Local History at the Mabel Tainter

By David K. Williams

The Mabel Tainter Theater has graced downtown Menomonie for 135 years.  On Sunday, June 15th at 10 a.m., congregations of the Unitarian Society of Menomonie and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Eau Claire will join at the Mabel Tainter to celebrate their threads of connection with the Mabel Tainter Theater.

Local historian Tim Hirsch will review that connected history.  Beginning in 1865, Bertha Tainter visited Eau Claire to speak at the Universalist Church there, and during the 1880s, she and Dora Rust from Eau Claire became friends.  Both women worked to organize Unitarian congregations in their respective communities.

In Menomonie, Bertha Tainter and husband Andrew collaborated with Unitarian minister Henry Doty Maxson to design and then build the Mabel Tainter Theater in memory of their recently deceased daughter Mabel and as a community center for the people of Menomonie.  Rev. Maxson also served the Eau Claire church in those early years. The Mabel Tainter Theater was noted as the “permanent church home of the Unitarian Society of Menomonie.”  Though the Unitarian Society of Menomonie meets regularly at 105 21st  Street NE, the fellowship maintains its historic connection to the Mabel Tainter in various other ways.

Connections among the Mabel Tainter, and the Unitarian Universalist congregations in both cities continue now into the twenty-first century.  The public is welcome to join this celebration and historical review of connections going back to the 1890s.  There is no admission charge.