History of Green County, Wisconsin. Together with sketches of its towns and villages, educational, civil, military and political history; portraits of prominent persons, and biographies of representative citizens, Part 30

Author: Union publishing company, Springfield, Ill., pub. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Springfield, Ill., Union publishing company
Number of Pages: 1168

USA > Wisconsin > Green County > History of Green County, Wisconsin. Together with sketches of its towns and villages, educational, civil, military and political history; portraits of prominent persons, and biographies of representative citizens > Part 30

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But the objection presents itself with more force in regard to lumber for building purposes. As for oak, walnut, cherry and ash, and on the river the cottonwood, and in some parts the sugar maple, there is abundance for the heavy parts of buildings; but pine lumber is scarce, and of course dear; even the ordinary lumber of the country commands now 82 per hun-

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HISTORY OF GREEN COUNTY.

ared feet at the saw-mills; this is owing to the sarcity of saw-mills, and the consequent in- creased demand for the article. There is no pine timber in the country, except very high up the Wisconsin river, above Fort Winnebago, and np the St. Croix river, and the other tribu- taries of the Upper Mississippi. Pine lum- ber is worth $6 per hundred feet at Prairie du Chien, Cassville, and Galena in Illinois; these towns may be called the chief shipping ports of this part of Wisconsin Territory. Pine lumber is brought down the Ohio river from the tribu- taries of the Allegheny above Pittsburg, as far up as the New York State line, and taken up the Mississippi by way of St. Louis; and in- stances have occurred of houses having been built altogether at Pittsburg, and at Cincinnati, and shipped in parts around to the Territory,and placed on the ground cheaper than they could have been built by procuring lumber from the Wisconsin river or the Upper Mississippi. The late treaty made with the Chippewas, by which the pine region has been purchased by the United States, will hereafter insure a constant supply of building material, and greatly reduce its price in Wisconsin, and along the Mississippi to St. Louis, and even as far as New Orleans. Saw-mills are already being established within the purchase.

Another objection, and the main one to be considered is the climate; as I have not passed a spring or winter month here, I give such in- formation as I have obtained. The winter is long and severe, and yet the general tempera- ture of the atmosphere is not colder than it is amongst the mountains in western Pennslyva- nia. The utmost duration of winter may be considered as of five months; this will include two months of wet and cold season in the spring and fall not properly called winter. From the beginning of May, until the end of October, the climate of this region to a Pen- sylvanian is delightful. I can say for myself that I never experienced hotter weather than in some days in August in Wisconsin; this is gen-

erally the case in high northern latitudes. Dur- ing the greater portion of the summer months, however warm may be some days, yet the general character is that of a temperature of 75 degrees to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Frost commences in the middle of September gen- erally; vicissitudes of climate which bring frosts destructive to grain early in Sep- tember, are not uncommon in Pennsylvania in the same month; nay, as early as the 25th of August, in the northwestern part of that State, I have seen whole crops of corn and buck wheat destroyed. But the frosts of September seldom injure the corn crops in Wisconsin. Corn is undoubtedly considered as more uncertain than any other crop here, and yet if attention were paid to the quality of the seed corn as regards nativity and first ripening, I have no doubt that this highly favored country may in time be as fine a corn growing region as any in our land. Understand me; as to nativity, I mean that the seed corn should be brought from our middle and northern States, and not from Kentucky, Missouri, and the south part of Illinois and Indiana; and as to first ripening, the farmers chief care should be to select the earliest ears for seed. By this mode of planting and select- ing, and in its continuance, I make no question that corn may be acclimated, improved, and rendered a certain crop. In some parts of the eastern district of Wisconsin, I have been in- formed that the corn crop has been matured in ten weeks from its being planted.

Continuing my remarks on the winters, I un- derstand, that when the cold weather has fairly set in, the snows fall, although by no means deep; snows continue to fall at intervals, until the winter is about to break up; there is no rain of any amount known to fall from October, until March or April. The cold is severe and the weather dry; no melting of the snow, no rains injurious to cattle, no wet sloppy time oc- curs in the winter, to occasion wet feet and drenched clothes, to the farmer and traveler, with all hosts of colds, coughs, rheumatism aud

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Ezra Doolittle

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consequent ills that attend on a variable winter. Winter is here, to be sure in earnest, and yet not colder than in the same latitudes eastward ; and when his icy hand is lifted from the locked up land, you leåp as with a bound at once into delightful summer.

Spring wheat is here generally raised, and the reason given why the fall sowing does not equally prosper with the spring sowing, is the length and severity of the winter, and the want of protection for the grain on the prairies, over which the winds have almost unbounded sweep, and consequently drive the snow from its genial covering on the tender plant. Now, although this may be all true, yet remedies are to be found. Let us say to the farmer, sow your wheat early in September, and the plant will have gained sufficient strength to resist the evils complained of ; the custom of October sowing, as prevailing in Pennsylvania, will not do in Wisconsin. If it were necessary to pro- duce facts to prove a self-evident theory, I have been informed of two or three similar instance> which substantiate it. Winter wheat was stub bled in after a corn crop had been taken off ; the stalks of corn, some standing and some fallen, afforded such a protection as to retain the snow on the wheat during the winter; a fine crop was the result. But this may be called slovenly farming ; early sowing is the remedy, or rather preventative, of the effect of severe winters.

These appear to me as the prominent objec- tions to the agricultural interests in Wisconsin; want of timber, coldness of climate, and length of winter. I have merely suggested some hints of the manner in which these objections may be obviated. Personal feeling in the coldness of the country is scarcely worthy of considera- tion; a family can be as easily kept most com- fortably warm. in winter, in Wisconsin, as in New York or Pennsylvania, and the absence of winter coughs and colds destructive to the human system will amply compensate for a thousand icy inconveniences.

One further remark on the winter climate. The situation of this Territory being west of the great lakes of the northwest, the freezing and biting winds which prevail in parts of New York and Pennsylvania during the winter, deriving their character chiefly in passing over the immense waste of frozen lakes, have no effect in Wisconsin; and when the prairies be- come settled by farmers who will turn their attention to the planting and preserving of fruit and forest trees, I have no doubt that the climate will still more be a meliorated in every succeeding year, with the settlement of the country.

The advantages of the agriculturist, now, at least, greatly overbalance all his inconveniences. His land is purchased at the government price of $1.25 per acre; land of the richest soil in the world. His prairie ground awaits immediate cultivation. His crops will yield him from thirty-five to fifty bushels of fall wheat per acre, and from twenty to thirty bushels of spring wheat is calculated on as a sure crop; barley will yield from forty to sixty bushels, and oats from fifty to seventy-five bushels to the' acre; corn will produce from forty to sixty bushels, and potatoes, turnips, rutabagas and all garden vegetables yield most abundantly. Potatoes, of a quality and size superior to any I have ever tasted, yield from 300 to 500 bushels to the acre; and with regard to this vegetable, I ven- ture to predict that the time will arrive when the Wisconsin potato, par excellence, will be- come an article of trade in the best demand in the southern markets. I am satisfied that this country is peculiarly adapted to the cultivation of the sugar beet; and add to all these advan- tages the certainty of a ready and high-priced market, and there is every inducement for agri- cultural pursuits. The only evil to be feared is that the farmer may strike his plow into a lead vein, and then adieu to the plough and the har- row, and welcome the pick-ax and the crowbar, the windlass and the new smelting furnace; the prospect of a mineral fortune is opened to the

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farmer at once, and he cannot resist the temp- tation of improving it.

The mining and agricultural interests of this country must always depend greatly on each other; they must flourish together, their mutual interests require their mutual protection. The mining interest always finds the farmer a ready market. The miner attends to his own business exclusively; he does not meddle with the soil except to see what lies beneath it; he very sel- dom even cultivates a garden; this fact, and the constant tide of emigration creating a demand far exceeding. the supply every year, causes the price of produce to be astonishingly high, $1 per bushel for oats, and the same for potatoes, corn, onions, turnips and beets was paid when I was at Mineral Point; I am informed that the prices are seldom twenty-five cents below this average. The high price of wheat all over the Union for a year past is no general criterion, and yet flour is always high here, which is partly owing to the present scarcity of grist- mills.

The necessaries and the luxuries of life, the various articles of household furniture and every description of farming implements can be readily procured in the Territory, as the steamboats are daily arriving and departing, at the several points of shipment on the Missis- sippi, and the price of carriage is regulated ac- cording to the stage of the water and the number of the boats plying on the river.

Enough, I hear you say, of this talk, desultory and conjectural concerning the farming of Wis- consin; let us hear more of the country; its general appearance, its waters, its hills, its woods and its valleys; its aboriginal remains, its towns and their population; its lead and its copper; and write to me like a traveler who journeys and wishes to impart what he has seen in a country so recently resened by the enter- prise and valor of our hardy pioneers, from the wandering Indian, whose only occupation was to hunt deer and spear fish, although dwelling in a western Eden,

Be it so: I will endeavor to comply with all you ask, but before I commence, an observation rises in my mind, to which I feel that I must give ntterance. It is not inconsistent with the wise and bountiful orders and dispensations of our Creator to believe, whilst viewing this beau- tiful country, that its fertility of soil, and its facility of being cultivated, may have been adapted to the capabilities of its primitive in- habitants. Such a soil as we here find, would yield abundance to a people who might be igno- rant of the mechanical arts, and although I have no morbid sensibility on the subject of taking possession of a land which was in worthless hands, and under the dominion of roving sav- ages; and as I am of the opinion that the earth was given to man for his inheritance, and conse- quently that the general good will justify the means by which that inheritance is claimed, yet I cannot help seeing that if there is any coun- try on the face of the globe where a Nation might exist without the knowledge of the art of civilized life, a country capable of affording the greatest sustenance with the least labor, such a country is to be found in the valley of the Mis- sissippi, and such a country is now before me in Wisconsin!

There is neither mountain nor forest, (properly so called,) in western Wisconsin, that is in the section which I have limited in my outset, in these remarks. The prairies may be passed over in any direction in a wheel carriage with ease and safety; the groves surrounding, and inter- lacing, and sprinkling, and dotting the vast ocean of open field can be treaded as easily with a carriage, as if you were driving through a plantation of fruit or forest trees, set or grow- ing irregularly. The undergrowth is generally of small bushes readily passed over; the black currant, the furred and smooth gooseberry, the red and white raspberry, the blackberry, the cranberry of the vine, and of the bush; the haw, the wild plum, and the crabapple; all these in- digenous fruits are found throughout the Ter- ritory; the strawberry literally covers the prai-

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HISTORY OF GREEN COUNTY.

ries and groves; and touching h size of this delicious fruit, I send you a paragraph from a Mineral Point newspaper; the fruit was meas- ured by Major John P. Sheldon, and is not by any means of uncommon size; the hazle, with its nut-laden branches is the most common bush in the country; acorns, black and white walnuts, and hickory-nuts, are as plenty as hosts of swine may for ages desire. Indeed it is not possible to find a district of country better calculated for the raising of this description of stock than here.

If I can by any means, bring your imagina- tion'to bear on the appearance of the country generally, I will endeavor to do so. Suppose for a moment that you were placed in the midst of the most fertile and best cultivated parts of Lancaster or Chester counties, in Pennsylvania; the houses were all removed; the fences and hedges all leveled with the general surface; the grain fields all set in luxuriant grass, the strip of woodland interspersed amongst the farms. remaining as they are; suppose further, that the most beautiful flowers variegated in colors, and of countless descriptions, were waving their plumed heads, with every here and there the tall compass plant or prairie sunflower, overtop- ping all; suppose such a scene in an area of fifteen, twenty or thirty miles; such is Wiscon- sin, and such have I generally found it in va- rions rides and rambles, and excursions on foot, on horseback, and in New York fashionable built carriages through a country into which the ad- venturous white pioneer first made his entry nine years ago, and which has only been free from the tread of savage feet, and the depreda- tions of the Black Hawk War, within five years.

The fiowers of the prairie are various and beautiful. I am not sufficiently a florist or bot- anist to class them, and generally speaking, they are not known in the eastern States as field flowers. The blue, red, white and purple chrysanthemum are very common; a yellow flower waving and drooping like an ostrich feather, is also generally found; some varieties

resembling the prince's feather are common; delicate snow-drops and violets, diamond sparks that "love the ground" form the carpet whence springs the plumed stem of many colors, inter- mingled with the masonic or mineral plant, and the compass or resin plant, or prairie sunflower. The mineral plant bears a bluish-purple flower, and is remarkable for the qualities attributed to its growth by the miners. It is said to in- dicate the presence of mineral. It sometimes spreads in spots over a large surface of ground, obscuring all but the grass beneath it; here the miner will dig with almost a certainty of strik- ing on a lead mine. Sometimes the range of the flowers growth is in a straight, a curved, or an irregular line, indicating the range of the crevice mineral in the strata beneath; these in- dications are believed in and relied on by many of the miners. If they be true, and the plant actually points out the location of the mineral (galena), then, as I have before observed, no one can say where mineral is not to be found, for this flowering plant is the most common in the country, and yet, as its growth on the dif- ferent parts of the prairies is so irregular in quantity and in direction, there may be some- thing in the peculiarities of soil covering min- eral which produces the plant; it is called by the miners masonic, perhaps in derision, as it discloses the secret mine.

The resin or turpentine weed, or compass plant, deserves some notice. I have called it. the prairie sunflower, from its near resemblance to the flower so called with us, except that the flowers and the seeds are much smaller; the largest one I saw was about four inches in di- ameter, exclusive of the surrounding yellow leaves. The stem of this plant rises to the height of five or six feet, and when broken in any part it exudes a white resinous fluid, which, on being exposed to the atmosphere, acquires a gummy consistence of the taste and smell of resin. But the strange peculiarity of the plant is, that its leaves invariably point north and south, In the writings of Dr. Atwater, who

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has visited some parts of this country, I remem- ber that he has noticed this flower, remarked its peculiarities, and has given its botanical name as belonging to the Helianthus tribe; I have not the book to refer to. The leaves are very large, firm and stiff; those nearest the root are largest, some of them about eighteen inches long and about one foot wide, palmated and deeply indented; from the root the leaves start out from the stem on two sides only, at irregu- lar distances, yet generally opposite each other, and these leaves invariably have a north and south direction. It is called the compass plant, because the Indians, in the absence of trees on the vast prairies, could at all times find a guide in the leaves of the prairie sunflower; and its resinous qualities might render it a good sub- stitute for pine knots in giving light, and thus greatly enhance its properties to the benighted traveler. Horses and cattle eat this plant with avidity, bite at it in traveling over the prairies, and seek it out from amidst the hay in the sta- ble. It is remarked that the wild indigo always accompanies 'his plant.

A remarkable and beautiful feature in the decorations of the prairies is, that the summer flowers, after having for a season displayed their gorgeous variety, and turned up their faces to receive the glowing beams of the sun, as soon as autumn puts on her sober brown, and the airs of heaven breathe more mildly, they droop, die, and instantly give place to a new galaxy of fine and beautiful flowers, particu- larly all the varieties of the chrysanthemum, and a splendid drooping bush of flowers that looks as if it were covered with snowflakes; the autumn flowers are more delicate and less flar- ing than those of summer.

I have said that there is no monntain in this district ; extensive ranges of hills are found on the Wisconsin river, and in the northeast parts of the Territory, but the only hills in this quar- ter of the country are the Sinsinewa mounds, the seat of Gen. George Wallace Jones, dele- gate to Congress, (these are near the Illinois

State line) the Platte mounds and the Blue mounds. These mounds serve as landmarks to the traveler over the prairies. The Platte mounds and the Blue mounds are about forty- five miles apart ; the former comprising three, and the latter two hills. These hills, with the exception of the centre one of the Platte mounds, are from 200 to 300 feet high, well covered with timber and generally capable of being cultivated to the summit. They are seen from almost every part of the Wisconsin land district, and independent of their being of so much service to the traveler in the absence of roads and of other landmarks, they are objects of great natural beauty ; for although the prai- ries are by no means a dead level, but on the contrary are most generally rolling and undu- lating, and in many instances may be termed hilly, yet these mounds very agreeably break, and diversify the otherwise monotonous view of prairie and grove, however luxuriant it may be in soil and vegetation.

I am disposed to believe that the general base of this country is of limestone. I judge from the fact that limestone is abundant and found in all parts of the Territory whereI have been. It is discovered in small bodies of flat white stone lying on the surface of prairies, and at the points of the rolling hills, where the prairie dips into and unites with the natural meadow. Perhaps there is not to be found any region in the United States better watered than Wiscon- sin. The springs rise generally in the prairies, and their locality is always indicated by the growth of the dwarf willow near and around the fountain head. The water is pure, cold and deliciously refreshing ; the springs after run- ning over the prairies and through small ra- vines, unite in some natural meadow from a quarter of a mile to a mile or more in width, and meander through the meadow in a stream, some three or four yards broad and two feet deep, until in the accumulation of several streams, a fine large and navigable river is formed. These natural meadows present the

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most superb views of any part of the country. Interspersed with small groves, irregular in their course and shape, owing to the jutting points or hills of the prairie dipping into the meadow ; the streams flowing in various direc- tions over and through the low ground until they combine in some broad and deep channel ; the high waving grass mingled with the field and meadow flowers, all afford a picture more va- ried and therefore more beautiful than the high prairie grounds. It is worthy of remark that the character of the streams is different from what might be expected in the deep rich soil of the meadows. The waters generally flow nearly full with the banks, and the firm sandy and gravelly bottom always allows a safe fording place. Fine trout, perch, bass, cat-fish, eels, buffalo, muskallonge and other excellent fish are found in all the waters. I have seen the buffalo, muskallonge and catfish of enormous size brought by wagon loads to Mineral Point; they had been caught in the Pecatonica, and many weighed from twenty to thirty pounds and up- wards. The white fish of the lake country is a delicaey which might well be desired by the gourmands of the east; its flavor needs no sauce, and its richness and fatness render but- ter or lard nscless in dressing.

Game throughout the whole country is abund- ant. The deer are often seen sporting over the prairies, and in the groves and oak openings; they are frequently aroused out of the high grass, and as the rifle of the hunter has not yet sufficiently alarmed them in their secret lairs, they are in a measure less wild than in parts more densely settled; I have often seen them in my rambles, quietly gazing at the traveler, un- til he passed by. Elks are still found, I am in- formed, on the wooded shores of the Wisconsin. The prairie hen, grouse or moor fowl, is an ex- cellent bird; they are very numerous and are found in families or broods; they are about the size of the common barn-door fow!, and I believe are the same bird as the Long Island grouse. Their flesh is delicious, juicy and fat; they fly

heavily on the prairies and alight generally at a short distance, consequently they are easily bagged by the sportsman. Pheasants also are in great numbers, but the partridge or quail is not often met with, I saw three or four near some farms, and as this bird always follows and attends cultivation, the flocks will certainly in- crease with the opening of farms, and the rais- ing of grain. Wild turkeys, I am told, are also numerous in many parts of the Territory; I did not see any whilst there.

Two species of wolf are found in the western part of the Territory; the gray wolf, which is common in the eastern States, and the prairie wolf; the latter is neither so large, nor so fero- cious as the gray wolf, but still very destructive on game and on the stock of the farmer. Yet in so open a country as this, these animals must be extirpated or driven into the distant forests as fast as the settlements increase. I met at dif- ferent times, in my little excursions, several of these prairie wolves; they appeared more alarmed than myself, and soon scampered off. Rabbits are also very numerous; indeed the abundance of fruit and of mast in this country affords ample subsistance to all kinds of game known in the eastern States.

Two kinds of rattle-snakes are found here; the brown and yellow rattle-snake, crotalus hor- ridus, is sometimes of great size. I came across one on the banks of the Pecatonica, lying in my path; it measured between four and five feet in length, and at least nine inches in circumfer- ence; fortunately it was dead, killed by a trav- eler an hour or so before. I saw it; I confess to an alarm at the time, as my feet were nearly upon it before I discovered it. I saw several others in various parts of the country, but they are not more numerous here than in the western parts of Pennsylvania. It is well known that these snakes always recede from cultivation, therefore there is no more danger to be appre- hended from them here than in any other new section of country. The small black rattle- snake of the prairie is also at this time common;

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History of Green County, Wisconsin. Together with sketches of its towns and villages, educational, civil, military and political history; portraits of prominent persons, and biographies of representative citizens, Part 30

Author: Union publishing company, Springfield, Ill., pub. [from old catalog] Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Springfield, Ill., Union publishing company Number of Pages: 1168

Author: Union publishing company, Springfield, Ill., pub. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Springfield, Ill., Union publishing company
Number of Pages: 1168