By Julie Huebel, Pierce County Historical Association
ELMWOOD, WI – I tend to have a pretty poor memory in terms of my own experiences; however, I have an uncanny ability to remember an acquaintance’s grandmother’s maiden name or something obscure like that. I sadly remember very little of my school days, but one memory stays with me very vividly. Picture it…Elmwood High School, the mid-1990’s…school has long been let out and us athletes are done with after-school practice. I’m down in the girls’ locker room off the “old gym” (which in my day, was the ONLY gym), I hear something. The sound is coming from the gym above, I follow the sound and discover a high school student all alone, seated at a piano playing like a bone fide concert pianist. My jaw hit the proverbial ground when I realized the person playing the angelic music was Elmwood upperclassman, tough guy and jock, John Crownhart. That story is my way of saying, C is for Crownhart.
Without much effort, I was able to easily find a long line of Crownharts that came before Bill (John’s father), Ed, Joan, and Mark. Their parents, Phillip and Lucille (Schwartz), married in 1940 in Elmwood and farmed in Spring Lake Township. Phillip’s father, Arthur was born in Salem Township, growing up in the Grange Hall area, he married Mary Riley. Arthur’s parents were Selenous and Katherine (Zwickey). Selenous seems to have been married a few times, he is buried in Thurston Hill Cemetery between Beldenville and Ellsworth.
Selenous’ parents were Napoleon and Mahitable (Burgess). (THIS FAMILY HAS THE COOLEST NAMES!) Napoleon was born in New York, came to Wisconsin as a child, his family settled in Waukesha County and then later Fond du Lac County. Napoleon was a Sgt in the Civil War, serving in Co. D of the 35th Regiment. Napoleon passed away in 1900 and is buried in Ellsworth’s Maple Grove Cemetery. His parents were Charles and Nancy (Donahue), also born in New York. Charles died in 1877 in Salem Township, as per the 27 September 1877 River Falls Journal, “…met with sudden death about eleven o-clock yesterday forenoon. He had been plowing and while unhitching his team the horses became unmanageable and ran away dragging him some distance and finally stopped. Mr. Crownhart started for the house and in attempting to climb over a fence he fell backwards and expired.”
He was also buried in Maple Grove Cemetery. He still owned land in Fond du Lac County at this time. It is reported in the book, ‘The History of Fond du Lac County Wisconsin’: “The first settlement in Ashford was made in the summer of 1846, by Henry Barnett, Josiah L. Perry, Charles Crownhart, and several others…they soon threw up log shanties and commenced clearing the land for crops for the ensuing year.”
Charles’ father was George Jr. (Johann George), also born in New York; he married Mary Hanson. George died in 1841, Mary in 1831; both are buried in the small East Settlement Cemetery in Bridgeport, New York, not far from Syracuse. George’s parents seem to have been Johann George Crownhart and his wife Anna (another Anna Crownhart!) of New York. I would have to spend more time on this, but George Sr. seems to have served in the Revolutionary War from 1776-1780 soon after arriving from Germany in 1773.
