With the capital campaign entering its public phase, a brief refresher on D. R Moon Sr. and his family are in order.

Birth and early childhood
Delos Rensselaer Moon Sr. was born August 29, 1835 at Ellery Center in Chautauqua County, New York to Angeline and Chester Moon, according to the received history. An alternate birth story told in a history by grandson C.W. Moon kept at the Stanley Area Historical Society has D.R. Moon Sr. potentially born at Chenango County, rejected in the same history on the grounds of New York State Census records supporting residence by the Moons in Chautauqua County in 1835, the year of Delo’s birth.
At least one obituary would later record his father’s name as Nathan, while family and census records relate the name as “Chester.” The latter is potentially supported by the fact that Delos named one son Chester Delos. Whether “Nathan” was a nickname or what relation this had to D.R. Moon’s family history remains to be fully explored. Chester/Nathan went missing sometime between 1835 and 1840.

Going west
His father missing, the future lumber company magnate with an anglicized Greek name dwelt amongst other Moon families in Chautauqua County before leaving with his mother Angeline around 1842, to head west. Angeline would later marry Forestville New York native Samuel Swift and settle down to a farm life in Aurora Illinois, not uncommon in an era when most Americans lived off the land. Delos took his his stepfather’s name on some census records. A girl named “Anna Kerance” or “Anna Swift” and younger than Delos shows up as a household member on census records as well.
Adapting to Illinois residency, D.R. Moon Sr. met his future wife Sarah Freleigh Gilman at Aurora, Illinois, Sarah being the daughter of John Lawrence and Cornelia (Baker) Gilman.
Born herself at Ohio, Sarah’s parents were from New England.
Sarah was nicknamed “Sally,” so much so that this name—not her legal one—made the tombstone at Forest Hill Cemetery in Eau Claire when she died in 1909, just under 11 years after her husband.
Married October 12, 1858 in Illinois, Mr. and Mrs. D.R. Moon Sr. traveled north to Eau Claire, Delos having made the trip via Read’s Landing a year earlier to take up management of the Halls Brothers Bank at Eau Claire.
Born in 1859, Mr. and Mrs. Moon’s first son Lawrence Gilman (L.G.) Moon would become an Eau Claire grocer, then becoming involved in the family lumber business and moving to Stanley to oversee operations there.
Married to Catherine Lockwood, Lawrence Gilman ‘Gil’ Moon would also become Stanley’s first president, back when the city was a village in the early 1890s. Mr. and Mrs. L.G. Moon would later move west to Idaho and the West Coast, “following the pine” as it was said in those days.
Also among the children of Mr. and Mrs. D.R. Moon Sr. was Delos Moon Jr., born at Danville, New York in 1879. Like his father, D.R. Moon Jr. went into business, entering the Northwestern Lumber Company’s employment in 1900 after an education in the public schools and at Phillip’s Academy in Andover Massachusetts.
On October 16, 1901 he married Bertha Elizabeth Dean, Mrs. D.R. Moon Jr. among those attending the libraries’ 75th anniversary in 1976. Several children were born to the the couple before D.R. Moon Jr. himself died in 1930.
Also among the sons of Delos and Sally Moon were Frank Hall (F.H.), Chester Delos (C.D.), and Sumner Thomas (S.T.) ‘John’ Moon, each with their stories. Sumner, for instance, was active in the family business and recorded in old Stanley locals mention as “John,” rather than Sumner.
As for daughters, the Moons had three, two of whom (Pauline and Angeline) survived into adulthood. A third daughter, Kate Porter Moon, died in infancy.

Life at Eau Claire and surroundings.
Arriving at Eau Claire in 1858 just as the community located on three river banks was starting to consolidate, the Moons settled down to life in Eau Claire. Unbeknownst to the newlyweds, war and its financial consequences would soon set Mr. Moon on a different path than anticipated.
Missouri being a border state between north and south, and Halls Brothers Bank of Eau Claire holding a great deal of Missouri securities, the threat and then reality of Southern secession caused a plummeting in the value of Missouri bank notes, affecting the stability of Halls Brothers Bank and leading to its closure by the State Comptroller. Forced as it were to reconsider the future, Mr. Moon went into business with New York native Gilbert Porter, fellow New York native Sumner T. McKnight later added to the partnership.
Known first as Porter and Moon, the company would blossom as the Northwestern Lumber Company, being involved in interstate commerce through lumberyards at Missouri, after the war.
As it happened, meanwhile, the first local venture of the three partners was not at Stanley, but southwest of Eau Claire, near what is now the Porterville Boat Landing off Highway 37 in the Town of Brunswick.
Then home to a lumber boom town known as Porter’s Mills, the site marked today by Porterville Road (old Main Street) and Chippewa River State Trail (old railroad bed) had three sawmills, with Mr. Porter handling logs, D.R. finance, and Mr. McKnight the downriver sales end, at Missouri.
While at Porter’s Mills, D.R. also functioned as its postmaster, listed as such in the mid-1870s. Home to three sawmills when nearby Eau Claire was known as Sawdust City, the flood of 1884 was among the events that spelled the beginning of Porter’s Mills end, located as it was on low ground. But the end of Porter’s Mills would be Stanley’s beginning, as many families relocated with the company.

The company comes to Stanley
Coming through the area in 1881, the Wisconsin Central Railroad opened new opportunities for transporting lumber—previously limited to waterways—and the Northwestern Lumber Company was not shy to take advantage of these.
Locating a mill at present day Fandry Park in the early 1890s, the company established a log pond (now Chapman Lake) along the Wolf River, a railroad called the Stanley, Merrill, & Phillips (S.M. & P) Railway transporting both logs and people in those days when local roads still left much to be desired.
Leaving Stanley headed northeast and passing through places like Junction, Mitterhoffer, Bellinger, Polley, and Gilman on its journey north, the S.M. & P Railway was later torn up and abandoned, persisting today mostly in remnants, disguised as roads or old rights of way. In time farms replaced the timber lands, large cutover areas being sold off by the lumber companies after the pine that made them valuable had been cleared away, a new economic phase succeeding the old as to land use.
As for Mr. Moon, he wouldn’t live to see Stanley come to this mature state, dying instead on November 5, 1898 at Eau Claire, with the funeral held from home, known as Maplewood.
Maplewood later among mansions demolished off the north bank of the Eau Claire river, the church Mr. Moon attended at Eau Claire, Christ Church Cathedral, would move to Owen, Wisconsin, persisting today as St. Katherine’s Episcopal Church, courtesy of fellow lumber baron John Owen.

Epilogue
Now 143 years old, Stanley owes its early development and existence to the Northwestern Lumber Company, of which D.R. Moon was the head. Granted a library on its twentieth anniversary in 1901, Stanley continues to grow and change, no longer dependent on lumber, but never far from its history.