Grafton, Wisconsin

Episode 222 / 6 May 2021 / 157 min / full

Murder Shoes & Fabulation

"Grafton, Wisconsin this time ... This is in southeast Wisconsin. This is Milwaukee suburbs ... This is in Ozaukee County." about 0:05:07

The case: Murder of Christopher Moore (January 26, 1982). Read the case file.

The figures, as told in 2021

Population

11,715

Median age

46

Median household income

$97,328

Median home value

$262,600

Two-bedroom rent

about $918

Cost of living

106

Religious

64%

Property crime

▼ about one-third under

Violent crime

▼ about two-thirds under

History, in brief

• Timothy Wooden arrived in 1839 from the east and is considered the first permanent white resident. about 0:06:53
• Most of the early residents were immigrants from Germany and Ireland. about 0:07:10
• The territorial legislature created the town officially in 1846. about 0:09:33
• The village of Grafton was incorporated in 1896. about 0:09:37
• Grafton was the site of the Milwaukee Falls Lime Company. about 0:09:46
• The Milwaukee Falls Lime Company quarried limestone and operated lime kilns to manufacture slaked lime. about 0:10:12
• The kilns are preserved in Grafton's Lime Kiln Park on the west bank of the Milwaukee River. about 0:10:31
• The lime kilns were where everybody worked until the 1920s. about 0:11:14
• In the early twentieth century the Wisconsin Chair Company operated a furniture factory in the village. about 0:11:23
• The chair company manufactured phonographs, originally exclusively for Edison records. about 0:11:43
• In 1917 the company started its own Paramount Records subsidiary. about 0:11:55
• It is estimated that a quarter of all blues and jazz records by black artists released between 1922 and 1932 were on the Paramount label. about 0:12:10
• Paramount's headquarters and studio moved from Chicago to Grafton, and the big blues artists came there to record. about 0:12:25
• Paramount stopped recording music in 1932 because of the Depression; the label closed in 1935 and the building was knocked down. about 0:12:40
• Grafton is one of the few sites on the Mississippi Blues Trail that is not in the South. about 0:12:49
• In the late 1930s pro-Nazi German Americans affiliated with the German American Bund bought land on the Milwaukee River in Grafton and ran a private camp called Camp Hindenburg. about 0:14:26
• The camp members came into the village to march with Nazi flags and meet at the Grafton Hotel. about 0:15:09
• Camp Hindenburg closed during the Second World War in 1941. about 0:15:15
• Grafton's population grew about six times bigger between 1950 and 1980. about 0:15:25
• Interstates built in the 1960s made it easier for people to commute to Milwaukee. about 0:15:41

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