USA > Wisconsin > Marathon County > History of Marathon County, Wisconsin and representative citizens > Part 9
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The following is a copy :
INVITATION TO INAUGURATION BALL
The company of yourself and Lady is respectfully solicited to attend a ball in Wausau on Friday, March 4th, 1853, at the House of John Le Mes- surier.
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Managers:
Charles Rodman, Wausau; James Single. Wausau; M. De Courcey. Wau- sau; Louis Kraff, Wausau; J. Gunsully, Wausau; Dan Whiting, Wausau; John Tuttle, Wausau; Thomas Grundy, Pine River; B. F. Luce, Pine River ; Isaac Coulthurst, Pine River; J. Aldrich, Stevens Point; B. L. Sparstein (a Lawyer), Stevens Point; D. R. Clemens, Stevens Point; George Strobridge, Point Washington ; Newcome Williams, Point Washington; A. Aldon, Point Washington : J. M. Smith, Point Washington : W'm. H. Byrn, Point Washing- ton; Commodore Perry, Eau Plain; Aaron Drake, Plover; Jeremia Rogers, Plover.
Floor Managers: L. O. Jones, Burton Millard
Music by M. Rousseau's band.
M. Rousseau's band consisted of himself alone. He played the fiddle for this and the next generation and there was no one who could compete with him. No dance was a first class dance unless he furnished the music. His fiddle could be heard over a whole city block and he had a way of singing out the figures of the quadrille or square dances in a stentorial, nevertheless mel- lifluous voice as an accompaniment to his violin, which simply charmed the dancers.
He was a character in himself. Good natured withal, a large, massive man, of fair education obtained in the Soult Mary's misson school (he had a trace of Indian blood), where he was brought up, he came here early and for years acted as interpreter for the Indians at Washington and later after- wards was foreman in the mill of W. D. McIndoe ; still later he removed to Stevens Point where he was sheriff and deputy sheriff for several years, but even as late as 1890 the older generation which had danced to his music in their younger days. when they wanted a good old-fashioned dance, had him come to play and sing out his figures as in the auld lang syne.
The enlarged output of lumber caused by the installing of muley saws, needed the employment of more men in the mills and also in the running of the lumber ; the village had been platted, people could get title to land on which to build, in consequence of which little buildings were put up, scattered though over four or five blocks of the original plat with trails leading up to the houses.
One saw filer, J. Kennedy, also working for McIndoe and evidently im- pressed by the spirit of his employer, built a house for himself and his family
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on the corner of Fourth and Forest street in 1854 which at the time and for many years afterwards, was the finest home in Wausau. It stands today, with very small additions made since that time, where originally built and is now the property of the A. Schuetz heirs.
Corey built a house on Third street where now stands the First National Bank building, and a few buildings were erected on Washington street. How few and scattered the buildings were as late as 1854 is apparent from the fact that even as late as 1854 a saw filer working in the mill of W. D. Mc- Indoe, buried his deceased wife on his lot in the block between First and Second and Jefferson and Scott streets, where the little mound covering her grave could be seen until his removal from here years afterwards.
Galena still remained the base of supply for the pineries until the latter part of the decade from 1850 to 1860, which may seem curious to many readers and needs some explanation. As heretofore pointed out, the lead region had attracted the first great emigration, part of which took up farming.
The lands being rich, fertile and easy of cultivation because mostly prairie, soon proved more attractive than lead mining and so when Wisconsin became a state that portion, including Grant county with a population of 16,169, Lafayette with a population of 11,531, and Rock with 20,750, was the thickest settled portion of the state. The erection of Fort Winnebago in 1828. so-called because it stood on land claimed by that tribe, caused a settlement to spring up in close proximity which took the name of Portage City, from the historic portage. It became the county seat of Columbia county which in 1850 had a population of 9,565, a large element being emigrant farmers.
It was the time prior to the railroads when the natural water routes were utilized. Galena being the largest nearest place to Fort Winnebago and Portage City with a navigable water way connecting them, it was not long before a steamboat plied upon the waters of the Mississippi and the Wisconsin between the two places. As early as 1849 a little steamboat, the Enterprise, made trips between them and carried on commerce. Then from Portage City supplies were carried up through the open country by wagon as far as Stevens Point; from there the heavy forest barred the passage of wagons, and as early as 1850 there was a regular stage service between Portage and Stevens Point which carried mail.
But after 1856 there was a change. The Green Lake prairies had become settled, a railroad began building towards Berlin and Oshkosh, and from the latter place a steamboat was already on the Wolf river to Gills Landing : Berlin could be reached from Stevens Point better than Portage City, and when the railroad reached Oshkosh in 1859 with a boat on the Wolf river to Gills Landing and a railroad ran as far as Berlin, the base of supply was changed.
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The lower country had so much grown that a new judicial circuit was created in 1854, including the counties of Adams, Waupacca, Waushara, Portage, Wood, Marathon, and Juneau, constituting the sixth judicial circuit of Wisconsin, and the Hon. George W. Cate was elected as judge thereof.
He held the first term in Marathon county in the month of February, 1855, and was continually elected without opposition, remaining on the bench until 1874, in which year he was elected a member of congress from the eighth congressional district, of which Marathon county was then a part.
This congressional district was heavily republican, and it was his own popularity which carried him through, but in the following election when party feeling ran high and party lines were closely drawn, he was defeated by a small majority. Before his election as judge he had served two terms with distinction as a member of the assembly and was one of the managers for the state in the impeachment trial of Judge Hubbell. Although a resi- dent of Portage county he was personally very highly thought of by the people of Marathon county. He was a fine lawyer, a scholar, and as an advocate before a jury he had no superior in the state. He had come to the pinery when only nineteen years of age, a poor lad, and supported him- self for a while as a common mill laborer, working on the construction of the Eau Clair dam. He reached a high old age and retained his mental facul- ties until the end, practicing his profession and died universally respected at Stevens Point in the spring of 1905.
The Chippewa Indians were all the while very numerous around Wausau, Mosinee, and Merrill, but did not molest the whites. They received their annuities at Wausau, which undoubtedly helped the trade in this place. Mail continued to arrive from Stevens Point, and there was a mail route estab- lished from Ontonagon to Wausau. There was the old Indian trail from Lake Superior to the portage, which was utilized. The mail was carried in sleds by dogs in the winter, but was discontinued in the summer, as then steamboats kept up commerce on Lake Superior. Later on towards the end of the fifties the trail was cut and widened to let a team through in the winter, and mail went there nearly regularly being drawn by ponies, and then called the pony express. It was discontinued when the railroad reached up in the northern peninsula.
There were stations so-called, one at Grand Father Falls, the next at Grand Mother, next at Pelican near Rhinelander, and from there to Lake View Dessert, and crossing the watershed, the route followed closely the course of the Ontanagon river.
CHAPTER IX.
First Farming Settlements-In the Present Towns of Berlin, Main, and Hamburg-The Pittsburg Settlers' Club-Marathon City and Town- Town of Stettin-Little Bull and the Irish Settlement-Knowlton- Keelerville-The Village of Forestville.
It has been shown that it was the majestic white pine forest on and along the Wisconsin river and its tributaries with its natural waterfalls easily harnessed by man, which attracted the first settlers to the Wisconsin valley and Marathon county, that farming was not given a thought by these men who came solely for the pine; that, indeed, for years they believed the soil to be wholly unproductive, the climate to severe, and the winters too long for the raising of agricultural crops; how their hopes of making a fortune by cutting the splendid pine which could be had, say, for nothing, and taking the lumber to market, were blasted by the expense of bringing the food stuffs up here and the still higher expense of running the lumber to market; how some of the pinery men had given up in despair and left. But many were still here; they had invested their little capital and could not leave without sacrificing not only that, but also the fruit of years of the hardest sort of labor, however little it may have been, performed under hardships which only the strongest constitution could survive.
But they saw the dawn of a new and better era after the county govern- ment was established and a united effort had been made to bring them in closer contact with civilization and market. They had also discovered by this time that the lands which they had believed unfit for cultivation would yield excellent crops when worked in husbandlike manner after the timber had been removed and the sun been given a chance to send its fructifying rays in the ground and awaken its dormant powers. Attempts at farming had already been made as mentioned in the foregoing chapter, but while the results exceeded all expectations, especially as they were made by mechan- ics more as a side line to their more congenial work in their regular profes- sion or trade, they had no lasting beneficial effect other than to convince
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people of the fertile character of the soil and a belief in the future progress of Marathon county because of the fitness of the soil for agricultural pur- poses.
The population in 1855 was still confined to the saw mill settlements where people at least lived in close proximity to each other which in some degree satisfied the yearning of the human heart for association with kin- dred beings and compensated them in part for the want of all reasonable comforts which they had to endure. It was not only the hard steady unac- customed and monotonous work of making a farm in the unbroken forest, but the necessity of staying away for weeks and months from all other human society, shut out from all association with mankind which prevented the pinery people from going into the woods and clear the land for cultiva- tion. This work of subjugating the wilderness and bring into a state of civ- ilization was begun by the German farmers who arrived after 1855.
At that time Marathon county presented still the appearance of an unbroken forest. Only a sled road passable in the winter for teams existed between Merrill and Stevens Point, touching at the small settlement at Wausau, a little clearing at Mosinee and Knowlton with the small mill settle- ments at Eau Clair, Trappe and Pine rivers with another trail to Little Rib river from Wausau. The whole population in 1850 was 508, and the state census of 1855 gives the population as only 447, which evidently is not quite correct, although there was, if no decrease, only a very slight increase over the census of 1850. And all these people lived at and near the mills in the county, and outside of them there were not more than twenty small clear- ings on the immense area of 44 townships. The small clearings mentioned were unoccupied during most of the times. All the rest was wild, unoccu- pied in its natural state. What pine had been cut was all cut close to the rivers and hardly noticeable. Everywhere was forest, heavily timbered, dark, forbidding looking. No ray of the sun could pierce the heavy foliage of the hardwood and pine woods. The shadow was on the ground all during sum- mer, and the snow which fell during winter lay there until the sun rose high in the month of April.
That was the condition of Marathon county in 1856 when the southern part of the state was being rapidly settled. No state in the Union had enjoyed so large a growth in so short a time as Wisconsin in the first ten years of its admission as a state. There was a boom for Wisconsin lands in the years from 1853 to 1858, partly caused by speculators in lands, but more so by actual settlers who soon discovered that the government had millions of acres from which any amount from forty acres to a whole section and more
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could be selected and bought for $1.25 per acre, and land speculators after holding on for several years at a high price were glad to sell at reasonable figures.
The reaction in Germany following the stormy years of 1848 and 1849 induced emigration from that country. Many of these emigrants were highly educated people who found employment as teachers, journalists, and many being mechanics, found good paying employment in the several branches of industry; only a few of them took to farming. But they were good writers, and by their letters written to their friends at the old home, describing the free democratic life in this republic, the ease with which land could be acquired and an industrious man could become independent, gave an impetus to emigration of the most desirable character. Many came to Wisconsin, and the establishment of the United States land office at Stevens Point brought some of those seekers for land up in this part of the state.
It is a curious fact, however, that the first farm settlements in Marathon county were begun almost simultaneously from different quarters wholly independent and unconnected with each other, one having its origin in the city of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, by a number of laboring men, and the other by farmer emigrants coming directly from Germany.
The first farmer emigrants coming to this county seems to have been one William Thiele, who came with his grown son and wife in 1856 and settled in Township 30, Range 6, now the town of Berlin. In the same year came the four brothers, Barteld, John, David, Gottlieb, and Frank, and a relative of theirs by the name of Roemer; they all took land in the present town of Main near what is now known as Taegeville. In the same year came John Kufahl and his brother Carl, Gottfriend Stubbe, Gottlieb Beilke, C. Schlueter, and Mollendorf. They all settled not very far from each other in the present towns of Berlin and Main from nine to twelve miles from Wausau. David Barteld was quite intelligent and a shrewd man in his way with a sense for business. Before coming to Marathon he had lived in the neighborhood of Madison, worked with the surveyors and familiarized himself with following section lines and locating section corners, and he was not slow to commercialize his capacity in locating his countrymen. The land had been surveyed only a short time before, and the blazes were fresh and could be followed easily by any woodsmen.
This John Barteld stayed on his farm for some years, even erected a dis- tillery (it was when distilling was yet free), but the product was too raw even for uncultivated taste, and he gave it up. After some years he came to Wausau, opened a little grocery and boarding house on Clark's Island
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immediately north of the bridge until his removal to the far West in the early seventies. William Thiele did some locating too, but Barteld having the good will of the land office, got the bulk of the trade. Of all the Bartelds there is ony one descendent now living on a farm in the neighborhood of the original settlement. Another family came from Germany in 1856. It was Carl Fehlhaber with his family, consisting of wife and four grown sons and two daughters. He went to Stevens Point, bought 320 acres lo- cated by Thiele, but the season being too late, he stayed with his family in a rented house on the Green Lake prairie during winter, coming up early in the spring of 1857 to make settlements. They came with their ox team from there to Wausau; it was early as soon as the snow was gone; the creeks and water courses were full, no bridges, only a trail for a road, and it took them two weeks to make the trip from Stevens Point to Wausau. They had to bridge the creeks, turn out of the road, cut new ones, but succeeded in reaching Wausau without great mishap. It was somewhat but not much better in reaching their land in Township 30, Range 6 E. There were ten strong willing hands and arms, for whom the woods had no terrors. They had their household and one cow with them. They went to work at once, made a brush tent for themselves, while the women slept in the canvass covered wagon, until the first rough shed was finished with a roof of birch bark. Next spring they brought the first sheep in their settlement. It seems that the cattle seemed to know instinctively that their safety depended upon their not straying far in the woods, they kept near the little clearing, and their bells could always be heard.
In the same years ( 1857) came August W. Schmidt, for many years a member of the county board and for twelve years register of deeds of Mara- thon county and later one of the directors of the German American Bank of Wausau; also Gottlieb Plish with a family of wife and two sons and five daughters, and Klinger, Anklamm, Hartel, and Aschbrenner, all with fam- ilies, all direct from Germany, all settling in the town of Berlin.
In the same year (1857) there settled in the present town of Hamburg Carl Zastrow, August Borchardt, Stephen Juedes, and Carl Juedes, and later John Miller, and Fred Ziebell, the two last families in the present town of Halsey nearly thirty miles from Wausau, with no road from this place to any of the settlements. This locating was done by John Barteld, and it is said that in locating settlers he would spend several days showing them lands in order to enhance his compensation which was $5.00 per day, it being in his interest to spend more than one day in showing the lands.
The families of Millert and Ziebell probably experienced the hardest
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luck of all new settlers. Their families were large, especially the Ziebells, and one of the big boys was constantly on the road, rather trail through the woods, carrying flour and groceries home, two days going and three days coming with a pack of fifty pounds on his back. Ziebell stayed three or four years on the farm, made quite a clearing, but the strain was too heavy, and he abandoned his land with all improvements made under the hardest sort of toil and wants, and his land was sold for taxes and lost. The family was game, however. The oldest son began life anew on eighty acres of land about seven miles from Wausau in the town of Main and became quite com- fortable; the others came to Wausau where they acquired a competency. The youngest of the sons, fourteen years old when they went out there, August Ziebell, only lately sold out his grocery store in the McCrossen building.
John Millert, too, left his improved farm of fifteen acres which was sold for taxes, remained long as county land and was conveyed by the county with- the 200,000 acres county lands to the Wisconsin valley as an induce- ment for the building of the road.
Another enterprising German, Charles Mante, erected a little farmer store near the present Lutheran church in the town of Main, west of the place known as the Armstrong farm, in 1856, where Herman Miller, after- wards member of the assembly, began his life career as clerk. He did a small business for some years, but when there was a lull in newcomers and the older comers had spent their money and needed credit, which he was unable to give, he sold out and left.
That was the beginning of the low or north German settlement in Mara- thon county. Most all men came directly to this county from Germany for the purpose of farming, and all of them, except a few like Bartelds, remained and succeeded in their undertaking. They became independent, fairly well to do, securing for themselves that competency in their old age which prompted them to leave home and friends to seek new and better homes in America.
A little earlier in point of time of the arrival of the north German set- tlers here, a colonization scheme was planned in the city of Pittsburg. It had its origin in a Catholic church society consisting in the main of work- ingmen and mechanics. They had labored for years in the rolling mills in that city and other trades; they saw that there was no likelihood for them while in employ to make provision for their old age, much less to give their children a start in life. They had heard of the good lands in Wisconsin and made up their minds to become farmers in the West. Knowing that they were going to an unsettled country, they desired to be as much as pos- sible together, to help each other in cases of need. In order to accomplish 6
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this end, they organized a settlers' club, each member agreeing to pay into the common treasury the sum of $110.00 with which to buy government land in one large complex, each member to receive in return therefore eighty acres of land and one village lot in the village to be laid out on said land, and three acres of land on the outside bordering on the village and called out lots. The land was to be drawn by lot by each member from the whole body of the land. This club organized in 1856, the same year that the first German farmer settlers came to Marathon county. They elected one Christ- mann, one Kalkenbeck, and John Kapp as a committee to proceed to Wis- consin to locate the land in compact form for the society. The committee arrived at Stevens Point and took up about three thousand acres for the use of the society in township 28, range 6 east and selected that portion on the west shore of Big Rib river, which was supposed to be navigable (which it was for logs and canoes only ) and had the village of Marathon city laid out and platted.
In making that selection they very probably were influenced by what they undoubtedly heard in Stevens Point that there were mills in Wausau and at Mosinee not far from the proposed new village of Marathon City, and also that one hundred and sixty acres bordering on the proposed new village had already been entered and a farm made thereon by Joseph Dessert. These set- tlers knew they were going on timber lands and expected hard work ahead in clearing because they had seen the improved lands around Pittsburg which were originally timber lands, and a lumber industry carried on there on the Allegheny river, but they did not know that there was no road to their land nor from one place to the other.
In the spring of 1857 a number of colonists left Pittsburg for their new homes arriving by way of Berlin in Stevens Point, and there took the steam- boat which ran for the first season from there to Mosinee. So far every- thing looked promising. But when they arrived at Mosinee, they were told that they could not reach their destination by any road nor by steamboat, that the only way to get there was by going through the woods or, what was recommended, by canoes. It was Mr. Joseph Dessert who was consulted, and being familiar with the descriptions of the land, gave them reliable information. That was the first surprise, but there were more and stronger ones for them in store. With the aid of a half-breed Indian and Indians, they embarked in canoes and were landed at the present site of Marathon City.
They were Robert Schilling. John Linder. Thomas Peternick, Joseph Haesle, Michael Bauer, Francis Tigges, and Anton Koester.
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Some were single, some had families. They remained together for a while, putting up two temporary log huts in the proposed village, until to each was pointed out his particular land by a surveyor, then began the work of putting up huts on their own lands, meanwhile helping out each other. During the same season came George Vetter, George Lang, Joseph Seliger, and Vogedes, all club members, and a few others not members. Vogedes died the same year, and his death made a deep and lasting impression on the remaining ones. A few others not belonging to the club arrived, among them Mathias Halkowitz, who went as far as township 28, range 4, now the town of Wien, and Bernhard Hilber, who settled near Marathon City. Others came, and after finding themselves in an immense forest, without signs of civilization, such as roads, schools, churches, and the absence of all con- veniences which seem an absolute necessity for cultured people, such as had the means to leave, left, returning in disgust. But those who had not the means, and most of them were in that condition, had no choice; they stayed and took up the fight for existence as best as they could.
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