USA > Wisconsin > Milwaukee County > Milwaukee > Early Milwaukee : papers from the archives of the Old Settlers' Club of Milwaukee County > Part 2
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12
10 A Sailor's Narrative Capt. William Callaway
11 Milwaukee's First Railway James Seville
12 First Locomotive Built in Milwaukee G. Richardson
13 An Up-River Mystery Jeremiah Quin
14 Early Physicians and Druggists John A. Dadd
15 First Small-pox Epidemic Dr. J. B. Selby
16 Milwaukee in the Mexican War H. W. Bleyer
17 Dr. I. A. Lapham W. W. Wight
Early Settlers
Paper Read by Peter Johnston Sept. 6th, 1897.
Henry Legler, in his excellent "Story of the State," gives a par- tial history of some of the early pioneers of Wisconsin from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century. But they were not settlers in the proper sense of the term. They were exploring adventurers and agents and employees of various fur companies of Canada and the United States and were sent by them to trade with the Indians for furs and peltries. And they had no desire or intention of open- ing the country to permanent settlement or to civilization. In fact it was their intent and aim to keep as far from that as possible. be- cause the fewer the settlers the more Indians and the more furs and better trade and larger profits.
By treaty with the Indians at Chicago in 1833 they ceded to the government the title to their lands in the State, excepting some reservations to which they could retire and live more closely and sociably together and where the Great Father at Washington could look after them and care for them until they became extinct or nearly so-as at present.
It was not till 1834 that lands were surveyed and opened to settlers, and the first land sale was at Mineral Point in 1834. The population of the state was only 4,795. and it was scattered at a few places, the lead mines and trading posts along the rivers and at Green Bay.
In June 1835, the first steamboat landed at Milwaukee and from that time we may date the first waves of immigration that during the succeeding quarter of the Century rolled on these shores. I think it is James Fenimore Cooper, who in a couplet in- troductory to his novel of the Pioneers describes the situation at that time very well :
I hear the tread of Pioneers, A mighty Nation yet to be, The first lone waves upon the Shore, Where soon shall roll a human Sea.
In 1836 eight hundred and seventy-eight thousand acres of land ยท had been sold to settlers and speculators. But the waves of immi- gration did not assume large proportions till after 1840. At that
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EARLY MILWAUKEE
date the population of the State was only 31,000. In 1846 it was 155,000, in 1850 it was 305,000, in 1855 it was 552,000, and in 1860 it was 776,000. In the early forties the advice of Horace Greeley to "Go West Young Man Go West" began to be heeded. And the tide of immigration to Wisconsin increased from year to year till it assumed vast proportions and the state was being set- tled rapidly with an enterprising and industrious population. I speak first of the foreign immigration. From what countries did it come and who and what were they as a class? They came from the best and most intelligent nations of Europe. Probably the great- est number were those speaking the German language. Germans, Austrians, Bohemians, Hungarians, Belgians and Hollanders. Scandinavians from Denmark, Sweden and Norway, English, Scotch and Irish from the British Isles. Some from Switzerland and France. And a few from some countries not mentioned.
In most of those nations education of the masses is general and very few of the immigrants were without some education in their own language.
There were few old people. They were from middle age to younger, married and single, young men and maidens and children. They were intelligent, enterprising and industrious. None were paupers or tramps. They intended to better their fortunes in Wisconsin by honest industry. They were of all trades and pro- ficient farmers, mechanics, lawyers, teachers and preachers, mer- chants and sailors. No better class ever settled a new state. Webster says that an immigrant is one who moves from one country to an- other or from one state to another in the same country. I call the latter domestic immigration. There was a great tide of immigra- tion from the Eastern states during those years. They came largely from New England and the empire state, some from Pennsylvania and from Canada. They were from the best families and blood of those states, descendants of pilgrims and Revolutionary ancestors. They came west for room to expand and grow up with the country. It is of no use to tell you what they did here. Their work speaks for them.
There is another class of early settlers who were not immigrants that came here during those years. They were very few in num- ber at first, but they increased to many thousands as the years
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EARLY SETTLERS
rolled on, and I give in illustration of the class the early history of our friend Capt. J. V. Quarles, as told by himself at the banquet of the Old Settlers' Club in February, 1896. As near as I remember he said in part :
"I came here in 1843. I was a very small boy and I came alone. I was a stranger and I had no money, and no clothes to mention. A kind family took me and cared for me. They were farmers and I helped on the farm. I did some milking and I raised much provisions-with a spoon. They were good to me and sent me to school and educated me to be a lawyer."
I hope that others of his class had a different fate. But I don't know. I do know lawyers are very plenty.
In 1861 when our Southern brethren attempted to destroy this nation and commenced war against it, no state responded more quickly to the president's call for troops than did Wisconsin, and no better or braver men ever followed the flag than Wisconsin soldiers. And no state lost more men, killed, wounded and by the accidents of war, in proportion to their number than Wisconsin. Her soldiers were nearly all early settlers of native and foreign birth, and their sons who were old enough to go to war. There was no difference in the ranks. All were Americans.
In illustration of the loyalty of foreign born citizens to the country, I will relate one instance-and to me it is a sad memory and the example is not extreme-there were thousands of similar cases. When the war commenced in 1861 I had four brothers, native born Scotchmen and adopted citizens of Wisconsin. Three of them enlisted in the early regiments and one later. Two of them returned when the war ended and two were killed in battle and sleep where they fell in unknown graves in Tennessee and Virginia. Could any men do more for their country ?
It is generally supposed that settlers suffered many hardships during early years, but I doubt if they were aware of them to any great extent. It is true they worked hard, but they were able and willing to work and did not count it hardship. They had plenty of good plain food and did not suffer hunger-good warm clothing and did not suffer cold. They had few luxuries for the table be- cause they were not to be had and few fine clothes for the same rea-
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EARLY MILWAUKEE
son. But they were contented with what they could get and did not consider it any hardship. Many of them came from large cities and densely populated districts where a struggle for existence was their only prospect in future. But here they had a feeling of free- dom and independence and assurance of future welfare that was ' new to them, and more than balanced any privation or hardships they might encounter. But they suffered some privations incident to a new country. Markets were few and distant, roads were bad, schools and churches were few and often far away, and in sickness or accidents, medical aid might be hard to get. Farming tools and machinery were crude but no better were in use anywhere. The strong arm of the farmer scattered the seeds, the scythe and grain cradle were mowers and self-binders and the flail and old horse- power thresher prepared the grain for use.
To be fashionable did not trouble them very much. Men were fashionable in satinet, jeans or hard times, ladies in alpaca, de- laines or calicos. There were no high hat laws and their heads were level. Boys and girls were not yet masters and misses, and the new woman was not yet invented. The old woman was perfectly satisfactory, and divorce courts were a luxury reserved for the present generation. They took their pleasure rides on the old buckboard or spring wagons or by Foot and Walker's line in place of bicycle, phaeton or electric car.
Money was scarce and hard to get. Gold and silver were at par, but 16 to 1, they had none of it. But an order on the store was just as good and easier to get. In fact they were not aware how much they were suffering and where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise.
The early settlers found Wisconsin a wilderness. They made it a cultivated, beautiful and prosperous state. They created state and local governments; they enacted wise, just and liberal laws; they founded public schools and the higher institutions of learning ; they built hospitals and asylums for the insane and other unfor- tunates, churches for the good and prisons for the bad. And all that has been added in later years is built on the foundations laid by them, and to them belongs the credit of the state.
At the close of the Civil War in 1865 the population of the state was about 900,000. By immigration and natural increase it
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EARLY SETTLERS
has more than doubled and also doubled in wealth, commerce and production. All the early settlers now living are indeed Old Set- tlers, and a younger generation of men must guide the Ship of State.
May they be as wise, prudent and honest as their Fathers were, and guide her in the safe channel of equal rights and justice to all, and all will be well with the State.
In the 'Thirties
Paper read by C. H. White at Old Settlers' Picnic, Aug. 18, 1898.
You may be unable to reconcile my age which is twenty-seven with these reminiscences of the early days, still I was quite a chunk of a boy when I came to Wisconsin in 1836 during John I. Rockwell and S. V. R. Ableman's terms of office as United States Marshal, for I was deputy under each of these officers during the exciting trial of Sherman M. Booth. I had charge of the jury, and I think Booth and myself are the only parties living who figured in that trial.
My father, Peter White, Sr., emigrated from Rome, New York, in May 1835 to Green Bay, Wisconsin. He established a store and returned in the fall to spend the winter in Rome. The following May he set sail again with his oldest son-your humble servant.
That year the ice proved very severe on boats bound for the upper lakes. We lay in sight of Buffalo two weeks, not able to move, on account of being locked in fields of ice, extending as far as the eye could see.
The middle of June on Sunday morning, we anchored at the point where now lies the City of Green Bay-being the first boat of the season, every inhabitant that was in sight of the Bay or in hearing of church bells was on the dock to receive us.
The Indians outnumbered the whites by hundreds. My first visit to Milwaukee was in the summer of 1838. I drove a team and took Andrew J. Vieau and family from Green Bay to Mil- waukee. Vieau was a brother-in-law of Solomon Junean-who lived in a log house situated about where the Marine Bank now stands. All I can recall of Vieau's family is that he had a lumber wagon full of children !
One year later I visited Milwaukee and took refuge in the Cot- tage Inn-kept by R. P. Harrison and George Vail, it was located on East Water street. On this occasion I took a load of fresh white- fish for speculation. Left the Bay with a whole ton of fresh shining fish, a brand new sleigh, a span of good horses and plenty of cour- age.
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IN THE 'THIRTIES
The snow gradually melted from day to day until I reached Summit. There I ran into a rain storm, I was obliged to hire a wagon of a brother of H. N. Wells, who at that time was one of Milwaukee's noted lawyers. After a drag of 30 miles from Sum- mit to Milwaukee through the rain and mud, I made a desperate effort to sell my fish; frozen and thawed fish do not present a very inviting or appetizing appearance.
After driving from house to house for three hours, and making but one sale, I became thoroughly convinced it was only "fisher- man's luck," and in desperation I drove down to the river, cut a hole in the ice and dumped the load, then started on my return trip. Paid Mr. Wells 10 dollars for the use of his wagon, left my new sleigh and double harness in his care, rented a dilapidated saddle and started for Green Bay-with the firm resolve that if Milwaukee folks wanted fish they would, as far as I was concerned, be obliged to come to Green Bay for them. When I reached home I found it necessary to employ a veterinary surgeon to cure the damage the old saddle was accountable for. The surgeon charged me $15. The horse died within two weeks. The sleigh and harness have never been heard from to this day.
Ton of fish. $ 60.00
Sleigh $30.00, harness, $25.00 55.00
Use of wagon 10.00
Surgeon 15.00
Dead horse 125.00
Expenses on road 30.00
$295.00
All for the fun of lugging dead fish to this, then, benighted town.
My next visit to Milwaukee was when the Hotel, called Mil- waukee House, stood on the summit of the city. I was sent by an uncle, who was a farmer, a hotel keeper and preacher. He lived on the edge of Calumet Prairie, 12 miles north of Fond du Lac. He was an extensive breeder of hogs and sent me with one of his sons to purchase a drove. He had a breed that was called Caseknife or Razorback. They would devour their weight in grain daily and not increase in weight. They would jump a six rail fence or lie down and squeeze between the rail, a space of about three inches.
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EARLY MILWAUKEE
For some reason we started home without purchasing the drove. Some man who was a guest of the Milwaukee House at that time, advised us to try the Indian trail leading to Fond du Lac, he said we would save fifty miles that way. We started, sixteen miles out of the city we passed the last house, we rode until night overtook us and concluded to camp; we were without food for our horses or ourselves ; we gathered brush for the horses and sat by a fire until daylight. During the night we were sure we saw and heard at least a thousand wolves. It was in October, the leaves had filled the trail so it was difficult to trace it, when the morning came, the trail was utterly obliterated. To make the story short, the night of the 3rd day, we found ourselves back at the sixteen mile house out of Milwaukee, nearly famished; during the time we were lost, if it had been possible to have gotten our clutches on one of those wolves, we felt equal to devouring it.
We concluded that the "furtherest way round was the nearest way home," and went via Watertown.
I took the contract for carrying the mail between Milwaukee and Green Bay that was carried otherwise than on a man's back in a mud wagon. I was allowed six days for making the trip. At that time postage on one letter was 25 cents. The trip is made in as many hours now.
Pioneer Land Speculation in Milwaukee
Paper by Silas Chapman, Read Before the Old Settlers' Club, Dec. 5, 1893.
For some time previous to the year 1836, money, or what is sometimes called money, the bills of banks of issue, was very abundant. Speculation ran rampant, prices of everything went upward, and this speculation culminated in 1836 by platting and throwing on the market lots, not only in cities and villages, but on mountain tops and under water. It mattered not where the real estate was, it became real to the speculator, and his credit, if not his money, was invested in it. It was supposed to be a fact that lots were platted and sold that were then, and are to this day under water. It was nearly true of lots in Milwaukee. As a take off it was gravely announced one morning in a New York paper that two paupers had escaped from a county asylum, and before they could be recaptured, each had made $40,000 by speculating in lots.
The land where our city now is had just been surveyed, and was an enticing field for speculation. The place was outside of civilization and only reached by tramp boats on the lake. The land was platted, the plats booked well on the map, and the maps were ready. All the present Seventh, Third and Fifth and parts of the Fourth, Second and Sixth wards were platted, and ready for sale. In all nearly 5,000 lots were in the market.
It mattered very little to the original settler or buyer where the great city of the future was to be, if, indeed, he concerned him- self about the future. Only the owners of the south part of the Fifth ward named their plat "Milwaukee Proper"-insisting that this was the true place for the city, and some of us-uninterested- agreed with them.
Then began the furious and reckless sale of lots. Sellers were as reckless as buyers, for everybody was a seller, and everybody was a buyer. There was no limit to the prices and expectation of prices. Lots were sold for a given price with a guarantee that within a named period they could be sold at a certain per cent ad-
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EARLY MILWAUKEE
vance. Mr. Juneau is said to have sold lots with such guarantee, and afterwards, according to his ability, honorably redeemed his pledge. Stories have come down to us, the truth concerning which I am glad I do not know, that business men would deny themselves to their customers and in their back room, with their bottle of wine, make themselves famously rich in trading in town lots. Having seen the results of such transactions, should some old settler press me hard, I should acknowledge a belief therein.
We can hardly realize it to be true, that while these lots were sold, and warranted titles given no individual owned in his own right one foot of ground, the title was still vested in the United States.
At that time the United States recognized no preemption claims. A settler might squat on an 80 acre tract or any other number of acres, build his cabin, and make all his improvements, and yet if he had not actually paid for his land in gold, any other person might pay for the same, oust the settler, and seize the land and improvements, without paying anything for those improvements.
On the east side, Solomon Juneau claimed all now the Seventh ward with a narrow strip south of Wisconsin street, Peter Juneau the rest of the Third ward, George Walker and others certain frac- tional lots now the Fifth ward and Byron Kilbourn was the first to perfect his title-the Juneaus followed soon after. Walker's title was not settled till 1842, and then by an act of congress, some other claimant having "jumped" upon it.
Late in 1836 business circles throughout the country began to fear a financial panic. It could not be averted. 1837 came in with great and extensive failures. There was crowding and rushing to cover. I was then a resident of New York City, saw the swirl in that center of whirlpool and the memory of that excitement will not leave me should I live as long as this Old Settlers' Club, that is, a thousand years. Land speculation came to a sudden close. The supposed values of real estate in Milwaukee all at once disappeared.
Owners of lots in Milwaukee were living in eastern towns and cities. They had given value for that which was of no value- something for nothing. Land was down nearly to its original acre value-lots could not be given away.
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LAND SPECULATION
A carpenter named Thurston, doing business here in 1836, had done some work for and had a claim against a neighbor. The debtor could not pay. Thurston obtained judgment, the claim and costs amounting to $175. The debtor having a lot, offered to pass that over to Thurston for satisfaction of judgment. Mr. Juneau was consulted but being in the depths himself, could hardly give a fair judgment. He told Thurston to let the lot alone-Milwaukee had gone to the dogs never to come back. Thurston did not take the lot-nor anything else. The lot is the one on which the old insurance building now stands. Some few years ago I met Thurston directly in front of that building. We looked at it, but neither of us said a word about it.
The recovery of real estate value was very slow. In 1841, four years after the crash, I met a gentleman of Salem, Mass., who said to me: "I have six lots in Milwaukee, my title is good, but there are some taxes still unpaid. If you will take these lots off my hands and save me from further anxiety I will give you a quit claim deed." I declined to relieve him. The lots are on West Water street, south of Grand avenue.
One could hardly be in an eastern city, without meeting owners of Milwaukee lots. As late as 1850, thirteen years after the failures, being in Philadelphia, a capitalist who had held on to his invest- ments, wanted to know if he could get 50 per cent of what the lots cost him in 1836. "Doubtful." was my reply.
In 1845 I purchased the northwest quarter of block 133, First ward, the block on which was Juneau's home-now the property of John Black, for $300.
Milwaukee did recover from the madness of 1836. It has since kept its real estate at a fair but not speculative value. What the condition is now and will be for the next ten years, I leave to the essayist who shall read to this club in 1950.
Boyhood Memories
Paper by A. W. Kellogg Read April 3d, 1889.
I was born in the little hamlet of West Goshen in the some- what noted Litchfield County, Connecticut, which lies on the rough back-bone of the state between the broad Connecticut river valley on the east and the narrower Housatonic on the west. Among my early recollections is one of going through the orchard and across the lot back of my father's house without once touching the ground ; not on wings to be sure but by stepping and jumping from stone to stone the whole distance. And as I was less than seven years old the stones must have been very thick, the fences already having been built of them. And I recall the remark of an old salt of a sea captain who said after living in the place for awhile, "That he had sailed around the world but had never been so long out of sight of land before !"
But yet I have ever kept a warm place in my heart for the good old "land of steady habits," which I once put into these simple rhymes :
"Backward, turn backward, oh time in thy flight,
"Make me a child again just for to-night.'
In the last days of October 1836, my Father, Leverett S. Kel- logg, with his family left the dear old state and starting westward, traveling by the fastest conveyances then to be had with one small exception, was just four weeks making the journey. Teams took us and our goods from Goshen to Albany, N. Y., then we took the old strap railroad to its end at Schenectady, then the canal packet to Buffalo, where we shipped our goods by the last schooner for the season bound round the lakes, and ourselves got on board the old steamer Columbus for Detroit. There father bought a team of horses and a lumber wagon and kept up with the stage during the daytime and only got behind by not traveling nights. Of the inci- dents of that long journey I recall two or three distinctly, viz: the long climb of the locks at Lockport, N. Y., and the packet captain's cry of "Low bridge" as we swept under some bridge that nearly touched the deck of the packet; the first venison steak ever tasted, at Ipsilanti, Mich., which, as it was cooked that morning, was as
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BOYHOOD MEMORIES
dry and tasteless as a chip; of the hard climb of the long sand hills as we struck Lake Michigan a little this side of Niles; and of one night's lodging with thirty or more other travelers in a log tavern of two rooms, each about 12x14, where father, mother and the three children occupied the only bed in the house, the landlord's, cut off by a sheet in the corner and given to mother as the only woman and nearly sick, while the rest were lodged in bunks one above another three or four high all around the walls, like the berths in a Canal packet. Father had thought some of stopping in Chicago, but the ground was so low and the mud so deep that we stopped only for a night. And I can see now, the chicken tracks in the mud on the kitchen floor of that old "Lake House," as I have since seen on a wet day the men tracks in the mud on the thronged sidewalks of Chicago, something less than an inch deep.
We reached Southport (now Kenosha) about sundown November 26th, and, as the weather had turned suddenly cold that after- noon, were nearly frozen when two miles this side we drove up to the log cabin of my father's brother who had come west the year before. After a day or two Father came on to Milwaukee, but mother and the three children stayed for a month in that one room log-house with a ladder-reached attic, in which there was al- ready a family of husband, wife and five children, and the im- pression remaining in memory is not that of being so greatly crowded, but rather of having had a nice visit.
Besides cracking hickory and butter-nuts, one of our amuse- ments was to go down through the trap door in the floor into the cellar, and, lifting the flat turnips by the roots, to judge by their weight which were solid and which pithy, to bring up the sound ones and scrape them with a table knife in lieu of apples, and I can almost taste now the cool, juicy flavor of those soft, white mouthfuls.
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