Biographical history of Clark and Jackson Counties, Wisconsin : containing portraits of all the presidents of the United States, with accompanying biographies of each, and engravings of prominent citizens of the counties, with personal histories of many of the early settlers and leading families, Part 44

Author: Lewis Publishing Company. cn
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 436


USA > Wisconsin > Clark County > Biographical history of Clark and Jackson Counties, Wisconsin : containing portraits of all the presidents of the United States, with accompanying biographies of each, and engravings of prominent citizens of the counties, with personal histories of many of the early settlers and leading families > Part 44
USA > Wisconsin > Jackson County > Biographical history of Clark and Jackson Counties, Wisconsin : containing portraits of all the presidents of the United States, with accompanying biographies of each, and engravings of prominent citizens of the counties, with personal histories of many of the early settlers and leading families > Part 44


Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).


Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44


line was of French extraction; the word du was formerly a part of the name, as "du Pichion." In her father's family were five daughters and two sons, natives of Maine.


Mr. Rollins was married January 6, 1873, to Sarah Jane Heath, and by this union are Rosa May, born July 30, 1876; William Henry, born November 1, 1877; and Frank


Leslie, born Angust 26, 1879. Mrs. Rollins was the youngest child of Jehiel Heath, and was born December 14, 1852. (A sketch of Mr. Heath's family is given elsewhere in this volume.) Mr. Rollins comes of a hardy race, and in his younger days he was an efficient laborer in the logging camps for fifteen years or more.


CLARK AND JACKSON COUNTIES.


383


ADDENDUM.


W. T. PRICE.


From the Congressional Record, giving the proceedings of the House of Representatives for February 9, 1887, we take the following address of United States Senator Spooner, of Wisconsin, giving additional facts and testi- monials regarding the life and character of Hon. W. T. Price:


" In the spring of 1845, rich in ambition, energy and the other elements of true man- hood, but, like so many thousands who pre- ceded and who followed him from the populous East to the Western land of hope, poor in every other way, Mr. Price turned his face and steps westward, and landed at Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, ill-clad and travel- stained, with only 25 cents in his pocket and an ax, which he well knew how to use, upon his shoulder. In the autumnn of the same year he went to Black River Falls, Wisconsin, where among the stately waving pines he pitched his tent. From that day on he knew no other home.


" From the time of his settlement in Wis- consin to his death he was an important fac-' tor, both in the public service and in the business life of the region in which he dwelt. In 1849 he was Deputy Sheriff of Crawford County, which then included what is now the county of Jackson. He was a member of the first law firm in the latter county, and in 1854 was elected the first Judge of that county. He was a inember of the Legislative Assem- bly of the State in 1851-'52; County Treas- urer in 1856-'57; Collector of Internal Reve- nue fromn 1863 to 1865; Presidential Elector


on the Republican ticket in 1868; member of the State Senate 1857, 1870-'71, and 1878- '81; President of the Senate in 1879; Presi- dent of the Agricultural Society of his county for seven years; the first President of the Tomah & Lake St. Croix Railway Company, (afterward the West Wisconsin Railway Com- pany); President of the Jackson County Bank from its organization until 1884; Chairman of the Town Board of his town for eight years or more, and President of the village of Black River Falls. He was also elected to the Forth-eighth, Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Con- gresses, receiving at the last election, though helpless through the illness which resulted in his death and unable to take any part in the canvass, over 12,000 majority,-a majority larger than ever before cast for a Congres- sional candidate in that State.


" For a few years prior to the commercial panic of 1857 he was a member of a mercan- tile firm, which went down during the panic; and all the accumulations which the toil and energy of years had brought to him were in a day swept away, leaving him, as he used to say, over $15,000 worse off than nothing; but, undaunted and undiscouraged, he set to work and in a few years had, single-handed, redeemned, with interest, the part which bore the name of his firm. His business life thenceforward was successful, and he amassed a considerable fortune.


" During the forty-one years of his life in Wisconsin, he was extensively engaged in lumbering operations, and came to be one of the principal loggers in the State, cutting and


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BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY OF


floating to market during the last five years of his life an average of 60,000,000 feet of logs each year.


" As has been seen, lie was familiar, almost from the ontset of his career in Wisconsin to the day of his death, with public duties of different grades, from the offices of the town and village to that of Member of Congress; and I assert only what goes without saying in my State when I say that he bronght to the discharge of every public dnty tireless industry, patient and intelligent attention to detail and unusual sagacity. He had a pe- cnliarly correct idea of citizenship. To him the government, State and national, was not a. far-away, fanciful thing in which the indi- vidnal cltizen liad no direet interest. He realized that the nation is only an aggrega- tion of individuals, and that nnder onr sys- tem of government the ultimate success of the whole vitally depends upon the intelli- gence and vitality with which sneh citizen discharges his duty, and therefore lie attended, not as a ward politician or in any sense a political boss, but as a citizen, every primary and every meeting which took cognizance of public affairs. * *


"There was no neutral tint in this man's character, being in everything aggressive, and a force in whatever he undertook. He was no laggard in any relation of life. In business there seemed to be no limit to his capacity or endurance. He managed with great sagacity, energy and success many dif- ferent branches at the same time, and on a large scale, any one of which would have overtaxed an ordinary man. He employed hundreds of men at a time, always paid them good wages, and demanded of them faithful service. He despised a drone, and no man better appreciated manly qualities, under whatever guise; and so in the logging camp, and on the great " log drives " among hun-


dreds of rough men, he was a master, not by reason of his wealth, or because he was em- ployer, but by force of his energy and ability, and because he himself had been a wage- worker among woodsmen. He was an ex- acting employer, but his men loved him, for he was generous and just to them; and on the wintry day of his burial, which bronglit prominent men in large numbers from the cities throughout the State to liis desolate home, there came out from the lumber camps up in the pine woods, red-shirted, kind hearted lumbermen, to take their part, with bowed heads and tear-blinded eyes, in the last sad rites of the grave.


" Mr. Price was a restless man, impatient of restraint, intolerant of opposition, recogniz- ing no obstacle as absolutely insurmountable. Intense, progressive, and a radical in every- thing, lie rarely hesitated to express his opinion of men and things. He was strong in liis friendships, bitter in his hatreds, al- ways outspoken and blunt, sometimes harsh in his judgment of friends, sometimes unjust, doubtless, to opponents; but there was in him and in his life so much of generous impulse, of good neighborship, of sympathy for all wlio suffered, of honest, faithful public ser- vice, and of genuine love of country, that he was popular throughout the State and had troops of partisans and personal friends.


" He was of a nervous temperament, phy- sically vigorons and quick of movement, and of an exceedingly acute mind. With all the details of his great business operations press- ing upon him, he would attend a session of the Legislature, never voting for an unneces- sary adjourmment, always at his post master- ing the details of legislation, investigating with sernpulous care all bills proposing to take money from the public treasury, and contributing his full share, and even more, to the debates of the session. Qnick of thought


.


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CLARK AND JACKSON COUNTIES.


and speech, he analyzed well, and possessed too, in a rare degree, the power of general- ization. Such a man could not fail to be a for- inidable and dangerons antagonist in debate.


" I do not remember to have known a more rapid speaker, either in the halls of legisla- tion or on the stump. He was phenomenally quick at repartee, and excelled in vitupera- tive eloquence; but he could be, when fancy moved him, pathetic also; and I have heard many times from his lips, as a legislator, speeches eloquent and thrilling in words of denunciation, and also in words of tenderness and pathos. No man who knew him will gainsay my statement that he was, taken all in all, a brilliant man.


" During the years of my acquaintance with him he was a Republican, sturdy and steadfast in the essential principles of the party, but not always in strict accord with its policies. There were times when he differed with the party ; and when he differed from it the party always knew it, and upon what ground he differed. He never concealed his views upon any subject; and though he was thought sometimes to have strayed from the party fold none denied his right to sit in the party councils, for no one doubted his integ- rity. He was a man of great conrage, both physical and moral. He would not tolerate an imposition or insult, and he was absolutely fearless of any inan anywhere, and yet he was not immodest or without distrust of himself.


" He was an attractive speaker to almost any andience. When he spoke, men always listened. Trne, he was not always right: who is? He was always earnest, sincere, bright and original. He hated sham, and was al- ways ready to attack it wherever he found it. He was an iconoclast, having little reverence for tradition. With him no evil acquired immunity from lapse of time, nor did age constitute a safe armor against his lance. 26


"To the national Congress he brought ex- cellent legislative training, a keen sense of fidelity to public trust, peculiar ability and a high and reasonable ambition to excel. That he has won his way and much impressed himself upon the body of which he was a member, eminent associates, oblivious to party lines, warmly testify. He was a sub- stantial factor in Congressional legislation, not simply for the intelligent labor which he performed in committee, nor for the measures which he drafted and the success of which he promoted, but also in debate. He compelled attention, challenged investigation, and. whether right or wrong in his premises and conclusion, made those around him think. Nothing escaped him. He was pitiless in exposing hypocrisy and denouncing what he deemed extravagance, whether it was in the appropriation of a millon dollars to an unwise purpose or a trifling waste of public money in a Congressional funeral or junket. In the State legislature, as in the higher field of legislation to which he was called, he was careful of the public money. In his view he had no right to be generous with it, as he might be with his own. He was a terror to the promoters of suspicious claims upon the treasury and deemed himself absolutely lim- ited as a legislator in the disbursement of the people's money to objects and purposes going obviously and directly to the general public good. Sentiment went for little with him in justification of the expenditure of public money, and sometimes therefore he may have seemed parsimonions to some, but this was his philosophy as to the obligation of a public servant.


" He was very tender of the honor of his city, county, State and nation. If the people made a bad bargain, through legisla- tion or otherwise, however unpopular it grew in time, William T. Price would fight


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BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY OF


determinedly against its repudiation and for its enforcement, not in letter simply but in spirit also. Every man who knew him and his history in the State will recall, as I do, more than one instance in which he upheld what he deemed to be a moral obligation of the people, when it brought him for a time nothing but obloquy, distrust and abuse.


"Ile was a strong advocate always and every- where of the rights of women, and of every proposition in legislation which would relcase them from what he decmcd the bondage of the common law and place within their easy reach facilities for education and independ- once more in harmony with the growing civilization of the world.


" Ile was a devoted friend of the soldier and a zealous advocate of liberal pensions to the soldier and the soldier's widow and orphan. This was with him little less than a passion. In his very soul he be- lieved that to the valor and endurance of the grand army which inarched to the defense of the Union, the people, south as well as north, owed a debt which could never be discharged. There was in his heart, too, a sense of individual obligation to the Union soldier for his home, his fortune, his future, and the happiness and prosperity of those whom he held dear. The faded, dust-stained, battle-torn uniforn of the Federal soldier was to him brighter than the purple robes of royalty, and an honorable discharge from the Union army was in his opinion the highest patent of nobility that could come to any man on earth; and so it was that he labored in season and out of season for the benefit of the soldier, and "pension night" always found William T. Price in his seat. Upon this subject, as upon all others, he had his own notions; and the Record shows him to have voted alone sometimes when it would have been much easier to have gone with the


multitude. Whatever may be said of his positions, none but his enemies questioned his motives, and even they could not fail to admire his courage.


" lle was a public-spirited and generous man. Public improvements found in him always a firm friend. When a charity was to be inaugurated the first man to head a subscription paper was Mr. Price; when a church debt, whatever the denomina- tion, was to be lifted he put his shoulder under the load; when a public library was to be procured he was prompt and princely in his donation.


" His secretary tells me that when, at the end of the last session, weary and ill, he was going home to rest, he assisted him to reckon up his expenditures for the session, and Mr. Price found himself about $900 short and unaccounted for. Upon investigation he found that he had sent it in little sums from time to time during the session to soldiers and soldiers' widows and orphans, whose pitiful letters had touched his heart, and who were waiting in distress for the day to come when the Pension Depart- ment should afford them relief. The circle of his private benefactions was a large one. No one but he knew how large it was, for he gave in his own way and in his own time, and published no bulletin of his charities. He was the good angel of mai.y a poor man's home. When the specter of starvation stood at the threshold Mr. Price drove it away. When sickness came to a neighbor, and the shadow of death settled upon any one's home within his knowledge, he was there, in his own way, and it was not quite like any other man's way, to comfort and to help.


" In the early days of his Wisconsin life and while yet his home was on the frontier, he sometimes joined the revels of the hardy and adventurous men by whom he was sur-


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CLARK AND JACKSON COUNTIES.


rounded; but long, long years ago he turned with loathing from the wine-cup, and to the hour of his death was a strong, active, aggressive temperance orator and agitator, and so known throughout the State. He was a firm believer in prohibition, and strove earnestly and persistently to bring it about; " but he always sought the accomplishment of this purpose within the ranks of his own political party. He considered the traffic in intoxicating drink an unmitigated curse, and was opposed to recognizing its legality by license laws or otherwise. He demanded its obliteration. In the lecture room, on the stump, in the legislature, in the halls of Con- gress, everywhere, he never failed to denounce it with all the power and eloquence and sar- casm which he possessed, and he everywhere pleaded with powerful pathos for all the good which temperance brings and whichi drunkenness destroys. He had bitterness of heart and speech for those, whether men or women, who tempted, anywhere on the earth, a brother to put the chalice to his lips; bnt she had even womanly tenderness and pity,


and a patience almost more than human, for him who was held in thralldom by the habit of drink. To such he was patient, watchful, helpful. No matter how often they stumbled and fell, his hand was outstretched to them, and many such an one encouraged, aided and strengthened by him, was led


To build a new life on a ruined life, To make the future fairer than the past, And make the past appear a troubled dream.


In the region where he lived and lies buried, many a child has been and will be taught to look upon his pictured face as that of the friend whose sympathy and substantial help led the husband and father of that household out from the blackness of night into the soft, sweet light of a happy home. Mr. Price was very near the popular heart in Wisconsin, and his name and fame will be always bright among her treasures. His most exacting friend can wish for him no better epitaph than the true story of what he did and was, and no nobler monument than that which he himself did build."


44.


DERY MAR 2 81339


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