USA > Wisconsin > Sauk County > A standard history of Sauk County, Wisconsin, Volume I > Part 56
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COULD NOT BELIEVE THE TOWN DEAD
A few of the other houses and some of the business firms soon fol- lowed, but many of the people could not be comforted nor eould they believe that Newport was really dead. They were sure it must rise again. From the position where they were inelined to dictate terms the people had now reached a point where they were humble. By December, 1857, they thought that, if the railroad company could be induced to allow a station on the line opposite the town, Newport might still retain her trade and glory. This station would accommodate Baraboo, Delton, Reedsburg and Newport and all the neighboring country between these towns.
A petition to the directors of the railroad company was circulated by the Newport remnant. It was signed by the most prominent busi- ness men of the places named. The prayer of the petitioners was that the Town of Newport be allowed to erect a depot on the line of the road where it ran nearest the village, at their expense for the ereetion and maintenance and that the trains be allowed to make regular stops there for the taking on and letting off of passengers, and for the receiving and delivering of freight. This prayer was granted.
Hope again animated the town and the sound of the hammer and saw was heard again in the almost deserted village. The exodns of build- ings and of business firms was stayed for a time. Within the next ten or twelve weeks, one of the handsomest depots on the line was ereeted by the Newport people and by the last of February, 1858, it was ready for opening. On the 25th day of February, 1858, there was a grand jubilee and festival, to which the residents of all the surrounding country had been invited. It was ealled, by the hopeful and overjoyed people of the village, "The resurrection of Newport." There was a procession, a banquet and a great danee. It was certainly a red letter day for the old town and one long to be remembered by the participants. Among the toasts given at the banquet were many which were decided slurs on the railway managers who, in aeeeding to the petition of the people in regard to the depot matter, should have been regarded as benefactors. Ever after there seemed to be a spirit of antagonism between the powers that controlled the road and the Newport people.
LAST FLARE TO THE TORCHI
This resurrection was the last flare to the torch. Newport was too far gone and soon was in the pangs of a second death. The people soon
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began to leave and the houses to go to Reedsburg, Baraboo, and Kil- bonrn, or out in the country. For ten years thereafter the place was slowly but surely sliding off the map, and when the postoffice was dis- continued, in April, 1868, and the tax collector dropped the Newport lots from the tax rolls and ceased to advertise them for sale for taxes, Newport was indeed dead and became but a memory.
Today but four houses, out of all the hundreds which once made up the village, mark the site. These are the Vanderpool home, once the palatial residence of the town, now the summer home of the Kerfoot family; the brick house on the hill, near the Delton and Kilbourn road, built by the Topping family; the little wooden cottage nearer the road, below the brick house, once the home of the Murrays, and the house now occupied by Mrs. Albert House, near the river road, cast of the ereek, ereeted by Mr. Scott. Murray was the master stone mason of the town. and he was also a well digger and dug the first well in the village. Mr. Scott was the last of the old inhabitants to leave the dead village. He did not give up hope until the beginning of the present century.
THE DESERTED VILLAGE OF TODAY
The old village streets are all grown up to locust trees and silver poplars, the descendants of the early shade trees. The streets can only be traced by lines of pits which were once cellars under residences and stores. An occasional clump of lilaes remains to mark the site of the home which some hopeful soul was once bent on beautifying with shrubs and flowers. The old gig paths which were worn deep by the feet of the raftsmen as they walked back from the cove below the town to the head of the Dells for the remaining strings of rafts are still plainly to be traced, but these paths are now pointed out to the wondering tourists as old Indian trails. The old brewery vault has been re-christened. It is now the Robbers' Den. Sugar Bowl Rock and Lone Rock retain the names they bore in the olden time.
The other points of prominent rock, nameless in the old time, are now called in the furtherance of tourist interest, Echo Point, Bear's Cave, Observation Point, Chimney Rock, Signal Peak, etc.
If the memory of Newport, so long dead, shall be preserved for the benefit of the curious in the annals of the Historical Society of Sauk County, the writer will feel compensated for the labor of recording it.
FADED IRON INDUSTRIES OF IRONTON
The iron industries which for some twenty years made the Village of Ironton and its neighborhood a very busy and promising section of the county are also past history. The commencement of that local chap- ter was the arrival of David C. Reed, founder of Reedsburg. to section
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10, south of the village to be founded, and the purchase by him from C. C. Washburne of the southwest quarter thereof, on which iron ore was afterward developed. Mr. Reed mortgaged the property to George Tibbitt and in 1855 Jonas Tower came into possession of it. Mr. Tower believed the deposits could be worked to advantage, bought the site of the Village of Ironton, laid out the town on the bands of the Little Baraboo, opened a store, erected buildings for mills and furnaces, and, although he associated others with him in the early period of the iron boom, he eventually shouldered the burden himself, until his death in 1863. The property then passed to John F. Smith and his associates. The mines and the furnaces a mile north, with buildings and apparatus-that is, the entire plants at the ore beds and the manufactory, with large outfit required for transportation, were then valued at over $100,000, which then was a large figure. Under Mr. Smith's management the Tower estate and mining and manufacturing properties so increased that at his death in 1878 they were probated at $170,000. A large foundry had been established in connection with the furnace and much of the ore was shipped in the form of metal work for agricultural implements, kettles, wagon tires and various castings. But such enterprises were doomed to collapse when it was evident that Ironton would fail to secure the transportation facilities necessary to move such output to advan- tageous markets; also, as has been noted elsewhere, when the vast ton- nage of the ores of Northern Wisconsin and Michigan came into compe- tition with the comparatively tiny quantities which could be mined from sections 9 and 10, of the Town of Ironton. The decline and almost dis- appearance of the mines at that locality, and the village founded on them, are virtual repetitions of the story of Newport in the far north- eastern corner of the county.
There are now a few houses and a postoffice at Ironton, as well as at Lime Ridge, on the southern border of the town. They are both little rural communities, with few ambitions and rivalries.
Other points of some local significance, most of them former post- offices which have been absorbed by the rural mail routes, are Black Hawk, Troy Township; Loreto, Bear Creek Township; Woodlawn in the Town of Washington; Walton, Woodland Township; Witweir, Troy; Denzer and Leland, Honey Creek; Cassel, Troy.
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CHAPTER XXII MEMORIES OF GREENFIELD TOWN
EARLY DAYS IN GREENFIELD (BY MRS. L. H. PALMER)-TOWN APPRO- PRIATELY NAMED-FIRST WHITE SETTLERS-MRS. GARRISON, SHREWD PROMOTER-VILLAGE OF GARRISON-INDIAN TALES-MILLS-RAILROAD NEARLY CAME-TOWN OF GREENFIELD (BY E. D. JACKSON)-PIONEER TEACHERS OF THE TOWN-HOME LIFE BY EXAMPLES-FARM, A MANU- FACTORY-FIRST SUCCESSFUL APPLE GROWING IN THE STATE-RELI- GIOUS LIFE AND CAMP MEETINGS-DEATH OF LITTLE ONES-THE WIL- KINSONS-HUNTING AND FISHING-SONGS OF THE GERMAN FARMERS -MEMORIES OF VANISHED MEN AND WOMEN.
The Town of Greenfield is one of the sections of Sauk County which has passed down the lanes of local history quietly and contentedly. It has no postoffice centers, no railroads, no large industries and little what would be called present-day aggressiveness; yet as much has been written of its good people and the serene beautiful country within its bounds as of any other part of the county, and as Greenfield is typical of rather an unusual phase of American prosperity and contentment, several rem- iniscent papers are reproduced.
EARLY DAYS IN GREENFIELD By Mrs. L. H. Palmer
The Town of Greenfield formed a part of Brooklin (now Baraboo), until 1853, when it was set apart and a preliminary meeting was held April 5th, at the home of John Munroe, where the first executive board was elected. Leonard Thompson, chairman; Hiram Bailey and Isaac V. Mack, side members; clerk, A. F. Kellogg; treasurer, Amos Johnson; town school superintendent, C. W. Kellogg; assessor, Nathan Dennison. The first ten years the names Thompson, Bailey, Mack, Kellogg, Johnson, Dennison, Hoege, Clark, Barstow, Simonds, Palmer and Tucker, appear most frequently as members of the executive board. That they gov- erned wisely and well was proven by the spirit of peace and thrift that hovered over the town at all times.
TOWN APPROPRIATELY NAMED
To Nathan Dennison belongs the honor of naming the town. Those who are familiar with the beautiful prairie, lovely valleys, and the rocky,
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well-wooded bluffs, hemming in as they do the beautiful Baraboo River as it takes its winding course through the center of the town and flows off through the Lower Narrows on its way to the Wisconsin, will agree that the town is appropriately named, though, I believe, Mr. Dennison named it in honor of his old home in Vermont.
FIRST WHITE SETTLERS
Edwin Johnson, the first white settler, built a log cabin and started a shoeshop in 1841, where J. E. Savage now resides, about one mile east of Baraboo. It must have been a very primitive affair and poorly patron- ized, as the next settler was Richard Clark, who built a bachelor eabin the next spring, where C. L. Pearson now has a home. His family con- sisted of nearly 100 hogs, and an old horse named Nell. His son, Thomas, came the following spring and located on the farm now owned by H. C. Langdon. In 1843 he purchased a pair of 18-inch burr mill- stones and erected a grist mill, as it was then ealled, near where the old red schoolhouse was afterward built. Farther up the Prothero (now .Jeffries) Creek, Mason Prothero built and operated a sawmill, and still farther up he built a mill for turning hard wood. He afterwards sold the sawmill to A. Lezart. In 1843 Loran Cowles settled on section 33. He was the first probate judge in Sauk County and one of his sons, Dr. Charles Cowles, was the first physician in the Baraboo Valley. His daughter, Mrs. Schaffer, was the first person to die, and left a baby, Mary, who was the first white child born in Greenfield. In 1845 Moses Nulph and Aaron Nelson located, followed by Job Barstow and Wm. Eikey in 1846. The year 1847 brought several families, namely, Simeon Crandle, Sr., Thomas Risley, John Sanborn, Andrew Garrison, John McGee, Abram Hoege, Thomas Jones, Mr. Denison and Geo. W. Tucker, who was the second settler east of what is now known as Tueker's bridge.
MRS. GARRISON, SHREWD PROMOTER
In 1848 Andrew Garrison died on the plains enroute to California and O. V. Troop, a relative, came from New Brunswick to assist Mrs. Garrison in her many business enterprises. Mrs. Garrison was a brilliant, unscrupulous woman, with a strong personality, very successful in hood- winking all classes, from the professor to the laboring man. She spent large sums of other people's money sinking deep shafts to prospeet for copper, lead and gold, and very nearly succeeded in getting a stoek company formed with a heavy capital, to work the mines that she was in hopes of finding. She started a pottery on her farm and eaused con- siderable excitement, claiming to have had the elay analyzed and that a fine grade of china could be made from it. The clay, however, proved not to be of any value and thus another one of her bubbles burst. O. V. Vol. 1-35
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Troop at her instigation built a dam across the Baraboo River on her land and erected a sawmill, which did some business for a time, but was washed out by a spring freshet and owing to the opposition of the farmers up the river on account of the damage done by the backwater, the dam was never rebuilt.
"VILLAGE" OF GARRISONVILLE
While all this was going on Mrs. Garrison originated and platted the Village of Garrisonville. The stakes that were used to mark the boun- daries of the lots, and the cellars of some of the houses that were built, were still in existence within the memory of the writer. She also estab- lished and conducted a ferry across the Baraboo River. As she lived some distance from the river it was necessary for her to provide some means of notifying her when people wished to cross. She solved the problem by hanging a cow's horn converted into a whistle, on a nearby tree. When she succeeded in getting her town platted, she took the plat to Milwaukee, where she succeeded in selling one-fifth of the town site for $5,000, by representing that the town lay at the head of navi- gation of the Baraboo River and that there was a fine water power at that place, all of which was true. She also persuaded Doctor Delametes of Cleveland, Ohio, that it would be a paying proposition to build a medical college in Garrisonville, but when he came and looked into the matter he found he had been badly humbugged, and he returned home a sadder though wiser man.
The best laid plans of men and mice will sometimes "gang astray," so it was with Mrs. Garrison's. The river was never used for navigation and Baraboo developed so rapidly that Garrisonville was soon deserted, though there had been a hotel and several houses erected and Mrs. Gar- rison conducted a general store at her home for some time. Mrs. Gar- rison, after living a long and eventful life, died a number of years ago in Chicago, suffering for the common necessities of life.
The first school was established in 1850 and was taught by Miss Van Valkenberg at the home of Job Barstow. The following year District No. 1 was organized, covering a much larger territory than it does at present, as settlers were few and scattered. The first schoolhouse was made of logs but was soon replaceed by a frame building, which served for school purposes until about twenty years ago, when it was moved to a nearby farm and serves the purpose of a granary, and a larger building stands on the old place and is still known as the "Eikey school- house."
The old pioneers thus early laid the foundation for the high educa- tional standard that has always been maintained in Greenfield. There have been numbers of teachers, town and county superintendents, assem- blymen and a state senator who received all or nearly all their early education in the schools of our town.
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INDIAN TALES
The Indians were an ever present source of worry and annoyance with the good housewives in those early days. They were generally good natured, but at times, having imbibed too freely of the white man's firewater, they were inclined to be rather ugly. We have heard our grandmother tell an experience, that, to say the least, was rather unpleas- ant. Some Indians and their squaws stopped at the house and wanted something to eat. She told them that she had no bread baked, showing them the dough in the pans as proof of her statement. The Indians were drunk and ugly and told her to make some bread, and sat down in the kitchen to see that she did it. She, with three small children, was alone, and of course could do nothing but obey orders. While waiting for the bread the Indians went to sleep, and the squaws immediately arose to the occasion, secured the guns and knives from the Indians, hid them under their blankets; telling grandmother that "fool Indian not hurt white woman now," hurried away as fast as possible, not waiting for their portion of the bread. When the Indians awoke they took the bread and decamped, much to grandmother's relief.
Greenfield was a favorite camping ground for the Indians on their migratory trips across the country from Baraboo to Dekorra, the trail crossing the Baraboo on the rapids at the point where Garrisonville was located. They hunted, fished, and cultivated fields of corn, tobacco, melons, beans and pumpkins. Traces of some of their cornfields could still be found a few years ago. The Indians have left behind them as mementoes of a rapidly vanishing race caches or places where they stored food, mounds of several forms, the most important being the Man Mound, the only one of its kind in existenee. It has been purchased by the Sauk County Historical Society, the State Archaeological Society, and the Landmarks Committee of Wisconsin Federation of Women's Clubs, together with a small plot of ground adjoining which we hope to convert into a pleasure park, thus preserving the mound and furnishing a pleasant place for holding picnics. There have been found many fine specimens of their handicraft, such as arrow heads, points, spears, ham- mers and axes, showing in many instances very superior workmanship.
The first church to be erected was built by the Lutherans on section 18 in the southern part of the town, and the next was built by the Evangelical Association of North America, one-half mile east of Tucker's Bridge, in 1882. From the first settlement of the town, religions serv- ices have been conducted in the schoolhouses of the several districts.
Fruit growing became a leading industry in very early times. Judge James A. Clark started a nursery on the farm now owned by S. S. Pearson, and was the first to introduce the Duchess apple into Wisconsin. One of the Duchess trees that he set ont lived until a year ago. It is to be regretted that a piece of that old tree was not used to frame a
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photograph of Judge Clark for the Historical Society; as he certainly deserves to be remembered for starting an enterprise that has been as beneficial to a community as fruit culture has to the farmers of Green- field.
MILLS
Some time in the late '40s Wm. Eikey and Wm. Bassett established a sawmill on Leambro Creek (better known as Jackson's Creek), at the northwest corner of section 36. They sold out in 1858 to S. Stimetz who continued the business for a number of years. Mr. Stimetz sold the property to Robert Prentice, who converted it into a flour and feed mill, selling it to his son Andrew, who did a thriving business until some- where about 1885, when he sold it to Chas. Falkenstine, who still owns the mill and does a thriving business. H. W. Konkel owns a flour, feed and saw mill farther up the ereek and though the plant was burned down two years ago he rebuilt and is doing a fine business.
Wm. Eikey, the first white settler east of Tucker's Bridge, located on section 25 because of a fine lime ledge that cropped out at that place. He was a mason by trade and knew the value of good lime. He con- strneted a kiln and for many years burned all the lime used in this part of the country. This lime was stronger than the magnesian lime, and although it was fine for stone work, it was not liked as well for plastering, as it was rather dark.
In 1855 John Dean, who was in the wool business in Baraboo, pur- chased a part of section 4 lying south of the Baraboo River. He thought by ditching two small ereeks together he could get sufficient water power to operate a mill for the manufacture of woolen goods. He moved a building out from Manchester to near where Lewis Schreiber's residence now stands; he installed the machinery and got everything ready for work, but the water proved insufficient and the project had to be aban- doned. He moved the building baek to its old place for a time, but finally deciding that he needed a barn moved it back to nearly the same place. The farm was sold soon after and divided into three parts, and the building was again mnoved and found a final resting place on a sub- stantial basement and is used for a barn by A. Fry.
In the latter half of the '60s the hop fever struck Greenfield in a very violent form. The epidemic spread rapidly until 1868, when the price of hops dropped from 65 cents to 4 cents per pound with a sud- denness that made those interested dizzy. Nearly every one went out of the business at once and it has never been revived.
The farmers were badly handicapped from the first by not having a convenient market for their produce. For a number of years all of their produce had to be drawn by teams to Madison and their supplies brought back in the same manner. It was an expensive, tiresome trip
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and many times by the time the expenses of the trip were paid the amount left to buy home comforts was discouragingly small. Matters were helped very much when there was a railroad put through Portage, but still it was a long drive and quite inconvenient, especially when stock was to be handled.
RAILROAD NEARLY CAME
The farmers were very anxious for a railroad through Baraboo and when the Baraboo Air Line Railroad Company was organized they gladly pledged themselves to bonds for $5,000, believing that the road would cross the southwest corner of the town. When the road was finally laid the Air Line had been consolidated with the Chicago and Northwestern and did not eross Greenfield at all. The people were greatly disappointed, but paid the bonds, although a neighboring town succeeded in avoiding payment on some technicality of law.
Greenfield has always been quite a dairy section and the first checse factory was a stock company in 1875. The members were Amnos John- son, John Munroe, O. H. Cook, Seth McGilvria, A. F. and C. W. Kellogg, Joseph Palmer, Henry Bradbury, Peter Wilkinson and John Dean. With a capital of $2,200 they purchased an acre of land, erected a build- ing, and carried on a very successful business for several years. The property is now owned by L. A. Johnson, and the building is used for a town hall.
TOWN OF GREENFIELD By E. D. Jackson
The Town of Greenfield is one of the beauty spots of Sauk County. It is doubtful if its cqual can anywhere be found for scenery that defies description. The view to the east from the high ground on the Fairfield Road north of Baraboo, presents this favored locality in all its entrancing loveliness. In the foreground is Peck's Prairie fading away toward Caledonia in the foot hills of Pine Bluff that seems to lord it over the surrounding country. On either side are the bluffs that require only a little imagination to lift them into the likeness of the Alps or our own Sierras; and softly stealing its way along willow embowcred shores, is the silver thread of the charming Baraboo, soon to be lost to our view past the Narrows that open on the great marshi toward Portage City.
The level or prairie country of this valley, was first chosen for settle- ment by the pioneers fifty or more years ago; they were largely New York folks with all the advanced ideas that origin implies. The broken country eastward had to wait until the Germans came. In short, the bluffs especially, remained Government land long after the farms in the valley began to feel the exhaustion of repeated cropping. But immigra-
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tion, and poverty which so commonly attends, finally clothed the bluffs with beautiful farms. None but the very poor would go there at first. They worked for wages or on shares on the valley farms until enabled to carry on their own, which had been rescued from the stony hand of nature by unremitting toil. The natural growth of trees made log houses and barns. The loose stones made permanent fences. The soil was good, and that proved the success of those worthy settlers. Moreover, its elevation above the early frost line saved their corn and garden in midsummer freshness when all were cut down in the valley below. A mixed population of Germans, Irish, English and other nationalities besides our own, found lodgement here and converted what at first seems worthless ground, into a very Garden of Eden as it is today.
PIONEER TEACHERS OF THE TOWN
Greenfield was rightly named by Nathan Dennison, one of the early settlers, after his Greenfield, Massachusetts, home. The schools of this town have always been of special interest. As far back as when O. Phelps taught in the Eiky District it was even so. His enthusiasm would often take him to a great rock well upon the Pine Bluff back of the schoolhouse, from which commanding platform the whole locality would resound with oratory as he declaimed the masterpieces of eloquence. To do this in the biting air of winter time meant the genuine spirit of what these productions stood for. The poor man was afflicted like many of the early inhabitants with fever and ague, which at times almost robbed him of energy, when he would fall asleep during school hours on some pupil's desk. At such times, the pranks of the latter would be shown in sprinkling his face with cold water that awakened, but never in time to discover the guilty one. This man loved books and learning. He after- wards became wealthy from hops, and escaped before the crash. For a time he lived with his family in Baraboo and made his home welcome to all his former pupils, even giving them books from his library as presents. It is said that he was the victim of mob violence in New Orleans on account of the mysterious death of his wife, of which he was suspected, I am fain to believe, wrongfully.
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