Advertisement Waller grew up in Glasgow Hardies Creek in rural Trempealeau County, an area originally settled in 1854 by Scottish and German immigrants, and went to high school in Galesville. He retired from the university in 1990 and moved back to Wisconsin in the mid-’90s, settling on a farm near Osseo.
“After I retired I started thinking about my ancestors and what it must have been like for them coming to this country from the old country,” Waller said.
Seven of his eight great-grandparents were immigrants, coming from Ireland, Scotland and Norway, and as he learned more about their histories he decided to write a book about the settlement of the Hardies Creek area.
He had written chapters in entomology books before but never a full book, and he’d never any major writing on history. “I learned as I was writing,” Waller said. “I never had much interest in history when I was a student. Now I find it terribly fascinating.”
The more Waller learned about the history of Hardies Creek, though, the more interested he got in the broader picture of both the conditions in west-central Wisconsin and in the old country.
“I don’t think most of us realize how hopeless their conditions were in the old country,” Waller said. “They had no hope for anything but to be a servant to the rich. Coming here was like an opportunity to become one of the rich. To own land was the ultimate, to own a farm. This was the ultimate accomplishment.”
By the time he was ready to publish his book two years ago, it had grown quite a bit in scope. Instead of a book about Hardies Creek, he had written a regional history: “West-Central Wisconsin: The Early Settlers.”
The part of the book that was perhaps the most fun was collecting photographic images for illustrations. He found one gold mine of pictures in a man from the area now living in Chippewa Falls. His mother and two “old maid aunts” never threw anything away, and the man had kept all the old photos, too.
He recently came across a picture from about 80 years ago that shows his father, Goodwin Waller, as part of a Holmen baseball team. “I had no idea that my father played for the Holmen baseball team,” Waller said.
He’ll probably bring that photograph and others for his upcoming presentation at the Holmen Area Historical Society. He’ll be talking about “Early Settlement of the Black River Valley.”
Now that he’s fully converted to a history buff, Waller would like to see more people get interested in how this country was settled, and they can do that without having to turn to textbooks. Waller recommends people check out some novels that give a good historical picture, including “Sons of the Old Country” by Waldemar Ager, “Old Pioneers” by Willa Cather, “Come and Get It” by Edna Ferber and “Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie” by Ole Edvart Rolvaag.
“I think people need to read more,” Waller said.
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