 |
 |
||
 |
|||
 |
Inscription Brick
A unique gift for that someone who is hard to buy for at the holiday season, or the celebration of life of someone who has passed. Also, the celebration of an anniversary or in honor of your children or grandchildren - you may wish to make a contriubtion via an inscription brick. For a contribution of $100 you can choose a 4" X 8" brick, $200 a 6" X 8" brick, $300 a 8" X 10" brick and for $500 a 8" X 12" brick.
John Lawler
John Lawler was born in Ireland in 1832. He arrived in Prairie du Chien in April of 1857. That summer a 25 year old John Lawler became a railway station agent for the Milwaukee & Prairie du Chien Railroad. Soon after the completion of the railroad to Prairie du Chien he became interested in the securing cheap and speedy transfer of passengers and freight across the Mississippi River to McGregor, Iowa. He bought barges and transferred railcars across the river towed by steamboat. In 1843 he invented and obtained a patent for the railway pontoon bridge. This allowed the railcars to travel across the river year-around. It was adapted in many places around the world and the concept is still used today. He became a very wealthy man.
John Lawler an active Catholic layman and philanthropist was responsible for purchasing the Christian Brothers' of St. John's College located in Prairie du Chien and given to the German Jesuit Missionaries and the school later became Campion Boys School. Lawler also paid for St. Mary's Academy, a Jesuit girls' school.
Lawler was very well connected both politically and with church leaders. It was John Lawler who accompanied Civil War Generals, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and Hancock to La Crosse, Wisconsin. His religious honors attest to his church service as he was made a Knight of St, Gregory by Pope Leo XIII.
Lawler Park was named after John Lawler, Prairie du Chien's greatest philanthropist.
Emma Big Bear
Part of Marquette and McGregor, Iowa's history lives on in the story of Emma Big Bear, born on July 5, 1869 to Chief Big Bear and Mary Blue Wing in a small frame home on the Winnebago Indian Reservation at Tomah, Monroe Co., Wisconsin. Emma spent her childhood and young adult life in Wisconsin, but lived mostly in and around small northeast Iowa Mississippi River towns. Emma claimed to be a direct descendent of early 19th Century Winnebago Chief Decorah, refusing to live on a reservation by not wandering far from the graves of her ancestors, preferring to live in the prehistoric area near Effigy Mounds' sacred space along the Mississippi River.
Emma's first husband was Little Beaver, also a Winnebago, about which little is known. Emma and her second husband, William J. "Henry" Holt of Winnebago and Sioux parentage, lived by traditional tribal means. To this union was born a daughter Emmaline. After Henry died accidentally in 1944 and Emmaline died of an illness in 1945, Emma moved down river to McGregor to live alone in a contemporary chipodoka, which was eventually destroyed by floods. Living out her last years in a house on Marquette's main street, Emma became ill, relocated to a nursing home and died on August 21, 1968 at age 99 years.
Local fishermen gave Emma their carp for her soup and she would skin muskrats and raccoons for hunters and trappers in exchange for the meat. To earn a living, Emma is best known as a basket maker, bead worker and herb gatherer. Many of the older generation recall Emma sitting on the riverbank making her beadwork and baskets from black ash trees and natural dyes, selling her wares by the Marquette bridge and downtown McGregor. Being dirt-poor didn't stop Emma from helping out a needy neighbor, even if all she could only afford to give was an empathetic look and a caring smile.
Emma Big Bear is long gone but cherished as the last full-blooded American Indian to live by traditional Winnebago, now Ho-Chunk, means in Clayton Co. and possibly all of northeast Iowa.
About | Sculptures | Fire Circle | Donations |
|
|
 |
mississippiriversculpturepark.com |
||
