Postville’s Past Still Lives at a York Township Crossroads
Once known as the village of Stewart, Postville grew from a pioneer settlement into a small farming hamlet with a schoolhouse, store, churches, cheese factory and blacksmith shop.
Postville is easy to pass today without realizing how much history sits at one rural intersection in York Township, west of New Glarus.
Before it was Postville, the place was known as Stewart, named for a man named John Stewart who settled there in 1838. Early records and newspaper references show the two names overlapped for a time, including a 1904 notice that referred to “the Stewart post office, sometimes called Postville.”
The name Postville is generally traced to Gilbert Post, who moved into the community in 1858 and established a residence and general store that later became the Postville Hotel. The change also solved a practical problem: “Stewart” was not a workable postal name once mail routes required clearer identification.
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