By DAN BENSON
of the Journal Sentinel staff

Last Updated: April 19, 2002

This will be a busy summer for the Ozaukee County Historical Society, with a number of new restoration projects and new events planned.

Living History   Photo/Tom Lynn Marie Bannenberg, Cedarburg, sweeps the steps to the professional building.   Photo/Tom Lynn Harriet Kapp, Sussex, removes the coverings from the bed at the Hilgen collection at Pioneer Village.

The biggest single project is the continuing restoration of the Interurban Depot in Cedarburg, but most of the action will be at Pioneer Village, on Highway I in the Town of Saukville, just north of Hawthorne Hills County Golf Course.

Pioneer Village, a collection of 20 historic buildings dating from the 1840s to early 1900s, will play host to a number of events, including Civil War and Revolutionary War re-enactments and a fiddlers' contest.

"The new thing is the artisans shows on June 8," said Mary Sayner, a member of the historical society's board.

She said 30 to 35 artists and artisans will have displays and booths on the grounds where they will sell merchandise and demonstrate skills including weaving, basket making and lace making.

"We'll also have woodworkers, broom makers, quilters and artists from the area and Illinois and all over Wisconsin," Sayner said.

The Civil War re-enactment is a two-day event for the general public May 11 and 12. A special day for area school children will be held May 10, Sayner said.

"There will be 12 stations set up where they can see how they performed medical treatment, cooked their meals and what camp life was like, as well as see the costumes of the soldiers and women who worked in the camp as nurses," she said.

Battle re-enactments will be held on May 11 and 12 only, she said.

Sayner said 25 to 30 fiddlers from Wisconsin and Illinois are expected to participate in the Old Time Fiddlers contest on July 28.

Prior to the season, a crew of 15 workers spent many hours getting Pioneer Village ready for the new season, Sayner said. Volunteers will be busy this summer as well on two other projects.

Plans call for a replica of Liberty School, a rural schoolhouse that was in use from 1868 to 1961 near Random Lake in southern Sheboygan County, to be rebuilt on the park grounds at a cost of $45,000.

Some pieces of the 20- by 30-foot building, which also has an 8- by 10-foot foyer, will be used but many of the materials used are being donated, Sayner said.

Another major undertaking will be the restoration of the Hashak barn, a log hay barn built in 1865 that was dismantled and moved from Myra, Wis., and rebuilt at Pioneer Village.

Sayner said that restoration is expected to cost $11,000.

The historical society also operates the one-room Stony Hill School, the birthplace of National Flag Day, a few miles north of Pioneer Village in the Town of Fredonia.

At the old Interurban Depot in Cedarburg, crews are installing a new roof, Sayner said.

"Once that's done, then we can get started on the inside," she said.

The group wants to restore the building, at the corner of Center St. and Hanover Ave., to the way it appeared in 1910, a few years after it was built.

Plans call for the building to become the headquarters of the historical society, which now uses a 20- by 20-foot room in the basement of the Lincoln Building next door to Cedarburg City Hall.

Work on the project is behind schedule and over budget, thanks in part to complications with removing lead paint and other environmental concerns.

The final bill for the building's restoration is expected to be about $730,000, more than double the original estimate of $350,000. Restoration is expected to be finished in 2003.