By KRISTEN PARROTT | Vernon County Museum curator
Our first free public program of the year will be held on Tuesday, March 1, at 7 p.m. at the Vernon County Museum. La Farge historian Brad Steinmetz will talk about the protest movement that occurred in the area over the La Farge dam and lake project. The protests began in the 1970s and continued for decades as the inactive federal dam project sat unfinished north of the village.
The Shivers farm in Cheyenne Valley, with Alga at center. (Vernon County Museum photo)
The program will be held in the museum’s first-floor, handicapped-accessible conference room. The topic of the program is also one of the stories featured in the museum’s new “Protest!” exhibit on second floor. This exhibit explores some of the causes that Vernon County people have championed over the years, from temperance to the La Farge dam to the Black Lives Matter movement.
February is Black History Month. Last summer, we received several requests for information about the African American farmers of the Cheyenne Valley community in the town of Forest in Vernon County. Most of the people in Cheyenne Valley were farmers, and the Shivers family farm was one of the largest owned by African Americans in Wisconsin.
Thomas Shivers was born into slavery in the late 1850s in Tennessee. He and his siblings came north after the Civil War, arriving in Cheyenne Valley by 1879. There, he went into agriculture, gradually building a large, modern farm. Thomas and his wife Millie Revels had five or more children, who also helped out on the farm.
On the 1896 Vernon County plat map, Thomas Shivers owns 62.16 acres of land in Section 2 of the town of Union, near the village of Dilly. On the 1915 plat map, Thomas’ land in Union has grown a little, to 66.16 acres, and the 191 acres of adjoining land to the north, in Section 35 of the town of Forest, is now owned by the Shivers brothers, which I think refers to Thomas’ sons.
The Shivers family was forward-thinking in their farming practices. In the late 1910s, Thomas was the first in the area to install indoor plumbing in his farmhouse, using water from a hillside spring. Son Alga built many of the distinctive round barns that Vernon County is now famous for, in addition to conventional barns. The Shivers family kept up on agricultural news and trends and were the first among their neighbors to own a tractor.
The Shivers’ farm was diversified. As an old man, Alga recalled that the family raised many crops, including barley, corn, oats, potatoes, and wheat. They also raised a variety of livestock, including chickens, cows, hogs, horses, and sheep.
You can learn more about the Shivers family, Alga’s round barns, and the Cheyenne Valley community by visiting the Vernon County Museum and archives. Winter public hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday 12–4 p.m. or by appointment.
