USA > Wisconsin > Columbia County > A history of Columbia County, Wisconsin : a narrative account of its historical progress, its people, and its principal interests > Part 41
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SKETCH OF JAMES R. HASTIE
Mr. Hastie is still living on the farm in Section 18, Town 11 north, Range 9 east upon which his parents and their children located on April 18, 1856. His grandfather, William Hastie, served as a British Vol- unteer Home Guard during the Napoleonic wars, when there was appre- hension that the Little Corsican might invade Great Britain. Grand- father Hastie's branch of the family was Scandinavian-Scotch. The maternal ancestry is English.
Archibald Hastie, the father of James R., was born in Scotland October 13, 1817, and on his fifteenth birthday landed in Boston, Massa- chusetts, in company with his parents, his sister and her husband, William Guthrie, going thence to Caledonia County, Vermont. There his mother died fifteen years later. William Hastie, Mr. Hastie's grandfather, sur- vived his wife more than twenty years, dying in De Korra during October, 1868.
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On March 25, 1841, Archibald Hastie married Elizabeth Jane Gil- fillan, daughter of William Gilfillan and (Mrs.) Ruth Blanchard Cham- berlain. That generation were the first of the Gilfillans to be trans- planted from Scotland to America, and Mr. Hastie's grandmother (Gil- fillan) was of French-Huguenot extraction with English mixture. Mr. Hastie's mother was a faithful, conscientious and religious woman, thereby following in the footsteps of her own parents. She survived the husband and father more than ten years, and they both were laid to rest in the cemetery at De Korra.
James R. Hastie was born in Caledonia County, Vermont, on June 3, 1843, and was the second son in the family ; his brother William was his elder by one year, and his sister Ruth was a year and ten months younger. The paternal grandfather and grandmother were also in the family cir- cle. With the other members of the family, young Hastie reached Columbia County on the 28th of March, 1856. He was then nearing his thirteenth birthday, his education having been confined largely to driv- ing oxen over the Vermont hills and helping the loggers in the mountain streams. At that time Poynette was just a postmark, and John Thomas postmaster. He kept the letters that came in any old place, performing his official duties for pleasure, not profit.
After looking around for a short time Archibald Hastie bought a farm on Section 18, Town 11 north, Range 9 east, moving his household to it April 18, 1856, and dying on this family homestead January 2, 1893.
Amid such homely, healthful surroundings James R. Hastie reached manhood. He was educated both in Sunday school and district school, and continued his ox-managing and plowing career, changed somewhat to meet the new conditions of a pioneer civilization sprouting in a prairie country. As already stated, he has seen the county grow from next to nothing to one of the most prosperous in South-Central Wisconsin; and of that growth he has taken his good part.
Mr. Hastie has had his little fling at office-holding, having handled the cash-box of the county at one time. From his own words, he is no longer ambitious in that direction. For instance, he says: "The inquisi- tive public perhaps might desire to know how ex-officials in general feel in retirement. Teddy would say 'Bully! And I don't take any in mine only a teaspoonful in a little warm water and milk; for I'm tem- perate in all things.' I'll smile through my fingers and say 'Me too.'
"Keeping anything is certainly an ordeal to pass through. Keeping money is a difficult matter. Keeping secrets, especially political ones, fries all the fat out of a fellow. Keeping books-you find you are
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short or long on cash. You find somebody has yours, or you have his. Either way, puts you temporarily out of confidence in yourself."
Mr. Hastie's family representative of the generation following his own, is his daughter, Grace R., who (to quote his words) "if she is favored with the family longevity, may be associated with the next edition of a Columbia County History. In fact, ladies may be compiling one of their own. It is impossible to foretell the future."
CHIAPTER XXXIV
MARCELLON AND FORT WINNEBAGO
FIRST SETTLERS IN MARCELLON-OTHERS WHO CAME IN 1846-SEVERAL FIRST EVENTS-NAME OF MARCELLON WITHOUT MEANING-TOWN OF FORT WINNEBAGO-COUNT AGOSTEN HARASZTHY-MAKES WISCONSIN HIS HOME-LOCATES IN SAUK COUNTY-OFF FOR CALIFORNIA-PROM- INENT IN THE GOLDEN STATE-DEATH IN NICARAGUA-PORTRAIT BROUGHT TO PORTAGE-FIRST PERMANENT SETTLERS OF TOWN-HOW THE TOWN CAME TO BE.
The Town of Marcellon is in the northern part of Columbia County, east and north of the Fox River Valley. The river crosses its extreme southeast corner, and two small branches of Spring Creek (formerly French Creek), a tributary of the Fox, traverse the western and central sections and provide them with good drainage.
Marcellon lies on high ground, has a rolling surface, is almost witlı- out marsh or prairie, and still has considerable timber-over thirty-three hundred acres yet standing-and is one of the townships which the railroads have failed to notice.
FIRST SETTLER IN MARCELLON
The first settler in the town was Francis B. Langdon, who, in No- vember, 1845, located on Section 24, in the eastern part of the present Marcellon. Messrs. Case and Powell came soon after. The first winter passed by Mr. Langdon in that location was spent in a small log house in which there was no window and only one door. To obtain flour and meal for his family he had to go to Beaver Dam, Columbus or Waupun. It required several days to make the journey, and when he arrived at his destination there was no certainty of obtaining a supply.
OTHERS WHO CAME IN 1846
In March, 1846, P. Peckham located as the town's fourth settler, and during the year was joined by E. Herod, William J. Ensign and Gilman
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H. Hoyt. Within the succeeding three years came Samuel Seavy, John Seavy, Thomas D. Wallace, William HI. Cahoon, George Brinkerhoff, William Bonny, Lawrence Van Dusen and Hiram Albee.
SEVERAL FIRST EVENTS
In June, 1846, Elder Wedge, a Baptist minister, preached at the house of Mr. Powell on Section 1, and his were the first religious services in the town. Leona Ensign taught the pioneer school in 1847 on Section 36.
Speaking comparatively, events came thick and fast in 1849. In that year the town was organized, a postoffice was established on Section 36, and the first church (Methodist Episcopal) was formed at the new postoffice of Marcellon.
NAME OF MARCELLON WITHOUT MEANING
As to Marcellon-what does it mean? Absolutely nothing. Like Poynette, it was born of a clerical blunder. William C. Albee, eldest of those horn to Mr. and Mrs. Hiram Albee, among the most prominent of Marcellon's settlers, thus explains its creation: "At a gathering of the early settlers of the town, then a part of Wyocena Precinct, they decided to ask for a postoffice for their convenience, and the petition that was sent forward asked that the postoffice be named 'Massillon' in honor of the great French pulpit orator, but the postoffice department suggested that some other name be selected as there was already a very important office of that name in Ohio. The organization of a town by the name of Massillon was then being agitated which was soon accomplished, but the scribe who handled the pen wrote Marrsellon instead, and it ap- peared on the plat as Marrsellon, but was afterward changed to Mar- cellon, which signifies nothing in its present form."
TOWN OF FORT WINNEBAGO
The first permanent settlement within the present limits of the Town of Fort Winnebago was made in 1848. The uneasy few at the Fox River side of the portage and those who squatted near the old fort cannot be included under the phrase "permanent settlement."
COUNT AGOSTEN HARASZTHY
In this class and in the period of the early '40s belongs one of the most noted characters who ever trod Wisconsin soil; and, though Count
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Agosten Haraszthy resided but a few years in Sauk County, and had a temporary dwelling on an island in the Fox River in the Town of Fort Winnebago, from which he supplied the garrison with wood, both the state and the town are proud of this small proprietorship in his wonder- ful and useful activities. The count was a Hungarian refugee of an ancient and honorable family ; wealthy, educated in the law, and honored by high office, civil and military, at the hands of the emperor. But he threw himself with natural impetuosity into the Liberal movement di- reeted against Austria, and his large estates were confiscated, while he fled the country to the United States. After widely traveling, he wrote and published a book setting forth the resources of the country to induce the immigration of his countrymen.
MAKES WISCONSIN HIS HOME
Soon after, in 1840 and 1841, he made the State of Wisconsin his home, purchased large traets of land for colonization purposes, founded a settlement on the western side of the Wisconsin River, which was the forerunner of Sauk City, built bridges, constructed roads and established ferries and steamboat lines, his boats not only plying along the Wiscon- sin, but down the Mississippi to St. Louis. But before he was able to prosecute such large enterprises he returned to Hungary, under the pro- tection of the United States Government, and surrendered a mass of valuable state papers in exchange for a fragment of his personal prop- erty. Out of the wreck he rescued $150,000 in gold and rare plate and paintings, which he brought to the United States in the summer of 1842, together with his family and retinue of attendants numbering twenty persons.
LOCATES IN SAUK COUNTY
Count Haraszthy bought 4,000 acres of land on the shores of one of the lakes near Madison, staked out his property as the Colony of Good Hope, but through an irregularity in the transfer papers was displaced by a land grabber. He then burned every building he had ereeted, broke up eamp, and located on his purchase of 6,000 acres in Sauk County three miles below the old settlement, known as Prairie du Sauk. He called his new colony by his own name, and had it incorporated, and it soon grew to be a flourishing village. He started a horse ferry across the river, made excellent roads, established flouring mills, sawmills and stores, and subsequently ran a steamboat down the Wisconsin River as
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far as St. Louis. It was during the early period of his founding of "Sauk City" that he secured a Government contract for supplying Fort Winnebago with wood, and spent some time within the limits of the present town in carrying it out.
OFF FOR CALIFORNIA
The count also engaged extensively in agriculture, planting the first hops in the state at Sank City, and encouraging others to do likewise. He was also at that time head of the Emigrant Association of Wisconsin, which brought over large colonies of English, German and Swiss emi- grants. His own settlement had attained such a start by 1846 that he succeeded in having it named as the county seat, building a courthouse at his own expense. But yearly recurring prairie fires destroyed his crops and many of his buildings, the commercial crisis of 1847 crippled him, and the Hungarian revolution of 1848 drew heavily on his dwindling private fortune. The consequence was that in 1849, with fifty associates, he started overland for California.
PROMINENT IN THE GOLDEN STATE
In the Golden State his fortune looked up. He became very promi- nent in the affairs of the commonwealth, and during his twenty years' residence there, mostly at Sonoma, scientifically founded those vast in- terests centering in viniculture and viticulture in which California has no rival in the United States, if in the world.
DEATH IN NICARAGUA
Having conveyed his vineyards covering 400 acres to a society which he had organized, he went to Nicaragua in 1868, and became interested in sugar culture, the distillation of spirits for export, the manufacture of textile fibers and the carrying trade between San Francisco and Nicaraguan ports. He is supposed to have been drowned on the sugar plantation of 100,000 acres in which he held a controlling interest, known as the Hacienda San Antonio, near the port of Corinto, Nicaragua, on the 6th of July, 1870.
PORTRAIT BROUGHT TO PORTAGE
A portrait of the count is one of the most prized objects in the por- trait gallery at the City Hall of Portage. After many years of effort
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to secure it, the painting was obtained in San Francisco during the spring of 1903.
FIRST PERMANENT SETTLER OF TOWN
Jonathan Whitney is considered the first permanent settler in the Town of Fort Winnebago. In May, 1848, he selected as his home the southwest quarter of Section 3, and founded "Port Hope;" which com- menced and ended in hope. In the following year the English potters colonized in the northeast.
HOW THE TOWN CAME TO BE
In January, 1849, was organized the Town of Winnebago Portage, which did not then include the present township west of Fox River, which was included in the Menominee Indian lands. The latter had not been surveyed when the name was changed to Port Hope, in 1850, but were in the following year.
Fort Winnebago, west of Fox River, was surveyed into sections and quarter sections in July, 1851. There were then one house on Section 4, two on Section 5, one on Section 7, two on Section 8, one on Section 9, one on Section 16, one on Section 17, one on Section 18, two on Section 19, two on Section 20, one on Section 21, two on Section 29, two on Section 30, one on Section 31, and one on Section 33-in all, twenty-one houses.
At a meeting of the board of supervisors held November 18, 1853, the town was named Fort Winnebago, and in 1858 had assumed its pres- ent form and area, when portions of its southwestern sections were taken from it to let in the northernmost part of the City of Portage.
CHAPTER XXXV
SCOTT AND RANDOLPH
GOOD FRUIT AND DAIRY COUNTRY-FIRST SETTLER IN SCOTT-M. W. PAT- TON AND OTHERS-FAMOUS BLUE TAVERN-NAMED AFTER WINFIELD SCOTT.
Scott is in the northern tier of townships, between Marcellon and Randolph, and is unvexed by cities, villages, settlements or other bunches of people.
The southeastern part of the town is prairie land, an extension of the large prairie area of Randolph. Adjacent to the head streams of the Fox River in the eastern and northeastern sections is considerable swampy land. The western and northern parts were formerly quite heavily timbered, with oak openings, but most of these wooded tracts have disappeared.
GOOD FRUIT AND DAIRY COUNTRY
The northwestern portions of the town present a rather light sandy soil, which readily raises fruit, in the production of which Scott devotes nearly four thousand acres of land, ranking next to Caledonia in this regard. The southern portions of the town abound in a heavy black loam.
Well watered as it is, with an abundance of rich grasses, the Town of Scott is especially adapted to the raising of a fine grade of milch cows. As a dairy country, Northeastern Columbia County far sur- passes its other portions, with the exception of Caledonia, and Scott Township presents all the best features of that region.
FIRST SETTLER IN SCOTT
The first settler in the town appears to have been Jolin Dodge, who came from New Hampshire in the fall of 1844 and took up a claim
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in the east half of the southeast quarter of Section 34, near the Spring- vale line. He then went home, but in the latter part of the same winter started for his Western claim. Reaching Chicago, he purchased a span of horses, and drove to Watertown, where he bought a load of corn and oats which he brought through to his location in Scott. He then sent his brother to Green Bay on horseback to enter the quarter section which became his homestead. The entry was made February 11, 1845- the first in the town.
M. W. PATTON AND OTHERS
In the fall of 1845 M. W. Patton, afterward known as the "High Court of Centerville," made his appearance at Mr. Dodge's, tired and hungry from land-hunting. The squire called for dinner, to which Mr. Dodge responded heartily to the extent of a squirrel which he had just shot. In after years Mr. Patton always said that that meal beat anything he ever sat down to.
FAMOUS BLUE TAVERN
In May, 1846, John Sawyer, Hamlet Copeland and James Hammond, agents of the English Potters' Emigration Society, bought land in the Town of Scott, and in 1846 Samnel and John McConachie erected the Blue Tavern, on the regular stage road which ran between Milwaukee and Portage. It was a roomy frame structure and, as their business grew, it was no unusual sight to see thirty or forty teams pass the house daily, carrying grain to Milwaukee and freighting goods back. Stephen B. Gage succeeded the originators of the enterprise, and was mainly responsible for its good business. He charged travelers a shilling a meal, with a drink of whisky thrown in-as was the custom in those days. Mr. Gage stuck to his tavern until 1857, when the building of the La Crosse & Milwaukee Railroad killed his trade.
NAMED AFTER WINFIELD SCOTT
The Town of Scott was organized for civil and political purposes in November. 1849, and was named after General Winfield Scott who was making his Mexican war record during the first years of its settlement.
CHAPTER XXXVI
LOWVILLE AND SPRINGVALE
JACOB LOW, FIRST SETTLER OF LOWVILLE-FIRST MARRIAGE, BIRTH AND DEATH-FIRST POSTOFFICE AND MAIL ROUTE-THE HOTEL-FIRST TEACHER AND PREACHER-COMING OF THE TOWNSEND FAMILY-REM- INISCENCES OF A. J. TOWNSEND TOWN OF SPRINGVALE-ADAPTED TO CATTLE RAISING -- SPRINGVALE'S FIRST SETTLER-HIGH-PRICED RELIGION-THE WELSH SETTLERS-ORGANIZED UNDER PRESENT NAME.
Lowville, one of the southern agricultural townships of Columbia County, is the origin of Rocky Run, a Wisconsin River tributary which has its source in Mud Lake; this, the largest body of water in the town, is in the very center of Lowville.
JACOB LOW, FIRST SETTLER OF LOWVILLE
The first settler was Jacob Low, son of Capt. Gideon Low, who was a sutler at Fort Winnebago and afterward proprietor of the famous Franklin House at the Portage. The son came in 1843, and during that and the following year Jacob Stone, Edward Clark and Jonathan Gil- bert also located on their claims; in 1845, Silas W. Herring, Henry Herring, John Barmore, Orin Rogers, S. J. Scott and Jefferson Waters; in 1846, S. P. Webb, Claudius Evarts, Justice Warden and Joseph Snell.
FIRST MARRIAGE, BIRTH AND DEATH
The first marriage in the town was that of Thomas M. Richards with Julia A. Webb, on July 15, 1847; the first white child born, Emma, daughter of Claudius and Betsy Evarts, in May, 1847; the first death, that of Joseph Snell, July 30, 1848 ..
FIRST POSTOFFICE AND MAIL ROUTE
The first settlements were made in the southwestern part of town, and in 1846 a postoffice was established on Section 32, with Mr. Low as
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postmaster. The first mail route by which this office was supplied was from Madison to Portage. Prior to the completion of the northern division of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad this route was quite extensively patronized by traveling men.
THE HOTEL
Mr. Low converted his house into a hotel in 1846, and conducted the tavern until 1853, Stephen Brayton succeeding him both as postmaster and hotelkeeper in that year. In 1856, with the approach of the rail- road, the stage line was discontinued and travel thus cut off.
TOWN NAMED LOWVILLE
With the organization of the county, in 1846, was created the Town of Lowville. As there was no dispute as to whom was the most prom- . inent citizen within the proposed subdivision of the county, it was named after Jacob Low.
FIRST TEACHER AND PREACHER
The year 1848 brought two important events into the town history- the teaching of its first schools, one by Julia Stevens near Mr. Low's house on Section 32, and the other by B. M. Webb, on Section 5; and the preaching of the first sermon, by Elder William Cornell, at the house of Theodore Northrup on Section 8. In September, 1849, the elder organized a Baptist Church, and for more than twenty years the society met at the schoolhouse on Section 5.
COMING OF THE TOWNSEND FAMILY
Among the newcomers of 1848 was the father of A. J. Townsend, the latter having resided in Wyocena for fifty-six years. He came to Lowville, with other members of the family, from Jefferson County, New York. The journey was by team to Buffalo, thence by boat to She- boygan, Wisconsin, and thence by team again to Columbia County. The father took up 240 acres of Government land, and farmed it for ten years, when, in 1858, the family came to Wyocena. The son (A. J. Town- send) insists that no settler should be called a pioneer whose land title does not run direct from the Government; and, by that rule, the Town- send family is surely in the list of Columbia County pioneers.
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REMINISCENCES OF A. J. TOWNSEND
Mr. Townsend, the younger, is still alert mentally and physically despite his eighty-odd years, and his reminiscences are always welcome additions to local history, as witness the following from his pen in 1914:
"Jacob Low, a son of Gideon Low, Captain of Fort Winnebago, was the first settler in Lowville. He built a tavern on the old Madison and Portage stage road, one mile from the south line and one and three- fourths miles from the west line of the town. The town was named Lowville in honor of his good early work. When he settled there, there was not a house between Portage and his tavern. It was the stage house for Fink and Walker's line from Portage to Madison. Mr. Low was the first postmaster.
"Until 1849 there were but fifteen families in the town.
"Just east of Mr. Low's tavern there was an Indian village with thirty-seven wigwams and quite a number of Indians still there. The village was located near a number of large springs that have since entirely disappeared. They were the headwaters of Rowan, Creek. This is in accord with the prediction of an old Indian living in the vil- lage at that time, who said: 'Great Spirit angry with smoky man and dry the water all up.'
"Nearly all the houses of the settlers were built of logs and poles, mere shacks, and small at that, and all public meetings were held in some one's shack.
"The people were wide awake and nearly all abstemious, with a decided Christian character.
"The first Sabbath school was organized early in May, 1848, and Peter Drake, living in a pole shack 12x16 feet tendered the use of it to the people for all Christian services. People came from miles around, often ten or fifteen miles, and pleasant Sundays the attendance was as many as 100 at the service and 35 at the Sabbath school. This school is still in existence and has been continuously since it started with the exception of one year when the male portion of the settlers were in the South defending their country. There may have been other Sunday schools started before this one, but where is there one in the county that has existed sixty-six years with one short vacation. The State Associa- tion gives this school the credit of being the Banner Sunday School of the state.
"In the fall of 1848 William Cornell organized a Baptist church in connection with the Sunday school.
"Two public school houses were built in 1850, one in the north part and the other in the south part of the town.
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"There are only four people living who took part in this first church and Sunday school to-day."
TOWN OF SPRINGVALE
The Town of Springvale lies on the Wisconsin River side of the watershed. Three branches of Duck Creek traverse it from east to west, running in flat, marshy, sharply defined valleys, which extend into Ran- dolph and Courtland townships to the east. In the western sections of the two towns last named are the sources of Duck Creek.
The valleys in Springvale have an altitude of from 230 to 260 feet, and are separated by tongnes of higher land. The broadest marsh and valley are those which lie along the north or main branch; on the west line of the town they are nearly four miles in width. Prairie on higher ground occurs in the northeastern part of the town, chiefly in Sections 11, 12, 13, 15 and 4, connecting with the prairie in the northwestern part of Courtland.
ADAPTED TO CATTLE RAISING
This diversity of surface, well watered and of good soil, adapts the town to the raising of live stock, especially of cattle, and not a few of the farmers have fine herds of milch cows. It is also one of the best potato districts of the county.
CONTENTED, THOUGH WITHOUT A VILLAGE
Springvale has never enjoyed the luxury of a village, although a postoffice was established on Section 28 more than sixty years ago, but finally discontinued. In 1857 the northern division of the Chicago, Mil- waukee & St. Paul line was built through the northern sections of the town, but there has never been a station between Cambria on the east and Pardeeville on the west. Notwithstanding which, the people of Springvale live well and seem contented, if not happy.
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