
Stories of Peop e`Around Lace Minnetonka
.by
F612A5 M49 1993
Meyer, Ellen Wilson. Iscin Meyer
Taies from Tonka :stories of
Lake Minnetonkaand its
people, originally published
in the Wayzata Weekly News.
helmet and leg plates from the 4th century B. C." Eventually, he presented the
t% family's 250 -piece collection of antique silver and many items from his art
collection to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
Still Charles Bolles -Rogers did not forget Trinity Chapel during his travels.
He returned one summer with a treasure from the Holy Land: a graceful bronze
Sacristy Lamp. You can still see it at one end of the corridor between the old and
the new church where it is hanging above, and slightly to the left of, the old altar
from the 1930s. (The altar was saved in memory of Dr. Hugh Custer Arey.)
Whether or not the Sacristy Lamp is lighted when you see it, perhaps it will
remind you of its donor, the world traveler and art collector who was never too
rushed to be gracious and appreciative.
GOING, GOING, GONE!
At Excelsior's Trinity Episcopal Church I met Harriet Wilson, a young
Sunday School teacher whose parents had been married in that little church.
More recently she told me about her father's career as an auctioneer.
Willis W. Wilson was, for many decades, the best known auctioneer in the
Lake Area. Son of a pioneer family, he discovered his calling at the turn of the
century and "cried" his last sale 65 years later.
When 14 years of age, young Willis looked upon Excelsior policeman, John
Powers, as a hero --not for bravery in action, but for his sideline,
auctioneering. In his eagerness to figure out Mr. Powers' jargon, Willie seldom
missed a sale. He'd hear the auctioneer begin, slowly and distinctly, "What am I
bid?' Then would follow a breathless verbal whirlwind:
"IwantonegimmeonaYESnowaInaItnow seventy -
fivenowtwoYEStwonowaquartergimmetwoandaquarter onemoretime... SOLD! And
so it went from household trinkets through farm machinery and even livestock.
Willie's next step was to become an apprentice -helper. He earned 25 cents
walking the streets, ringing a hand bell and calling out loudly: "Auction, auction,
at ten tomorrow morning. Read all about it." Then he'd give handbills to
everyone in sight.
At the sales Willie held up the smaller articles, leaving the auctioneer free
to use gestures with his jargon to whip enthusiasm into a frenzy of bidding.
Speed was a factor, as the bidder must not be given time to think, or to use the
power of mind over patter. While many came off with bargains, others could
sometimes be egged on to buy things they didn't even want, or to bid more than the
cost of a similar article new at Sears.
Im
When young Willie was finally permitted to sell a few small articles
himself, he was hooked for life. Aware that "an auction is psychology in action,"
he attended the Jones National School of Auctioneering in Davenport, Iowa, to
learn the techniques and become properly licensed.
After graduation, 22 -year-old Willie returned to manage a farm near
Excelsior and to marry the daughter of another pioneer family, Elva Newton.
Their wedding on October 30, 1907, was the last service held in Excelsior's old
Trinity Church at its original site on Third Street. Already mounted on rollers,
the church started the following morning on the block -long journey to its
present site.
As farmer, family man and auctioneer, Willis Wilson advertised, "Sales
conducted anywhere in the state: Merchandise, Real Estate and Farm Sales." To
keep his voice in trim, and to practice the patter without driving his wife and
children crazy, Mr. Wilson used to practice calling into a mason jar. Daughters
Olive and Harriet remember the wonderful sound of his muffled hollering into the
glass jar. They could barely distinguish: "Do I hear a bid now? I HAVE a bid--
sickety-sickety-sickety. Do I hear seventy... now seventy... seventy one more
time ... Going, going, gone! SOLD to the lady with the big smile and the pretty
dimples --and did she get a bargain!"
Harriet Wilson (now Mrs. Donald Elmblad) said she used to dream of
becoming a lady auctioneer. She still remembers a big sale of merchandise from
a Chanhassen store. Although not yet five years old and timid by nature, she
surprised herself, as well as her parents, by bidding on a hat. Her proud Papa
said, "Going, going, GONE. Sold to the little girl in blue beside the nice -looking
woman in the blue suit." Harriet wore that hat a long time, secretly enjoying it
as a symbol of her unexpected courage in becoming her father's youngest bidder.
It used to be the custom for the seller to furnish a free lunch of coffee and
sandwiches to all who attended the sale. It fell to Auctioneer Wilson, therefore, to
furnish several hundred tin cups, which he carried from sale to sale in gunny
sacks. When little Harriet went along, she always hoped her father would be too
busy to accept the seller's customary invitation to join the family at a hot dinner
inside the house. To her child's -eye view, a much better treat than a hot dinner
was a free bun sandwich, filled with a thick slice of ham or those "good, old-
fashioned, all -meat, skin -on weiners."
In the 1940s, garage and estate sales became popular, reducing country
auctions mainly to sales of farm equipment and livestock. Mr. Wilson missed the
ladies and their frantic bidding. He had come to depend on several dozen
"regulars" who would no more miss a household auction than they would a barn
dance, a Ladies Aid supper, an ice-cream social --or a funeral.
169
AEL
�:.MAN
In 1965, Willis Wilson "called" his last farm sale at eighty years of age.
Again he missed the ladies trying to outbid each other on apple peelers and coffee
grinders. By that time, also, customers were not only having to pay for their
sandwiches, but they were getting only "modern, adulterated, skinless weiners to
boot." To the elderly auctioneer, it seemed as if country sales had lost much of
the zip and zing of earlier days.
j. MRS. GEER AND THE METHODIST CHURCH
If I were asked to discuss "Women of Excelsior," I would place Aldena Cram
Geer high on the list. Few have been her equal in talent, training, or Christian
I st parsonage in Ohio in 1881, she earned
faith and fellowship. Born in a Methodi
a master's degree in English Literature at the University of Nebraska.
Somewhere along the line she received a degree in music and took up painting.
In 1905 she married Dr. Benjamin Cram, a Methodist minister, and then
had two children: Arthur and Catherine. Widowed in 1928, she later married
the Rev. James Geer, who had served the Excelsior Methodist Church for five
years. The couple spent the next ten years serving churches in Wadena and
Moorhead before returning to Excelsior to spend the rest of their lives.
Although Reverend Geer retired from the ministry, both were active in the
local church; in fact, Mrs. Geer herself was "a local ordained minister of the
Methodist Church." In Excelsior she took part in the Women's Society, was part-
time organist, and directed the choir for eight years. But she is probably best
she wrote for church publications. One of
remembered for the plays and poems
her plays, entitled "Women of the Bible," for example, was a series of short
sketches that were dramatized and produced in churches nationwide. She wrote
her last poem in 1974, at the age of 93, three years before her death.
One literary effort for which Mrs. Geer is remembered locally is her
"History of the Excelsior Methodist Church," in which she pretended she was a
fictitious character, attending the old white church on George Street through the
years. Here are some of the high points gleaned from her story without (for the
sake of brevity) her imaginative touch.
On January 5, 1886, the Official Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church
met at the Masonic Hall "to discuss plans and ways and means to carry on the
work of the church, [which included] the question of a new church."
170
The Methodist membership, consisting then of just fourteen persons, grew to
about 30 by the time building started, but the largest single pledge to the
building fund was $25. D. J. Higgins, the first preacher, came from Eden
Prairie, as Excelsior belonged to the Eden Prairie Circuit.
The Reverend Higgins, Mr. Woodruff, Grandfather Spickerman and his son C.
W. made the pews. "In fact," Geer said, "they nearly built the church. And the
minister himself made the pulpit and the altar rail."
Preacher tenure in the Methodist church was conspicuously brief in those
days. Pastor Higgins served the church from May of 1885 to October, 1886, and
the next six preachers stayed just one year apiece. Then came the young and
enthusiastic Reverend Spicer, who was unmarried and very popular. He had a
row of carriage sheds built for the membership, and a porch built just high
enough so that, when carriages were driven alongside, the ladies could step right
out. The men would then drive around to the sheds and blanket the horses.
Young Spicer's next project was painting the church. He rounded up
volunteers --old and young, tall and short --but ended up having to paint the
spire himself. He finished the job and still had time to take a large group of
young people into the church. Some of them were sprinkled at the altar, but
those who wanted to be baptized by immersion were taken to Christmas Lake. A
few were disappointed that another pastor was called to do the honors, because
Reverend Spicer was not yet ordained. At the end of the year, however, he went
back to school and a succession of other ministers followed.
In August of 1894, women of the church were delighted to welcome Dr.
Martha Sheldon, a medical missionary home on furlough from a hospital in India.
Martha, who had graduated from the University of Minnesota and the Boston
School of Medicine with high honors, had spent a year in hospital work before
applying to the American Board to be sent out to India. When the Excelsior
Congregational Church (where her father was pastor) refused to send her, she
had turned to the Methodists for help and their Women's Foreign Missionary
Society made it possible for her to serve in the country of her choice. When she
returned to India after this furlough, Dr. Sheldon was called to Tibet to perform a
cataract operation on a 'high-up official." Because she had been particularly
successful in this type of surgery, the door was open to the lady surgeon from
Excelsior, even though Tibet was then a "Forbidden Land."
During the four-year stay of the Rev. J. R. Davies, the church mortgage was
burned at an interesting service on Tuesday evening, September 25, 1900.
Former pastors were invited to take part. Little Lou Davies and Lizzie Show, in
white dresses exactly alike, came down the aisle, one carrying a candlestick with
lighted candle and the other, a silver tray on which lay the old mortgage. When
the presiding elder (Mr. Fielder) applied the flame, the mortgage was reduced to
171