Preserving Our Postal Past

by Chris Barney

In March, 1998, my wife Pam and I visited the small, unincorporated village of Sherry, Wisconsin in northern Wood County, about five miles north of the farm where Pam was raised. Sherry was a booming lumber mill town in the 1880s and 1890s, but the boom passed and the village’s population, which had peaked at about one thousand around 1890, eventually dwindled to about 150.

The village’s fourth-class post office, established in 1884 with Charles S. Briggs as first postmaster, hung on until 1968, when the little office was closed following the retirement of postmistress Lorraine LeRoux, and the Post Office Department’s decision that there was not enough revenue to justify a full-time postal employee.  

By the time of our 1998 visit, all that remained of Sherry was a cheese factory, church, tavern, trucking company, and the Sherry Volunteer Fire Department. Not a grocery store or gas station survived. What did remain, however, was the old storefront building that had housed the Sherry Post Office for most of its eighty-four years.

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Once a general store, with gasoline pumps added in the first half of the 1900s (probably around 1920), it ceased being a store around 1960, was an insurance agency following that and, more recently, was remodeled to accommodate living quarters and garage space.  Even though the original storefront windows and entrance had been removed and replaced with an overhead garage door, the original, old-fashioned squared-off roof façade remained in place. Though heavy rain occasionally interfered, I was able to snap a few photos of the structure, along with views of the 1903 Lutheran Church, Main Street, and the circa-1890s Anderton house, briefly owned by lumberman Henry Sherry, the town’s namesake. Later that year I was able to obtain a 1956 photo of the store/post office from former owners Vernon and Fern Becker, showing a remodeled storefront entrance and a more modern gasoline pump.  

By the end of 1998, the present owner of the store/P. O. building had removed the roof facade, eliminating the last recognizable feature of the original storefront. Fortunately, I was able to capture that feature on film before it was taken down. Since that time, I have also obtained two circa-1910s postcard photos of the store. If not for my interest in this particular facet of state postal history, much of what I discovered may have remained unknown or lost altogether.  

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Sherry Postmasters and Appointment Dates:

Charles S. Briggs 12 April 1884

Walter S. Paddock 30 March 1888

George K. Smith 16 Jun. 1891

Edwin E. Ramsdell 25 May 1897

Richard O. Evans 12 April 1900

Alva C. Cline 25 Jan. 1902

Arthur D. Kelley 4 Aug. 1903

Richard O. Evans 14 July 1904

Mrs. Mary F. Swazee 24 March 1925

Anton Wiken Acting PM 1 July 1928

                                PM 25 July 1928

                                Deceased 21 July 1937

Claude A. Weber 16 Aug. 1937

Mrs. Lorraine Leroux 1 Jan. 1938

Phillip Reinhardt Kundinger 19 April 1968 

Office discontinued 8 May 1968, with mail service from Milladore 54454. Zip Code 54478 was retired. Office was located in sec. 4, R24N R5E, Sherry Township.

Related Links

• Sherry Post Office Photos