The First School
At 321 Seventh Avenue, the visitor comes to where the first school was erected in the Baraboo valley. The site was selected by Wallace Rowin, W. H. Canfield, and Lewis Bronson. E. M. Hart the first teacher, resided with his girl wife in the lean-to of the log structure. Notwithstanding an abundance of timber in the immediate vicinity, such economy was exercised in erecting the structure, as a tall citizen once remarked, it was necessary to stoop unusually low when entering the door, "and you could throw a cat through the cracks without touching a hair."
[CHAPTER II]
Old Opera House—Cemetery on the Hill—Deserted Ringlingville—Bunn the Baker of Baraboo
A huge and humorous hoax was the Cardiff Giant. The collapsed humbug was told at every fireside in the land in 1869 and has been retold thousands of times since then. (If the reader is interested go to the Carnegie Free Library, Baraboo, and obtain a copy of the Century Magazine, vol. 64,—new series of Century is Vol. 42—Oct. 1902, page 948; or read in the Sauk County History, 1880, page 547.) The figure was made at Fort Dodge, Iowa, shipped to Chicago, where finishing touches were made, and later taken to Binghampton, New York, then buried on the Newell farm at Cardiff. Not long after the giant was exhumed and still later the fraud was exposed. One of the star actors in the performance was George Hull, who came from Binghampton, New York, to Baraboo, in 1867, and manufactured cigars in a shelly kind of a structure at 614 Oak Street, next to the alley, across the thoroughfare from the rear of the Warren Hotel. While Hull was away the building was burned. It is stated there was insurance of $12,000, that Hull settled for $1,000, and many people said, "Nigger in the fence."