USA > Wisconsin > Brown County > History of Brown County, Wisconsin, past and present, Volume I > Part 25
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The suspension of the Ohio Life & Trust Company, in August of that year, for the enormous sum of $7,000,000, was soon followed by the suspension of every bank in the country, with the single exception of the Chemical Bank of New York City. The panic was universal, business was paralized, and thou- sands of manufactories closed their doors. The lumbermen of Wisconsin, many of whom had incurred vast obligations in the prosecution of their enterprises, were ill prepared to encounter the financial cyclone which swept over the north- west. Money seemed to have taken wings and flown away. Exchange on New York sold in Milwaukee at 12 per cent. The banks held notes, which the makers were unable to meet, and their collaterals were unavailable. As a result of such a condition of affairs, every millman was embarrassed, and a major- ity of our most energetic lumbermen went to the wall. They had invested all their capital in mills and lands and had incurred debts with the expectation of cancelling them with the proceeds of sales of lumber ; when unexpectedly the bottom dropped out of the market, and the demand for lumber ceased. The large stocks in the yards at Milwaukee and Chicago remained intact for want of purchasers, and the dealers unable to dispose of what they had, were of course unwilling to buy more: in short the market was fairly glutted, and under such circumstances the millmen were reluctantly compelled to shut down. The city dealers, in order to force sales, cut prices to such an extent that the shrinkage was simply awful. Lumber, which was held in August at $16, was retailed in October at $8, and cargoes warranted to run at 20 per cent better than common, were disposed of at the ridiculous price of $6 per M. Shingle cargoes sold as low as $1.25 for star A's. Such manner of doing business was of course ruinous to the manufacturer, whose logs ( making no account of the stumpage ) cost $2.50 delivered at the mill. The expense of sawing was at least $2 and the transportation to market at least $1.25 per M ; hence we have, without counting the value of the raw material, $5.75 per M as the actual cost of labor and freight ; so that a sale at $6 per M left a margin of 25 cents per M to cover stumpage, taxes, insurance, feed of the teams and a thousand other contingent expenses.
The dealer pulled in the same boat with the manufacturer. He whose stock in August inventoried $100,000, with liabilities amounting to $50,000, consid- ered himself well off; but in October, the shrinkage had reduced the value of his stock one-half, while at the same time his liabilities had unavoidably increased. The unparalleled fall in prices had completely wiped out his equity, and bank- ruptey was inevitable.
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The lumbermen as a class were overwhelmed by the tidal wave of mis- fortune which accompanied the memorable panic of '57, and many a ship- wrecked bark was left high and dry upon the rocks when in after years the water receded.
In discussing the deplorable state of affairs in the fall of '57, and the years following, the writer speaks whereof he knows. There are but few of the active lumbermen of that period now left, but those who are still living, and whose minds revert with sadness to the experience of those days, will cor- roborate this statement. Overloaded with debts, and spurred by their credit- ors, the manufacturers vainly attempted to force sales, but even at reduced prices, they met with no encouragement. There was no money in circulation, nobody was building and the absence of a circulating medium stopped improve- ments of every description. When buyers failed to make their appearance at the yards. the dealers sought customers in the country. During the winter of 1857 and '58, the writer, having secured a pass from S. S. Merrill, the superin- tendent, traveled for weeks along the line of the Milwaukee & St. Paul Rail- road, and at every station where he could find a man willing to pay the freight, he established a small yard. From these yards he received from time to time consignments of country produce, which he sold on the platform at Milwaukee.
It was during this season of depression in the lumber trade that the war came, when many of the lumbermen, weary of the long struggle against adverse fate, abandoned their unprofitable business and joined the army. Their lands were sold for taxes, and the treasury of Brown county was full of tax certifi- cates, some of which were subsequently redeemed, but a vast majority remained in the treasury and were bought by speculators aud sold to capitalists who had confidence in the revival of the lumber trade.
/It was not till the fall of 1862, however, that this revival came. The retire- ment of the "wild cat" currency and the immense issue of greenbacks by the government, made money more plentiful and confidence was gradually restored. The price of lumber advanced to $10 by the cargo and continued to advance till at one time it reached the maximum of $25 per M for cargoes of mill run lumber, and those who had been so fortunate as to retain control of their mills, reaped an abundant harvest. Those were indeed the palmy days of the lumbermen, who redeemed their forfeited lands and had reason to congratu- late themselves on the improved conditions. The pioneers, however, who unable to stand the strain, had lost their all, thought bitterly of the past, and sadly moralized on "the mutability of human fortunes, and the instability of human hopes."
In 1870, Brown county is recorded as leading the shingle markets of the world, the marketed product at Green Bay being 500,000,000.
The rapid growth in this industry led some anxious individuals in 1875, to ask whether at this rate within a few years would there be any forests to invade.
In 1860 the capital invested in lumbering in Wisconsin was $5.595.380. the cost of material was $1.965,031 ; the value of the product $4,377,880. In 1868 a conservative estimate placed the product at 800,000,000 feet of lumber and $10,000,000 as the value of the lumber and shingles manufactured that year. In 1870 the census statistics showed capital invested $11,206,495, cost of mate- rial $7,243.949, value of products $14,486,673. In Brown county the capital
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invested was $092,000 in lumber, in logging $21,500, value of material $1.305,- 019, logging 30.346, product lumber total 71, 110,000, with a value of $1.510,277. In cooperage the value was $58,293.
One of the most successful lumbermen in Brown county was N. C. Foster, who began his milling operations as sawyer at Rice's mill on Duck creek, not far from Sullivan's flats. Rice in common with other mill owners became involved in the general depression of 1857, and not having the cash to pay his sawyer the required two dollars a day in wages, offered him a half interest in the mill, a small one, in payment of his indebtedness. Foster took up the offer, in time got control of the mill, then moved to Mills Centre, where he made a great deal of money, moving to more lucrative fields as time and pineries passed. A resident of Duck creek in the days of Foster's mill says that almost all the young people, girls and boys in that vicinity packed shingles in Foster's mill during the sixties and early seventies. The logging camp was quite an insti- tution. From fifteen to twenty-five men with four to six teams and a good cook composed the crew. The logger, usually the owner of the pine land or lumber, or a contractor to put in logs from lands belonging to others, was the head man or superintendent of the gang. The shanties were comfortable, built of logs covered with shakes ( long rived shingles) or boards, making tight warm roofs. After the building of the shanty followed the making of wide smooth roads from the timber to the bank of the river where the logs were to be rafted.
At Stiles, Eldred and Balcom had a large water mill, and during the '6os this with all the mills which survived the panic of 1857 did a prosperous busi- ness. There were mills at Pensaukee, Peshtigo and Oconto, all doing a thriving business, but in 1858 Oconto county had seceded from Brown, so although closely connected with the county's interests and buying their supplies largely from Green Bay and other Brown county towns these bay mills with the exception of those at Big Suamico were outside the history of Brown.
About 1867. Anson Eldred built a mill at Little Suamico and twelve years later moved his interests to Green Bay, purchasing a large tract of land from Mrs. C. L. A. Tank on the west shore of Fox river and south of the Milwaukee & St. Paul railroad bridge.
The Anson Eldred and Son Company erected modern mills on their Fox river property and did a large and prosperous business, adding a planing mill to their plant a few years later. Howard S. Eldred acted as manager of the con- cern.
In 1883 the sawmill burned and was replaced by a larger structure with new and improved machinery.
The property was sold to the Diamond Match Company in 1896, was enlarged and run by that company until 1909, when it burned. The Diamond Lumber Company then came into possession, and the large mill built by them is still in operation and cut over 25.000,000 feet of lumber the past year.
In the meantime the Murphy Lumber Company had erected a large plant in Green Bay in 1882, at the mouth of Fox river, where a good sized village for the mill employes sprang up on the flat. The logs for these later mills were largely brought by rail, the towing of rafts being slower and more expensive than transportation by flat car. McDonald's mill in Fort Howard was also operated for many years.
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The lumber epoch in Brown county has passed as did the fur trade. The streams no longer furnish power for the sawmill, and in many parts of the county as in the town of Pittsfield, with the disappearance of the forests the branches have dried up or remain only a swampy, stump-covered tract. In looking over the list of industries in Brown county one finds not a single "logger" throughout its well tilled length and breadth. There are extensive lumber manu- factories, lumber dealers, box factories, cooperage establishments, planing mills and sash and door factories to be found in Green Bay, DePere, Wrightstown, Denmark and New Franken, but the timber is gone, the lake craft loaded with lumber no longer makes port in the harbors of bay and river, and the great luni- ber industry of Brown county is a thing of the past.
( References for Chapter XVIII: Green Bay Advocate 1850-60; Wis. Hist. Colls. Vol. 15; Indian Conveyances : B. F. Smith ; Howard C. Gardiner ; Govern- ment Census, 1850, '60, '70.)
Vol. 1-13
THE NEW TOHI PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTRA, LEMAX AND TILDER FOUNDATIONI
CHAPTER XIX
BROWN COUNTY IN THE CIVIL WAR
The year 1860 and the one following-the first year of the great war-were spoken of at the time and afterwards as "the golden years." Industries along all lines were booming; large crops of wheat (both spring and winter) oats, barley, corn and peas were harvested in abundance and excellent profits real- ized. Brown county shared largely in the fat of the land and throughout her borders was peace and plenty. The grain elevator built by I. G. Beaumont and A. Pelton was finished at Green Bay, Hathaway and Penn, lessees, with an aggregate storage capacity of forty thousand bushels, and was found absolutely inadequate from the first to meet the required demand.
The grain trade in 1860 promised to be larger than ever before. In prepara- tion for the heavy shipments from the Green Bay port the New York Central placed two new screw steamers, Rocket and Comet on the Buffalo line, and these with the steamer Michigan made the tri-weekly trip with regularity. On the river the most important addition in transportation facilities was the El- wood belonging to D. M. Loy, De Pere, which carried ten thousand bushels of wheat at a speed of six miles an hour. The greatest crops of wheat ever raised in Wisconsin were during the years of 1861 and 1863, when the yield was re- spectively twenty to twenty-five million, and twenty-five to thirty million bushels. The price per bushel ranged from $1.75 to $2.00.
On July 28, 1860, Portage City called a meeting to consider running a steamboat from Portage to Green Bay. "The purpose for which this meeting is called is one of vital interest to every farmer in Columbia county. We believe that with united effort at least one good boat can be put in immediate operation and if so we are informed that responsible parties agree to take it and carry wheat to Green Bay for five cents a bushel. If this can be done the advantage to our city will be incalculable." The Fox River Improvement Company was proving a success and the sanguine hopes of its incorporators were being realized.
A steady influx of population from the old world had increased the strength of the county to a great extent. Industrious thrifty people from many nation- alities had already made each township a centre for trade and export for the growing agricultural wealth. Roads throughout the county were, however, in most deplorable condition,'and to haul a good sized load of farm products to a shipping point was often an impossible task because of unsafe bridges and ill kept highways. Shawano county demanded that the Brown county board of supervisors put these avenues of trade in better condition and the inhabitants of Brown owned to the mortifying fact that in crossing their county line they entered on roads so neglected as to be practically impassable. Although the soil
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was yielding as never before and the lumber and shingle interests were recuper- ating after the drastic panic of 1857, yet money was tight all over the country and the county funds must be carefully expended to cover the demands for even moderate improvements. In Humboldt and New Denmark $60.00 apiece was allowed for the betterment of the roads and in Pittsfield and Scott $40.00, while fording was the only means possible for crossing the majority of the streams, bridges being as yet an unhoped-for luxury.
East river boasted a float bridge and across Duck creek a substantial bridge had been constructed, John P. Arndt contractor, the specifications calling for heavy timber string pieces and sound planking.
As one scans the county newspapers of that year 1860, the Green Bay Ad- vocate and Bay City Press, through the gossip on daily doings there becomes apparent a deeper trend of public thought at the time, the very gradual awaken- ing of the whole country to the fact that a great Civil war was impending. There was little talk of the possibility of open rupture between the north and south and the sympathizers with John Brown and his radical attempt to free the slave seem to have been decidedly in the minority throughout this corner of the world. The people in general appear hardly conscious of the electric ten- sion and restlessness of that critical period in United States history. Douglas was the idol of the hour, and even by many among those who had voted for Abraham Lincoln as president that exceptional man was regarded as an experi- ment, and lacking in the essentials of statesmanship.
The people of Brown county seem unaware from the record of their daily doings that a momentous cloud was gathering over the hitherto united nation. As an instance the winter of 1860-61 was of unusual cold and the Bay City Press, always a somewhat irreverent sheet with Colonel Harry Eugene Eastman at the helm, and John Lawe as publisher jocularly suggests that Georgia and South Carolina have carried off the temperate weather in seceding. "Come back, dear girls, come back, and give us a little balmy weather once again," is its plaint.
The Green Bay Lyceum, a literary fortnightly gathering of townsfolk with John C. Neville, a brilliant and successful lawyer, who had recently with his family settled in Green Bay as principal incorporator, met as regularly in Klaus hall as wind and weather would permit, but the subjects discussed by Judge Stephen R. Cotton, John Last, Timothy O. Howe and other prominent lights of the law were such as "The feudal system," "The Tower of London ;" ques- tions not of vital import in the great issues of the day. Deep in all hearts, however, there rested undoubtedly an unrecognized dread of threatened disaster to the country at large, although it was hardly credited that this rebellion of the southern states would ever approach closely their own homes.
In the autumn of 1860, Timothy Otis Howe was elected to the United States senate. As judge of the fourth judicial circuit and associate justice, he was already well known and prominent throughout Wisconsin; a man of sterling qualities and fine judicial mind and a forceful although not a brilliant speaker.
On the morning of the fourth of March, 1861, a clear sun greeted the crowds in Washington who had gathered to witness the inauguration of the sixteenth president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. It was feared that there might be a disturbance from southern malcontents, but the day passed off
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quietly. The president's inaugural address, calmly unpartisan though it was, and as were all the official utterances of this great man, yet unmistakably asserted the power of the administration to defend at all costs the inviolate Union. "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine is the momentous issue of Civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You can have no oath reg- istered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one 'to preserve, protect and defend it.'"
In the senate the great question under discussion was, should the government proceed to coerce the Confederate states. Senator Douglas claimed that there were constitutional difficulties preventing the president from using the war power effectively. The impossibility of the United States having resources suffi- cient to declare war upon the seceding states was another point hotly contested. Senator Howe, who had taken his seat in the senate, on March 22, 1861, made an able speech on this question. Deprecating the disparaging views of the strength of the government expressed by Douglas and others, Howe said : "Our notion has been heretofore that the authority of the United States extended to its utmost limits, and that the power of the United States was sufficient to defend its authority anywhere within these limits, and was quite equal to sustain- ing it against any nationality or any power in the world." And alluding to the question of slaveholding, "I fear we do not remember that the people of the United States have gathered within them the blood which freedom has shed upon all her battlefields, from Marathon to Yorktown. Do not try to subdue them. Slow to a controversy they are difficult to give it up. They have not forgotten how to die, they never knew how to surrender."
Later Senator Howe had a stirring encounter with Mr. Cleghorn of North Carolina on the subject of slavery ending thus: "Because they are, or are not permitted to do this thing, is that a reason why they should not contribute to the revenues of the United States, which revenues are to be expended for their protection ? Because a citizen of North Carolina is not allowed to take slaves into Kansas is that a reason why our forts must be surrendered, why our troops must be driven back-why our treasury should be plundered, why our flag should be trailed in the dust?"
The fall of Sumter sent a tremendous thrill through the nation. There was at first a struggling disbelief of the unbelievable news, followed by sullen and rising resentment mingled with almost universal and enthusiastic loyalty to the Union.
Then came President Lincoln's call to arms: "Whereas the laws of the United States have been for some time past, and now are opposed and the exe- cution thereof obstructed in the states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshalls by law; now therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the constitution and the laws have thought fit to call forth the militia of the several states of the Union to the aggregate number of seventy-five thousand, in order to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed."
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This ominous message, the most momentous ever issued from the executive mansion swept the country like a firebrand, for it meant the parting of families, of long time friends and brothers, and the breaking of ties forged by political and patriotic association. Many had doubted whether the president would interpret his war power to the extent of calling the Union to arms, and his stirring words roused the people like a trumpet call.
As early as the day succeeding the president's proclamation another was issued nearer home for the people of Brown. "For the first time in the history of the Federal government organized treason has manifested itself within sev- eral states of the Union, and armed rebels are making war against the government. A demand made upon Wisconsin by the president of the United States for aid to sustain the Federal arms, must meet with a prompt response. One regiment of the militia of this state will be required for immediate service, and further serv-
ice will be required as the exigencies of the government will demand * * Opportunities will be immediately offered to all existing military companies under the direction of the proper authorities of the state for enlistment to fill the demand of the Federal government, and I hereby invite the patriotic citizens of the state to enroll themselves into companies of seventy-eight men each, and to advise the executive of their readiness to be mustered into service imme- diately. Detailed instructions will be furnished on the acceptance of companies, and the commissioned officers of each regiment will nominate their own field officers.
"In times of public danger bad men grow bold and reckless. The property of the citizen becomes unsafe, and both public and private rights are liable to be jeopardized. 1 enjoin upon all administrative and peace officers within the state renewed vigilance in the maintenance and execution of the laws, and in guarding against excesses leading to disorder among the people.
"Given under my hand and the Great Seal of the State of Wisconsin, this 16th day of April, A. D. 1861 by the governor.
"ALEXANDER W. RANDALL."
War meetings were immediately called in Green Bay and De Pere, the two cities vying with each other in patriotic promptness. We learn from the papers of May, 1861, that the spring days were beautiful as never before, and that gardens and hedgerows were "beginning to blossom as a rose." the "flour and the wheat and the general fatness of the land is coming down in boat loads and barge loads, and batteau loads and broad bottom scow loads." Samples of Bay Settlement wheat were brought in by Jerome Forsythe "five feet tall, heavily headed, the grain encased in rich velvety pockets, averaging thirty-five to forty bushels the acre, and all the settlements are laden with this extraordinary stubble." No wonder the farmer dreaded to leave his land and living for war with all its horrors.
The Bay City guards held their annual election with the result that Fred- erick S. Ellis was made captain, T. Teneyck. first lieutenant, Joseph Harris, second lieutenant, and vigorous drilling was begun under Captain John Cotton who was well fitted for this duty from former military service. In De Pere, Captain Loy dropped steamboating and went to the Oconto pineries, the drive being over for the season, where he recruited one hundred and one volunteers for a three years service ; hardy, active lumbermen ready and earnest to enlist.
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. On July 6, 1861, the company landed in Green Bay on their way to join the Fourth Wisconsin Regiment, and the manly muscular fellows in their rough woods dress, and carrying handspikes instead of guns excited the greatest inter- est and admiration. At the time the Oconto company was organized there were no guns to be had and as a substitute easily to be obtained in the pinery district handspikes were used when drilling and marching. One of these driver's poles carried in 1861 by Porter Jones, who enlisted under Captain Loy is preserved among the war relics in the Green Bay public library. When the company reached Racine the mayor of that town refused to allow the men to marchi through the streets with such formidable weapons, and not until the colonel had become personally responsible for the good behavior of the recruits would the local authorities allow them to proceed to headquarters.
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