History of Grant County Wisconsin, including its civil, political, geological, mineralogical archaeological and military history, Part 2

Author: Castello N. Holford
Publication date: 1900
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 813

USA > Wisconsin > Grant County > History of Grant County Wisconsin, including its civil, political, geological, mineralogical archaeological and military history > Part 2

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).

In 1787 the Continental Congress adopted the celebrated ordi- nance creating a territorial government for the "Territory Northwest of the Ohio River," more familiarly known as the "Northwest Terri- ritory." Both New York and Connecticut, as well as Virginia, had claimed this territory, but all these States yielded their claims to the general Government.

Though by the treaty of 1783 the British Government had ac- knowledged the jurisdiction of the United States over all the country to the Mississippi on the west and the Great Lakes on the north, yet the British continued to hold possession of all that region embraced in the States of Wisconsin and Michigan, on the pretext that the country

"It is doubtful if this village was at or near Muscoda. Carver's narrative shows that it was six days' journey from Portage to the mouth of the Wisconsin, and he appears to have reached this village in two days' journey (one third of the whole), while Muscoda is much more than half way from Portage to the mouth of the Wisconsin.

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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY.

belonged to the Indian tribes who were their allies. At last, after Jay's treaty with Great Britain, the British forces were withdrawn in 1796. During this time the British probably had no military post on the Mississippi, but the region was controlled through their traders.

In 1796 Wayne County was formed, embracing most of the western part of the new territory, but that part of the present State of Wis- consin drained by waters running into the Mississippi was left with- out a county organization ..

In 1800 the present State of Ohio was cut off from the Northwest Territory and the remainder became Indiana Territory. Saint Vin- cennes (now Vincennes, Ind.) was the capital. In 1805 the territory of the present State of Michigan was cut off from Indiana Territory, and in 1809 Illinois Territory was formed, embracing all the present States of Illinois and Wisconsin. The capitol was at Kaskaskia. In the same year St. Clair County was formed, including all the present State of Wisconsin. In 1812 the region now Grant County was included in Madison County.

In 1818 the State of Illinois was admitted into the Union with its present boundaries, and whatis now Wisconsin was attached to Mich- igan Territory. The southwestern part of the Territory west of Lake Michigan was made Crawford County, with the county seat at Prairie du Chien.

Up to this time all this shifting of territorial and county lines was of no consequence or interest to any of the inhabitants then living in the limits of the present Grant County, if the wandering bands of In- dian warriors and hunters occasionally doing some desultory digging of lead, and the few equally nomadic white traders, can be called in- habitants; for there was nothing that could be called a settlement, except the temporary Fox village near Muscoda (if it was there) and the later and rather more permanent Fox village a little above the mouth of Grant River.

After the Frenchman Marin, the next trader or trapper who is known to have made any considerable sojourn within our borders was one Grant. What was his first name is unknown and his nationality can only be guessed at from his name. An early historian, writing of him in the Grant County Herald, says :

"Grant was an Indian trader, one of those dauntless frontiersmen known to the Northwest, who differed from the savage by possessing a thirst for gain and the enterprise to gratify it. As early as 1810

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EARLY HISTORY.

Grant was engaged in trade with the Indians occupying this region, making his headquarters at Prairie du Chien. He was noted for his hardihood and endurance, and for his disregard for every comfort and convenience of civilized life. His rifle supplied him with food; his cooking utensil was a brass kettle which was fitted to his head, and which he wore under his cap. One incident of his history has been preserved and is worth relating. The Sacs and Foxes were at war with the Winnebagoes. Grant was trading with the former, and was consequently regarded by the latter as their enemy. One day he hap- pened to encounter a war party of Winnebagoes, who immediately gave him chase. The foremost, coming up, struck him upon the head with his tomahawk, which produced no other effect than a sharp ring from the kettle before mentioned. The Indian recoiled with consterna- tion and horror, exclaiming, 'Manitou!' (spirit), and precipitately re- treated, accompanied by the whole party. This revelation of his di- vine character subdued the animosity of the Winnebagoes, and he was ever afterward regarded with the utmost awe by the Indians."

What became of Grant is as little known as where he came from. His name is perpetuated by the county with which we are dealing and the principal stream which flows through it.

In the fall of 1815 Captain John Shaw went up the Mississippi from St. Louis to Prairie du Chien with a boat-load of merchandise, and there established a trading business. He made trips every year until 1820. In 1816 he stopped near where Cassville now is, hoping to obtain part of a cargo of lead from the Indians, who had long been doing a little superficial mining and smelting in this region. His land- ing was probably at the Fox village of Penah (Turkey), mentioned on page 3. He failed in obtaining lead here, but, although the Indians jealously excluded English-speaking whites from their mines, Captain Shaw, speaking French fluently and being taken by the Indians for a Frenchman, was allowed to ascend Grant River and go out to the mines, probably near Potosi.

The Indian mining was of the most superficial character. An out- crop of a vein having been found on a hillside, the Indians burrowed in with sharpened sticks, prongs of deer-horns, knives, etc., as far as they could go in this manner. Occasionally some obstructing rock was removed by building a fire under or about it and, after it became hot, pouring water upon it to split it. The earth was removed in buckskin sacks, pulled out by rawhide thongs. The furnaces in which

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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY.

they reduced the ore to metallic lead are thus described by Captain Shaw:

"A hole or cavity was dug in the face of a sloping piece of ground, about two feet in depth and as much in width at the top. This hole was made in the shape of a mill-hopper, and was lined or faced with flat stones. At the bottom, or point of the hopper, which was about eight or nine inches square, other stones were laid across grate-wise. A channel or eye was dug from the sloping side of the ground inward to the bottom of the hopper. This channel was about a foot in width and in height, and was filled with dry wood and brush. The hopper being filled with mineral and the wood ignited, in a few minutes the molten lead fell through the stones at the bottom of the hopper and thence was discharged through the eye over the earth." It was cer- tainly a simple, but rough and improvident, way of gathering the melted lead. But in the great abundance of mineral and the ease with which it could be procured, it sufficed for the wants of the Indian. At many of these primitive smelting places the white settlers afterward extracted a rich harvest of lead from theslag and refuse of the Indians' smelting.

It has been stated that the Indians were enabled to locate the "leads" by means of a small, bluish bush resembling sage, and by an abundant growth of wire-grass, but this is highly improbable. They had no need of such guides. Numerous rich veins of lead ore cropped out on the hillsides, and the ore was exposed by the wash of the rains, full enough for the small wants of the Indians, who had little use for lead except to sell to the traders, and who were not disposed to do un- necessary labor in sinking a shaft, upon mineral-weed indications, when they could work out-cropping veins by means of a simple drift into the hillside.

The lead being extracted, it was run into plats, as the French traders called them, or bowl-shaped masses of about seventy pounds' weight. Captain Shaw obtained seventy tons of lead at the mouth of Fever River, where, he said, the lead of each trader was stacked up in separate piles on the river bank.

Although, as just stated, the Sacs and Foxes, at the time of Cap- tain Shaw's visit in 1816, excluded English-speaking whites from the mines, their title to these lands had previously been extinguished by more than one treaty. In 1804 General Harrison made a treaty with

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EARLY HISTORY.

the Sacs and Foxes at St. Louis by which the Indian title to the lands within the following boundaries was extinguished :

"Beginning at a point on the Missouri River opposite the mouth of Gasconade River; thence in a direct course so as to strike the river Jefferson [now Salt River] at the distance of thirty miles from its mouth, and down the said river to the Mississippi; thence up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wisconsin River, and up the same to a point which shall be thirty-six miles in a direct line from the mouth of said river [about three miles west of Muscoda]; thence by a direct line to the point where the Fox River [in Illinois] leaves the small lake called Sakaegan; thence down the Fox River to the Illinois River, and down the same to the Mississippi."

It will be observed that the boundaries include nearly all the pres- ent Grant County. The validity of this treaty was denied by the band of Sacs of which Black Hawk was the chief; but it was confirmed by two subsequent treaties made in 1815. One was with "the chiefs and warriors of that portion of the Sac nation residing on the Missouri River," in which they assent to the treaty made by Harrison in 1804. The other was with the "kings, chiefs, and warriors of the Fox tribe or nation," in which they assent to the treaty of 1804. Black Hawk and his band did not assent to either of these treaties, and this failure was made the ground of the Black Hawk War in 1832. The Foxes, driven from their ancient seat on the Fox River by the repeated ter- rific assaults of the French, had drifted down the Wisconsin and the Mississippi, with some temporary halts and settlements, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century had combined with their ancient allies and kindred tribe of Sauks, and had dispossessed the more num- erous but less warlike Illinois, and had their principal settlements along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, quite below what is now Grant County.

Up to 1824 it was believed that no steamboat could pass the rapids in the Mississippi immediately above the mouth of Rock River; but in the spring of that year, the water being high, David G. Bates passed the rapids with a small steamer, the Putnam, and made the first through trip from St. Louis to Prairie du Chien and Fort Snelling. In the same year larger steamers ascended and steam navigation of the upper Mississippi was established.

THE PRAIRIE DU CHIEN AND FEVER RIVER SETTLEMENTS.

But, notwithstanding this tide of travel and trade all around this

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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY.

region, the wars and treaties, the numerous provincial, territorial, and county lines that succeeding kings, congresses, and legislatures had run around it, more than two centuries passed after the settle- ments were established at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, and still this fair region we call Old Grant lay in native wildness, without a white settler, even a "sucker" miner, until the quarter-post of the nineteenth century was reached. It is true that, when this quarter- post was reached, close upon its northern and southern borders were two settlements of widely different characters. The older and north- ern consisted of a few soldiers, passing the time in the dull routine of military duties, and a few French settlers, many of them with Indian wives, living mostly by the rifle, the fishing tackle, and the trap, culti- vating only small patches of vegetables, barley, and wheat, on the sandy, easily tilled soil of the prairie bottom-living a half idle and wholly careless and contented life. The southern and newer (very new) settlement was of eager miners and enterprising traders along Fever River in the vicinity of the present city of Galena. It was a set- tlement then-by no means a town or a village.

It is probable that the French had a military force, at least tempo- rarily, in the neighborhood of Prairie du Chien as early as 1689. Rev. Alfred Brunson has stated that the first settler was a trader named Cardinelle, who came with his wife in 1726 and made a small farm. In 1737 a French trading post with a stockade was established there; but it seems to have been abandoned, as Carver, in 1766, makes no mention of it, although he mentions a Fox village there. In 1781 Michael Brisbois settled at Prairie du Chien and lived there till 1837, and is remembered by some still living. The place was an important trading post where the Indians sold their furs and peltries and lead. Here met on terms of truce the braves of many tribes hostile on other ground-the Sioux, Chippewas, Sauks, Foxes, Menominees, Potta- watomies, and Kickapoos, and their buffalo-skin tepees, bulrush wickiups and bark wigwams dotted the prairie about the little settle- ment.

In the spring of 1814 the United States Government sent some Regulars and a company of Missouri volunteers to Prairie du Chien. This force was driven out and the place captured the same year by a greatly superior force of British and Indians under Lt .- Col. Mckay, who erected a fort there, called it Fort McKay, and held it during the war. At the close of the war in 1815 the British, repeating their

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EARLY HISTORY.

tactics adopted after the treaty of Paris, refused to deliver up this fort on the pretext that the surrounding country belonged to their Indian allies. But it was finally evacuated by the British, and in 1816 a force of U. S. troops occupied the place, and built Fort Crawford.

In 1818 Crawford County was formed, with Prairie du Chien its county seat. It included the present Grant County. Thos. McNair was appointed sheriff. No term of court was held until 1823.

As to the settlement on Fever River: although as early as 1788 Julian DuBuque, a French trader, did considerable mining on the site of the city bearing his name, and probably some on the east side of the Mississippi near the mouths of Fever and Grant Rivers, the earliest occupant of the Fever River lead region of whom we have any record is Colonel James Johnson, brother of the famous Richard M. Johnson, who came to Fever River in 1822. He had with him that year about twenty persons. The next year the neighborhood contained seventy- four persons, men, women, and children. A few of them were negroes. In 1823 425,000 pounds of lead were shipped from the settlement. A few more persons came in 1824, and probably a few of them went out into what is now Lafayette County, and it is stated that some came to Hardscrabble (Hazel Green) that year; but probably none of them entered the bounds of the present Grant County until 1825. But the fame of the new lead mines was rapidly spreading and the great tide of immigration was about to set in, dispelling the solitude that had for untold ages hung over these hills and glens.

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CHAPTER II.

THE LEAD MINING ERA IN GRANT COUNTY.

First Comers-Mining Titles and Tenures-Prospecting and Min- ing-Smelting-Mining Life-Character of the Pioneers- Grant County Formed.

FIRST COMERS.

Decades passed on, the soldiers' dress-parade

By none but brave and trader was surveyed. But not by these the waiting germs were sown Whence all these fair communities have grown. The first half of the century" passed away And still this region fair in native wildness lay.

But lo! the eager miners come, Equipped with pick and spade, And for the Empire at their backs The first broad highway 's made. In steamboats panting o'er the lakes And struggling up the streams, In white-topped wagons o'er the land, Behind the slow ox-teams, Lured by the gleam of the dark-bright ore, The crowds come rushing in ; From Pennsylvania's mines of coal And Cornwall's mines of tin; And rough Missouri's mines of lead. Their steps the gray wolf scare; The rattlesnake starts at their tread And seeks his rocky lair. Like an invading army swarm The solders of the Lead Brigade, The ocher-stain their uniform, Their arms the pick and spade. On many a wild and rock-ribbed hill, In many a dark ravine, The miner's cabin, built of logs And chinked with earth, is seen.

*Half a century from 1776.

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THE LEAD MINING ERA IN GRANT COUNTY.

The streams which once like crystal ran Run thick with muddy stain, For, toiling through the wash-dirt flumes, The ocher's hue they gain; And creaking 'neath the heavy tub, The windlass makes its rounds,

And mottling many a hillside green, Rise up the yellow mounds. Beneath its volumed, sulphurous smoke The fiery furnace roars, And from its glowing, stony throat The molten metal pours. Hemmed in by thickly pitted hills, Springs up the busy mart,

And through its stony valley streets Rolls the lead-burdened cart.

-Centennial Poem by C. N. Holford .*

When the quarter-post of the Nineteenth Century was reached the mining population of Fever River valley began to overflow into Wis- consin, probably into the present Lafayette County a little more and earlier than into Grant. In 1825 (some say 1824, but probably not) John Bonner camefrom Galena into the present Hazel Green township and discovered an old Indian lead from which he took a large amount of mineral. It has been said that on the second day he took out 17,000 pounds, but this is doubtless an exaggeration.

In the spring of 1826 many miners came to the "Hardscrabble Dig- gings" (Hazel Green). Most of them were transient "sucker" miners, but among them was Major Adney, who was then or had been of the regular army. He discovered the "Adney Lead." He brought with him his daughter Mary, who appears to have been the first white fe- male within the borders of our county. We can hardly call her a woman, she was a mere child; and yet she very soon (in her thirteenth year) married Col. Joseph Dixon. Among them also was James Gro- shong, a name afterward familar in this region.

All these miners, unless we except Adney, returned south for the winter. In the spring of 1827 James Danielson and his partner Wood- bridge and Frederick Dixon and his partner Roper came to the present site of Platteville and found some mineral. In the same spring a man named Metcalf found mineral thrown out by a badger in digging its hole, and digging down, he found a large body of mineral.

*Written for the centennial celebration, 1876, at Bloomington, Wis.

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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY.

The news of his discovery spreading, many came there, among them John H. Rountree and J. R. Campbell, who in company bought Metcalf's lead for $1,200 and developed it into the famous "Rountree Lead." Among the others whose names afterward became as house- hold words in our county, either as pioneer fathers or legislators, who came to the neighborhood of Platteville in the year 1827 were James R. Vineyard, Orris McCartney, Joseph Dickson, and Farnam Johnson.

In the summer of 1827 Mr. Rountree made an exploration of the county which he has thus described in a talk to the Old Settlers' Club in 1876:

"A friend and himself who were located on the headwaters of the Fever River, took a prospecting tour to the northwest. As they saw the Platteville Mounds in the early morning they thought they were one of the most beautiful sights in nature. They climbed to the top of the mounds and viewed the country over. It was a wide and love- ly prospect, but an unbroken wilderness. It was the 4th of July-the 51st birthday of our national independence. They inscribed their names upon the rocks of the mound and also inscribed the statment that they were celebrating the Fourth there. They did not stay there long, for it was a hot day and they wanted water, so they set out to the north. There was no road-nothing but an Indian trail. They had with them their blankets and provisions and were prepared to prospect for mineral. They camped near Wingville. Then they turned west and traveled through the town of Fennimore, camping the second night at a spring near where is now the village of Fennimore Center. The next day they passed by where Mt. Hope now stands. All this was then a most beautiful country, but without a trace of civ- ilization. On the third day they met four wagons and teams and sev- eral persons with each team. They were settlers near the Beetown diggings who had heard of the Indian difficulties, then and afterwards known as the 'Winnebago Fuss,' and had deserted their settlement and started for Galena. He and his companion asked the fugitives to stop there while they went out to reconnoiter and see if there were really Indians there. So they went on to the Beetown diggings and beyond there, but found no Indians, or Indian signs. But those who had left the Beetown diggings were determined to go on to Galena, and so they all went. The settlements were all deserted and the set- tlers went into the forts. A tort was built at Galena, one at Gratiot's Grove and one at New Diggings. A large mounted company was

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THE LEAD MINING ERA IN GRANT COUNTY.

raised, and after a dispute as to who should command it, Gen. Dodge took command and it went up to Portage, but had no Indian fight- ing. After the 'Winnebago Fuss' Mr. Rountree staid at Platteville. There was then no wagon-track out from Platteville. He spent his first winter in a sod cabin."

Many returned to Hardscrabble diggings in 1827. Among those who came this year (and possibly in 1826) were the well-known pioneers Henry Hodges and Thomas Shanley. In 1828 there was still further immigration and development. Joseph Dixon had the previ- ous fall cleared up some land near Platteville and this spring planted twenty acres of corn. It was probably in this same season that Frank Kirkpatrick planted a field of corn on Platte River bottom in the present town of Clifton. He broke up the ground by means of a pick used as a plow, the team attached to the handle of the pick as a plow-beam, and handles attached to hold this primitive plow. The ground was cross-plowed and Mr. Kirkpatrick said he raised a good crop. It was probably in the same year, but possibly in the next, that Alexander Ramsey also became one of the pioneer agriculturists of the county near Cassville. But there was little more agriculture for many years, except small patches of vegetables about the miners' cabins, as all men's thoughts were of lead.

The transient troubles with the Winnebagoes early in 1827 had only temporarily checked immigration. Before the summer was over "Uncle Dick" Palmer with several companions had started a settle- ment at Wingville and begun mining. Alexander D. Ramsey and others had located at Cassville. James Meredith, Curtis Caldwell, Thomas Crocker, and Cyrus Alexander found the celebrated "Bee Lead" at Beetown early in 1827, and in the fall of the same year Henry C. Bushnell settled at Muscalunge with his young wife. Mrs. Bushnell had been preceded a few months by Mrs. Thomas, who came to these mines with her husband, and was the first white woman in the county if we except young Mary Adney. The "Winnebago Fuss" caused Mr. and Mrs. Thomas to go to Galena and they did not return to Beetown, but settled in what is now Lafayette County.

In 1828 quite a number of persons located in Beetown and A. L. Johnson of Baltimore opened a store, and James Walsh a blacksmith shop. Orris McCartney came in as a miner. Solomon Arthur and his wife came in and built a cabin. But with the advent of winter all of

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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY.

these except the Arthurs appear to have left. McCartney went and opened a farm near Cassville on which he lived many years.

The further development of these places will be described in the separate histories of the towns of Hazel Green, Platteville, Beetown, Cassville, and Wingville in this volume. It should be stated, however, that in 1828 Mr. Bushnell and his wife located at "Bushnell Hollow" near where Lancaster now stands, but before this their daughter Dorothy was born-the first white child born in the county.

In 1828 Asa E. Hough built a furnace a few miles from the mouth of the Platte, calling the place Gibraltar, and the next spring built a saw-mill, the first in the county, a few miles up the river from the fur- nace. It has been stated that a post-office was established at Gibral- tar in 1828, but the editor can find no record of any post-office here till 1838. The first post-office in what is now Grant County was established at Platteville in 1829, with J. H. Rountree as postmaster. Previous to that some person would go to Galena from Hardscrabble or Platteville and bring out in his pocket all the mail for his neighbor- hood.

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History of Grant County Wisconsin, including its civil, political, geological, mineralogical archaeological and military history, Part 2

Author: Castello N. Holford Publication date: 1900 Publisher: Number of Pages: 813

Author: Castello N. Holford
Publication date: 1900
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 813