Profile · Caledonia, Wisconsin
Elmer Addison Morse
U.S. Representative (WI-10); born Franksville / Caledonia, career in Antigo
$7,500
Elmer Addison Morse was a Racine County farm kid who became a three-term Republican congressman from Wisconsin’s cutover north. Franksville—inside today’s village of Caledonia—was the childhood and the superintendent’s office; Antigo was the House career. Born in Franksville on May 11, 1870, he attended the common schools of Racine County, graduated from Ripon College in 1893, and served two terms as county superintendent of schools (1893 and 1895) while reading law at the University of Wisconsin. Admitted to the bar in 1900, he did not stay. Antigo made him city attorney from 1900 to 1906 and, in 1906, sent him to Congress from the Tenth District. He married Myra Tradewell in Mount Pleasant on March 31, 1897; they had one daughter, Catherine. He served three House terms, March 4, 1907, to March 3, 1913, talking like a Progressive about trusts, monopoly, and natural resources. A Democratic wave and a redrawn district ended it in 1912. He went home to Antigo and stayed in law, insurance, and real estate under the Morse-Tradewell name until an operation in Rochester, Minnesota, killed him on October 4, 1945. He is buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Antigo. The Caledonia stretch is childhood and the superintendent’s office, not the Capitol years.