Veterans group works to revive old church
By Tracy Ouellette
SLN Staff
A local Civil War veterans groups is in the process of restoring the historic Lafayette Church. Camp 15 of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, based in Wind Lake, is the new owner of the defunct church and is working to fix up the church, which has been a landmark in the community for 150 years.
Originally named the First Congregational LaFayette Church, the church was established on July 4, 1855, on the prairies of Lafayette Township and served the early settlers in the township. Around a dozen Civil War soldiers are buried in White Oak Cemetery adjacent to the church.
Dave Daley said because the members of Camp 15 have a strong connection to the church and the cemetery.
“We’re a fraternal organization made up of descendents of the soldiers who fought in the Civil War,” Daley said. “We want to make sure the church and cemetery are maintained for history.”
One of the soldiers buried in the cemetery is Tom Pollak, who farmed just northeast of the church, and later served as a sergeant in the Civil War. Pollak helped found the church and is buried in the cemetery. Also buried there is Jonathan Dwight Stevens, a sergeant in Co. D, 20th Wisconsin Infantry, and the son of Lafayette Church’s first pastor.
That pastor, the Rev. Jedediah D. Stevens, was a well-known missionary to Native American tribes in the Upper Midwest before coming to Lafayette Township, and himself served during the Civil War as a sanitary agent in the South, working to ensure safe sanitation and medical care for Union Army soldiers.
The church is just west of the intersection of Walworth County Highway D and Highway ES, about five miles southwest of East Troy.
“We are proud to take over the church and pledge ourselves to preserving the church in a way that honors the love the Lafayette Township community has for this church,” said Bob Koenecke, a top officer in Camp 15.
Koenecke, who helped start the restoration of the church 10 years ago, worked on the deed transfer with members of the Wuehrmann family who had owned the church.
“When Lafayette Church basically went defunct around 1980, Kyle Reed’s father took over the church and he used it for a scholarship foundation to honor his son,” Daley said.
By the early 1980s, with dwindling membership, services at the church ended and the building fell into disuse although burials continued in the adjacent cemetery. The PIP Foundation, operated by William Wuehrmann Sr., who had ties to the area, took over the church, and through the foundation, awarded more than 50 scholarships to architectural students in memory of his son, William Phillip Wuehrmann, Jr. The church was also used for occasional weddings, Thanksgiving services and other social events.
In 2010, Bob Koenecke and Pat Kulas from the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, began renovating the church, putting on a new roof and repainting both the outside and inside of the building.
“So that’s how the Sons got started restoring the church,” Daley said.
Taking over
Wuehrmann Sr. died in 2015 and last year, the Wuehrmann family – which includes a daughter, Kyle Reed, who operates Reed Furniture in Elkhorn with her family – decided for business reasons to transfer the Lafayette Church building to another non-profit organization.
With two members of the non-profit Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War so involved in the renovation of the church, the family asked the Camp 15 in Wind Lake to take over the church.
“They asked if we were interested in taking over the church and with having done some must restoration already, we said we’d be happy to take ownership,” Daley said.
Since last spring, Camp 15 has been busy fixing up the church, inside and out, and have installed new windows in the basement and will be painting the exterior soon. They hope that they may be able to undergo more renovations such as an Entry Doors Renewal by Andersen or someone similar, for an example. There are some big ideas for improvement that with hope, will one day become a reality.
“It’s a slow process,” Daley said. “It’s all done with donations and we’ve had to do things like put new gutters on both the east and west eves of the church because there was some dampness in the basement. It seems to have been very helpful with that.”
Daley said the group’s intent is to restore the old church, with a few updates, so it can be used for meetings, gatherings and possibly a wedding venue.
“We want to bring it up to date, but preserve the church as best as possible,” he said. “We want the community know our goal is to preserve this as a part of our history.”
Some of the updates needed, Daley said, were to install plumbing, which the church doesn’t have and electrical upgrades.
“We hope to have enough funds to do that, we don’t have a toilet or running water and we want to put those in the facility,” he said. “This summer our focus will be painting the outside. We’re in the process of deciding if we’re going to use regular exterior paint, which will cost about $1,000 or if we want to use Rhino Shield, which is going to cost about $5,000, but offer longer protection.”
Daley said it was important to the members of Camp 15 to let the community know they are committed to preserving the church and history for future generations.
“This is an historic church and a landmark in the area since 1855,” Daley said. “We are honored to now be caretakers of the church and the community can be assured we’re not going to be changing the church, just updating it and maintaining it. We want to make sure the Union soldiers graves are taken care of and that we’re preserving the legacy, memory and history of those soldiers.”
How to help
Donations for the project can be made at www.gofundme.com/f/lafayette-church-preservation-fund.
For more information contact Camp 15, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War: Dave Daley at 414-418-5112, Bob Koenecke at 262-539-3219 or Mike Wozny at 262-470-2846.
