Erskine Root Cellar

In 1873 Royal Erskine bought a boarding house by the lake from Mr. Logan, moved it across the road, joined it with two other vacated buildings to create a large red building called the Eureka House, and later sold it in the 1880s to his brother Lincoln. Lincoln and Caroline (Carrie) Erskine raised their family there and ran a post office and a successful boarding house for guests. Because the Eureka House had no basement, a root cellar was built nearby for food storage for the family and boarders. It had a shingled roof insulated with newspapers, a stone foundation sunk about three feet into the ground, and steps at one end in an enclosed entryway. Though primitive in construction, it worked well, with frost appearing only when temperatures fell to 25 to 30 degrees below zero. Bins in the back held potatoes, carrots, beets, and cabbage, while shelves in the front held canned berries, meats, and vegetables. Thirty-gallon crocks were filled with sauerkraut, and wide-top milk bowls held fresh milk each day so cream could rise and be skimmed off for weekly butter making with a hand-cranked wooden barrel churn. Lincoln and Carrie's grandchildren remembered helping make head cheese, blood sausage, and liver sausage, and also helping smoke bacon, hams, and hocks, all stored in the root cellar. The granddaughters slid down the roof in their dresses and bloomers, sometimes wearing holes in them, and a grandson planted flowers on either side of the entry. On May 21, 1976, Katherine L. and Robert C. Onan donated this parcel of land to the town of Jacksonport to be maintained as a green area, and in 2003 the Jacksonport Historical Society, Inc. restored the root cellar to preserve its history for future generations.

Jacksonport, Wisconsin · United States