Clerk displays village records

A four-year project has come to fruition for Marnie Osterbrink.

The Eland village clerk spent the last four years compiling village records and historical documents from Eland’s storied past.

“I came back after finishing my bachelor’s degree,” Osterbrink said. “When I came back a lot of the records were stored at our treasurer’s home. He had passed away, and all of the stuff came to the village hall. When I saw it, I thought we can’t keep it all like this — the village deserves better.”

Osterbrink, who labeled herself a “history buff,” said that she had a fun time and learned a lot about the village as she categorized the records.

As she searched through the various documents, she found deeds for land, railroad documents, fire department documents, birth and death documents, marriage certificates, cemetery documents and local government documents.

“It is kind of cool to take a look back at this stuff and compare it to how we operate now,” said Osterbrink. “There is a lot of information.”

Osterbrink said that she found documents that date back to the late 1800s.

“Eland is such a cool place,” said Osterbrink. “So I thought that we really need to protect this stuff.”

As she was putting all of the historical documents together, Osterbrink said, she learned a lot about the history of Eland.

“For a lot of the older residents, it brings back memories,” said Osterbrink. “You don’t hear about some of this stuff today. It is that community togetherness and keeping that history within present day.”

Among items that piqued her interest were documents detailing how streets were platted.

“Things were platted by people’s names,” said Osterbrink. “For example there was a House Street and Mr. and Mrs. House had donated that.”

Other interesting pieces were documents containing absentee voting information from various wars.

“I have wartime absentee information,” said Osterbrink. “I have an absentee envelope from Senator Roger Breske from when he served Eland.”

Osterbrink plans to have this information on display every Eland Day. She plans to limit how much people can come in and read the documents to help keep them preserved.

“I don’t want to leave this stuff where it can get destroyed,” said Osterbrink.

She said that the community can learn the history of Eland from reading these documents and looking at these pictures.

“I think that people within the community can learn where Eland came from,” said Osterbrink. “People can learn the history and the changes that have occurred in the village.”

When she was going through the process of putting the full display together, Osterbrink would come to the village hall during her free time, grab a box of documents and categorize it into an excel spreadsheet.

“I went through all of the stuff to sort out what I wanted to keep,” said Osterbrink. “I also put some stuff off to the side, so people from the Wisconsin Historical Society can come and take it.”

She said that a lot of statute books went to the Shawano County Historical Society.

Eland was lucky that they are able to have this full set of historical records, Osterbrink said.

“All of the treasurers and clerks worked out of their homes,” she said. “So as they passed away, all of those boxes of documents would get passed to the next family.”

Osterbrink said that she was happy to put these records on display. She added that her next step is to read through all of the minute books and type them up into an Excel sheet.

lreimer@newmedia-wi.com