History of Iowa County, Wisconsin, Part 75

Author:
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago, Western Historical Company
Number of Pages: 958

USA > Wisconsin > Iowa County > History of Iowa County, Wisconsin > Part 75

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).

By a mistaken policy of the War Department, nobody was allowed to cultivate more than an acre and a half of ground. This region was only looked upon as valuable for the mineral produet of lead and copper. The fallacious idea prevailed, that, if the country was plowed, and the ordi- nary erops grown upon it, no leads could thereafter be discovered ; the idea being that a certain wild growth of grass and shrubs, particularly the " masonic weed," indicated the existence of crevices of lodes and patches of mineral. This restriction upon agriculture was afterward repealed; but, before farming became general, the prices paid for all sorts of produce and bread, stuffs were exceptionally high ; $1 per bushel for oats, potatoes, corn, turnips, and beets was frequently demanded and freely paid, as the supply was exceedingly limited, if not poor in quality. Flour was searee, and eraeked corn was more generally used. When the staple of life could be procured, the cost ranged from two to ten hundred pounds of mineral. The win- ter of 1828 was exceptionally severe, and great privation and suffering were engendered by the

495

HISTORY OF IOWA COUNTY.

sudden " low dip" that locked the rivers in ice, and cut off the winter supplies, at the time en route, on Mississippi steamboats, to the mines. A French trader at Galena happened to have a fair supply of flour in store, and, taking advantage of the temporary embarrassment, he raised his prices until flour attained the enormous figure of $20 to $30 a barrel. The consumers were forced to make the best of the unsatisfactory arrangement ; and as, in the depressed condition of the country, following the depreciated price of mineral, few could afford to indulge in the luxury of bolted flour. Various substitutes were employed until relief was obtained in early spring. An unfailing supply of good fresh fish was one of the bounties of a beneficent Creator, bestowed upon the hardy miners. The Pecatonica River and the larger tributaries abounded almost with a surfeit of fish ; and, in those days, the piscatorial artist was not satisfied with complacently holding a pole in a horizontal position over the turbid waters for hours without procuring a " bite." Fine kingly trout, perch, bass, catfish, eels, buffalo, muskallonge and other excellent kinds were found in all the streams coursing through the county. Buffalo, muskallonge and cat- fish of enormons size were brought to Mineral Point daily, and peddled on the streets at purely nominal figures. Many of these fish weighed from twenty and thirty pounds upward.

LIFE IN THE DIGGINGS.

When, in 1832, Black Hawk invaded Illinois, spreading death and desolation in his trail, he took a position on the Rock River, some miles east from Madison. The settlers were con- vulsed in a tumult of alarm, and fire-arms were eagerly songht after. (For partienlars, see in third chapter.)

The inhabitants lost the entire spring and summer in defending and building the stockades and block-honses erected throughout the country. On the restoration of peace, adventurers and explorers swarmed in threefold numbers, and mining was prosecuted with an energy unknown since the years of 1827 and 1828. Freed from all eare on the score of Indians, the miners scattered their claims all over the surface of the land. In every direction within scope of the eye, heaps of mineral refuse blackened and disfigured the verdant hillsides, and the elank of the windlass made merry music to the accompanying sounds of the crowbar, pick and drill. The price of mineral was more favorable to the miners. An undoubted era of prosperity had com- meneed ; money was plentiful, and it was dispensed with all the lavish prodigality for which miners have become famous. Groceries, gambling hells, poker dens and faro banks marked the progress of civilization. The discovery of a good lead invariably led to a sudden rush of settlers, who, after intermittent toil, would as speedily relinquish their claims and remove elsewhere. Riotous carousing, gambling and other bacchanalian revels marked the nights and served to dis- tinguish them from day. Sleep or rest was a superabundant luxury that few deserved, and no one indulged in until the exhausted system, robbed of strength by the assimilation of vile "forty- rod " and " fusel oil," would sink down and recuperate in the arms of "nature's sweet restorer." Knifing affrays and shooting matches were of daily occurrence, as, with a superfluity of animal spirits, the air was impregnated with the germs of strife. The wild, reckless dare-devils conrted danger for danger's sake, and woe be to the man who intentionally or otherwise proffered an insult to an associate miner. In all probability, he would die " with his boots on " in a brief space of time, unless, perhaps, he was an adept in handling a rifle or revolver. In this cheerful state of affairs, graveyards and cemeteries would suggest themselves to the Yankee speculator

as affording & good investment. On the contrary, publie cemeteries were sparingly patronized, as private graveyards were located all over the country. Usually, the unfortunate dnelist was buried in his tracks, without even an apology for a coffin to screen the lifeless remains from con- taet with the cold earth. Yet, withal, the miner was a whole-souled, expansive-hearted individ- ual, inclined to be generous to a fault. He would share his last crust with a stranger, and the cirenmseribed interior of his cabin was always hospitably placed at the disposal of a new arrival. He gave of his last without a murmur, and expected the same token in return. In such a com- munity, the free and easy relations of life would have shocked the innate delicacy of one of the cloth, but, as preachers did not prove indigenous to this uncongenial soil, the passions of the

496

HISTORY OF IOWA COUNTY.

mining community flamed unrestrainedly for many years. In the giddy maelstrom of existence, each man rushed blindly forward in search of mythical wealth. Delusive dreams of abundant mineral was the ignis fatuus that spurred them on and supported the artificial life of super-excite- ment. " A computation of the number of adventurers who achieved success and wealth would form only an infinitesimal proportion of the glaring aggregate whom riches eluded.

In 1833 and 1834, the irregular mode of living furnished numerous victims to the inroads of cholera, nearly every case of which proved fatal. The bloody flux, in an epidemie form, swept the mining region and scored a host of conquests. The diminution in the population by these contagions was more than counterbalanced by the heavy influx of settlers. The rich agricult- ural lands were offering remunerative returns for the labor and capital invested. The false theory that a rugged mining country was incompatible with the growth of luxuriant erops, had, by this time, been exploded, and many persons were induced to forsake the precarious livelihood of a miner for the contented and fruitful labors of a pastoral life. Agriculture and mining together received an impetus from the incoming tide, and the effect was mutually profitable. About this time, the Territory was districted into three land districts.

FIRST LAND DISTRICTS.

By an act of Congress, approved June 26, 1834, two new Land Districts were established in Northern Illinois, called the Northwest and the Northeast Districts, and two in Wisconsin, called respectively the Wisconsin and the Green Bay Districts.

The Northwest District embraced all the territory in Illinois north of the dividing line, be- tween Townships 12 and 13, north of the base line, and west of the dividing line between Ranges 3 and 4, east of the Third Principal Meridian.

The Wisconsin Land District embraced all the territory in the then Territory of Michigan south of the Wisconsin River, and west of the north-and-south line "along the range of line next west of Fort Winnebago." (This was the line between Ranges 8 and 9 east.)

The fourth section of this act reads as follows: " The President shall be authorized, as soon as the survey shall have been completed, to cause to be offered for sale, in the manner pre- scribed by law, all the lands lying in the said land districts, at the land offices in the respective distriets, in which the land so offered is embraced, reserving only Section Sixteen in each town- ship; the tract reserved for the village of Galena; such other tracts as have been granted to in- dividuals and the State of Illinois; and such reservations as the President may deem necessary to retain for military posts, any law of Congress heretofore existing to the contrary notwith- standing."

The Land Office for the Wisconsin Land District was established at Mineral Point, by the same act, and John P. Sheldon was appointed Register, and Joseph Eneix, Receiver.

The survey having been completed, the President, on the 7th of July, 1834, issued his proclamation for the public sale, on the second Monday of November, 1834, of all the lands west of the Fourth Principal Meridian (which now constitute Grant County). Appended to the proclamation was a notice, in the following words : "The lands reserved by law for schools or other purposes, are to be excluded from sale. All tracts of land on which lead mines or dig- gings are indicated to exist by the official plats of survey, together with such other tracts as, from satisfactory evidence, to be adduced to the Register of the land office, prior to the date of sale, shall be shown to contain lead mines, shall be excluded from sale."

A few months later, another proclamation was issued by the President, for the public sale of all the lands in the district, east of the Fourth Principal Meridian, at the land office in Mineral Point, in the year 1835. A notice similar to the foregoing was appended to this proclamation.

The "official plats of survey" only indicated the existence of such "lead mines or dig- gings " as were observable from the surveyed section lines at the time of the survey-two years or more before the publie sale-consequently, the mineral discoveries made after the surveys, and many of those in the interior portions of the sections, made previous to the surveys, were not " indicated to exist by the official plats of survey."

497

HISTORY OF IOWA COUNTY.

Very few "other tracts " were "shown to contain lead mines " by " satisfactory evidence, adduced to the Register of the Land Office prior to the date of sale."

The result was that all the lands in the district were offered at public sale; but the land officers refused to receive bids upon the few tracts upon which lead mines or diggings were indi- cated to exist by the official plats, or by " satisfactory evidence."

Immediately after the public sale, a regulation was adopted by the land office, and acted apon by them, that private entries might be made of what were denominated the "reserved lands," whenever the application was accompanied by the affidavits of two persons, stating that there were no discoveries of lead ore on the tract applied for, and that the same was not occupied by any smelter of lead ore.

The practical effect of the course adopted in reference to the sale of the public lands in the Wisconsin Land District-by the Government officers, as well those at Washington as the local officers at Mineral Point, and, as well, at the public sale, as by the mode adopted of per- mitting private entries-was, that so large a proportion of the lands containing lead mines passed into private hands, that the occupants under leases from the Government, of the remaining tracts, upon which mines existed, refused longer to comply with the conditions of their leases.

CLAIM RESTRICTIONS AND FIRST ENTRIES.

Doubts existed of the right of the Government to enforce the terms of the leases ; and, as there was, at least, no disposition manifested to do so, by common consent, the payment of rents, either by miners or smelters, went into immediate disuse, and no rents were paid after the first publie land sales.

The whole amount of land reserved by the Government from sale was estimated at one million acres. Owing to the difficulty of collecting this rent, it was for several years aban- doned. Efforts were ultimately made by the Government to collect lead rents, which resulted, according to the message of President Polk, as follows : Amount expended in collection, $26,- 001.11 ; value of lead collected, $6,354.74 ; loss to the Government in four years, $19,756.37. Many veins or mines of lead having been discovered after the sales, on lands of private indi- viduals, the value of public or reserved lands was depreciated, and the miners thereon subjected to the imposition of an unjust tax. To remedy this evil, it was suggested to Congress to dispose of these reserved lands on the same principle that other lands were disposed of.

The Register of the Land Office at Mineral Point, in a letter to the Commissioner of the General Land Office, dated March 23, 1838, says that among the regulations for the govern- ment of the mining country, there was one which required that a inining lot should be two hundred and twenty yards square (ten acres), and bounded by lines running due east, west, north and south. The usual course adopted by persons wishing to try their fortunes in the business of mining, was to seek out an unoccupied spot where they supposed they would find lead, and commence digging. If they found ore in sufficient quantities to warrant a continuance of labor, they would measure off their ground and fix corner stakes, and thus continue their work until they traced their discovery to a valuable vein or sheet, or found it to be delusive. "In a large majority of cases. the labor expended in these attempts to discover lead entirely lost ; and there are instances where men have expended years of labor and large sums of money, and have never had the good fortune to discover a valuable vein or sheet of ore; consequently, the property of a miner in a valuable vein or discovery of lead ore, is held inviolable by most of the residents of the county. £ Its sacredness is recognized by the courts and juries of the county ; and he elings to it with a tenacity that will admit of no relaxation. The lots claimed would probably embrace about five thousand acres, and are the sole dependence of numer- ous families. Their value has been discovered by the labor and perseverance of the miners ; and, were they dispossessed of them by Government, their families would be reduced to want. It is thought the miners have a just and equitable claim on the Government for aid and protection. They accepted its invitation to labor upon its territory and to develop its wealth ; they have staked off and labored for years upon some five or six hundred ten-acre lots, and have paid

498

HISTORY OF IOWA COUNTY.

the Government about $230,000 for the privilege." The odious enactment was subsequently repealed.

The first entry of land was made in the county by Peter Alphonse Lorimier and Paschal Bequette, who entered eighty acres on the west half of the southeast quarter of Section 22, Township 5. During this month, thirty entries of land were recorded. In 1836, there were nearly three times as many entries made. In 1837 and 1838, the entries were diminished fully fifty per cent, and, in 1839, they fell off rapidly, owing to the stringeney that affected the money market. The number of entries in 1840, was reduced to sixteen by the general depres- sion in all circles of trade. In 1841 and 1842. nine and two entries, respectively, were recorded, thus reaching the lowest stage. After this an improvement was manifest, and the entries increased to five in 1843, about fifty in 1844, until the maximum was attained in 1847. The office was moved to Muscoda in 1841. Eventually, when the lands of Northern Wisconsin came into the market, another office for that district was opened in Mineral Point. The first land entries, in their order of precedence, were made by the following : P. A. Lorimier. Paschal Bequette, Benjamin Seguin, Francis C. Kirkpatrick, James Kirkpatrick, Joseph Hawkes, George Sparkes, William Bennett, William Prideaux, Mark Terrill, James Fiddiek, Edward James, James Prideaux, Andrew Hughes, Jesse W. Kirkpatrick, Richard H. Kirkpatrick, Stephen B. Thrasher and Thomas MeKnight,

At the first session of the Territorial Legislature, commenced at Belmont, October 25, 1836. the capital seat was located at the city of Madison. then platted in the Four Lake region by an act of the Council and House of Representatives. As soon as Gov. Dodge had affixed his signature to the bill, there was a tremendous rush made for the Land Office at Mineral Point, to enter eligible corner lots, and invest loose capital in land in the newly located capital. The town plat of Madison was divided into twenty shares, one of which was offered for $200 in cash.

In February, 1837, Judge Doty, of Green Bay, came to Mineral Point, and engaged a surveying party to proceed to Madison and survey the adjoining territory, with a view of platting the western addition to Madison. The party consisted of Moses M. Strong, Civil Engineer, with John Catlin and George Messersmith as assistants. They started out with a sleigh and team of horses, furnished by Messersmith, and arrived at Madison the second day after leaving Mineral Point.

PROJECTED RAILROADS AND CANALS.

The spirit of enterprise was rampant in 1835 and ensuing years, when many bold engineer- ing schemes were projected. Some of these were utopian in their conception and utterly inade- quate to the wants of a rising country, and were so burdened with estimated costs that the people, for an instant, never, soberly considered them, while others certainly merited and received con- sideration. But, in a few instances only, was anything done of a tangible or permanent char- aeter, as those who usually originated the schemes desired to realize rather than to invest capi- tal. Gov. Dodge, in his message of 1836, makes mention of constructing a canal through from Madison to Arena by way of Middleton and Black Earth Creek. There might have been a memorial presented to Congress in furtherance of the scheme : at any rate, several speculators, including Moses M. Strong, purchased considerable traets of land at the supposed outlet on the Wisconsin.

The Belmont & Dubuque Railroad Company was chartered in the same year to construct a line of railroad from Belmont to the nearest and most eligible point on the Mississippi, with power to extend it to Mineral Point and Dodgeville. After enjoying a series of vicissitudes, vy- ing in perplexity with the career of the Mineral Point Railroad, this line was built to the present station of Calamine, in 1868, where it unites with the latter railroad, under the management of the Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad Company.

The Peeatoniea & Mississippi Railroad Company was chartered in 1839 to build a railroad from Mineral Point to the nearest and most accessible point on the Mississippi. The line never appeared, save in the heated imagination of the projectors.

499

HISTORY OF IOWA COUNTY.

The costliness and magnitude of an enterprise necessary to the survey and construction of a competent line of railroad discouraged all further attempts in that direction, and turned the attention of the engineering fraternity to the improvement of the principal water-courses. It was calculated, that, at a nominal outlay, the Pecatonica River, by several cuts and a system of locks, could be transformed into a profitable channel for slack water navigation. A company, called the Pecatonica Navigation Company, was incorporated in 1839 by the Territorial Legis- lature to improve the navigation of the Pecatonica from Mineral Point to the Illinois State line. After the charter was procured, a survey was made, which demonstrated the unfeasibility of the project, and the scheme was abandoned. as were many others insufficient in importance to deserve mention.

HARD-MONEY WEALTHI.

The currency in circulation in Iowa County has always been above reproach, barring the stigma of the Mineral Point Bank failure, which resulted disastrously to a number of those who had intrusted their savings to the care of that institution. One reason generally assigned for the unusual stability of Iowa County, in currency questions is, that gold and silver was the chief circulating medium in early times. Wildcat, or paper money, subject to repudiation, was scorned by the people, who held aloof and refused to countenance the innovation upon their ancient usages. Sovereigns and five-franc pieces were the principal medium of exchange, and the people, gifted with deeply rooted ideas of the value of bullion, clung tenaciously to the gold pieces. These coins were introduced into the county through real estate proprietors, who secured British gold by depositing land certificates in pledge.

Receipts from the sale of mineral shipped abroad were also instrumental in sustaining a solid gold currency. The inflation system of banking was instituted in 1836, and the country was flooded with an illimitable amount of promissory notes which, supported by no valid securi- ties, possessed no greater value than that represented in avoirdupois at the paper-makers. This hemorrhage of paper notes suffused the entire country, with the solitary exception of the min- eral district where the miners, true to the conservative instincts of their British lineage, refused point blank to accept it. The exceptional freedom enjoyed in this respect elicited the following notice from the Territorial Gazette, in 1837 :

'. We have before remarked substantially, and we now repeat, that there is no other portion of the United States that has sufferedI so little from the pressure of the times as Wisconsin Ter- ritory ; we mean Western Wisconsin particularly ; of the eastern part, we cannot speak with cer- tainty. but of the west side we can, from close observation and personal knowledge. The truth is, that we have scarcely felt the pressure. We have, it is true, heard much of it; it has been rung in our ears from abroad ; but our sufferings (if they deserve the name) have been most in apprehension, or sympathetic in their character. The wild spirit of speculation which reigned here a year or more ago, has, it is true, been checked (and so much the better for that), but the ordinary and regular routine of business has been conducted pretty much as usual. There have been no mercantile failures which could properly be attributed to the times ; no stoppages of payment ; no curtailment of business ; no relaxation of industry ; no pretermitting of enter- prise, and, in a word, very little of anything real to interrupt, in a degree worthy of notice, our steady onward march to prosperity and greatness. We have not, too, as many have, been cursed with that bastard trash, the pretended representative of money commonly denominated ' shinplasters.' Bank notes, for the most part of good and solvent banks, have not been want- ing for the ordinary transactions of business, while silver change-dollars and half-dollars- have been abundant enough for all purposes. A Benton mint-drop, too, has been occasionally circulated among us. Thus, while the old, rich and populous States have been organizing, under the pressure of the times, we have been so far from it as to forbid a murmur of complaint. While a silver dollar cannot be seen at the East in the interval of a month, and then only exhibited as 'a cure for sore eyes,' as the saying has it, here its jingle may constantly be heard upon the count- ers of our merchants and in the purses and pockets of our citizens. Our crops, which were abundant and of the best quality, awarded fair cash prices, and, indeed, so far as we are

500

HISTORY OF IOWA COUNTY.

concerned ourselves, were it not for the murmurings of complaints from abroad, which will always meet with a sympathetic response from generous bosoms, we should hardly know there was any distress existing in the land."

In 1841, a contraction in the currency led to a financial panic throughout the West. In 1843, recovery was speedy, and, with an unwonted elasticity, affairs resumed their wonted chan- nel. The final crisis, in 1857, was borne with the same ease that distinguished the county in previous financial convulsions, and the citizens emerged from the panic with unshaken confidence in home monetary institutions.

FIRST ROADS AND HIGHWAYS.

The advancement of the mineral interests of the lead region, were the almost insu- perable obstacles encountered in the transportation of ore to shipping-points, and receiv- ing, in return, merchandise. The highways were merely blazed tracks through the wilder- ness, which were at times rendered impassable by storms of rain and snow. The shortest exist- ing route from Milwaukee to Helena and Mineral Point, was by way of Green Bay, and thence up the Fox River and down the Wisconsin River. No attempt, be it ever so feeble, was made to ameliorate the passage by reducing grades or macadamizing the boggy sections of the road. Old corduroy roads were constructed in the more densely settled regions, but, in the trunk roads run- ning to Galena and Milwaukee, the freighter was obliged to feel his way with every precaution in his power. The streams were unbridged, necessitating circuitous voyages to reach fording places. In the springtime, when the streams and water-courses were swollen with the dissolved snows of a winter's accumulation, and filled with running ice-cakes, the teamster's life was in imminent peril. The clumsy ox-team and cumbersome wagon of antique mold, were the only means of carriage, and for weeks these vehicles, with their patient tractive power, toiled and labored through a desolate region, untenanted by man, and through an impenetrable depth of " forest primeval."

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of Iowa County, Wisconsin, Part 75

Author: Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Chicago, Western Historical Company Number of Pages: 958

Author:
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago, Western Historical Company
Number of Pages: 958