W67 W55224 Columbia Rd Cedarburg, Wisconsin
Also Known as the Cedarburg Cooperage
Adam
Gleitzmann employed quite a few people at the cooperage. They mostly
made barrels for the Layton & Plankinton Packing Company of
Milwaukee, for the packing of pork and beef. They may have also
delivered barrels to the flour mills in Milwaukee.
During
the Civil War, Adam was a volunteer in the United States army, he
served from October 1864 to July 1865. While Adam was serving his new
country, his wife, Barbara not only kept the cooperage running, while
raising her infant son, but also boarded some of the employees. The
woman of the cooperage employees repaid her kindness with a
friendship quilt.
The
cooperage stayed in our family, as a working business until the
1900's. Adam's son Jacob took over as cooper of the cooperage in the
1900's. After this our Aunt Francie lived in the family home until
she was moved to a nursing home near Mequon.
The
Pichards were the next owners of the cooperage, they owned it until
The Skeens fell in love with the old cooperage
in the 1940's, then some time in the 1970's, they approached Mr.
Pichard and they became, I believe the third owners. They
finished converting it into a residence. Richard and Evelyn Skeen
worked to have the cooperage listed as one of Cedarburg's landmark
buildings. Happily they did or who knows what would have happened to
one of the earliest buildings in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Sometime
during this time the cooperage was also added to the Stone House Tour
of Cedarburg. The present owner(s) are the Nancee and Ken who bought
it in 1991 from a young school teacher who was getting married.
Nancee not only lives there with her two dogs, but also runs a punch
needle shop out of the cooperage.
