Ozaukee County Documents


Visiting the Prowatzke Farm
Town of Grafton
by Glenn Prow

My great-grandfather Gottlieb PROWATZKE and great-grandmother Dorothea nee FRENZEL, along with their first son Gottlieb PROWATZKE (who never married), immigrated from Prussia (Province Schlesien, Germany) and arrived at the port of New York on 14 July 1856. They initially went to Milwaukee and eventually acquired the land for the farm in Grafton. The 40 acres of farmland was purchased for $500.00 on 28 Sept. 1865. (Section 18, Township 10, Range 22).

My grandfather Friedrich PROWATZKE was born in Milwaukee and he married Augusta nee TRUPKE, who immigrated on/about 1855 from Germany. They were married in 1880 and had 8 children whom they raised on the farm. My Uncle Fred PROWATZKE eventually bought the farm. He and his first wife Emma (Louise Alwine) nee KRAUS had one daughter Charlotte BARROWS whom inherited the farm when he died. After his first wife died in 1940, he married Minnie (Elsie) nee KRAUSE. She died in 1986. Both the KRAUS's and KRAUSE's had farms on River Road.

From a history book "Wisconsin Doomsday Book - General Studies Volume II - Four Wisconsin Counties", published by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin - 1927; The farmland was described as riddled with stones and boulders. The area had mainly beech and maple trees. I can remember seeing in the corner of fields, stone and rocks being piled - evidently cleared by my ancestors. The lower part of the barn, which I assume is still standing, was built from stone - I assume from the fields. The wood beams, as I remember, are rough cut, again I assume from the trees removed from the land.

Up until the late 1930's, a team of horses, named 'Buster and Joel' plowed the fields. Eventually my Uncle, I called him Uncle Fritz, purchased a tractor and retired the horses. I vaguely remember the horses being kept in the stalls in the barn. From my early memories of the farm, there were pigs in a pen between the shed by the road and the building where the tractor and automobile were housed and next to that was a corncrib. Then the driveway up to the rear and upper level of the barn. The barnyard with a huge haystack was in front of the barn.

The first section in the lower level of the barn was the chicken coop, which contained rowed shelves for the nesting of the chickens and where the eggs were gathered. The other two-thirds of the lower barn were stalls for the milking cows – about a dozen. The upper level contained an old buggy and the storage of hay bales. Of course, the silo contained the grain, which was harvested.

When I was young in the late 30's, I remember my uncle was proud of the electrification for the pumping of water from the well and how it delivered water to the barn via an overhead pipe – before it had been pumped by hand. In the mid 50's, water was still pumped by hand from the well in the farmhouse and we still had to use the outhouse located east of the house. A large cast iron wood burning stove in the house was still used for cooking and baking. The only telephone in the house was a party line in which you had to listen for a certain pattern of rings for your call, i.e. two long, two short rings. It also meant that you could listen to other people's conversations on the line.

There were actually two houses connected together. The section that paralleled the River Road contained only two rooms - a long bedroom and the kitchen/living area with a long wooden table where my grandparents fed and raised their family. They (grandparents) lived in that section until they died. The other house, which was added later, had a second floor and a partial basement, which I assumed was built for my Uncle Fritz and where most of the family gathered when they came home to visit. I can remember the spiked lightning arrestors on the peaks of the roof corners. Annual family reunions were held on Labor Day each in the woods by the river.

My parents, aunts and uncles normally spoke in English and could read and write both English and German, however when I went to visit the farm, almost everyone spoke in German. My grandparents could not speak English; therefore I couldn't understand them.

Several times when my parents visited the old homestead, we walked down the road, which paralleled the northern end of the farm, to the wooded area and the Milwaukee River. My parents fished in the river, catching mainly "bullheads". They told me to be careful when handling the fish as it had a sharp stinger on it. When my wife and I fished there in the mid 50's we caught a big Redfish - my uncle fed it to the cats.

There was an interurban that ran between Milwaukee and Port Washington, which stopped at Brown Deer, Mequon, Cedarburg, and Grafton. The bridge where the interurban crossed the Milwaukee River, could be seen North of the property. When my father was younger in the 1920's, he worked in Racine, WI and would occasionally travel to the farm on weekends. He told me he would get off the interurban after it crossed the Milwaukee River bridge and then walk along the river to the farm and farmhouse. When he returned he would walk back to the bridge and flagged down the interurban.

I was born and raised in the city of Racine, WI. In my early teens, I would visit my uncle on the farm during the summer. He always asked me to bring home the cows from the field in the evening - the field is now a subdivision of homes. He tried to teach me how to milk a cow by hand; of course, I wasn't really interested; all I did was squirt the cats in the face with milk. Until his last days, Uncle Fritz always milked the cows by hand. When he finished milking, the milk was put into milk cans and stored in the cooling house until they were picked up in the morning about ten o'clock. The cans were kept cool by setting them in cold water from the well. In the evening the cows were put in the field behind the barn. There were two milkings a day - one in the morning and one in the evening, which my uncle had to do daily. In the evening, about ten o'clock my uncle would listen to the radio for the weather forecast for the next day and then he went to bed. I slept in the upstairs bedroom with the windows open and I can remember hearing an occasional car traveling down the Highway (then called highway 57). In the morning the rooster crowed to wake us up.

One year it was harvest time when I came to visit. My uncle's farm had already been harvested, so we went to a neighbor's farm to help harvest. All the neighbors helped each other with the harvest. For lunchtime and late evening, there was a big feast prepared by the wives of the farmers - including lots of homemade pies.

The highway interchange of routes 57 and 141 used to be called "Pretzel Park". This was because of the many accidents that occurred there. The last time we visited the area was in 1991. By that time they had rebuilt the interchange and renumbered the highway.

It was always a thrill to visit Port Washington. We went there especially to get smoked fish either from Ewig Brothers or the Smith Brothers fish shanty. We used to stop on the way home in Grafton and get Bratwurst and Knockwurst from the local butcher shops and good pastry (Cheesecake) from the bakery.