NEW GLARUS — A new book detailing the first 10 years of New Glarus has been issued this summer in advance of next year’s 175th anniversary of the Swiss settlement.
The book was written by Duane H. Freitag of Greendale. He is a native of New Glarus and a retired newspaper reporter and editor. He has written several other books about New Glarus and earlier this year spoke in Monroe to the Green County Genealogical Society about how early immigrants came on the Erie Canal.
Copies of “A Common Treasure” are now available at the Swiss Historical Village in New Glarus and online through Amazon. Freitag also plans to have the book available during the Christkindlmarkt at Monroe’s Turner Hall on Nov. 29 and 30. He will do a book signing during the annual Harvest Fest celebration at the Historical Village on Sunday, Oct. 13.
The book emphasizes many treasured aspects of the “challenging first decade of the Swiss colony of New Glarus.” The community was under the control of the Emigration Society of Canton Glarus, Switzerland, from its founding in 1845 until the colony land was sold in 1855.
Freitag has drawn on many old letters and Emigration Society documents preserved in Switzerland, immigration records in this country, and land records in the Green County Register of Deeds office, as well as family histories to tell the chronological development of the community. Many of these details have never been written about before, including how the heavy immigration of 1853 exasperated the community’s leadership.
The book mentions all of the known immigrants of that era, how they traveled to New Glarus, including the ships that they came on and in many cases their impact on the Swiss colony. Also included are the early immigrants from Canton Bern.
The title “A Common Treasure” is a play on the fact that at the beginning, much of the colony work was done in common and most of the assets were held in common — a situation that made New Glarus unique among pioneer Wisconsin settlements.
Freitag, a 1963 graduate of New Glarus High School, received his Bachelor of Science degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin in 1967. He worked at the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison and then at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal.
He retired from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2000 and then devoted some of his time volunteering at the Swiss Historical Village. He was a founding member of the Swiss Center of North America and helped represent New Glarus at the celebrations in old Glarus to mark the canton’s 650th anniversary of becoming part of the Swiss confederation.
