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Weekly Column

Each week a small segment of Vernon County history is published in the county papers.


For the week of 12/13/2020
by Kristen Parrott, curator

Throughout 2020 we have enjoyed bringing you stories about the Sherry-Butt House, the historic home at 795 N. Main St. in Viroqua now owned and operated as a museum by the Vernon County Historical Society. The house was built by the Butt family in 1870, and sold to the Sherry family in 1947. The VCHS bought it from the Sherrys in 1989.

The story of the Sherry-Butt House is not only about these two families, but also about Viroqua. The house and its residents show us how the community changed over the course of 100+ years.

Many of Viroqua’s early residents were “Yankees”, people from the eastern U.S. with ancestry in Britain and Ireland. This was true of Cyrus and Margaret (McAuley) Butt, the house’s first owners: Cyrus was born in Ohio, and Margaret in Indiana, and they came from British and Irish stock.

Their five children – Tom, Esther, Jane, Cyrus, and Beth Butt – all graduated from Viroqua’s schools and then went on to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, as did many other children of early residents. Most of the Butt children went out into the wider world after college, but some did return to Viroqua after a period of years. Only one had a child. Leaving Viroqua and/or having small families were also characteristics of some Yankee pioneer descendants.

The Butt family attended the Viroqua Congregational Church, which in 1897 built the big church building at the corner of Jefferson and Washington, today’s “The Commons”. Located in what was considered the fancy part of town, Viroqua’s elite attended this church. Pioneering Yankees who created the town helped form the congregation and build its magnificent church building, while their children saw the congregation dwindle, as members had small families and moved away or died. Finally the church dissolved, and the building was sold in 1935, during the Great Depression.

As these Yankee descendants were moving away from Viroqua, Norwegian immigrants and their descendants were moving in, and the Sherry family represents this change. Both Orbec and Hilda Sherry were children of immigrants. Hilda’s father Iver Loverud was born in Norway, and her mother Ida Olson was the daughter of Norwegian immigrants. Likewise, Orbec’s father Tobias Sherry was born in Norway, and his mother Johanna Stevlingson was the daughter of Norwegian immigrants.

Orbec and Hilda were both raised in rural Vernon County, and they chose to stay in the country when they married and had children. They and their children, Orbec Jr. and Mary, attended country schools. A rural life was a common choice for Norwegian-American families, with parents often moving into town later in life, as Orbec and Hilda did.

Hilda and her daughter Mary graduated from St. Olaf College in Minnesota, a school steeped in Norwegian traditions. The Sherry family attended Main Street Lutheran Church (now Good Shepherd) in Viroqua, which began as a Norwegian congregation. Norwegian families tended to be large, and descendants often stayed in the area, although this certainly wasn’t always the case.

This is just a quick comparison of the Butt and Sherry families, and a brief look at how they represented larger trends in the Viroqua area from the late 19th to the late 20th centuries.


Tobias Sherry

The Tobias and Johanna Sherry farm on Belgium Ridge southwest of Viroqua, where Orbec Sherry grew up and then raised his own family.