History of Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, Part 26

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 26

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Then one day from the Trempealeau River came the thrilling whistle of a steamboat. The peaceful quiet of the country was broken, and the inhab- itants were stirred with excitement at this undreamed-of occurrence and people flocked down to the river to feast their eyes on a real live steamboat actually navigating the modest little Trempealeau River. A landing was made, the gangplank touched shore, and every inhabitant of Williamsburg felt his property rise in value so fast that it was necessary to hold onto the trees to keep from sliding downhill.

The steamboat men wanted to buy some eggs from the Williamsburg farmers, and William Eastman, eager to secure the trade of the boatmen. hurried home and in a short time returned with a basket of eggs. But, alas ! Mr. Eastman was more accustomed to walking the wide country roads than a narrow gangplank, and when he had taken a few steps on the plank he slipped and fell, but like the boy who tumbled out of the barn loft and clung to his pail of nails to keep them from spilling, Bill froze to his backet of eggs, and regained his foothold with but a few of them broken, and the captain of the boat paid him for the original number of eggs, and Mr. Eastman walked home the crowned monarch of the rural market, and the first and last Will- iamsburg settler to trade with a Trempealeau River steamboat.

The new community grew rapidly and prospered, for they were thrifty society should not be forgotten in Williamsburg history. In the winter time every other Friday night was given to the literary society or spelling school, and people would come from neighboring districts to attend. There was a great deal of rivalry between contending districts in these spelling school matches, and the pupils were kept in good trim for the contest. Then on a winter's night when the chores were done, there would be a merry jingle of sleigh bells vibrating along the road to the schoolhouse and by 8 o'clock in the evening the strains of some well-known school song would announce the opening of the exercises. And if you would listen in the course of an hour you would hear the droning of words as the teacher pronounced them to the pupils lined along the walls of the schoolroom eager for the spelling-down contest. It is surprising what large words some of those bright little

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country maidens would wade through-words that would give one a kink in the neck to pronounce were consumed as easily and greedily as a robin devours an angleworm.

The new community grew rapidly and prospered, for they were thrifty farmers, and brought from the Empire State a wealth of dairy experience and agricultural knowledge that proved useful in opening up the new country.

In the summer there was the school picnic, which was worth while to a hungry bunch of children. There under the green shade trees, near the limpid brook, where the blue violets bloomed in profusion we would enjoy a picnic dinner with tablecloths spread out on the ground and covered with, Oh, my, what good things to eat! not to forget the blueberry pie.

The railroad went through the valley, and by 1876, Williamsburg had two markets, Arcadia and Independence.

There is not an original settler or a descendant of one left in Williams- burg. You hardly ever hear the name any more, except among a few of the old settlers who still tell of the days when there was good deer hunting in Wickham Valley, and elk horns were picked up on the hillside back of the old Skillins place. (By Eben D. Pierce.)

McGilvray's Ferry, located on the Black River, in Caledonia Township, occupied an important place in Trempealeau County history for nearly four decades, from 1854 to 1892. Many of the early settlers passed into the county over this ferry, and the route of which it was a part is still an important thoroughfare, the ferry being now replaced by a neat bridge.

Alexander McGilvray, from whom the ferry took its name, located in Trempealeau (Reed's Landing) in 1852, and the following year moved his family to a homestead.

At that time people desiring to go to La Crosse, overland, went by way of the ford at what was afterward Gordon's ferry. The need of a ferry to shorten the route was imperative. Therefore in March, 1854, with the assistance of Charles Utter, Mr. McGilvray built a scow in the streets of Trempealeau, and later in the spring hauled it with teams to McGilvray's place, where it was launched and poled across Black River with Mr. Utter's team as its first cargo. The ferry was a reality now, and the first wagon road was opened into the south end of the county.

Poles to push the boat across the river were used only for a short time, when they were supplanted by an ordinary rope cable which was used one season, and was then replaced by a three-quarter-inch iron rod put together in sections. This was used until the wire cable took its place when the new cable was utilized until the ferry was discontinued.

The first ferryboat lasted two years, when a new one was constructed. In all five boats were built, the last one by G. O. McGilvray (now of Canyon- ville, Oregon), in 1890 and was run until the McGilvray bridge was com- pleted February 22, 1892, when it was sold up the river to Decorah Prairie for Gordon's Ferry.

The rates charged for ferrying across the river were 25 cents for a team ; 35 cents for a four-horse wagon and 10 cents for a foot passenger.

The tide of settlers increased with the drifting years, and the traffic

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along the river assumed larger proportions. Stage lines, and freight lines were established, and in the winter when the steamboats were frozen in, the travel was entirely by team and horseback, and by French train. Four- horse freight wagons were commonly used, and the stages often used two teams on their coaches when the roads were heavy.

McGilvray's place assumed a busy aspect at times with the long line of freight wagons and stage coaches on the river bank waiting for their turn to be ferried over the river. Many of the travelers remained all night at McGilvray's, and the country inn, or tavern. was hurry and bustle on days of heavy travel. Here were congregated at times a rough and hardy lot of characters, and around the evening fire were told wild and fascinating stories of pioneer life, filled with thrilling adventure, and the comedy and tragedy of the backwoodsman's career, whose nearest neighbor lived miles away. and whose skill with the rifle furnished his rough-hewn table with plenty of savory venison, and made the wary Indian reluctant to disturb his cabin home.

The stage driver told of his wonderful feats of driving, and of his narrow escapes from robbers in attempted hold-ups ; and of the perilous risk he took of being thrown down some rocky embankment on mirky night drives. The trapper told of his long journeys alone into the pathless wilder- ness in quest of furs; and the freighter was ready with his tales of hardy endurance, and of the miraculous journeys made with ponderous loads, up almost impassable roads. through snowdrifts or mud, until his destination was reached and he was a hero in his own mind, as well as the minds of some of his fellow listeners. The hunter and trader swapped yarns and mixed lies almost as strong as the rum in the freighter's wagon.

Alexander McGilvray entertained his guests occasionally with music on his bagpipe, an instrument he had brought from Inverness, Scotland, and the weary traveler would be stirred by the strains of "A Hundred pipers and a'," and would beat time to the Highland Fling as the piper weaved to and fro by the glowing fireside.

Rankin McGilvray was at this time a youth. In speaking of the early days in after years he said: "When the Civil War broke out, we began to carry soldiers across the ferry. Hardly a day went by until the close of the war that we did not carry some of the boys, and along at first they were all going one way. bound for La Crosse, and from there to Madison or Milwau- kee, and then to the front. But after the first battle of Bull Run the wounded soldiers began to return, and then we were carrying soldiers both ways until the war ended. You could always tell one of the wounded ones, for they were bandaged, and crippled; a great many had their arms in slings, and others were walking with crutches; while some had bandaged heads. I recollect one fellow who came back nearly shot to pieces. He was the most dilapidated looking soldier I ever saw. He was lame and his right arm was in a sling and he had been hit in the face, and lost one eye. and couldn't see very well out of the other one, and was sour and cranky, and rather discouraged and I didn't blame him. Father kept him all night. and had one of the boys drive him to Trempealeau the next day. Father never charged the soldiers anything for carrying them across the ferry

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or for board and lodging and although he could not go to the war, he did this patriotic service for his country. My chances for going to the war were spoiled on account of the ferry. I was on fire to go all right. but instead of going to the front and dying for my country, I had to stay at home and bail the water out of the ferry boat and help run it."

Along in the early sixties logging began to interfere with the ferry. Sometimes teams would be compelled to wait for hours until a log jam was cleared. Usually the logs bothered only a few weeks in the spring or for a few hours only but occasionally the ferry was laid up a week or two on account of the jams, and in 1885 the logs extended in a solid mass from Lytles to the head of Decoras Prairie, about 200,000,000 feet in the jam, and in the summer of 1890 the ferry was blockaded for five months. This was done for the convenience of the logging companies by putting a jack boom across the river half a mile above Lytles and letting just enough logs go through to handle during the day, thus saving the company from em- ploying the men to do the work the current did, when the river was kept open from Lytles to Onalaska.

After Alexander McGilvray's death in 1878, his son, G. O. McGilvray operated the ferry until the bridge was erected, with the exception of one or two seasons when it was rented to William Kribbs.

Referring to the ice stopping the ferry, G. O. McGilvray once wrote, "On November 6, 1868, five or six West Prairie farmers drove to Onalaska for lumber. The river was open and the ferry running. The next day the men returned and found the river had been closed twelve hours. The horses were unhitched and the wagons loaded with a thousand feet of lumber were run across the ice by hand and the horses led over in safety. That was closing in rather suddenly."

When one turns and looks backward at the changeless past, what strange visions come floating through the brain. One can see the long procession winding down the road and passing in grand review along the old ferry at Black River. The foot-sore land seeker walking along the blazed trail and dreaming of the land where he can find a free home in the unsettled wilderness; and following in his footsteps comes the prairie schooner drawn by a yoke of oxen, and headed toward the new settlement where lies the richest land that the sun ever shown on, almost unmarked by the plow share. And then the stream of pioneers increases, and the stage coach comes into view, and the long train of freight wagons, and the trader, and lumberman mingle with the varied throng. And now we see a line of blue creep into the procession as on it moves and we feel a patriotic pride as our soldier boys slowly cross the river, facing the grim reality of war where death stalks abroad. And we see the wounded return with empty sleeves and wan lips and take their way homeward. Onward the procession moves until on every vacant piece of land there rises a home, and the subdued soil blossoms with cultivated fields, where once the wild deer ranged. And anon the procession changes, the French-train and stage coach fade away, and in their place comes the lumber wagon filled with golden grain for the market while the hum of our commercial age makes the very hills tremble ; and the slow old ferry of long ago retreats up

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the river to sleep where old Chief Decorah once looked out upon his peaceful village of smoking wigwams .- (By Eben D. Pierce.)

A Wisconsin Pioneer. Albert Rouse Rathbone was one of the remark- able figures of early days in Trempealeau County. In many ways, the experiences of himself and his family were typical of hundreds of pioneers who found their way to this region and assisted in its development. His story, written with loving sympathy and understanding by his daughter, Mrs. Jennie Rathbone Webb.

My father, Albert Rouse Rathbone (properly bun but changed by mis- take in the war records) was born June 28, 1838, at the old Rathbun homestead on Amity Hill near Wattsburg, Penn. His father was an itinerant doctor carrying among his pills and liniments, kerosene oil, a great new cure for colds and throat trouble. When Lincoln called for men my father enlisted in the 145th Pennsylvania Volunteers, and being soon ordered to the front, he married Adeline White, and left her with his widowed mother upon the homestead where mother tended her flock of sheep and did tailoring. Father saw most of the Wilderness Campaign, was taken prisoner at Chancellorsville, held in Libby prison eleven days, after which he was exchanged. Wounded in the arm by a minnie ball at Spottsylvania Courthouse as he raised his sword in sign for his men to charge the breastworks, he returned home after hospital treatment at Annapolis with a wound that prevented further army service.

Grandfather had procured his kerosene medicine from the surface of pools, but now they were deriving it from wells. Father bought a partner- ship in the Titusville Wells, but having little faith in the business, sold mother's sheep, a goodly flock, packed up their few belongings, took mother and the four-months-old baby, waved goodby to a tall form at the homestead bars, and was off to try his fortunes among the pioneers of Western Wisconsin.

Their baggage was light. Clothing cost much in "Wartimes," muslin, coarse, unbleached stuff, sold at seventy-five cents per yard. People had no machines by means of which they could turn off two or three garments a day. I imagine most of the space in that leathern trunk which bore the misuse of travel right up to and including father last move, was taken up with keepsakes.

Time, prodded by boat, stage, and a hired ox team on the last lap, landed them, in the spring of 1866, the new cook stove, the precious baggage intact, upon their possessions at the mouth of Black River some fifteen miles from La Crosse near the old McGilvray ferry. The little log cabin but recently vacated containing its rough hand-made furniture was clean. The new stove in position, mother stored the provisions, conspicuously at the front a jar of Pennsylvania blackberry jam blatantly labeled, hung the dimity curtains, wound and set the clock, while father at a near neighbor's filled the tick with bright oat straw, brought home the cow which had been included in the purchase, a rangy, long-haired creature jangling a bell but a trifle smaller and every bit as badly cracked as that one of 1776 fame, and another home venture was launched.

In this settlement were some thrifty farmers. Though father still

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carried his arm in a sling, he earned enough that summer driving teams for the farmers to pay for three good milch cows. Mother, by holding boards up to be nailed, and down to be sawed, helped put a small milk house over the spring. Mother made prime butter bringing war prices. On a Sunday might have been seen an odd couple-a tall, soldiery young man, his baby bundled at his back in a scarlet shawl, true Indian fashion, and a puffy short woman trudging along the lovely river paths, off to spend the day with a congenial neighbor. This during the cool days of May, then it turned warm, and oh, the mosquitoes! And oh dear, for the resultant smudges! There was a smudge under the table while they ate, one under the baby's cradle all the time, another for the cow when milked, and yet the mosquitoes nearly ate them alive. Mother ran slapping to right and left with a switch from house to milk room. Father, his one arm useless, defenseless against their onslaughts, tied down his coat sleeves, wore a veil and a heavy coat for protection. The creatures followed one in a black cloud. Up out of the bottoms the cattle rushed, tearing like mad through the brush.

Father was surprised one morning to find a stray ox at the barn. Inquiry among the neighbors established father's title thereto. It was Jim, the ox that had been included in the trade. He had a bad lump on his jaw, but it didn't hinder his working. He was shy but gentle and took quite philosophically to the most outlandish harness beast ever wore in man's remembrance. How father chuckled as he attempted to fit the contrap- tion, trying it fore and aft, right side and wrong side before getting it properly adjusted to those particular parts of Jim's anatomy for which it had been intended. It had the merit of strength, and it resembled hustling to see father hauling great cart loads of wood behind Jim instead of lugging it up on his own back.

The summer passed, and, best of all, the mosquitoes went with it. Fall on Black River. Did you ever gather plums there ? Burbank may keep his hybrids, the flavor of those wild goose plums can never be improved. Did you ever struggle in a thicket for black haws, high bush cranberries or fox grapes after Jack Frost had performed his magic? Yet over all the glory hung the memory of those mosquitoes.

So, when, during the winter father had an opportunity to sell, they concluded one summer there was enough, bought a mate for Jim, packed a few belongings into the sled and drove over the ridge into Trempealeau Valley. It took two days, but mother and the baby were cozy in the sled box, and father kept his blood up gee-hawing the oxen through the drifts. They located a few miles from Arcadia in the lower part of American Valley on the Harmon Tracey place. Here the third child was born, a fragile babe, and, only sixteen months later ere this one had vacated the maternal arms, hardly able to sit alone, I was born. You mothers with every convenience, steam-heated rooms, hot and cold water on tap, and perhaps one child, consider this pioneer woman's part. A child of three years, a weakling of sixteen months (whom I over a year later helped learn to walk), and here a lively lusty youngster demanding her share of atten- tion, a fireplace for warmth, melted snow to wash in.

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As I read the few notes my mother, now a woman of nearly four score, pioneering in the wilds of Washington, has furnished me, for this sketch, it seems their married life was a series of broken advances and retreats, halting in their migrations for one of two or both reasons, to-wit: to trade horses, or receive the stork. That we left Trempealeau County only to hop the more gingerly back in again. And so if at the time my tale is a trifle overcharged with baby, horse, or vagabondage,-oh well, if you love the three as I do, nothing I may write will prejudice you against the book containing other articles most charmingly handled by experienced pens.

We advanced a step in civilization here-had horses to drive. Mother did most of the marketing. She tied me into the seat beside her, put the two older girls on the floor of the hack (I believe they called it the democrat wagon) with a foot upon each one's skirts, father stepped from the heads of the wild young team and away we flew. Mother declares if it hadn't been up-grade after each down hill plunge she never could have brought them to a halt in front of Storm's store in East Arcadia. Long years after I saw her drive our vicious coach stallion in South Dakota and I am fully persuaded she gloried in those wild pioneer dashes. Father didn't enjoy renting. The next year he bought a place and in March, 1868, moved over into Travis Valley where our regular feathered guest got in two paying visits before we could pack and resume the broken march over Wisconsin, which, in spite of a very rapidly increasing family calling for an extra board seat across the wagon box every halt, ceased only when the thirteen child was born the thirteenth day of June, the birthday of the first babe, had broken the charm.

That father was a financier goes unchallenged. He shod and provided books for a family where it was not unusual to meet nine at a time plodding a mile and a half to school, sister Kate, that most to be pitied being, the oldest, bringing up the rear with the peck basket of lunch. That he was a true blue farmer is proved by the fact that the twelve grew up strong healthy men and women (though Kate in making her first dress declared in a flood of tears that she was one-sided from carrying that basket, to find later that she had left out an under arm piece) ere one of the number dropped out, and he grew the food that fed them, and most of the clothing to keep them warm. Recent dietitians would probably exclaim at the rich diet so generously larded with pink and white ham, and great prints of butter. How many fleeces from his flocks were exchanged with the Bangar Woolen Mill wagon (maybe you remember that curly horse) for bolts of flannel that so stimulated the circulation of blood and gave us a bran new epidermis daily if scratching counted. What tear blurred scenes each fall to get brother Virgil properly clothed for a cold Wisconsin winter. How, after he had been coaxed and shoved into those home-made domestic flan- nels he'd watch his chance to hide them in the haymow only to be betrayed by shivering and obliged to go all through the coercing again and again until the tender, outraged hide had thickened itself against its aggravator. Consider, too, the excruciating sensation from wearing one of father's heaviest red flannel shirts in a hot summer all afternoon, next your thin

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summer skin, in punishment for risking a pleasant suicide wading the freshet up to your chin.

.But to our sidetracked story. The last of October, 1871, as soon as these last little ones could sit, one between father and mother on the spring seat, the other in mother's arms, we packed the leather trunk in the back of the wagon, emptied the ticks, rolled up the bedding and clothing, and with us three girls down in the wagon bed on a pile of hay, for three days bumped and lurched across the hills, to a farm father bought, as so many did in those days of slow transit, with no real estate man to whirl you out in a super six, without first seeing the place. Lunch on the first day was eaten at Ettick, a small Scandinavian settlement, and early that afternoon we reached Melrose, spending two nights with Aunt Nan, to rest mother's arms a bit. With a dawn start and steady driving, we made the Wisconsin River at dark, where we camped out, the baby crying, it seemed, all night. I was divided between the fear of wolves devouring us, and hunters shooting us for panthers on account of it, but the baby, unmind- ful of these dangers, gave vent to its troubles in its own noisy way. We crossed on a small ferry near where Germantown now stands just as the sun rose, and hurried on again as nearly due east as the roads permitted. Those moves must have been keenest torture to mother, but I never heard her complain. The nearest to it being when late that day as the sun plunged into his cloudy bed, we looked down upon our eighty acres of sand, unfenced, un almost everything, she turned her tired face to father, asking pleadingly, "Isn't there some mistake, Albert?" "Yes," father returned in his char- acteristic, quiet way, taking the blame upon his own shoulders, "I have made the mistake of trusting one man too many."

Indeed, it would have taken a Chinese wall to keep realty in bounds there. The wailing fall wind seemed never to weary of carrying sand from one spot to another, piling it against the scant clumps of grass, level- ing it, and shaping a mound farther on. Over and over again it piled and leveled monotonously. We drove through the creek bounding one side, where, as the horses drank, we sat in wearied silence, up to the tiny house standing on a knoll in a small grove of oaks. It was banked to the window sills. From a broken pane of the attic window a bit of white rag waved and beckoned. "The peace signal, Adeline," father said, smiling whim- sically. We had traded even up everything except the team, wagon and what it held. Here we found rude furniture not unlike we had left behind. Mother, it is true, complained that the milk crocks were seamed and cracked, and what a boiling and scrubbing in home-made soft soap suds they did get. She found bedbugs, too, but they were soon routed through her per- sistent deluge of boiling brine. A peculiar hardness of atmosphere foretold snow. Mother made up a good hot supper, we girls ransacked our future room, the attic, and father, after stabling the jaded team, brought in the rest of the load, filled, as usual, the bed ticks, and we were again ready to receive. However, we missed the periodic visit of our most constant guest. Either it didn't look for orphanages in this outlandish country or had mercy because of its barrenness. In a few days the snow had covered the bleak prairie.

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History of Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, Part 26

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