Following are excerpts from October, 1956, Beloit Daily News articles written by Blaine Hansen.On Beloit’s west side … long has been a single block street … headed by an old time mansion at its north end. The street is Parker Avenue, named for Charles H. Parker, an early Beloit mayor, manufacturer and banker, whose home was the … dwelling just described… At the north end of his lot … was the Parker School… Before present day Roosevelt Avenue became “West D Street” it was known as “Parker’s Hill” with the two houses on its top about the only buildings in sight…
[At the south end of Parker where the American Legion resides] was the German Presbyterian Church with Mr. and Mrs. Jake Weigle as staunch supporters and members. In fact it was often called “Jake Weigle’s church.” … [And] there was the Second Congregational Church, a rambling gabled structure of wood, at the northeast corner of St. Lawrence and Parker. There it served the spiritual needs of a large parish until the present church was built on Bluff at St. Lawrence.
Back in the 1860s and earlier ‘70s Christmas trees and lots of presents piled at the tree base were not so prevalent in houses of worship as later. But not so at Jake Weigle’s church. Christmas Eve exercises there featured a good sized “Christbaum” sparkling with twinkling candles of every hue. The program always was in German, but that did not prevent youngsters from the “Second Cong” and other nearby churches attending.
They were welcomed by the German Presbyterian folks, sharing in all the fun, including candy, nuts and oranges as well as at least one present, handed out by an appropriately garbed Santa Claus. Is it little wonder that the kids of that section of the west side thought a lot of the Weigles?