History of Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, Part 24

Author: Curtiss-Wedge, Franklyn; Pierce, Eben Douglas
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Chicago Winona : H.C. Cooper
Number of Pages: 1318

USA > Wisconsin > Trempealeau County > History of Trempealeau County, Wisconsin > Part 24

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then to keep my promise to work for the company another year I went back to Chippewa Falls, where I worked one year and seven months. Then in January, 1854, I returned to Montoville, then finding that a more wonder- ful change had taken place. Hotels, stores, shops and other business places, churches, school houses and farms scattered here and there in all direc- tions, and going out to my claim I found that my father, with all of his family, had bought out William Cram, the place adjoining my claim, and that a man had jumped my claim and had made some improvements, for which he would not give up except upon the payment of fifty dollars, which I paid and took possession. Later I sold it to Charles Pickering.

In the spring of 1854 Alexander McGilvray settled on Black River and ran a ferry boat across the river, instead of fording as before. The place then became known as McGilvray's Ferry. In the summer I bought property there and built a store, blacksmith shop, and also opened a farm, and early in 1855 our settlers found the need for a school and rented the front room of my house for one year and employed Cecelia Segar to teach the first school at McGilvray's Ferry. A new school house was built for the second term, and Fanny A. Olds was employed as teacher, and here in this school house at the first term was organized the first debating school in the county. Our people all became so deeply interested that they came from far and near and took part in the debates, and established a weekly newspaper called the "Singinezia," to be edited by the members and read at each meeting. These schools were kept up for a number of years, dis- cussing many great and important questions to the lasting benefit of all that took part in them. Mr. McGilvray, the grand old Scotchman, being the first settler here, named the place Caledonia, after his native place in Scotland. Soon after Trempealeau County was organized and the county seat was established at Galesville, a beautiful young town on the banks of Beaver creek. Our early settlers were a very intelligent, industrious and progressive people. Thus school houses, churches, villages, hotels, stores, grist mills, saw mills, and all kinds of public improvements was the order of the day from the beginning of our early settlement. Always manifesting the highest degree of intelligent progression, thus changing a land that was once the home of the Indian and wild beasts of the forest to a land that now stands upon the highest pinnacle of American civilization. Thus we mention but a small part of the events of our pioneer days from 1851 to 1861.

From 1861 to the spring of 1864 I kept my place at McGilvray's Ferry, and in the month of May, 1864, Benjamin Oliver and I went north to look for land to homestead. We found a few settlers in Trempealeau valley near the mouth of Pigeon Creek. The settlement was called Whitehall. From there we went up Pigeon Creek about six miles. There we found Hely Fitch, his mother and sister, who told us that they had settled there the year before, and that Mr. Fitch froze to death in the winter of the deep snow; that the old man had to go up into the cooley about three miles to cut and stack hay to winter his oxen on, and that the snow got so deep that he could not driver the oxen there after hay, and to keep them alive he would go on his snowshoes every day and bring a bundle of hay on his

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back. The weather turned very cold and he went for a bundle and came back about half way and fell with his hay, where they found him next day froze solid. Through the snow being so deep they could not walk through it and had to shovel and break a path to get to him, but they got him home late that night. Thus that cooley was named Fitch's Cooley. After hear- ing their heartrending story, we went on up the creek about four miles into a cooley southeast of Pigeon Falls, where Mr. Oliver selected his homestead. We then went north over the bluffs about one mile. There I selected my homestead. This Fitch family were the only settlers up in Pigeon valley in Trempealeau County. Mr. Oliver and myself moved onto our land in August, 1864, and George H. Olds and James Phillips moved in one month later. Then in the spring Wm. Olds and L. B. Man and H. Smith, P. Peter- son, L. Larson, Phineas Wright, C. H. Hines, Andrew Peterson and Mr. Richardson, and some others, moved in during the summer of 1865.

In the fall of 1864 and early winter 1865, Mr. Oliver, Mr. Phillip, G. H. Olds and myself bought and hauled lumber from Merrilan and built a school house, and employed Mary Nott to teach the first term of school in Pigeon Valley, beginning with twelve scholars, but having some more at the close of the term. The second term was taught by Jane A. Olds, and the third term by Marilda Lyons. In these early days our people organized debating schools, where some of the most profound questions affecting the weal or woe of our people were discussed, and to this day we can see and realize the benefits from the food for thought that was brought out in those old debating schools, and I am happy to know that some of those lights that shone so brightly in those early days have not all gone out yet in 1912, and I hope that other and brighter lights will continue to shine until the end of time.

Among the many early settlers of Pigeon Valley was one, Mr. Fuller, who settled in a cooley northwest of Pigeon Falls about one mile, where he had built a small farm house, and during a heavy thunder storm had laid down with his wife upon a bed that stood with its head near a south window. Mr. Fuller lay on the bed, his head in line with the window, his wife lying back of him, when a bolt of lightning passed through the window, striking him on top of the head and passing the length of his body and from his feet to the floor and out through the side of the house and to the ground, thus killing him instantly, while his wife was unharmed except a slight shock. Thus this cooley was called Fuller's Cooley. A year or two after his body was taken up from his farm and was found to be petrified, and required five or six persons to take it out of the grave .- (J. D. Olds in letters to Hon. H. A. Anderson, Feb. 14 to Feb. 17, 1912.)

Trempealeau Prairie. William Trim has seen all the changes come to the county from its really wild state to its present condition of wealth and comfort, having resided in it since the fifteenth day of October, 1858, to this time, except during the three years that he was in the army. He saw the red schoolhouse built at Wright's Corners in 1862 by Al Holcomb; saw the mill and dam put in by the Holcombs and Mr. Grant in 1860; knew the first teacher in the red schoolhouse, a Miss Sumara Grant, afterward Mrs. Carsely, her term being in 1862 and 1863. Mr. Carsely ran the saw-

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mill above Bortles, built by Mr. Grant when he and Holcomb dissolved partnership in the prairie mill. Abe Holcomb and Mr. Grant came to the prairie in the winter of 1860, Al Holcomb coming in the spring of that year. Hollister Wright was on his old farm when Mr. Trim settled in the vicinity in 1855. Elder Cook came in 1860, Ralph Martin in 1862. Trem- pealeau was a small village in October, 1858. Harvey Bowls kept a hotel, as also did Frank Utter. Thede Booher and Mr. Paine kept stores, and N. B. Grover a warehouse, to which he helped Mr. Ware haul corn in the winter of 1858-59 at 25 cents a bushel shelled. He attended the town meet- ing in the spring of 1859 at Trempealeau, the first meeting of that kind he ever attended, and there became acquainted with Mr. Sutcliffe and John Rhodes, Samuel Barr and others, who all lived in the Big Tamarack. He says a man by the name Whistler was an early settler over the Pass- being the first one-and that the Pass was named after him. The two sons of the man became homesick and traveled back to Dodge County, and Mr. Whistler and his wife soon abandoned the place and in an ox team returned to Dodge County. Thomas Knox was an early pioneer over the Pass and sold their claim to a Mr. Rudnick, who was the first Pole to settle in Pine Creek, in 1859 or 1860. This man and his wife paid Knox in half- dollar pieces the sum of $800 she had earned in Winona washing. Knox put the half dollars in a sack to carry on foot to Galesville, but at the Lee bridge over the Tamarack Creek he hid half of the money, finding the whole amount too heavy to carry at one time to Galesville, afterward returning for the half that he had hidden. In 1860 four Germans located north of Vernons, in the valley that has since been called German Valley. There were Koop, Pfefer, Were and Dopp. In 1858 the settlers in the Tamarack were Bortle, Cook and Vernon. On the west side of the prairie were Seby and Darwin Atwood, two Nashes and A. A. Whiting. In the south part were Stevens, Gillies, Brewins and Steadman. On the east toward Gales- ville were Anson Bell, Mr. King and a Mr. Hartz on the Isaac Wright farm, Thompson on old farm. A barn was built on the Thompson farm in 1859; the shingles were rived by Stark Butman from logs. Many of these shingles are now sound and good. William McDonough then lived on the old Martin farm, William Lee on the Chase Wasson farm. Later came Shaw and Howe above the Vernon farm. Castleman, a half-negro, lived on the Walsky farm .- (Interview with Stephen Richmond.)

Beaver Creek Valley. John Hess settled in Beaver Creek Valley in the fall of 1852. "There were very few families in this part of the country at that time," said Mr. Hess. "James Reed was living at Trempealeau or Reed's Landing, as it was called then, and he was the first white man I saw after coming here. The second season we were here I had a good crop of winter wheat, which had to be threshed with a flail. It was difficult to get it clean without a fanning-mill, and so I went down to Prairie du Chien to buy one and had it shipped to Trempealeau by boat. It was the only fanning-mill for miles around and I used to loan it to farmers up at Foun- tain City and across Black River in La Crosse County.

"Flour was hard to get, and one day when I was debating in my mind where I could get the next sack of flour, for we were out, James Reed came

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along and told me there was a mill over in Lewis Valley in La Crosse County, and described the trail leading to the valley so that I would have no trouble in following it. The next morning I got up at three o'clock and started over the trail for the mill, my wife accompanying me as far as Heuston's near Galesville. I found my way to Luther Lewis's mill, bought a fifty- pound sack of flour, and walked home with it on my shoulder, having traveled between 25 and 30 miles.

"Pork was a luxury in those days and I remember walking up to North Bend to buy some of it of Thomas Douglass, who operated a sawmill on Black River. When I got there I found Mr. Douglass at work repairing a breakdown in the mill, and when I told him my errand he said he could let me have the pork, and as he was very much in need of help in repairing the mill he suggested that I pay for it in work.

"I worked for him five days for a hundred pounds of pork, and when I was ready to start home I built a raft of kant timbers, and loading my cargo onto it, started down river. I landed at the mouth of Beaver Creek and hid my pork in the woods and set out afoot for home to get an ox to 'pack' the meat with, but, as luck would have it, I came across my oxen feeding in the edge of a wood less than half a mile from where I landed. I drove one of the oxen down to the river and tied the pack of meat on his back with my suspenders and then drove him home.

"I'll tell you how we got our blacksmithing done the first few years after we came to Beaver Creek. We drove with an ox team to Trem- pealeau and then borrowed a skiff and rowed across the river to Richmond, Minnesota, where there was a blacksmith shop. Sometimes it would take two days to make the trip, for if the smith had work ahead we would have to wait.

"Along in 1856-57 I bought a threshing machine. I went to Racine and bought a horse-power machine of the J. I. Case Company and paid $725 for it, and they shipped it to Chicago and thence to Dubuque, and from there it was shipped by boat to Trempealeau. It was the first thresh- ing machine in this county, and I used to go many miles over mighty rough roads to do threshing. I went over to Arcadia and threshed for Noah Com- stock, James Gaveney and Collins Bishop."

Mrs. Hess also has told in her quaint and pleasing way stories of pioneer experiences. She says: "The first few years we lived here our nearest neighbor was Charles H. Perkins, who lived over in the Tamarack, and as there was no road to their place from our home we used to go back and forth visiting, over a trail that lead across the bluffs. Mother was a great hand to knit and always took her knitting along when she went visiting, and that is how we happened to get our first chickens. You see we hadn't any chickens and had almost forgotten what an egg looked like, but Perkins' folks had a flock of chickens, though they didn't care to sell any. Well, mother was at their place one day and was just finishing a pair of stock- ings she was knitting when Mrs. Perkins asked her if she would sell a pair or two of them. Mother said no, she would not sell them, but would trade for some hens and offered to knit two pairs for four hens. The trade was agreed to and when mother completed her knitting contract she took the

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stockings over to Mrs. Perkins and brought the four hens home across the hills in her apron. To complete the flock father went to Treampealeau and succeeded in buying a rooster from Mr. Reed.

"Hogs were difficult to get, and the first one we were able to procure after we settled in our new home Mr. Hess got of James Reed in exchange for work. He cut nine cords of wood over on the island opposite Trem- pealeau for a sow, and was well pleased with the bargain.

"There were no churches anywhere near our place at that time, and it was a great treat when a preacher happened to come along and stay over Sunday with us. The neighbors would gather at our log house to hold religious services and after the meeting was over they would stay and visit.

"La Crosse was only a little country village then, with one hotel, a half dozen small stores, a blacksmith shop and a burned-down mill with the brick chimney left standing."

This was pioneering with all of its varied phases. There were hard- ships but joys as well, and it is hardship that gives zest to pleasure. There was a backwoods adventurous spirit in the rough life of that age and the pioneer will tell you that he took real comfort in his cabin home. And so we look back and see the log cabin dreaming in the solitude where the wild roses bloom in profusion, and the ox team and the breaking-plow creep slowly across the clearing, while the sunlight streaming through the valley turns the old grub-piles into heaps of gold .-.- (By E. D. Pierce.)

Lewis Valley. In 1857 Lewis Niffin took up a quarter section of land about four miles above Arcadia, on a small creek that has since borne his name, being the first settler to locate directly above Arcadia. He erected a log hut near the creek, a few rods towards the Trempealeau River, from what is now the main road, between Arcadia and Independence. Mr. Niffin remained on his claim less than a year, when he abandoned it and left the country. In 1861 Richard Rook, an Englishman, came and picked out a location near Niffin's abandoned claim and put up a small building, but he was not favorably impressed with his new home and forsook it in a few months for a more suitable locality. Then came Alonzo Baker (about 1862) and took up a homestead in one of the branch coolies of Lewis Valley. But it remained for Capt. John D. Lewis to become the first settler in the main valley. In May, 1866, shortly after getting his discharge from the army, he took up the land now known as the Lewis farm and during the summer built a house and broke some land. The following summer, 1867, J. B. Gorton and Jonathan Busby moved into the valley .- (By Stephen Rich- mond.)

Newcomb Valley lies wholly in the town of Arcadia, opening into American Valley near the Penny schoolhouse, where the branches of the creek meet above the Miller and Bear pond. The valley runs east about four miles to the foot of the Preston hills. There are a number of small valleys known as coolies on either side in which good farms are located ; among them are the Erickson, Hanson and Arneson farms, while the combes or coolies on the north side are known as the Knudtson and Rud farms and neighborhood. The main valley was settled in 1866 by Isaac Newcomb and

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his brother Harold, who came from Lewis Valley, La Crosse County, where they settled with their parents in 1855, emigrating from Tioga County, Pennsylvania. (In 1868 the parents also removed to Newcomb Valley, making their home with Isaac, with whom they lived out their lives, the father dying in 1873 and the mother in 1879.) So far as can be learned a family by the name of Van Scroch had for a short time occupied a log hut on an 85-acre tract, which Isaac Newcomb purchased through N. D. Com- stock as agent, of Lot D. Rice, he getting his title from Dr. Bishop, who bought the lands from a Mrs. Hessey Vallandingham, the widow of a Ken- tucky soldier. She never occupied these lands. Mr. Newcomb home- steaded 160 acres adjoining this tract, which he improved and made into a valuable farm.

The early settlers who may be said to have been the pioneers in the valley were Isaac and Harold Newcomb, Andrew Knudtson, Arney Olson Rud, Stiner Knudtson, Lewis and Lars Hanson and a man named Rock- well. At the close of 1866 there were no settlers in the valley except the Newcombs, nor east to where Hans Solberg lived near Lake Slough. Sol- berg was known as Stocker in those early days. James McKivergin had settled in Preston on the old McKivergin farm, and the only tract over the hills was a single plow furrow to guide the traveler to these settlers' claims. The Knudtsons, Ruds, Ericksons and Hansons came in in 1867 and 1868, as did Mr. Scow. After that time settlers continued to locate in the valley, so that in 1876 all the lands had been taken up and were occupied. The Newcombs began improving their lands and in 1867 built houses and other buildings upon them. In the fall of 1868 the Penny schoolhouse was built, a mere board shell, and the winter term in 1868-69 was taught by W. L. Cummings, who boarded around with such settlers as were able to keep him. At some places Mr. Cummings was obliged to crawl to his bed because of the meagerness of the living and sleeping accommodations. He boarded principally with Jerry O'Brien, Ira Penny, Isaac Newcomb and John Truman. Other early teachers there were Kate Rudolf, Ida Smith and Eva Allen. The schoolhouse in Newcomb Valley was built in 1875 and was firs taught by Ida Smith.

When Isaac Newcomb arrived he brought with him four cows, four head of young stock and a yoke of oxen, and with these possessions and 245 acres of land was considered as a well-to-do man.

The country was mighty new and people possessed of little money, but all were stout-hearted patriots determined to "make good," which many of them did after the coming of the railroad in 1874. About the only farm implement in the neighborhood was a dung-fork owned by Ira Penny, which he loaned with misgivings to his neighbors. The story of these early days might be written elaborately into pages of local incidents and gossip, among the most interesting being the bear story published in the Arcadia Leader in 1874, a newspaper owned by N. D. Comstock, and published after the new village was started on the Trempealeau River bottoms, where the flourishing village of Arcadia now stands.

Newcomb Valley for many years had and now has a number of excel- lent farms, and its people are among the most intelligent and progressive

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families in the county, with comfortable homes and farm buildings, blooded stock, and being well provided with all farm conveniences, showing thrift and contentment .- (By Stephen Richmond.)

Holcomb Cooley lies partly in the town of Trempealeau, the greater part being in the town of Arcadia, and is in townships 19 and 20 north of range 8 west, opening into the Tamarack Valley, or running back east and northeast about two to three miles in width and footing up against French Crcek and the Galesville hills more than three miles from the Tamarack Valley. Near the center it is widest. On the south side are several small valleys or coolies in the hills, with much the same conditions as on the north side, where in the early pioneer days stood dense forests of tamarack timber. Al and Abe Holcomb, brothers, who had settled on West Prairie and who had put in a dam in the Tamarack Creek, in section 5, township 18 north of range 9 west, and erected a saw mill, filed claims on much of the land in this cooley and, taking possession, began to cut and carry to their mills saw logs which were cut into lumber for use by the settlers. Hence the name Holcomb Valley, or Cooley, was given to the region by early settlers and has not been changed, though the men after whom the valley was named have been long dead. In 1870 the saw mill did little work, and about 1875 the mill and power were converted into a grist mill by Square A. Picket, who had come into possession of it, and who later sold it to other parties, who continued to operate it till 1885.

Much of the land in and about the region of the Tamarack Valley was marshy, and to reach the cooley when the ground was frozen was an almost impossible task, except by way of the French Creek Valley, until a series of corduroy roads was built over the marsh places. The Holcombs also built and for a number of years operated a windlass on the hills to facilitate transportation. The teams were unhitched from the vehicles and driven singly up the bluff and the loads dragged up by the windlass. In fact, teams descending could not be driven down the bluff side hitched to a wagon. This was in operation as late as 1868 or 1869. It is a fact almost forgotten by the oldest living pioncer today, though familiar to all of them at the time.

The first settlers to permanently locate and improve lands in the cooley were Wenzel Brom, known as Big Wenzel, and his cousin, Wenzel Brom, known as Little Wenzel, and John Holemy, Bohemians, who had immigrated in 1859 with Mathias Brom, who later settled in Pine Creek in what is now a part of the town of Dodge ; also Ole O. Chestleson, still living in the cooley on the land he homesteaded or pre-empted; John Johnson, who later removed to the State of Nebraska ; Oluff Olson, Hendrick Olson, Mat Olson, and perhaps one or two other families. These settlers came in at various dates from 1861 to 1865. John Brom later than 1868 homesteaded lands in the cooley. Among those who came before 1869, not mentioned above, were Hans Hanson, John Hanson and Easton Hoverson.

In 1868 a log schoolhouse was built in the cooley on the site of the present one, and the first school taught in the winter of 1868-69. The nearest business place was Old Arcadia, where Gay T. Storm conducter' a store and David Masseure owned and operated a grist mill in 1868. The road over the ridge to this store and mill was a rough unimproved tract.

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Frank Brom first visited these business places in the late fall of 1868 with Matthias Olson, they going to mill with two yoke of oxen and a cart, having to lead the oxen up and down the steep hillsides, and then it was a dan- gerous journey to make. The country was indeed wild and desolate in that late fall day, being a series of hills and bluffs on all sides, with scarcely a settler anywhere in sight till they trundled down into Arcadia .- (By Stephen Richmond.)

American Valley. The first settler in American Valley was a man named Kenton, who came in the early sixties.

Albert Tracy came in the spring of 1865. Sydney Conant and the Messrs. Taft and Drake came in the fall of that year. The experiences of Conant are typical of early life in that valley. Starting out on foot from his old home in Amsterdam he encountered Mr. Tracy, who advised him to settle near Arcadia. But upon reaching the Tamarack and finding no one who had heard of Arcadia, he decided to enquire at Bishop's settle- ment. Arriving at the settlement he found that he was at Arcadia itself. From there he went to the head of what has since been called American Valley and staked out a claim. He had some breaking done and cut some marsh grass, and then started a house. Some of the lumber was hauled from Amsterdam. Most of it, however, was obtained from near what is now Merrillan, Tracy and Conant going to the woods there with two yoke of oxen each, and each bringing home a large load of lumber and shingles. Conant finished the woodwork of his house, but as the plasterer was taken ill was forced to move in before the interior was completed. Then came the terrible cold. Dry oak logs were burned for fuel. The stove was heated red-hot, a small space around the stove was enclosed with blankets, within which the family huddled. As soon as the weather moderated Conant made some plaster from lime, sand and horsehair, which he had secured, and started plastering. The plaster froze solid as soon as applied. On the following Sunday, Taft and Tracy helped complete the work.

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History of Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, Part 24

Author: Curtiss-Wedge, Franklyn; Pierce, Eben Douglas Publication date: 1917 Publisher: Chicago Winona : H.C. Cooper Number of Pages: 1318

Author: Curtiss-Wedge, Franklyn; Pierce, Eben Douglas
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Chicago Winona : H.C. Cooper
Number of Pages: 1318