Preservation efforts at E.H. Bertermann Memorial Chapel Rib Mountain
, 2022-07-13 02:00:00,
Editor’s Note: This story has been changed to reflect the correct date of the annual service held at the chapel.
RIB MOUNTAIN – The little church only holds about 60 people, and regular Sunday services haven’t been held there since 1965.
But the picturesque white clapboard chapel has been part of the Rib Mountain landscape for more than 130 years. And for a few families with deep roots in the area, it’s one of those holy places that connects them with the past and gives added meaning to the present.
Now they do the work to physically preserve the E.H. Bertermann Memorial Chapel for their descendants. They also are in the midst of collecting and organizing pieces of the church’s history to make sure the memories and history of the place are preserved, too.
Kathryn Marten, 27, of Green Bay, is helping compile the history of the church, which was an Evangelical Lutheran denomination, and early members were German-speaking immigrants. Her husband, Mitchell Marten, is descended from homesteaders who settled at the base of Rib Mountain in the late 1800s, and they were among the early organizers and members of the church.
Kathryn and Mitchell, also 27, are high school sweethearts who attended D.C. Everest Area High School. They were married in the chapel in 2019. Even before Mitchell formally proposed, “we knew we were going to get married in that little church,” Kathryn said.
For Mitchell, it was a long-held dream come true.
“I knew from a young age on that I…
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