USA > Wisconsin > Grant County > History of Grant County Wisconsin, including its civil, political, geological, mineralogical archaeological and military history > Part 8
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The second railroad to enter the county was the Platteville & Cala- mine, as stated above. In January, 1875, the Narrow-Gauge road was built into Platteville. A more particular account of these roads will be found in the history of Platteville in this volume.
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TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION.
The next railroad built in the county owed its construction to the determination of the Lancaster people to have a railroad. At first they looked principally to a connection with Platteville, but a road to Dubuque via Potosi was also discussed. A road had been surveyed from Lancaster to connect with the Kickapoo Valley Railroad, but little attention was paid to it. In 1875, beginning in January, a ser- ies of enthusiastic meetings were held in Lancaster, in which the peo- ple expressed a readiness to lay a five per cent. tax for a road to any point to which it could be had. Efforts were made to rouse up Ellen- boro in favor of the road to Platteville. Meetings were held in Potosi, and one at Dubuque February 11, attended by delegates from Lancas- ter and Potosi. At this meeting a road was favored crossing the Mis- sissippi on a pontoon bridge and from Dunleith via Potosi to Lancas- ter. In the spring the citizens employed an engineer to survey a route from Lancaster to Platteville. He reported that a grade of more than one hundred feet to the mile was necessary between Lancaster and the Platte, which was considered very unfavorable for the opera- tion of the road. However, a company, called the "Grant County Railroad Company," was formed with Hugh A. Moore, president; A. Burr, vice president; John Schreiner, treasurer; John G. Clark, secre- tary. A road crossing the river at Specht's Ferry by a ferry barge, and thence to Dubuque was proposed. Dubuque was expected to as- sist, but did not do so. A special election of the town of Lancaster was held November 2, 1875, to vote on a proposition to issue $43,000 in town bonds to be exchanged for an equal amount of stock in the railroad company. The proposition was carried. The questions of route and gauge continued to be discussed. In June 1872, a party of Lancaster business men had taken an excursion on the narrow-gauge, railroad from McGregor to Elkader, Iowa. President Williams's road, to observe its workings. On the 26th of August, 1875, a delegation from Lancaster went to Galena, over the narrow-gauge road from Platteville, and at a meeting in Galena the narrow-gauge people, espe- cially John Lorrain and M. Y. Johnson, urged the Lancaster people very strongly to help extend the road from Galena to Lancaster. The route to Platteville was decided on and subscription books opened. Liberty and Ellenboro were asked to assist. At a special election June 6, 1876, Liberty voted down a proposition to give $5,350 in bonds toward the road, and on June 20, 1876, Ellenboro voted down a proposition for $5,000 in bonds. The project fell through and for nearly two years no prospect of a road to Lancaster appeared.
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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY.
Early in 1878 D. K. Williams, president of the Chicago & Tomah Railroad (narrow-gauge), proposed that if Lancaster would subscribe $42,000 in bonds his company would complete the road from the Mil- waukee & St. Paul Railroad to Lancaster, by November 1, 1878. A meeting was held in Lancaster May 1, 1878, and it was decided to ac- cept the proposition. An election was held and the $42,000 aid voted. Liberty voted $5,000 and Fennimore $50,000 to aid the road, and work on it was soon begun. It was not completed by November 1st, as agreed upon, but on New Year's Day, 1879, the locomotive entered Lancaster, after so many years of hope deferred. To finish the work, however, many miles of ties were laid on the frozen ground and had to be relaid in the spring. The road ran from Woodman via Fenni- more; it was a narrow-gauge.
By November, 1879, a branch of the road was extended eastward to Montfort, the town of Wingville having voted $9,000 aid. Mean- while the Galena narrow-gauge people were building northward from Platteville to Montfort. In 1880 the Chicago & Northwestern Com- pany purchased both the Galena road and the road from Woodman to Lancaster. The whole was changed to a broad-gauge, except the part from Woodman to Fennimore. Afterward the Northwestern Company built a road from Madison to Montfort, thus giving Lan- caster, Fennimore, and Montfort a direct route to Chicago, as well as connection with the Illinois Central at Galena and the Milwaukee & St. Paul at Woodman.
TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE LINES.
The first telegraph line in Grant County was built in 1849. It ex- tended from Dunleith, by way of Potosi, Lancaster, and Platteville, to Mineral Point. The stock of the line was mostly taken in Grant County, the investors being led to expect great profits from an alleged invention in telegraphy by the plausible promoter of the enterprise, Henry O'Reilly. But the enterprise was in advance of the time and the concern went into bankruptcy, after about a year of struggle against adverse fate, and a loss of $6,000 or $8,000 to stockholders, and the line was abandoned. The residents along the line, seeing it abandoned and uncared for, took the wire for clothes-lines, for which it was very well adapted, being of galvanized iron wire. Thus relics of the old "Grant County Telegraph Line" came down to recent days.
The county was left without telegraphic communication until the building of the Milwaukee & Prairie du Chien Railroad through the
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county in 1856, and many years later, the Platteville & Calamine road. But only a few of the border towns had telegraphic communi- cation by these railroad telegraphs; the interior of the county was wholly without it. In 1879 Capt. W. H. Beebe, of Platteville, con- structed a line of telegraph from Platteville to Lancaster, and in 1883 completed it to Beetown, Bloomington, Cassville, and other villages. The enterprise seemed a doubtful one at first, but it was fairly success- ful. Afterward Capt. Beebe changed his line to a telephone line, and as such it is now operated. He endeavored to operate it first as a telephone line, but had some difficulty about the telephone patents. The line now runs to most of the cities and villages in the county.
In the summer of 1888 Dr. J. M. Lewis built a line from Blooming- ton to Glen Haven. It was first operated as a telephone line, but trouble about the patent ensuing, it was changed to a telegraph line. In 1894 Dr. G. C. Marlow bought the line and extended it to Bagley, operating it as a telephone line. In 1896 the Grant County Telephone Company was organized with L. D. Holford as president, and Marlow's line was rapidly extended to other villages, until in 1898, when it was merged into the Union Telephone Company, it had 350 miles of wire in the county, and reached all the cities and most of the villages and hamlets in the county. The Union Company was formed by the consolidation of the Grant County with the two Rich- land County companies. Its officers are: L. D. Holford, president ; C. H. Pease, vice president ; E. M. Pease, secretary and treasurer.
In 1897 the Farmers' Telephone Company was organized, with J. A. Jamison, of Beetown, as president, W. V. Mink, of Burton, secre- tary, and Jacob Reed, of Burton, treasurer. It now has 'phones in the houses of a great many farmers in the western and southern part of the county, and through its connections reaches every part of the county.
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CHAPTER VIII.
COUNTY BUILDINGS AND INSTITUTIONS.
The Court House-The Jail-The Poor Farm-The Insane Asylum- Grant County Agricultural Society-The Soldiers' Monument.
THE COURT HOUSE.
The first meeting of the Board of County Commissioners in the spring of 1837, found the county without a public building for its offices and court, and the Board proceeded to consider the matter of building a court house, and at its next meeting it let the contract for the woodwork to G. M. Price, and for the masonwork to Daniel Ban- fill. This court house was finished in 1838. It was thirty-six feet square, two stories high, the first story ten feet and the second eight feet high. Banfill was to get $4,000, but it appears that only $3,060 was paid for the building, which was probably more than it was worth. It appears to have been rather a flimsy affair, for in 1851 it had become so dilapidated that it was not deemed advisable to under- take the extensive repairs necessary to make it tenable, but the erec- tion of a new building was decided upon. Clovis A. Lagrave, Thomas Eastman, and David Mckee were appointed a committee to receive proposals for the new building. At the June special session of 1852 the Board removed Lagrave and Eastman and appointed in their places J. B. Turley and Wm. Bull. An appropriation of $700 had been made for building "a fire-proof office for the records of the county." The contract was let to Messrs. Wood, Alcorn and Prentiss, who soon began work and completed the building in 1853. With the second story raised it now forms the wing of the present court house.
The building was from the first too small, but nothing was done to provide a larger building till after the war, with its excitements and burdens, had passed. Then, in 1865, the Board at its annual session appropriated $5,000 for a new wing and the heightening of the old building. The contract was given to John Thornton. The new front, a brick 30x60, was finished in 1866. The contract price was $5,000, but the Board, after the completion of the building, allowed an addi-
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tional amount of $1,087.76, as the work had been done in a satisfac- tory manner and the Board was convinced that the cost to the contractor had exceeded the contract price. At the time of its comple- tion it was one of the finest court houses in the State outside of the large cities and is still creditable to the county in size and appearance, being sufficiently spacious and commodious for the business of the courts and the county officers and the safe and convenient keeping of the public records.
THE COUNTY JAIL.
When the murderer Oliver was brought to Lancaster early in 1838, the county had no jail. At a special session of the Board in that year a contract for a log jail was let to Harvey Pepper for $400. This jail was made of oak logs, hewn, not only on the sides, but on the upper and under surfaces, so as to fit together without large cracks. It was lined within with two-inch oak planks. It had no windows to speak of and no doors except a trap-door in the ceiling through which de- scent into this oaken dungeon could be made with a ladder. Two or three holes, much too small for a man to crawl through, and at the top of the walls, let in a scanty amount of light. This jail was burned, it is supposed by an incendiary. In 1844 a stone jail, with a small frame residence for the jailor was erected, at a cost of $1,685. It was a very fine jail, as jails went in 1844 in the far West, but it was soon found to be too small, as well as badly ventilated. At its annual ses- sion in 1848 the Board decided to advertise for proposals for enlarg- ing the jail, but at its special session in January, 1849, it changed its determination, and decided that some air-holes cut in the wall for ven- tilation would make things tolerable until another Board should ven- ture to appropriate enough to enlarge the building. J. C. Squires was made the ventilating committee. In 1852 the Board became suffi- ciently ashamed of the rough little jailer's house, built in 1844, to provide for a new one.
Several prisoner having escaped from the old stone jail, it was finally decided that the county ought to have and should have a new iron cage sufficiently strong to hold even an expert burglar. Bids for the construction of a new jail were advertised for in 1872, and in July of that year the contract was let to Haugh & Co., of Indianapolis, Ind., for $20,500. Norris & Hinckley, of Monroe, Wis., obtained a sub-contract for all the building except the iron-work. The plans of the building were published in the Herald at the time of letting the contract, and were as follows :
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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY.
"The edifice will be made of brick and will be two stories high above the basement room, the latter having an altitude of seven feet, five inches, and extending three feet below the surface of the ground. The basement will be divided into two compartments, one of which (the front) is to be used as a fuel room, and contain the furnaces for heating the various rooms, cells, etc., above. Eight basement windows will light this portion of the building, each grated with two horizontal and seven vertical bars of iron. The walls are to be one foot and six inches thick, laid with good building stone in the best sand and lime mortar. The dimensions of the building will be 361/2x4512, all meas- ured outside of brick work. All outside walls above the water-table will be twelve inches in thickness, to be built of the best quality of Lancaster brick. The floors will be of bush-hammered limestone, seven inches thick laid level and properly bedded in mortar. All win- dow frames and sash to be of good solid oak.
"The building will contain twelve cells, six on the first floor and six on the second. Each cell will be 5 x 7 feet and eight feet high, made of jail-plate iron, a quarter of an inch thick and set on iron pillow- blocks six inches from the floor. The doors to these cells will be two by six feet, made of articulated iron-work secured with heavy bolts and provided with strong locks. A corridor composed of articulated iron-work will surround the outer tier of cells on both the first and second floors. This grating will extend from floor to ceiling. Separ- ating the corridor from the gallery will be another grating of iron- work, the horizontal bars of which are to be of strong band-iron, and the upright of one-inch round iron, spaced three to a foot. The lower end of these bars will pass through the stone floor and be securely riv- eted. The gallery is to be two feet wide, and will extend all around the main prison. Besides the cells, gallery, and corridor already refer- red to, the first floor will contain a kitchen and guard-room; the sec- ond a jailer's bedroom and a female ward furnished with six beds and provided with an iron door. The walls on three sides of the main prison will be eight feet in hight, the wall on the north side the entire hight, the whole ceiling of the apartment containing the cells, as well as the floor, walls, and ceiling of the female ward, are to be lined with jail-plate iron a quarter of an inch thick. There will be eight windows in the prison and two in the female ward, each made secure with cast- steel gratings, consisting of three horizontal and seven vertical bars. the latter let into the caps and sills two inches, and the spaces at the
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bottom around them filled with melted lead. There will be twoswing- ing beds in each cell, and six in the ward for women. These will be hung with suspenders and hinged with strong hinges, four inches from the wall."
The original plan was changed by adding two feet to the hight of the basement and six inches to the thickness of the basement walls, and some other small additions. The jail was built on the corner of Maple and Jefferson Streets, on a lot which had been vacant, and near the old jail. In September, 1873, the building was completed and ac- cepted by the County Board. The lot cost $800 and the contractors were allowed $440 for changes from the original plan, making the total cost $21,740.
It was supposed that this elaborate iron cage would hold even an expert jail-breaker, but as years passed on one escape after another was made, greatly to the chagrin of the Sheriffs. One escape was made in a very simple manner. Crotty, who was in for a burglary in Platteville, managed to take out the screws which held the register- plate of the heating flue and crawled out through the flue. This was July 24, 1876. Two prisoners came near escaping September 27, 1877. They sawed off a bar of the door, and using it as a lever, pried apart the other bars so they could crawl through into the corridor, from which they passed to the upper story on the west end of which there was no iron-plating. Here they dug nearly through the wall, but when they had only one course of brick between them and free- dom, and they were waiting for dark to make a break, they were be- trayed by another prisoner and their plan of escape frustrated. On the night of August 3, 1890, three prisoners, the notorious Nick Ames, Dan Hayes, and Pat Higgins, escaped under the cover of a severe storm. The nights had been so hot that the Sheriff allowed the pris- oners to occupy the general room. A bar of the grating was sawn off with a saw made from an old butcher knife, which allowed the prisoners to escape into the corridor, and thence into the upper story, where they dug a hole through the brick wall and let themselves down with their blankets. In October, 1891, Messrs. Morris and Miller, professors of burglary, who were in for an operation at Montfort, got out by sawing off an iron bar with one of the handy little saws gen- tlemen of their profession know so well how to use and how to hide about their persons. Nick Ames also escaped again from the jail, not by burglary, but by making a sneak on the jailer in his foxy and elusive way.
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HISTORY OF GRANT COUNTY.
It had been intended to add a jailer's residence to the jail at the time it was built, to cost $2,500, but opposition on the part of some members of the Board caused the project to be dropped for a time. In 1894, however, a contract was let to Messrs. Muesse & Patch to build a jailer's residence at a cost of $2,194. It was to be built as afront to the jail.building and in uniform style with it, having two stories of brick and a stone basement, 46x26 feet in size. The total cost of the building exceeded the contract price, being $2,237.95. The residence and jail together make a fine-looking building and one of which the county may be proud.
THE COUNTY POOR FARM.
The original poor farm, 240 acres in extent, was purchased by the county in 1845, at a cost of $3 an acre, of James Wilter, through the agency of Messrs. Barber & Dewey. Work was immediately begun on a poor house and in 1846 the house and farm were ready for occu- pancy for the county. Isaac Martin was appointed Superintendent. but retained the place only a short time when S. B. Chase, of Potosi, became Superintendent and remained so till 1849, when Charles Ash- ley, of Waterloo, took charge. At a special session of the Board in 1850 the poor farm was ordered to be leased and the paupers there to be returned to the towns whence they came. The farm was leased to Albert Skellenger as a tenant, but the county afterward took back the paupers which were a county charge, and Mr. Skellenger became man- ager of the poor farm, as such. He was succeeded by James Jones, and he by Franklin Halbert as Superintendent, who remained in charge till 1873, when he was succeeded by R. B. Showalter, who was Superintendent until 1881. The system was then changed from that of a superintendent to the contract system and the contract was let to Joseph Petty and Sons. But in 1884 the State Board of Control re- quired a return to the superintendent system. George E. Budd was placed in temporary charge and soon Mr. Showalter was reengaged as Superintendnet. He was succeeded by George W. McFall, of Harri- son, who remained in charge till 1892, when he was succeeded by James Alderson, of Beetown, who still has charge. The management under these several superintendents has always been such as to win the highest encomiums from all who have observed the workings of the in- stitution and has given entire satisfaction to the County Board.
In special session 1864 the Board appropriated $2,000 to build an addition to the poor house. The main building was destroyed by fire
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COUNTY BUILDINGS AND INSTITUTIONS.
October 24, 1866, an insane pauper, Susan St. John, starting the fire in her cell. There were no men about the building, and the utmost efforts of the women to check the flames were in vain. Word was hastily sent to town, but assistance arrived too late. The loss was about $7,000 without insurance. A stone building on the Cox farm, south of the poor farm, was used temporarily as a poor house. In November, 1866, the Board appropriated $5,000 and provided for the erection of a building not to cost more than $8,000 for a poor house. The present building was then built, at a cost somewhat in excess of the maximum fixed by the Board. In 1888 the Board ap- propriated $8,000 to buy more land and at its last session, Novem- ber, 1899, it provided for the purchase of 240 acres of adjoining land to get a "scientific frontier," as Disraeli taught the English to say.
Some years ago Mr. Hier, of Jamestown, introduced a resolution to change the name of the county poor house to the "county home," and supported the resolution with an eloquent plea. That Board, however, did not share his sentiment, and the resolution came to naught. The Board of 1898 were of a different sentiment, and the poor supported by the county now live at the "county home."
COUNTY INSANE ASYLUM.
For some years previous to 1880 it had become a difficult problem what to do with the insane of Grant County. The quota of the county at the State asylum had long been overfull; no more would be received there and the county had no fit place in which to keep them. The building of a county asylum was discussed, but met with strong . opposition. At last at the annual session of the Board of Supervisors * in 1881 C. G. Rodolf, of Muscoda, introduced a resolution to appro- priate $10,000 to build a county asylum for the insane to accommo- date sixty patients. The matter was vigorously debated, some want- ing an appropriation of at least $20,000 and others favoring a cheaper establishment that, as one member of the Board said, "could be burned every few years to disinfect it," as hen-houses are burned to get rid of vermin and bacteria; while others opposed any appropria- tion at all. Finally Mr. Rodolf's resolution was carried, with only the dissenting votes of the representatives of Beetown, Bloomington, Boscobel, and Castle Rock, and a committee was appointed to let the contract and superintend the building.
At the next annual meeting of the Board in November, 1882, the committee reported that they had been unable to obtain a contract
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for the sort of building the Board required for the $10,000 which had been fixed as the maximum cost; but they had let the contract to Mayers & Lefeldt, of Prairie du Chien, for $16,400. They reported that the building was nearing completion and they had paid the con- tractors $10,000. They had put in furnaces and incurred other extra expenses, so that the total cost of the building would be $16,775, be- sides $1,145 for furnaces. At the session of 1883, the building com- mittee reported a further expense of $837 for completing the building.
The main building is 116 feet in length with an extreme width of 52 feet. It has two stories of 10 feet each with a basement 9 feet. It is built of brick with hollow walls. It is roofed with slate and tin, with an iron cornice. The basement is entirely above ground and con- tains the kitchen, dining room, and laundry. The building will easily accommodate sixty patients and with a little crowding eighty.
Geo. W. Ryland and John G. Clark were a sub-committee to super- vise the construction.
The committee reported that the county had 43 patients for the asylum : 18 had been kept in the poor house, 9 in jail, and the remain- der had been kept by private individuals. In 1882 the county had 51 insane in the State asylum, at a cost for the year of $4,373 for keeping and transportation. The committee stated that a further sum of $3,- 225 was necessary to complete and furnish the house.
Though the cost caused a good deal of mincing and grumbling, the whole county felt that it had an institution to be proud of, and one well worthy the high reputation of Old Grant. Besides, it was soon demonstrated that the asylum enabled the county to make a decided saving of expense in caring for its insane.
In 1886 a wing was built to the asylum at a cost of $8,366. It was of two stories, brick, with a stone basement, uniform in hight and style with the main building.
In 1899 another wing was added to the front of the building at a cost of $8,727.33. Much of the work was done by the inmates of the asylum and home, much reducing the cost, notwithstanding the great advance in the price of building material. This wing is intended prin- cipally as a dwelling for the Superintendent and his family.
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