by Alison Sandlass Car, Henry L. Sandlass, Karen Reese

The following untitled piece speaks of my father’s childhood memory of Wetheredsville/Dickeyville, having grown up in nearby Forest Park. The golf course and Hillsdale Road between Maine Avenue and our turf was all woodland then, with a clearing or glade in the middle of the forest. There is where he played with his friends, and found so many Indian artifacts. I can recall his talking about Dickeyville, too — a slumlike community that he was cautioned to avoid. The village of this time frame (ca. 1918?) was in serious decline, with the mills shutting down, before the 1934 auction and resurrection. The rather precious name, “Pickwick Road”, may have been born in the Roland Park Company imagination; they did model the development scheme on their idea of an English village (Cotswolds-like).  By Alison Sandlass Carr

Memoir by Henry L. Sandlass, 1950’s

“My memories of Wetheredsville go back to my childhood. The details of those days twenty-five years ago are indistinct, but the general picture is clear enough. It lay five miles from where we lived, an old mill town in the Gwynns Falls valley. Thickly wooded hills threw about it a mantle of isolation, and it was not until you descended the road and crossed the old stone bridge that the place would suddenly burst into view as you found yourself on its one and only street. As you followed the street you felt the furtive eyes of slovenly urchins and strange gaunt women that said, ’you are an interloper. You do not belong here; why do you come? Stay in your own world and leave us in ours.’ And indeed it was a different world, settled and begun in pre-Revolutionary days and little changed since then, a strange living anachronism, existing almost within the boundaries of a large industrial city

Huge tulip trees lined the street forming a tunnel of shimmering green, terminated at the end by the white columned facade of the old stone church against a background of sunlit meadow and woodland.

And here the road divided, one branch leading up over the hill to Franklintown; the other branch followed the twisting stream through a forest so dense that for almost a mile of its length the sun never penetrated. This was the Wetheredsville Road”

Memories from Karen Reese (Dickeyville, Wisconsin) 

From correspondence between Karen Reese (of Dickeyville in Wisconsin) and Anne McMahan.

Dickeyville is named for Charles Dickey, who came here in 1849.  He was born in New Jersey, lived for a time in Illinois before coming Wisconsin.  He was a surveyor for Grant County, held county offices including the County Coroner and a member of the Board of County Supervisors, Justice of the Peace for Paris Township (in which Dickeyville is located), the town chairman for six years and assessor for two years.  He operated the first store at the intersection of current highway 61 & 35, and the old highway of 151.  Owned the store for nineteen years.  He also served in the Civil War.  He moved to Kansas in 1872 and named a town there- Dickeyville (only known for a short time)- which became part of Phillipsburg, Kansas, where he died and is buried. He also was a land speculator along with his brother, Robert Dickey.  Robert’s wife died in Keokuk, Iowa in 1849 so Robert didn’t make it to Wisconsin till 1851, then he moved to Illinois.  Robert died and is buried in Elizabeth, Jo Daviess County, Illinois.  Karen Reese of Dickeyville, Wisconsin