USA > Wisconsin > Walworth County > History of Walworth county, Wisconsin, Volume I > Part 25
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William Oakley Garfield ( 1819-1888) was born in Vermont; learned his father's calling-shoe-making-and came with him in 1842. His wife. Fidelia ( 1822-1910), was a daughter of Dexter Dewing.
William E. Gregory came with more than average means, bought a farm in the Lafayette quarter, and died soon afterward. His son, William Eliot Gregory, about 1857 went to Galveston, where he was for several years a successful business man, with some railway interests. His occasional return was welcomed by old friends. His younger son, Asaph, remained here till his death, about 1875.
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Noah Harriman ( 1805-1903), born in Vermont, bought a farm nearby in Lafayette, and preached as a licensed exhorter. His wife was Lucinda Davis ( 1797-1891).
Horace Noble Hay was for a few years Otis Preston's partner in retail business. Mr. Preston mentioned him as one who gave much attention to his dress and personal appearance. He owned a farm in Lafayette. In 1852 he started for California, and died of yellow fever, at sea, on his way out. His wife was Margaret Fuller.
Dr. Samuel Wirt Henderson ( 1817-1857), son of Dr. John M. Hender- son's first wife. Rebecca, daughter of Samuel Wirt, was born at Willoughby, Ohio. He married Rebecca, daughter of Nathan Hicks. He was accounted a skillful physician and surgeon. A jump from a wagon to hard ground resulted in inflammation of the bowels and in death after a week of pain. He understood his case from the first.
John Matheson ( 1820-1895 ), son of Jolin and Jessie, was born in one of the joint counties of Ross and Cromarty, Scotland : apprenticed to a tailor at Inverness ; came to Lafayette in 1840; opened a shop and store at Elkhorn : married Loretta ( 1827-1903). daughter of Rev. Luther Lee.
William Lyman Stowe ( 1821-1891) was born at Stowe. northeastern Ohio. He married Lavina, daughter of Philip and Mary Mink, of Walworth, in 1851. Ile was a cabinet-maker and house-joiner.
Samuel Tubbs (died in 1861) and wife. Polly Frost ( 1785-1875). were natives of Connecticut who settled at Augusta, New York, and lived a short time at Chagrin Falls, Ohio. A son, Isaac P., died at Elkhorn in 1859, aged fifty. A daughter, Martha, wife of Nicholas George Bowers, and two daughters were successively wives of Lot Mayo. Mrs. Tubbs was nearly related to Alvah J. and Eli K. Frost.
. Edward Winne ( 1815-1886) was son of a rich man of Albany, and was at once a business man (in lumber and grain ) at Elkhorn and a farmer of section 4. Geneva. The hard times of 1857 sent him to northeastern lowa. He died at Bozeman, Montana. . His wife, Lydia Maria Chapman, was married November 6, 1844; died at Waverly, Iowa, in 1802. Mr. Winne's father left to him his books, and for many years these constituted the largest private library at Elkhorn.
Having chosen his village-site, settled on it, and named it from Colonel Phoenix's trail-mark, and a vote of the county in 1838 (confirmed by legis- lative act) having made it the county-seat. Mr. Rockwell's next great care was to lay out a few streets about the park and set off the enclosed blocks
(19)
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into home lots. As at first platted the village was wholly on the county's quarter-section. Edward Norris, the county surveyor, laid out the streets, blocks and lots, and Mr. Rockwell was appointed county agent for sale of lots. There were five parallel streets, running northward and southward. Beginning with East street, on the section line, the others are Washington, Wisconsin, Broad and Church. Beginning near the intersecting section line. the streets running from east to west are named Park (then called South) , Walworth, Court, Jefferson, and North. Court, Wisconsin, Walworth, and Church streets bound the park, which overlies or cuts in twain Broad street. All these and the newer streets are four rods wide, except Walworth and Broad, which are six rods wide. These two streets were designed for business uses, but a hotel built at Wisconsin and Walworth streets diverted business from Broad street. No alleys were considered in the original plat nor in the several additions.
Rockwell's first addition enlarged the village by a narrow tier of blocks eastward, and by a row of blocks southward, to Rockwell street. After 1854. when coming railways filled men's minds by day with hopes and their dreams by night with visions of cities rising like exhalations, bringing wealth in front-foot values to each lucky lot owner, Colonel Elderkin laid out his addi- tion southeastwardly and gave Jackson, Wright and Frank streets to the vil- lage map. Arnold's addition, eastward, was laid out by the heirs of Giles Thompson Arnold of Victor, New York, who had bought a quarter section and had soon afterward died. Levi Lee's addition and the smaller Edwin Hodges addition, westward, lay within the area of village growth. Booth B. Davis' addition, northward, gave a few more streets and avenues, and grew some- what more slowly into valuable lots. The rather premature Squire Stanford and Heman H. Harrison additions lie northwestward and are but thinly settled, and much like' them, except as to Walworth street. is the farther westward Devendorf. Mallory and Spencer addition. Dr. Devendorf was of Delavan. Samuel Mallory was a substantial and reputable citizen, but not a real-estate "boomer." David D. Spencer became too well known to bankers and depositors in three states. He was at Elkhorn less than two years. Finally, there were the abortive Centralia and Byzantium additions, the first far to eastward, the other across the railway, southward. Both were the unsubstantial creations of Otis Preston's restless mind.
A village straggling into four sections, in as many towns, soon found it inconvenient to divide its little squad of voters among four polling-places on election days and its yearly accounts with the county government equally troublesome at the record offices. A legislative act of February 27, 1846.
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relieved this situation by creating a new town from section 1 of Delavan, section 6 of Geneva, section 31 of Lafayette, and section 36 of Elkhorn. As the new town received the name of its village, the older Elkhorn became Sugar Creek. In 1856 the village was chartered and its limits made co- extensive with those of the town, the whole constituting also one school district. In 1897 a general law made Elkhorn a city of the fourth class, its population being then above fifteen hundred and below ten thousand. With this last change disappeared the time-honored April town meeting, which regulated the corporate revenue and outlay by viva voce vote of electors present at the hour appointed; and with it went the July school meeting. which in similar purely democratic way disposed yearly of the affairs of the village considered as a school district. The change of four villages of this county to cities has brought more power to the local administrations, broader and more efficient systems of public improvements, and, of course, greater cost to taxpayers.
The city of Elkhorn lies above sea-level, at the railway station 996 feet. at the court-house 1,031 feet, at points in the farthest northwest quarter 1,038 feet. It was for long supposed and said that it is on the highest ground in the county, which is nearly true, but not so nearly as to warrant the slight misstatement. Sharon and Walworth villages are nearly as high and the Yerkes Observatory is on ground higher by twelve feet. The point in the short high ridge of section 19, Geneva, is about one hundred feet higher than any part of Elkhorn. The rise from the station northward to Park street is of nearly uniform slope. The greater part of the city is built on practically level ground. The surface of the town was mostly of black prairie mould, a spade-thrust deep, which gave rise to a harmless sarcasm; in effect, that sixteen fine cornfields were spoiled to make a needless city. The gravel next below is so mixed and underlaid with clay as to make the natural surface drainage worse than that of any city or village of the county, excepting Walworth. But it has become practicable, after many years, to secure dry cellars for new buildings. Good sewers are possible whenever the citizens are able and willing to bear their cost, as there is a fair descent southward to Jackson's creek. A once considerable pond or marsh in the northeastern quarter has so far shrunk as to leave but twenty-five acres, at the northern line, slightly under water.
CHURCHES AND SCHOOLS.
Religion and secular education came hand in hand. \ Methodist society was formed about 1841, and before the end of that year the Episcopal society
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began its long pioneer period. The Congregationalists organized in 1843, the Baptists in 1852, the Catholics in 1848, the Evangelican Lutherans in 1870, the Universalists built a church in 1874, the Lutherans of the Ohio synod separated in 1898 and built a church. In 1856 the Methodists built a large church of brick, which was burned in 1859. They rebuilt of wood, afterward encased with brick, and have continued to improve their home within and without, and they first bought and then built a parsonage. St. John's, Episcopal, was built about 1855. of wood. extended in 1858, re-built of brick during the rectorship of Mr. Pullen-having first built a rectory. Extensions and improvements succeeded, and an organ, altar, baptismal font, and stained windows have given the church some distinction in appearance. In 1858 the Congregational and Wesleyans jointly built a church, which in 1882 gave way to a suitable brick building, creditable to the liberality and good taste of its owners. (The Wesleyans long ago retired from the part- nership, and have been absorbed by other societies). A parsonage was soon added to the Congregational property. Like their Methodist. Episcopal, and Baptist brethren, they own a dining-hall on the fair ground. The Baptist church, built in 1853 of wood, roomy and comfortable, was pulled away in 1885 and a brick church took its place. This was largely rebuilt in 1897 and made a thing of beauty. In 1907 it was so far injured by fire that it was built anew, and now seems likely to meet all needs for a generation to come. The Catholics had for several years held fortnightly service in a mission chapel. In 1880 they built St. Patrick's church of brick on a fine lot prudently acquired at a favorable opportunity some years previously, and occupied it until 1905. when it was pulled down and built anew with en- largement and improvement. A good house for the priest was built soon after the first building was finished. There is much in the story of this society's early struggles and of the things it has accomplished without noise to move the mind to sympathy and admiration. The older Lutheran church was built, of wood, in 1884 on the site of a house built for a select school. It is of modern village style, and is both sightly and comfortable. In the pastorate of Rev. Carl H. Auerswald, 1898, the members divided and the seceders built a brick church in the same block. The Universalist society exists, but has been inactive for some years. Christian Scientists use part of the otherwise empty church.
The present church buildings are becoming to a not wealthy little city, and the societies are mostly full of the vitality which supports Christian organization and its appropriate work. The several slow, painful steps in the earlier progress of the five now most prosperous church societies are
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naturally and rightly memorable to the surviving toilers, and incidents of these patient struggles are yet told. Such trials of body and spirit are part of the common experience of newly planted and for long but slowly-increas- ing communities and institutions. Each congregation still knows and feels the disproportion of its means to its great aims; but Episcopal rectors no longer swim swollen streams and labor through not less formidable mud to meet communicants in a pioneer's little dwelling, nor do gray-haired Catholic priests plow or plunge through otherwise unbroken road from Delavan to Elkhorn to hold fortnightly service in a chapel little more sightly or comfortable than a barn.
The story of schools has points of resemblance to that of churches ; but the great difference is that churches are built and maintained by the voluntary sacrifices of the few, while the schools quickly become the care of the body politic and are upheld by taxation which exempts no man for his unwillingness. The rise of neither institution is by sudden flight. Each moves always forward, through difficulty and delaying circumstances, by uneven steps, toward its always far-ahead object. Private schools at Elk- horn, taught by Lydia Carr, Mary S. Brewster, Adelaide B. Beardsley, Colonel Elderkin, and others whose names are lost to local memory, were followed in 1840 by a public school. Its house was built on a lot reserved for its purpose from the county's quarter section. It was twenty feet square, and afterward remembered as the "old oak school-house." In 1850 a larger house was built on the same lot, of native brick, two-storied, without outer ornament, substantial, homely, and comfortable. This house was not neglected by prudent school boards, for it was occasionally painted as to its wood-work and its rooms, vestibule and stairway, whitewashed yearly as to ceilings and walls. Its construction admitted such extensions and alterations as to make it a neat old-fashioned dwelling for Doctor Reynolds, and after him Belden Weed. Ex-Sheriff Derthick now lives where soldiers, civil officers, business and professional men, and other merely useful and excellent citizens, many of whom are yet living between Michigan shore and Pacific coast, learned the three R's and something besides, and laid broad bases for their maturer lives.
A new school house was built in 1857, in Arnold's addition, fronting Jackson street, and at the head of Walworth street. It was adapted to the needs of four grades. Its ample ground has now a fine growth of shade trees. A two-storied addition was built in 1882 and burned with the whole structure in 1886. For a year the departments divided themselves among nearly a dozen temporary refuges. The new building with furnishing cost
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twenty-five thousand dollars. Increase in the number of pupils and depart- ments, arising from the admission of pupils from other towns, made another building needful. This was supplied, at a cost of thirty-five thousand dollars, in 1906, by a separate house for the sole use of the high school, built a few feet from the older house. Both are steam-heated and electric-lighted. The total value of ground. buildings, and equipment is about seventy-five thousand dollars. Nominally a high school for some years, a resolution of the school meeting of July. 1876, made this institution really so by directing a slight re- arrangement of study-courses and other compliances with the rules of the state superintendent's office, where the subsequent work of the school has been acceptable.
A full list of teachers cannot now be shown, for such record as was made was cared for but shabbily by often-changing clerks. It is learned from records and somewhat uncertain memory that there were Levi Jackson. Mary S. Brewster, and Lydia Carr in 1841 ; Emeline McCracken in 1842: Adelaide C. Beardsley 1844: Eli K. Frost and Helen Mar Cowdery 1849; Alvah J. Frost 1850; William P. Frost about that year. Miss Brewster became Mrs. Edward Pentland, Miss MeCracken was married to Edwin Wallis Meacham, and Miss Cowdery to Darius Coman.
After these the record is rather less broken: James B. Tower .* Benja- min C. Rogers* and wife, and Selinda J. Gardner in 1851: William C. Dustin,* Mrs. Flora M. Pratt, Harriet Leonard in 1852: M. W. Carroll .* Pamela A. Darling, Mary Louisa and Sarah E. Patton in 1853; Matthew Waklenmeyer .* Julia Stevens, Misses Morrill and Swain in 1854: J. C. Plumb,* Stephen Sibley,* Henry D. L. Webster .* Sarah J. Allen. Ellen Beardsley in 1855; George M. Dewey,* Robert M. McKee .* J. J. M. Angier,* Jeanette Henderson, Mrs. Laura Young Plumb. Mrs. Jane E. Utley in 1856; O. Sherman Cook,* Emily D. Carpenter, Harriet Marion Perkins, Nellie Young in 1857: Orlando M. Baker,* Helen Chamberlin, Susan M. Golder, Eliza Goodrich, Melvina Vienna Hawks in 1858; Everett Chamber- lin .* Minnie Hubbard, Sarah Ponsford. A. J. Wheeler in 1859: Zeruiah Adkins, Elvira Chapman, Aristine Curtis, Philena Tuttle, Flavius Josephus Harrington in 1860; Emerson Pect* in 1861: AA. M. Case .* T. N. Wells,* Helen E. Selden in 1862: Charles W. Cutler .* Lydia Malvina Aldrich. M. C. Bennett, Mary Holley in 1863. Asterisks denote principals. Some of these teachers were more than once employed. Mr. Plumb stayed long enough to marry Laura Young, who remained after he left the school. Mr. Sibley was a son of John Sibley, of Bloomfield. Mr. McKee married Mrs. Utley. Miss Henderson became Mrs. Chipman .A. Holley: Miss Perkins,
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Mrs. Frank Leland; Miss Hawks, Mrs. Horace L. Arnold; Miss Aldrich, Mrs. Dyar L. Cowdery; Miss Allen, Mrs. Alanson H. Barnes. Messrs. Chamberlin. Cutler and Harrington were soldiers of the Civil war.
Loss of record prevents further enumeration of subordinate teachers, but the succession of principals from 1864 to 1912 is fully known: Mr. Cutler in 1864, William Elden 1865, Augustus J. Cheney 1866. In Sep- tember. 1867. the school was reorganized with four grades and began its . work with Mr. Cutler at its head, Charles N. Bell 1869 (his term com- pleted by Orvie G. Taylor). W. A. Delamater 1871. Edward H. Sprague 1873. David H. Flett 1877. Adelbert I. Sherman 1879. Howard L. Smith 1881. F. G. Young 1883. Dexter D. Mayne 1884, Robert Fayette Skiff 1889, John T. Edwards 1890. Charles D. Kipp 1894, Thomas J. Jones 1900, John Dixon 1907 to 1912. Messrs. Bell, Flett. H. L. Smith, and Sprague became lawyers. Mr. Baker has for many years been treasurer of the Merriam Company, publishers of "Webster's Dictionary." At the opening of the public library he gave to it a copy of that work. Messrs. Mayne, Edwards, and Jones were called to higher or wider usefulness in their profession.
In 1856 Edwin. Hodges built at Park and Church streets for the use of a select school. The teacher list was not long, and Lorenzo Dow Hand, Harriet M. Perkins, Everett Chamberlin, J. F. Mack. and Anna Friend are most easily remembered. In 1858 Robert M. McKee opened a school for one year. in Preston's Centralia block.
BUSINESS INTERESTS.
Business at Elkhorn began in 1838 at Mr. Rockwell's store. and by 1842 Booth B. Davis and James O. Eaton came. each to add to increasing trade the enlivening element of competition. John Matheson came about that time from Inverness, and advertised himself as a fashionable tailor. By 1850 his brother, Finley Matheson, advertised a stock of hats and caps and also first-rate port wine and brandy for medicine only. He had but lately come from Demerara and therefore knew how to buy medicinal liquors and wines. Reuben Harriman was making and dealing in boots and shoes. Walling & Son advertised harness-maker's goods and carriage trimmer's works. Ed- ward Elderkin, George Gale, Urban D. Meacham, and Wyman Spooner were resident lawyers. Samuel W. Henderson and George H. Young were the home physicians. Levi Lee had Elkhorn brick in any quantity and of excellent quality for sale. At the end of his term as sheriff, in 1851, Otis Preston went into general retail business with Horace N. Hay as partner,
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and later with Benjamin F. Pope. He remained in a steadily decreasing business until his death, in 1890, and hoped to the end for himself and Elkhorn.
There were other men in business before the dawn of the railway period. but changes were frequent then as later and dates are uncertain. Among these were George Bulkley and Edwin Hodges, each of whom had various speculative enterprises in hand. Mr. Hodges was generally prudent and Mr. Bulkley was sometimes less prudent. The business career of cach closed . in total failure.
BANKS AND BANKERS.
From earliest years there were money-lenders and petty brokers. The demand for money was pressing and constant. Two to three per cent monthly was readily obtained, even when the security offered was the best that the time and place admitted. The products of Wisconsin as yet brought insufficient money from eastern cities, and a currency that would pass within the state was thought much better than nonc. The statute permitted the creation of banks of issue. and the notes of these local conveniences were based upon rather than secured by deposit of depreciated bonds of other states, as Tennessee, Missouri, and California. A few of these banks, no doubt, were of the "wild-cat" variety from their beginning. Most of them became so, in effect, when such test as that of 1857 was applied.
An advertisement in the Elkhorn Independent, in 1855. called for some man having knowledge and experience as a banker to come and help. David D. Spencer, of llion, New York, heard and answered the Macedonian cry, and in the next year the Bank of Elkhorn, with capital of twenty-five thou- sand dollars, was organized with Mr. Rockwell as president and the wise man from the East as cashier. One of the pleasantest, most winning fellows was Spencer; but a year of his partnership was enough for Mr. Rockwell, who was one of the sanest and safest of business men. He retired and with his brothers and brother-in-law formed a private banking house. Dr. Jesse 6. Mills followed him in the presidency of Spencer's bank. The Doctor was one of the best of men, but singularly simple-minded in business affairs of more weight than those of a village retailer. This he had shown as a state senator, and showed again, after several years, in an autobiographical sketch asked of him for inclusion with Mr. Dwinnell's projected county history. Such a man would be a bank president very much to Mr. Spencer's mind. Within little more than a month from this change, and while the monetary panic of that year was yet but a day or two ohl, the bank was closed-by
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Spencer's neglect to unlock the front door-without the demand at its counter of a dollar by depositor or note-holder. Within a day or two more, at the demand of directors and stockholders, the cashier unlocked the door and, opening the old-fashioned Herrick safe, he pulled a drawer and showed thirty-one big copper cents and coolly told his employers that there was the entire coin asset of their bank. His last act as cashier had been to receive as a special deposit, from a widow of Spring Prairie, six hundred dollars in gold. He made such restitution as his small interest in local real-estate enabled, and was permitted to go forth to gain further experience in Georgia, in Grundy county, Illinois, and at Chicago, and then lived a few years, self- exiled to Europe, as a philosophical observer of fiscal systems abroad.
Doctor Mills was followed in the presidency by John Alexander Pierce in 1858 and J. Lyman Edwards in 1861, and George Bulkley became cashier. Early in 1865 Messrs. Edwards and Bulkley, with William H. Conger, Amos Fellows. Osborn Hand and Robert T. Seymour, constituted the directorate of the First National Bank of Elkhorn, into which concern the old bank was merged with some changes in ownership. In the fall of 1869 it was found that in the cashier's private speculation he had made the bank liable for his loss: for he had used its credit in a manner forbidden by federal law and by the customs of scrupulous and careful bankers. Mr. Bulkley, whose business ability had been estimated rather extravagantly, may have been judged even more harshly than he deserved. It might seem that he was much the great loser, for he lost his own money and other property. his friends, and his family. For nearly a quarter-century he had been an appreciable force in local business and in town affairs. He faced the situation squarely until all possible adjustments had been made, and then went to Kansas; but it was too late to begin at bottom and build himself anew. One true friend, his sister Amanda, remained to his end. She had small means for her own support, but was resourceful and resolute, and she placed her abilities at the service of the family which had cast him off, and then went for a time to Kansas to make a home for him and to give such aid and comfort as a capable and faithful woman might.
Mr. Conger became cashier until his death in 1895, when he was followed by Fred W. Isham. The latter's resignation in 1911 served to promote Henry D. L. Adkins, who began as a boy. under his grandfather's wise instruction, to serve a long apprenticehood in the business of banking. Mr. Conger was son of a prosperous farmer of Dutchess county, and was well bred to farm work though he did not permanently harden his hands. His education was but rudimentary and neither that nor his habit of life
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