Recipes from the Spence-McCord Drug Co.

Hailey Hudzinski

Catalog Number:  2017.020.01

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

The Spence-McCord Drug Co. was formed after the 1905 merger of the James McCord Drug Co. (founded in 1864) and the T.H. Spence Drug Co. (founded in 1874).

The company first occupied a four-story brick building in downtown La Crosse that was destroyed in a May 4, 1905, fire. The building next door, then home to the Funke Candy Co., was badly damaged.

The Funke Candy built its factory in 1898 on the site of the first building in La Crosse, a log cabin constructed in 1842 by Nathan Myrick. He established a trading post here and is generally recognized as the founder of modern La Crosse. The candy company operated in this building for 35 years until its closure in 1933. In 1937, Spence-McCord moved into the vacated building and operated there until 1963, when it expanded into a warehouse and office building at 1502 Miller St. The downtown building was sold to the owners of Ross Furniture. Since 2014, the building has been home to the Charmant Hotel.

The expansion and success of Spence-McCord was not just limited to La Crosse. Although the company was founded here, it operated offices in Mankato, Minn., Green Bay and Madison.

Spence-McCord also played a significant role in efforts to eliminate polio. In 1958, Spence-McCord published a series of ads in the La Crosse Tribune reminding citizens to receive the vaccine. In 1961, Spence-McCord’s Green Bay office received the first shipment of the Sabin oral polio vaccine in northeastern Wisconsin, which was then shipped to area doctors, hospitals and drug stores. In 1963 and 1964, Spence-McCord aided in polio immunization programs in both La Crosse and Green Bay. In Green Bay, the clinic offered the vaccine free of charge but encouraged a 50-cent donation to cover the cost.

Not only did the company provide essential vaccines, it also created recipes for a variety of items. The La Crosse County Historical Society received a donated Spence-McCord recipe box from Shirley Lesky, who worked in the company’s accounts payable department for more than 20 years. She kept the box as a memento when the business closed in 1973 — and we’re glad she did.

It contains recipes for a variety of balms, lotions and ointments, some more conventional than others. A recipe for bedbug exterminator calls for corrosive sublimate and wood alcohol. Spence-McCord’s grasshopper poison requires bran, molasses, Paris green or crude arsenic, amyl acetate and water. Mosquito dope (my personal favorite) calls for olive oil, sassafras oil, spirit of camphor, citronella oil and eucalyptus oil.

For more original Spence-McCord recipes, visit our website, wwww.lchshistory.org, but, please, don’t try them at home.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on February 18, 2018.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.

Girl Scout Sweatshirt

Hailey Hudzinski

Catalog Number: 1990.004.08

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

La Crosse area Girl Scouts will sell cookies door to door — and at local establishments — during the next several weeks.

If you were buying Girl Scout cookies back in 1953, you would have been purchasing a sandwich-type cookie — with the option of four flavored fillings — at a cost of just 40 cents a box.

We recently came across a Camp Ehawee sweatshirt in the collections of the La Crosse Historical Society that made us curious about local Girl Scout history and the development of Camp Ehawee north of Mindoro.

Phoebe Sorenson, who donated this sweatshirt to the historical society in 1990, was in the Girl Scouts for several years. She also served on the Riverland Council board.

The history of the Girl Scouts in the U.S. dates to March 12, 1912, when Juliette Low created the first troop in Savannah, Ga., for her daughter and friends. The first Girl Scout troop in La Crosse was created in 1919, when Mrs. J.E. McConnell began a troop for her own daughter.

The first cookie sale in La Crosse, however, did not take place for a dozen years after the first local troop was created. A local bakery made the cookies for the Girl Scouts in 1931, and they were then packaged and delivered by the Girl Scouts themselves. That first year, La Crosse Girl Scouts sold 4,834 dozen cookies.

All of the money earned by local Girl Scouts through cookie sales stays with the local council and troops. Girl Scouts are then able to choose how to use their earnings. Girl Scouts have the opportunity to go on trips with their troop, experience the outdoors at camp, fund a local project to improve their community and even donate to a cause of their choosing.

In the early 1950s, local Girl Scouts had a specific goal for their funds: to earn enough money to build a local camp. They relied on cookie sales and funds from rummage sales to pay for the project.

The local Scout council bought the land in northern La Crosse County in 1951. That same year, the Girl Scouts conducted a naming competition. Jacqualine Kramer won the contest with the name Camp Ehawee, meaning Camp of the Laughing Maidens.

Although the land already had been purchased, the Girl Scouts still needed to raise enough money to begin development and build facilities. La Crosse Girl Scouts were so dedicated to their goal of having a developed camp that they sold 12,951 boxes of cookies in 1952 — the largest number in local history at the time. The La Crosse Tribune printed an article on May 16, 1952, stating the Girl Scouts were “building their camp with cookies.”

Even though La Crosse Girl Scouts this year won’t be concerned with building a new camp, they are as invested in community improvement now as they were in 1917.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on February 10, 2018.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.

1920s Football Referee Uniform

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

Ben Hudrilik

Catalog Number: 1987.062.03

Before the 1920s, football officials dressed much differently than they do today. A New York Times article from 2013 reports that football referees wore a beret, bow tie and white dress shirt. They also used horns, not flags, to signal penalties.

This look could cause on-field confusion, because football players often wore white uniforms, too, and they could not easily distinguish a teammate from an official.

The striped uniform we see today was introduced about 1920 after an Arizona quarterback mistook referee Lloyd Olds for one of his teammates and threw him the football. This mistake drove Olds and friend Greg Moe, who owned a sporting goods store, to design a black-and-white-striped uniform that would stand out.

Football fans hated this new look at first, but it stuck around because of its distinctive style. Many people tried to change the uniform in a variety of ways — such as adding red stripes when color televisions became popular — but none of them could dethrone Olds’ design. This design later was adopted by other sports, including hockey, basketball and soccer.

The uniform for football referees has changed little over the years. According to ESPN, the most recent change came in 2006 when NFL referees selected new uniforms to accommodate a wider variety of weather. This also was when wider white stripes and thinner black stripes were introduced.

This uniform was donated by Leon Miller, who attended, taught and coached at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse for more than 40 years. He was widely praised for his officiating work, and he served as associate director of the university’s Physical Education Department.

Fans will be able to see the almost-century-old referee uniform still on the field at Sunday’s Super Bowl in Minneapolis.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on February 3, 2018.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.