The Watertown High School athletic teams are know as the Goslings.
Why?
The choice was not a random one. For over 60 years ending about 1970, Watertown was known as a purveyor of noodled geese. Some may be familiar with foie gras, hand feed and fattened goose liver. Noodling is a similar process.
“Noodling geese is a method of hand feeding which has for its purpose the production of the best fattened geese. It is not employed to any extent except in the section about Watertown, Wisconsin, where the farmers specialize to some extent on goose fattening. It is a method requiring long hours and tedious labor and cannot be profitably carried on unless a special price can be obtained for the product.” (http://ducks-and-geese.f1cf.com.br/ducks-and-geese-156-noodling-geese.html)
According to the late Fred L. Holmes, historian and author of “Old World Wisconsin” and other historical books, the method of forced feeding, stuffing or “noodling” of geese, as the method was known, had its origin in Alsace in Europe over 200 years ago. He learned this from Jefferson and Dodge county farmers who were in the ethnic groups who came from Germany in the late 1800’s. They brought knowledge of the noodling of geese with them.
Holmes also quotes Dr. William F. Whyte, a long time physician in Watertown well over 60 years ago as saying he believed this noodling was an ancient custom. Dr. White, in his “Chronicles of Early Watertown” published in 1921 and reprinted in the Wisconsin Magazine of History writes: “stuffing geese is an ancient custom. In the tombs of the sacred bulls of Egypt, which are 4,000 years old, I saw carved on the walls a pictorial, representation of the same process which made the Watertown farmers famous.” — Evelyn Rose, Watertown Daily Times, June 15, 1977
So how does that fit with our family?
Articles have been written about geese noodling regularly, and many focus on some local farmer or another involved in the difficult task.
In 1895, it was Henry Daub. In 1904 it was ex-Mayor H. Wertheimer and Fred Albrecht. In 1906, it wasW. A. Beurhaus who was packaging the geese for sale in New York. In 1954, it was Fred Rumler and his family.
In the Watertown Daily Times, 12 10 1954, after discussing noodling and the Rumler family and Fred Albrecht, the Times said:
“The art of noodling geese was brought to Johnson Creek and Watertown by a family named Stiehm.”
William and Anna (Ton) Stiehm where natives of Wattenburg, Germany. They came to the United States in 1852 and settled on a farm of 40 acres in Jefferson County. It was necessary to cut down the standing timber in order to make room for the log cabin, so thickly was the ground covered with a native forest trees. At times three weeks were passed without the family seeing another white person. There were shot from the window and on one occasion their dog, which was changed to his kennel, caught a farm, so tame and numerous with a deer in this section. (from History of Jefferson County, WI and Its People: A Record of Settlement, Organization, Progress and Achievement, by John Henry Ott, 1917, SJ Clark Publishing, Chicago, p 275-76.)