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Pritzlaff Home
Champion Tree is Dying
Forty-Eighters: Builders of Watertown,
pg 55
Forty-Eighter, hardware merchant, flour mill,
grain and produce dealer.
1880s,
Partnership with Fred Miller
Pritzlaff, Henry B "Hans", 1917,
Watertown High School Senior YrBk portrait
Abstracted
from Watertown
Daily Times, 11 01 2008
The champion tree
is located at 900 East Cady St. which is the current home of John and Chris
Katzenberger and the former home of the Ken and Dolly Wetzel.
Both men
confirmed the tree is the second oldest Scotch pine tree in Wisconsin and is
located in the front yard of the Cady Street property. The scientific name for the tree is pinus
sylvestris.
The tree was
last measured in 2000 by Dave Schumann of Watertown who at the time was a
technologist, quality-yield development research, division of wood quality,
United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Products Laboratory in Madison.
John did some
basic checking and using the information he had and with a little estimating,
he believes the tree is about 270 years old.
John told us
many of the largest trees in the state are located in the southern and
southeastern part. A century or more ago
there was a lot of clear cutting in the northern forests and that meant many of
the trees growing today are second or third generation trees as compared to
some of these down here which were left on residential plots of land.
The downside to
this story is John and Ken both confirmed the tree is not in good health . John
said there was very little life left in the tree this fall and he believes the
terrible winter of last year and then coupled with the constant rains of this
year did some serious damage to it. When
a tree is approaching 300 years old, it's just possible it's dying of old age.
The home at 900
Cady St. is one of Watertown's historical ones and was included in Evelyn
Rose's book “Our Heritage of Homes.”
“Henry
Pritzlaff was born in Prussia in 1824, came to America in 1856 and in 1864
arrived in Watertown, where he soon engaged in the hardware business. He built his home shortly after that. In 1878 Pritzlaff became a dealer in grain
and general farm products.
“The Greek
Revival style Pritzlaff home is well maintained and most attractive today. It is of Watertown brick and elongated
windows are in evidence in all parts of the home. Return cornices also show a Greek Revival
influence.
“Henry
Pritzlaff's son, William, was born in Watertown and took over his father's
hardware business in 1967. William
Pritzlaff married Julianna, daughter of Fred Lehmann. Lehmann, one of Watertown's early contractors is said to have built this home
and also to have introduced the use of concrete in Watertown.”
