Oak Creek Historical Society

Jacob Goelzer Farm

 

Location:    approx. 800 W. Oakwood Road,  Oak Creek, WI

Established: about 1870

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Jacob Goelzer and his relatives had a 174-acre farm on what is now West Oakwood Road, on both sides of the railroad tracks and across the street from the Oakwood Depot, according to the 1876 plat map of the Town of Oak Creek.  The Jacob Goelzer clan’s large house, built in the early 1920s, still stands on Hummingbird Lane in the Oakwood Terrace subdivision that was built around it in the early 1990s.  

Jacob’s father, Johann Daniel Goelzer, came to Wisconsin from Germany and established a farm in Franklin on the west side of Kilbourn Road (now 27th Street) near Elm Road. In 1854, Daniel bought an additional 40 acres on the north side of Oakwood Road in Oak Creek.  In 1870, Jacob bought the 134-acre farm on the south side of Oakwood Road in Oak Creek. Jacob ran a farm machinery business, Jacob Goelzer & Co., in the Village of Oakwood across the street from the Studer Depot.  The Goelzer building housed the residence of the Goelzer family on the second floor.  The first floor was a tavern at one time, a butcher shop and a post office.  One of Jacob’s sons, Lewis, was the Oak Creek Town Clerk for 52 years.

In 1869, Daniel’s daughter, Louisa, married Jacob H. Goelzer (no relation, but confusing to later day family history researchers).  Jacob H. and Louisa lived on the Franklin farm with Daniel.  Jacob H. had his own interesting story.

Jacob H. Goelzer served in the Civil War. He had been living in Germantown when he enlisted on Aug. 21, 1862, in Company G of the 28th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment. He was a private and spent most of the next two years in Arkansas. In early 1865, the 28th was moved to New Orleans and then to Alabama, where it was one of many Union units laying siege to Mobile and Fort Blakeley in the final weeks of the war.  Goelzer was mustered out on Aug. 23, 1865.

Jacob H. Goelzer was born in 1840 and died in 1892. He and many other relatives are buried in the Independent Cemetery behind St. John’s Lutheran Church at West Oakwood Road and South 27th Street.  It has a GAR marker, honoring his Civil War service. The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was the war veterans’ organization.

Seymour Gilbert of New Berlin was a sergeant, first sergeant and then the first lieutenant of Goelzer’s Company G, and the officer’s substantial wartime diary is on a website devoted to the 28th Wisconsin. What he saw daily is what Goelzer also saw. See it at: