USA > Wisconsin > Green County > History of Green County, Wisconsin > Part 10
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The other post-offices of Cadiz are Skinner and Wau-
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History of Green County.
semon, on sections three and six. Cadiz's only tavern, the well known Buckhorn, was built by Joseph Paine, who soon after 1840 traded a mule for a tax title to the quarter section of land on which it stands. It was so much the fashion then "to dicker" wool, corn, lead, or some other commodity for whatever one wanted to buy, that a Green County justice once astonished a man who was hoping for money by rendering judgment in his favor for a thousand feet of basswood lumber. All the little money in the county was hoarded up to buy land and pay taxes; and how to take care of this little was an important problem. As most of it was hard money, it was neces- sary to deposit it somewhere. Notwithstanding his efforts to conceal it, the care of a hundred dollars-when that was all the money he had-was evident enough to give Mr. Lake of Spring Grove the troublesome reputation of being enormously rich. At one time, a neighbor went to his cabin to borrow ten dollars, and Mr. Lake told him he would get the money as soon as he had been to the spring. He went out, apparently to get a drink, but really with the hope of digging up his money without letting it be known that he kept it in the ground. As he dug he heard a laugh, and, turning around, he saw his neighbor watching him. The ground was no longer a desirable safe, and the money was moved to a straw stack. Going to the stack one day after an absence from home, he found that the cattle had uncovered his golden store. Before he could conceal it again, he was address- ed by a young man who thenceforth, with his friends, looked upon Mr. Lake's farm as a place every part of
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History of Green County.
which might conceal treasure more valuable than the buried riches of Captain Kidd. Of all the guests of the Buckhorn, probable none ever passed a more anxious right than Mr. M. H. Pengra passed there in 1848, when on his way to enter land. He had with him in a shot pouch, $200 in coin, mostly in half dollars and Mexican five-dollar gold pieces. The pouch was too heavy and bulky to be easily secreted. Once when he tried to keep it in an inner pocket of his coat it broke through the pocket and fell to the ground. He sought relief by going to bed with it as early as possible, but Mr. Paine's entrance into his room an hour or two later, with a request to be allowed to sleep with him, filled the night with suspicions which murdered sleep as effectually as Mr. Paine's sudden transformation into Ali Baba's forty robbers could have done it.
When Mr. Paine first bought his land in Cadiz he built a cabin on it, and laid out a village to which he gave the name of Pecatonica City. The new village did not grow as Monroe had grown. The cabin was unoc- cupied, except as travelers stopped there occasionally ; and, when careless pilgrims forgot to put out the fire they had kindled, there was no one to do it for them : whence it happened that Pecatonica City was destroyed. From its ashes arose the Buckhorn, which Mr. Paine sold to John Bringold. It was always Mr. Paine's pecu- liarity to forget the particulars of business transactions. As passionate and turbulent as he was careless and for- getful, he often quarreled with those who had accounts with him. In the spring of 1849 he quarreled with Mr.
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Bringold about the rails on the land, and, as Mr. Brin- gold insisted on taking them, Mr. Paine shot him dead in the field. Mr. Paine was taken to Monroe, but, before the time for his trial, he escaped to California, where he died in December, 1875. Once since then a moment's passion, and if not a willful, at least a careless use of a gun at a charivari, cost the life of a citizen of Cadiz. In this case the unfortunate doer of the deed delivered himself up to the law, and was tried and acquitted.
LARGEST FARMERS IN CADIZ IN IS76.
Names.
No. of Acres.
Names.
No. of Acres.
August Bast,
160
Geo. Michaels, - - 329
Sol. Binger, -
ISI
J. W. Montgomery, 199
W. Binger,
160
Mason Parmer, ISO
Warren Clark,
160
A. Pickett,
161
E. Divan, -
565
M. Reinhart, 160
Henry Divan,
198
J. V. Roberts, 401
E. F. Evans,
19S
H. Rush, -
424
F. S. French,
160
S. Saucerman,
210
W. Fuller,
239
J. H. Shank,
172
W. & G. Hodges, -
230
M. Shank,
I So
S. Kelly,
166
T. D. Taylor,
192
John Keller,
IS6
P. Timmons,
233
David Klassy,
205
G. Truman, - 162
M. Kratzer,
160
E. Ullom, -
280
Geo. Lawver,
235
John Warner, 160
F. Long, -
160
Thomas Watson,
165
C. W. Loomis,
160
N. L. B. Wescott,
176
John Loomis,
200
F. F. West estate,
453
A. Ludlow,
160
Edward Whitehead,
450
S. P. Lynch,
320
Levi Whitehead, 160
N. Martin,
437
W. Whitehead, 160
Ben. Michaels, - -
221
Whitney & Treat,
200
LARGEST STOCK RAISERS.
Wm. & James Bratley. Shank Bros. E. Ullom.
The first voting place in Cadiz was the house of Mrs. Deniston, but for some years there has been a good 14*
.
-
M. Kelly, Sen., -
Hiram Smith,
385
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History of Green County.
town house. When Cadiz and Jordan were united in the Calimine election precinct (named in remembrance of a Winnebago head chief), the usual voting place was Michaels' mill.
OFFICERS FROM IS49 TO '77 INCLUSIVE.
CHAIRMEN.
JOHN WOOD.
J. H. LAND. J. M. STAVER, (2 years).
E. DIVAN. .
ALFRED FLOWERS.
WARREN CLARKE.
WESLEY SWANK.
C. R. DENISTON, (2 years).
W. M. BROWN, (5 years).
J. M. STAVER.
EZRA WESCOTT, (7 years).
M. REINHART.
M. REINHART, (2 years).
E. F. EVANS.
HENRY RUSH.
H. RUSH.
CLERKS.
WESLEY SWANK, (3 years).
J. G. SANDERS.
ISAAC WILLIAMS, (3 years).
HENSON IRION.
J. G. SANDERS, (3 years).
F. M. BRADFORD, (2 years).
E. DIVAN, (H. Irion acting).
J. A. MEACHAM, (3 years).
C. R. DENISTON.
B. C. CURTIS, (2 years).
ISAIAH MICHAELS.
J. A. MEACHAM, (2 years).
FRANCIS HAUGHEY.
B. C. CURTIS.
C. R. DENISTON.
J. M. STAVER.
G. L. SHATTUCK, (2 years).
ADAMS.
Before the Black Hawk war, the work of surveying and sub-dividing range six was intrusted to Gen. James Biggs, of Ohio. In the prosecution of his work, which was finished in 1834, he discovered in the northwestern part of town three a very rank growth of the lead weed, a plant whose roots are said to extend forty feet below the surface. Gen. Biggs knew that the Indians re- garded a line of this weed on the surface as an indica- tion of a fissure which might contain mineral, and in the intervals of his work as surveyor he began to dig there. His labor was so successful that he made the place his home; but for several years his family spent much of the time at Hamilton's diggings. In the fall of 1837 Wm. Brazel settled in the southern part of the town, and in '38 Jonas Shook settled where he still resides near the castern boundary of the town. Geo. Morrison in '41, Wm. Morrison, Samuel Truax, James H. Bailey, Gabriel Long, Lemuel Iliffe, and Matthew Cunning- ham, in '42, were the next settlers. Mr. Cunningham was a Virginian. All the other settlers named after Gen. Biggs came from Illinois. Messrs. Truax, Bailey,
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History of Green County.
and Long came to the southern part of the county in '39. Mr. Bailey's house was the first voting place in the town.
In the summer of 1842 the first religious society in Adams was organized. The first minister was Dr. Church and the second was Mr. Iliffe, who had been accustomed to "exhort" in Illinois.
One of the saddest accidents that occurred in the first years of the county's existence occurred in Adams, in January, 1843. It was at the raising of Wm. Morri- son's house. James Brown, of Monroe, was on the roof, and one of the logs which held the shingles in place rolled to the ground, throwing him down and killing him instantly.
Sometime prior to 1846, Chauncey Smith built a saw mill on the creek which had for many years been called as it is called now, the Dougherty, in commemoration of the early visits there of Exeter's Indian trader. After the building of the saw mill, Mr. Osborne, who, in allu- sion to the wild ducks there, fastened upon the mill pond and its locality the name of Puddle Duck, corrupted into Puddle Dock, set up a carding machine there. It changed owners, and under the care of Geo. Ball and E. M. Hilliard grew into a fulling mill. In 1868 the saw mill was washed away, and its companion and sur- vivor the fulling mill has recently been transformed into a flour mill. This mill, of which L. M. Stevens is pro- prietor, and Jacob Karlen's cheese factory, are the only manufacturing establishments in the town.
In 1847, Mr. Wilderman, a young man who was living
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History of Green County.
at Mr. Shook's, excited the wrath of the community by entering a piece of timber which adjoined his own land, and formed part of the claim of a man whom Mr. Wild- erman called, in defence of his own conduct, speculator. It was the Monroe doctrine, and it prevailed all over the county that, by fair means or foul, claim jumpers should be made to deed their land to the squatters. Those who intended to bring about this result in the present case were afraid of Mr. Shook's opposition. They therefore sent a man to pick a quarrel with him, the result of which was that Mr. Shook was arrested just before dark and taken to Attica. Twenty men then appeared at the door, and called upon Mr. Wilder- man to come out. He declined to go out, and they en- tered the house. On one side of the room were two high bedsteads, one in each corner. Mr. Wilderman stepped between the bedsteads, and, having snatched a large butcher knife from the table, defended himself so well that his assailants were forced to retire to bind up their wounds. When Mr. Shook knew the real cause of his arrest, he had the rioters arrested. After a whole night's wrangling at the court house, they were set free on a recognisance. Their release was followed by the burning of Mr. Shook's grain stacks, and this by a long continued prosecution. Under similar circumstances, life and property have been endangered in almost all the other towns. One man who entered land was put through a hole in the ice into Smith's mill-pond, and held there until he promised to give the squatter a deed, but in no other case was the trouble of such long con-
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History of Green County.
tinuance and such notoriety as this that Mr. Wilder- man began.
In 1846, a quarrel of two drunken miners, Patrick Ryan and Patrick Egan, resulted in Ryan's killing Egan with a drill. An indecisive trial followed, and at a second trial no witnesses appearing against him, Ryan was discharged. Like Cadiz and Mount Pleasant, Adams has a second murder on her records. In the case referred to, there was a dispute about money which a woman demanded of the father of her child, for its sup- port. After many altercations in other places, the dis- pute chanced to be renewed at a hotel in Monroe, and the woman shot and killed the man. She was tried and acquitted.
In IS49, a mail route was opened from Albany to Argyle. Adams had an office on this route, and Mr. Shook, the first postmaster, named it Willett, because there was but one office of that name in the United States. The office has for a long time been kept at Puddle Duck, a place which has the advantages of possessing a central location and more houses than any other one place in the town, and of being the usual place of holding town meetings.
A history of Adams that left out her mines would be as incomplete as Newcastle without her coal. The Badger diggings, section eleven, were discovered in 1843, by John Bailey, an old Exeter miner. He was looking for a bee-tree, and happened to notice that in the dirt which the badgers had thrown out of their holes there were pieces of lead. The Newkirk diggings, section
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History of Green County.
24, on land bought in 1836 by Mathew Newkirk. a wealthy citizen of Philadelphia, were discovered in '12 by John Bailey and Jonas Shook; and they furnish a good example of what Miss Thackeray calls the strange part played in life by the things that never happen. For years their owner was looking forward to the time when they should lead him to the source of boundless wealth. The town was made famous by the hopes, the money, and the labor that went down into their black mouths; but when all these things were swallowed up that was the end. It was not until ISso, when much of the float mineral had been raised, that Mr. Newkirk be- gan to work the mines. He had become convinced that there was a large amount of lead there, and, it is said, expressed his willingness in the outset to spend $20,000 in searching for it. The belief was just then gaining ground in the lead districts of Illinois, Iowa, and Wis- consin, that the mineral extended several hundred feet below the surface, and that most shafts failed to reach the lower deposits. This belief was stated more clear- ly than ever before in IS53, by the poet Percival, who was the next year appointed State Geologist of Wiscon- sin. Mr. Percival visited the Newkirk diggings, and his published report refers to " a remarkable opening in the blue limestone in that vicinity," as " in its character unlike any other I have examined." Though having no special reference to Adams, the following passage from a letter written by Mr. Percival in August, 1853, may be of interest in this connection : " I will just give you a touch of the mining language: I was staked on a pros-
1
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History of Green County.
pect, and, after prospecting several days, I struck a lead and raised a lot of bully mineral; but it was only a bunch in a chimney without any opening, so I petered out and a sucker jumped me."
The Newkirk diggings were under the supervision of the Rev. James Smith, whom Mr. Newkirk sent from Philadelphia in 1850. By Mr. Smith's direction, the mineral found was tested in Philadelphia. The lead was a carbonate of lead. Silver ore was found containing 11/4 per cent. of silver, and copper ore con- taining 56 per cent. of copper; but no veins of either copper or lead were followed out, because Mr. New- kirk had resolved to make his mine a deep one. After a time, the water came in so rapidly that a pump was kept going night and day to keep it out. The pump was worked by a tread-wheel about thirty feet in diam- eter, and the wheel was turned by oxen. In 1857, OW- ing to financial embarrassments, the work stopped. When it was resumed, two pumps were used, and a steam engine was employed to work them. Buildings for the pumps and engine were begun in '64, on a scale corresponding to the great success anticipated. The en- gine house is some distance from the mine. Two long walking beams passed from the engine to the pumps, through an underground passage way which was meant to be arched over with solid masonry. The en- gine was powerful enough to drive, besides the pumps, the machinery of a saw mill and flour mill; and the engine house was really designed as a flour and saw mill, but the requisite machinery was never put in. In
History of Green County. 165
1866 Mr. Newkirk engaged another agent in place of Mr. Smith, and some disagreement then about accounts led to the Smith-Newkirk lawsuit-a case which, for interminable intricacies, has no parallel in Green County, and which at the present time bids fair to grow out of comparison with all suits except, perhaps, the famous case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Under the superintendence of Mr. Wm. Monteith, work in the mine went on five months longer, and then stopped never to begin again, In 1866, Mr. Newkirk sold the land to Mr. Monteith, who has made it much more productive above the surface than it ever was below. Pumps and engine are gone, the shafts have nearly been filled up, and the mill is used as a grain barn; but the mammoth tread wheel and the half-finished arched passage way still remain, unchanged monuments to the great expecta- tions once raised there.
A large proportion of the inhabitants of Adams are of foreign birth. Most of the foreigners are Irish, but there are also many Norwegians, and a few Germans, as is indicated by the following list:
LARGEST FARMERS IN IS76.
Names.
No. of Acres.
Names.
No. of Acres.
Edmund Barry,
, 346
Owen Knight,
- 300
Arne Benson,
3So
A. K. Lien, - 453
Geo. Bleiler,
-
440
K. L. Lien,
211
E. & J. Blumer,
240
James Menahan, - I So
Christopher Boman, 160
Hugh Monahan, 260
H. M. Brazel (heirs of), 360
William Monteith, 240
Thomas Byrne,
200
Frank Mullin, 256
Thomas Carey, 366
John Mullin, 292
*Thomas Collantine,
320
Andrew Nelson, - 160
John Conway, 305
George Poff (heirs of ), 240
*Largest stock raiser 3.
15
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History of Green County.
Names. No. of Acres.
Names.
No. of Acres.
*Michael Crotty, 560
Jacob Poff, 280
Thomas Everson, - 167
Gilbert Post, 182
* Michacl Flanagan, - 465
John Reiley, 160
*William Flanagan, 300
*John Ryan, Sen., - 200
Patrick Flanery, -
160
Richard Scott, 280
James Gilligan, 180
Adam Shrake, - 240
Tames Grant, - 200
Jonas Shook, 277
Reuben Holcomb, 340
James Smith, Sen., - 320
H. C. Jorunby, 160 James Smith, Jun., 280
Richard Keegan, - 160 John Sullivan & Co., 360
John Knight, Sen., - 240
Edward Toban, -
280
OFFICERS OF ADAMS FROM 1849 TO 1877 INCLUSIVE.
CHAIRMEN.
SAMUEL KELLY (2 years).
LEVI P. DUNCAN.
A. L. GRINNELL.
JAMES SMITH.
JONAS SHOOK.
J. F. GRINNELL.
JAMES SMITH (4 years).
JOEL KELLY (2 years).
JONAS SHOOK.
LEVI P. DUNCAN.
JAMES SMITH.
ADAM SHRAKE (2 years).
ROYAL M. JACKSON (2 years).
JONAS SHOOK.
RICHARD SCOTT.
THOS. BYRNE.
JONAS SHOOK (2 years).
WM. MONTEITH (4 years).
CLERKS.
T. M. BIGGS.
R. M. JACKSON (6 years).
C. M. BALL.
. E. D. JACKSON. JAMES SMITH.
THOS. BYRNE, (3 years).
JONAS LAND (3 years). THOS. BYRNE.
FRED HUMMEL (3 years).
HENRY GILLIGAN (5 years).
*Largest stock raisers.
JONAS LAND. THOS. BYRNE (3 years).
JEFFERSON.
In 1835, Jonathan E. Clark of Ohio built on section thirty-two the first house built in the town of Jefferson. Thither, in the spring of 1836, he brought his family from the mines. He was not long without neighbors. In the fall of 1836, David Bridge, also from Ohio, built on section twenty what was called the prettiest cabin this side of Chicago. Settlers had so much to do, and it took so much time to get lumber and puncheons, that in all the towns some families lived at first in doorless and floorless houses. Doors were the only things for which lumber was provided. It was lumber that Mr. Hawthorne had brought from Galena to make a cabin door that made the first coffin in the county-Mr. Patterson's. In Mr. Bridge's cabin, a puncheon floor was made in the ends of the room, and there the beds were made. At first, Mr. David Bridge and his father, Mr. John Bridge, slept at one end of the room, and Mr. Jeremiah Bridge and his family slept in the other end. A homeless family asked and obtained leave to sleep on the ground in the middle of the room, but rattle- snakes that raised their heads there were inhospitably
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History of Green County.
cut off, ere they were fairly out of their holes. Other settlers in 1836 were Daniel Harcourt, John Chryst, and Joseph and Simeon Forbes, all from Indiana. In the winter of 1836-'7 Mrs. Jeremiah Bridge died. The set- tlers of 1837 were Wm. Rittenhouse, F. T. Kendrick, James Riley and Henry Minert from Indiana, Jehu Chadwick from Pennsylvania, and James Christie, Michael Alben, and Joel De Camp. Most of those who came in the next few years came from Pennsylvania. They were not only bound to each other by recollec- tions of the home they had left, but they selected their farms here with reference to the new ties that might be formed through church organizations. The north-east corner of the town became a stronghold of the Baptists, section seventeen was a Methodist centre, and the Chris- tians congregated on and near section thirty-two. Be- fore there were any churches, a man so tall that some of the boards in the floor of the loft had to be moved to make room for his head preached once at Mr. Clark's house. All the people came with ox teams, some of them from a long distance, and good Mrs. Clark meant to give them a dinner. The dinner was put to boil in kettles suspended over a fire which was built by the side of a brook; and then the women, remembering the praise given to Mary, went in to hear the sermon. While they listened, an unexpected storm arose, the stones which supported the kettles were blown down, and the dinner was washed away in the brook. The catastrophe was explained by the supposition that the minister's head had penetrated and broken a storm
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History of Green County.
cloud, but the minister thought that if some of the women had been contented to watch the dinner, all would have been well.
Soon after his arrival here, John Chryst constructed a " horse mill " for grinding buckwheat. Crops of all kinds were raised in 1837-'38. One man raised great quantities of oats, which he sold for forty-four cents a bushel. Another raised potatoes, four hundred bushels an acre. Some good things were lacking yet. There were hardly any stoves, and the ever-praised old fire- place did little more than burn those who sat near it. In the spring, after his first winter here, Jeremiah Bridge laid a floor in his cabin, and found that the ground on which his family had lived all winter was frozen to the depth of eight inches. One day when Mrs. Chad- wick set aside her wheel to get dinner she found her fire had gone out. Friction matches had never been seen in the county at that time, and J. M. Chadwick, then a lad of fifteen, was sent three-quarters of a mile for fire. Going home, he was obliged, in order to keep fire, to stop frequently to gather up and burn dry twigs and barks, so that his return was delayed until the family was in a very unusual state of mind and appetite. If Charles Lamb, who thought that since in most families dinner is no precarious or unusual thing it is therefore a less appropriate time than many other occasions during the day for saying grace, had dined at Mr. Chadwick's that day, he would no doubt have seen a peculiar beauty in the ceremony. In 1838, Mr. Ly Brand had matches to sell at twenty-five cents a bunch (a bunch consisting of
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History of Green County.
about twenty-five matches glued together at one end), but they were of so poor a quality as to be of little use except to quiet the apprehensions of children who had heard too much about fire and brimstone. Those were the days of borrowing and lending. Mr. Daniel Bridge once went nine miles to borrow a brush scythe, and was told that he might get it from another borrower who had taken it nine miles farther. Everybody with an axe to grind, though he lived as far away as Orange- ville, went to Mr. Bridge's.
Among the first civil appointments made in Jefferson was the appointment, some time before the end of 1841, of John Cain to the office of justice of the peace. The petition asking for the appointment was written by a resident of the town, and is said to have begun as fol- lows: " To his majesty, Henry Dodge, governor of Wis- consin and superintendent of Indian affairs; We, your humble subjects, ever praying, do humbly pray."
A Methodist camp meeting, the first in the county, was held in Jefferson in the summer of 1841, and later in the season there was " a basket meeting," lasting five days.
Almost as soon as she came here, Mrs. John Bridge instituted weekly spelling schools, which were held at her home, and attended by all the children within a mile. In 1840, Jefferson paid her school tax and drew her portion of the public school fund; but this was paid in Mineral Point bank-notes, and even before it was paid, the bank had failed. Jabez Johnson taught Jeffer- son's first school, at the house of David Bridge, but in
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History of Green County.
184.1 a school house was built on Mr. Rittenhouse's farm, and in this the first teacher was Wm. Jones. Mr. Chadwick, fearing his children might lose their way on the prairie, ran a furrow from his house to the school house with his breaking plow, which was drawn by five yoke of oxen and which made a furrow twenty inches wide. On this furrow the children walked un- til the snakes, pleased with the soft ground, took up their abode there, and then they walked in the high grass by its side.
The villages of Jefferson are two-Juda, in the north- east corner, and Twin Grove, almost in the centre of the township. Jehu Chadwick entered, sold, and bought back again the land on which Juda is built, after which he sold several lots and gave lots for a cemetery and Baptist church. The first building there was a log school house, called, for the old home of the settlers, the Pennsylvania school house. The first person buried in the cemetery was James Chadwick, who died in September, 1846. People who had moved their dead from farm to farm, as their own homes had changed, now brought the precious remains to the new cemetery ; so that when, a few years later, the growth of the unexpected village necessitated the removal of the cemetery, some coffins were taken up for the third time. The church was built in 1848 by the soci- ety which was organized by Elder Wm. Stilwell, September 19, 1840. This was the first Baptist society organized in the county, and it numbered thirteen mem- bers. Elder Stilwell lived in Illinois, but for four years
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