Section thirty-three of the Township of Sharon, County of Walworth, State of Wisconsin, has been nothing but forest land.

It is 1842. Wm. Van Ostrand and Mr. Southern settle in this section. No one has any idea of beginning a village. By 1848, six years later, a school house becomes a necessity and a fact, located in section thirty-three.

Seven more years pass. It is 1855. A right of way for the Chicago and North-western Railroad has been surveyed and acquired. Just after crossing from Illinois into Wisconsin it intersects section thirty-three almost diagonally. Someone has a practical idea and fortunately for our story, acts on it. Robert Campbell of Oshkosh knows what is going on, has the foresight and the funds to purchase the entire section, to lay forty acres of it out in village lots, and to have the plat duly recorded.

It is now a year later. To be exact, it is October 22^nd, 1856. the railroad has been built and Sharon has a depot. The depot agent has bought the first lots from Robert Cambell. John Gochey is building a blacksmith shop. Seymour Rice is about to open his two story hotel. $2,000 has built a Methodist church. George Malmine has built and opened a grocery store.

Wages ran from one dollar to $2.25 a day for the construction crew; but unskilled workers receive from fifty to eighty cents a day. Corn brings ten to twelve cents a bushel, hogs two cents a pound, eggs six to eight cents a dozen, bacon or butter six cents a pound. Coffee is a dollar for eight pounds and this is in Sharon.

When a town is about to be born there ought to be a doctor present. There Was. At least Mr. Wilson did not only blister and bleed, he also had an adequate supply of calomel; a remedy that seems to have been more frequently indicated a century ago then it is now. If attending to all legal matters makes an attorney, Sharon also had an attorney, Mr. F.P. Arnold.

Unincorporated Sharon’s first anniversary was in 1867. To enjoy normal growth a town must have children. By selecting Sharon as her birth place Belle Low achieved the distinction of being the first child born here. However, this increase in population was off set by the first death in Sharon. Small pox took Dr. Rosser’s boy the same year.

December 22^nd, 1862. – Don’t look now, but that little baby boy that was just born to the Goodland’s will be Governor Walter S. Goodland some day. When Sharon will celebrate its centennial in 1956 they will name a park after him and prove from history that there are advantages about having governors who are seasoned in years.

“1864” The “Vedder House” Hotel, three stories for $8,000. March, 1866, Do you see that new depot agent? When he worked for the New York and Eric Railway Company he was the first telegraph operator in history to send train orders. What is he doing just now? He is conducting services in the depot. He will be long remembered as Reverend George F. Brigham, and because later he will give a centrally located and beautiful piece of real estate and two thousand dollars for a free library they will in 1927 name the new $5,000 colonial library building in his honor.

June, 1867. This is the first edition of “The Mirror”, Sharon’s first weekly newspaper. Four years from now it will be “The Gazette.” And two after that it will be “The Sharon Inquirer”. Finally three years later it will become “The Sharon Reporter” and keep that name.

December 1867. What’s over there? That is “Sharon Academy”, a normal institute, organized by Pastor J.G. Schaefer last year and built this year by popular subscription. Ninety-six students are enrolled for this first session.

1870, the largest cheese factory in Wisconsin has just been completed by Robert Pearson and H.H. Bent. It cost $5,000 and uses the milk from 1,500 cows, produces about three thousand pounds of cheese (47 cheeses) every day. Seven men handle up to 30,160 pounds of milk daily. Cheese produced on a scale up large commands a good market, especially in the east.

1874, eighteen years after the town has been laid out in lots, The Sharon Bank, established by J.M. Yates and Howland Fish, opens for business. Work begins on “Sharon’s second hotel, the $15,000 “Yates House”. The hotels are good investments now; but they will not be needed when cars are invented and cover many more miles a day than trains and carriages can now.

1882, Sharon, twenty-six years young, now has seven physicians, four general stores, one grocery, three drug stores, tow hardware stores, one variety store, two shoe stores, three restaurants’ (besides the two hotels), one flour mill, one cheese factory, five pastors, and a number of machinists. $10,000 has constructed the first brick high school building.

May 10^th, 1884, Sharon has a $35,000 fire, in which almost the entire east side of Baldwin Street is reduced to ashes.

1888, John Byrne of Sharon invents and patents the tire bolt wrench. About this time James H. Phelps of Sharon patents among other things the Phelps Harmony pedal, which will become standard on all pianos.

1890, population 878.

May 17, 1892, election day. Sharon, platted and laid out in lots thirty-six years ago, decided (130 to 60) to incorporate.

1895, population 906.

1896, water works with a 110 foot water tower at the “Point”, the junction of Martin and Baldwin “Streets.

March 23, 1899, Sharon organizes a fire department. Twelve tailors are kept busy at Wolf and Brownson’s Store.

1900, population 945. The Sharon telephone company organizes. It will continue to remain independent throughout the years. Four different secret societies organize in addition to the four that already exist.

1901, another secret society organizes, to make it nine in all.

January, 1902, The Sharon Reporter publishes the “Souvenir Edition of Pictorial Sharon” (From which much of this material was taken).

1916, Sharon has had two of the state’s finest hotels, Hotel Wells and the Yates House, but has them no more.

Tuesday, March 28, 1916, all the lights in the village go out and an instant later a tremendous explosion, the exact cause of which will probably never be known, is heard all over town, kills the new water works superintendent, Frank D. Rich, and by fire destroys the power house which has so far furnished the water, gas and electric light for the village. Since we had come in just before this part of the picture, and since the lights are out now, let’s go out here

Overheard at the EXIT, “It has been a long time since George Malmine in Sharon’s first store sold eight pounds of coffee for a dollar. I wish I had a cup of it now.”