USA > Wisconsin > Walworth County > History of Walworth county, Wisconsin, Volume I > Part 3
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Bloomfield, parts of sections 8, 24. 160
acres
East Troy, parts of sections 13, 14
80
acres
Lafayette, parts of sections 4, 8. 281.28 acres
Lyons, part of section 29. 40 acres
Richmond, parts of sections 22, 23, 24. 26. I200
acres
Sugar Creek, parts of sections 19, 20, 21 443.1 acres
Whitewater, part of sections 34, 35.
So
acres
2284.38 acres
WATER COURSES.
Rock river, flowing southward through the county of the same name, and thence to the Mississippi, and Fox river, flowing in like direction to the same destination through the counties of Racine and Kenosha, receive all the drainage of Walworth. The great divide, for the most part, lies nearly diagonally southwest and northwest, along the great moraine. Honey creek and Sugar creek run by nearly parallel courses-the former from La-
.
31
WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
grange across the Troys, thence southward to section 13, Spring Prairie. where it joins the latter within a few rods of the county line, and meets the Fox near Burlington. Sugar creek rises in a marsh near Richmond and crosses the towns of Sugar Creek, Lafayette and Spring Prairie.
The outlet of Geneva lake is rather grandly named White river and is joined in Lyons by the outlet of Duck lake, ending its crooked course at the city of Burlington. Three streams. the west, northwest and northeast branches of the Nippersink, meet a little above Genoa Junction and reach the Fox a few miles below Richmond, Illinois. The west branch comes out of Linn, crossing and recrossing the state line. The other branches are wholly in Bloomfield. The northeast branch is an outlet of Powers lake and its little companion lakes, lying along the border of Kenosha county.
Most of the town of Whitewater is drained by the creek of that name, which rises near the Richmond line, flows northward, becomes near the city a pair of connected ponds, and, passing into Jefferson county, reaches the Rock by way of Bark river. Turtle creek rises in Richmond, receives the discharge from Delavan lake outlet, crosses Darien (leaving the county near Allen Grove), finds its way to the Rock near Beloit, having crossed the towns of Bradford and Turtle. More than one half of the drainage of Elkhorn reaches the Turtle by way of Delavan lake inlet and outlet. The inlet has but a short course. in northern Geneva and Delavan, south of Elk- horn, and among its names have been Wallings, Phillips, and Jackson's creek. Straight southward through Sharon and near its eastern line runs the Piskasaw, which crosses the state line, traverses McHenry and Boone counties to merge itself in the Rock in southeastern Winnebago. Thus by its streamlets. once mighty glacial torrents, Walworth is joined to all the oceans between pole and pole.
LAKES AND THEIR SOUNDINGS.
The lake region of southeastern Wisconsin includes the counties of Dane, Jefferson, Kenosha, Racine, Walworth and Waukesha. The largest of the Walworth lakes are Geneva, Delavan, the Lauderdale group, and Beulah, all of which have been made known beyond the county borders, by the tongues and pens of men. Had Longfellow been provi- dentially guided to one or all of these lakes he might have added pleasantly, if not greatly, to his "poems of places." He may have felt that local poets have rightly some precedence here, and these well-beloved sons of the lyric inuse have neither neglected nor flagrantly abused their heaven-sent oppor-
32
WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
tunities. The other lakes, in impartial order of alphabet, are: Army, Bass, Booth, two Comos, Holden's, Lulu, Mud. Pell's, Pleasant, Potter's, Rus- sell's (or Otter), Ryan's, and Silver. Of these, Pleasant is associated in many minds with the Lauderdale chain, and Army, Booth and Mnd with Beulah. Power's lake, in Kenosha county, has one long shore, with enough water to keep its pebbles clean, in Bloomfield. A smaller lake (Middle) las an end in Bloomfield and a third (Lower) is wholly in that town, and these two lead the waters of Powers to the Nippersink.
As far as is known to the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey, of all the inland lakes of the state, the deepest is Green lake, in the county of that name, 237 feet. The next deepest is Geneva lake, and in the clearness and coolness of its water it has no rival. Its surface is 860 feet above sea level, and 282 feet above Lake Michigan. Its length is about seven and five-eighths miles and its area 8.6 square miles. Its very variable width is shown by the table below, the results of nearly six hundred soundings taken on nine lines measured across the ice from shore to shore. The length of these lines and the deepest sounding along each are thus given, beginning near the head of the lake :
Miles
Feet Deep
Marengo Park to Fresh Air Association 1.3
102.7
Cook's Camp to Camp Collie.
I.I
142.0
Cook's Camp to Williams Bay Pier
2.0
I40.7
Kaye's Park to Cedar Point.
I.1
123.3
Across mouth of Williams Bay
0.8
99 0
Black Point to Cisco Bay
I.I
12I.O
At the Narrows.
0.5
75.4
Point to point, a little west of Button's Bay .
1.4
71.5
Manning's Point to opposite shore
0.8
68.0
Delavan lake is nearly three and three-fourths miles long and its average width about three-fourths of a mile. Its area is 2.7 square miles. Its great- est known depth is 56 7 feet. For the greater part of its area it is more than forty feet deep and little of it less than ten to twenty feet.
The measurements and computations for Beulah and its companion lakes are shown thus :
Booth Lake Greatest depth, 25.4 feet; area, 125 acres Beulah Lake-
Upper Greatest depth, 67.0 feet; area. 260 acres
Round Greatest depth, 40.0 feet; area, 100 acres
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WALWORTHI COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
Lower Greatest depth, 54.2 feet ; area, 550 acres Mill . Greatest depth. 51.5 feet : area. 61 acres
East Troy Lake (Army ) Greatest depth, 16.8 feet; area, 81 acres
Similar tabulation for the Lauderdale chain shows :
Green Lake . Greatest depth, 56.8 feet: area. 282 acres
Middle Lake Greatest depth, 50.0 feet ; area, 282 acres
Mill Lake Greatest depth, 50.0 feet ; area, 304 acres
These officially surveyed lakes have been of no inconsiderable economic value to the county. Their attractions for summer visitors do not as yet wither or grow stale, and their influence on the valuation of adjacent real estate is evident.
NATURAL PRODUCTS.
Stone crops out occasionally along the banks of creeks, but little quarry- ing has been found profitable. Cobblestones and boulders were strewn, not thickly, as in the rugged farther-east, but not difficult to gather, in the first half century of white man's needs, for wells and foundation walls. The lake shallows and creek bottoms supplied much of this homely but readily available material. . \ large three-storied hotel was early built at East Troy of little more than fist-sized pebbles, and seems time-defying ; and a wayside inn, now a sober and substantial dwelling, was built at Tibbets before rail- ways came this way, of gravel and lime mortar.
Brick clay of variable quality has been found and used from an early date, making a substantial, though often homely article for home builders. The best is that at Whitewater. its bricks having the color and hardness of the cream-colored product which once made Milwaukee famous. Generally. the bricks from other kilns vary in color from grayish yellow to dull light red. Drain tiles have been made for home trade for perhaps a quarter- century.
Beds of peat have been worked in the valley of Whitewater creek, but without great influence upon the fuel market. Deposits of ochrous earths here and there have been worked experimentally, and for a time have raised some hopes in the minds of owners. The one great, unfailing, earth-hidden resource is spread over all the towns, at plowing depth below the green sur- face.
(3)
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WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN
TIMBER.
There was nothing peculiar to this county in its native trees, shrubs, vines, medicinal herbs and weeds. Oaks of the black, burr, pin, red and white varieties were by far the most numerous and widely spread, and hence most valuable; and these gave their distinctive character to the timber open- ings, so inviting to the early comers. Other trees and shrubs were black and white ash, basswood, birch, black cherry, black walnut, butternut, red and white cedar, crab apple, cranberry, hazel, hickory, ironwood. locust, curly and sugar maple, plum, poplar, sumach, tamarack and willow. The oaks. at first piled for cabin walls and split for fencing and fuel, were but little later hewn for long-lasting framework of houses, barns, mills, churches and county buildings, and sawed into scantling, joists, inch boards, and half-inch siding : and when railways brought in a full supply of pine lumber the older trees became the general source of firewood. Some of these fallen lords of the ancient forest may have been thrifty shoots as long ago as the voyages of Columbus and Cartier, and many of them must have been acorn-bearers when Nicolet came down Rock river valley from the further north, in 1634. A few are yet living, seemingly as slow in their dying as in their growing. White oak and hickory gave excellent materials to the local wagon makers. The earlier joiners found in black walnut a fair supply of easily worked lum- ber for inner finish of houses. Since it was taken as it ran through the mills- unselected-its color was slightly improved by painting.
The settlers early became forest conservators, and there has been little wanton or accidental destruction. The needs of pioneers and the later fuel supply of farmers and villagers nearly exhausted the dead timber and the older living trees within the first thirty years. For a few more years the oaks of second growth gave firewood at a steadily rising price. Thus, good wood. often in over-full cords, was sold in 1856 at $2.25 to $2.50; in 1866, in even cords, at $4.50 to $5: in 1876. in scant cords, at $5.50 to $6: in 1806, in loads of dead trunks and dynamite-split stumps, a scant supply at $6. Coal began to come into general use after 1870, and is now, with coke, kerosene, and gasoline, for kitchen use, the only fuel available for such as do not own a thriftily managed wood lot. There are yet many fair-looking and valuable groves of trees from six to eight or more inches in diameter, but the fortu- nate owners are able to withold the axe for yet a generation to come. For that space of time. at least, the county will be far from trecless, as the yearly growth seems to be gaining on the few cutters.
35
WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
CLIMATE.
The climate of Wisconsin is probably modified by the presence of the great lakes northward and eastward and by the absence of great wind breaks east of the Rocky mountains. The prevailing winds of winter which give that season its most familiar character, blow from the arc between southwest and north. strongly and keenly. Winds from the lakes are much less frost- laden. Snow and rain come from every point of the compass-card. Sudden changes of weather often surprise wary observers and are more trying than greatest heat or cold. The prevailing winds, which make winter so cruel, compensate in the warmer seasons by driving away such miasmas as arise from the shrinking marshes. The fevers of the prairie-breaking period have disappeared and have made way for the disorders of riotous or careless living. Pulmonary and bronchial diseases are not so common as might be judged likely from the general weather conditions, The few epidemics are speedily limited in severity and duration by the local physicians and boards of health. As long ago as 1857 a physician described the region in which he practiced as "distressingly healthy," and this could have been said as truly of the rest of the county.
The summers are variable as to length and temperature, but may be de- scribed as short and hot. There is more complaint of drouth than of ex- cessive rain, both of which have been known to spoil the farmer's year ; but in general the crops grow to fullness and ripen well in spite of prophetic fears. Untimely frosts, too, sometimes threaten or injure the sprout or the unripe ear. The late Robert T. Seymour said, about 1876, that he had been twenty-three years in the county and had gathered twenty-one good crops of corn.
In 1859 and 1863 it was noted that there was in each of these years at least one frosty night in each month. A man who seemed not overcredulous remarked that a friend had heard Solomon Juneau say that an aged Menomi- nce had told him that such years had occurred quadrennially in southeastern Wisconsin for a period reaching as far backwards as 1743. But neither 1867 nor any subsequent year before leap year has confirmed this simple rule of forecasting a season. The summer of 1859. for all its monthly frost, was generally hot and dry. The summer of 1911, until near the end of August. was warm and dry, and the first week of July was superheated in city and country. In July and August pipe-layers found the clay scarcely moist enough to hold together in spadefuls at the depth of six feet. Then began, in time to save the crops, short local showers, increasing throughout September and
36
WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
October in frequency and duration, and so restored the normal moisture that the surface soil is likely to withstand, if need be, another series of dry sum- mers.
Mr. Dwinnell noted that the winter of 1836-7, endured in new log huts by himself and Isaiah Hamblin in Lafayette and by James Van Slyke, wife and child at Fontana, was cruelly cold and hard to bear. Mr. Cravath told of five feet of snow, January to April, 1843, and a hard winter. Mr. Gale and Mr. Simmons also thus noticed this winter. That of 1856-7 was exceptionally cold in Michigan and Wisconsin, and the next winter, though somewhat less so, was made trying by heavy snow and wild drifts. Builders worked out of doors in 1857-8 nearly all winter in shirt sleeves. A heavy fall of snow, each side of New Year's. 1864, was blown into almost impassable drifts, and with this such degree of cold as to make the whole month of January for long mem- orable ; and this was but slightly mitigated in February. Among later ex- tremely cold winters were those of 1872-3. 1874-5. 1887-8, 1894-5. That of 1875-6 was mild, and the next, or next but one, was so muddy that it was diffi- cult to haul half-loads of produce into town. In the first week of November, 1869, about eighteen inches of snow fell in two days, and lay nearly undis- turbed by winds until March. For one full winter sleighing was good where the tracks were well beaten.
A MEMORABLE SEASON.
The snow blockade of February and early March. 1881, was general throughout most of the northern states. The weather of February 10th was unusually mild. Before daylight of the IIth began a heavy snowfall, driven slantwise at a small angle with the plane of the horizon, from the north-north- east, and this continued until roads for long spaces were full from fence to fence and deepest railway cuts filled to their tops. New levels thus reached, the snow was driven onward to regions of warmer air. After the first heavy fall the air was kept full of the finer particles raised and driven by the long unresting gale, constantly setting at naught the work of snow plows and of thousands of shovelers. The fields were swept nearly bare between drifts. but many farmers found long and hard work between house and barn. Vil- lages became as petty sovereignties with a policy of non-intercourse. Besides, before the ways were again opened there was reasonable dread of a soon- coming want of flour and fuel. For nearly a month mails were stopped. Then, having been notified by telegraph that an accumulation of tie-sacks had reached Eagle from Chicago, by way of Milwaukee, the postmaster at Elk-
37
WALWORTH COUNTY. WISCONSIN.
horn, March 8th, swore in Daniel Lennon as special carrier and sent him out by two-horse bob-sled to find his way and flounder through it as best he might. Ile returned in twelve hours, himself and team greatly way-worn; Mr. Bradley distributed mail all night, and men received their delayed parcels and their newspapers which had become back numbers. Railway travel was practically suspended about three weeks.
The only employment for young men was as volunteer shovelers in the nearer railway cuts. They soon discharged themselves with blistered faces and necks, and eyes for some days blinded from the reflected heat and glare of the sun in the snow pits. Older or less active men, finding home a cage, wallowed through drifts and fought with the gale to reach hotel, saloon or store and soon found the fireside gossip there stale and outworn for want of new material.
Nicholas Donoghue died about March ist and his body lay unburied for a week or more. Isaac Burson died March 5th, at a hotel, and his body lay more than forty-eight hours before it could be taken to his relatives, two and one-half miles away, toward Delavan. These few instances may show the effectiveness of this historic blockade.
When the snow no longer filled the air and shovelers began to make some way through the drifts, men hoped that as the slowly creeping month neared the equinox the sun would prevail against the long winter. But, on the 19th, the storm returned to Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa. It seemed the same snow, driven from the same quarter at the same angle by the same ill- intending wind. It was mid-April before all the highways opened. Near the end of May the slowly-melting snow and lower ice lingered in such places as the hollow next west of the church near Jacobsville.
CHAPTER III.
INDIAN OCCUPATION-MOUNDS AND RELICS-GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES.
At the coming of Jean Nicolet in 1634 to Green bay and thence by way of Rock river to the Mississippi, Wisconsin was well occupied by Chippewas, Maskoutens, Menominees ( Folles Avoines, or wild rice eaters), Outagamis, Pottawattomies, Sauks, Winnebagos, and remnants of other Indian tribes. Whatever had been their previous inter-tribal relations, the presence and influence of the soon-following French missionaries, traders, and garrisons tended somewhat to make the wars of these tribes less frequent. As far as this condition was brought about at all, it was done, in great part by arraying the natives against the English as their common enemy. Charles Langlade led his Indians and French half-breeds to their share in Braddock's defeat, and in 1760 to the defense of Montreal.
A few years after New France was no more, British agents directed native hostility against the American settlers in the old Northwest Territory as the advance guards of the real and forever-encroaching wrongers of the Indian. Though after the Revolution the titles of the tribes, from eastern Ohio to farther lowa and Missouri were slowly extinguished by wars and by treaties, for yet a half-century after the peace of 1783 the settlers of Illinois and Wis- consin were not secure from the terrors of Indian outbreak. The motley de- scendants of Langlade, with their full-blooded Indian friends, fought against Harmar. St. Clair and Wayne, in Ohio, and at Tippecanoe and in the war of 1812-15 they found work for their too willing hands. By a treaty at Fort Harmar, July 9, 1789, General Harrison acting in behalf of the United States, the chiefs of the Sauks and Pottawattomies ceded the district lying be- tween the Fox and the Mississippi, which included about two tiers of Wis- consin counties. Black Hawk, always hostile, denied the right of the chiefs to give or sell the lands of the tribes. His foolish undertaking. in 1832. ended in defeat and expulsion of himself and his always intractable tribe, and Indian war was no longer possible on this side of the Mississippi. He had received some delusive encouragement from the Winnebagos of Rock River valley, who may have hoped for him some partial or temporary success while they dared not help him openly. It does not appear that the Pottawattomies lis-
39
WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
tened to his plans, nor that they greatly shared his blind hatred of white men. Their own landlord rights had been signed away at Fort Harmar, and the event of the war with England had left them no hope of recovery of their ancient domain by trick or force. This county had been a part of their patrimony from white man's earliest knowledge. They had at least three villages, as late as the coming of the surveyors who staked the corners of townships and sections, along the shores of Geneva lake. Bigfoot, one of their chiefs, had his village near the site of Fontana, and there was one at Williams Bay, and another at the foot of the lake. There had been a village on each side of Delavan lake, one at Whitewater, and part of the tribe hov- ered on the eastern line of the county, near Burlington. Squaws had broken ground and raised corn before white men came with plow and hoe and they boiled maple sap in the valley of Sugar creek. They lingered until 1837 be- fore following the westering trail of most of their race. Bigfoot had no con- suming love for the evicting white men, and less for their ways of life. but he was wise and prudent enough to comply with the terms of the treaty which had, in effect, given his hunting grounds to the plow and his fishing places to tourist-laden steamers. It is told of him that he asked of a friendly new- comer that the graves of two of his wives and a son should be respected, and that on that occasion he gave way to much like a Caucasian's emotion. The earlier settlers at Geneva. Spring Prairie, and Whitewater saw the disappear- ance of these several links between historic and pre-historic Wisconsin.
MOUNDS AND RELICS.
Among relics, left for a short time, of the older occupancy were a few mounds of a period which has left no other sign-a period antedating okdlest Algonquin tradition. One of these, lizard-shaped, with legs outspread. tail turned northwardly, was at the flat-iron point of Main and Lake streets, Lake Geneva. It was fifty to eighty feet long, ten to twelve feet wide, and two to three feet high. A large oak stump at its top gave a partial hint of its age. Little more than a block westward was a larger mound, also lizard-shaped, with longer tail. Both heads were near the water's edge. About the head of the lake were other mounds, in size and shape not easily determinable, and cov- ered with woodland growth. On section 31, town of Geneva, between the lakes of Geneva and Como, was a bow-and-arrow shaped earthwork. This monument of a forgotten race was already badly in need of the "restorer's" ingenious art. It was eighty to ninety feet long and its form was that of a bent bow with arrow ready for flight toward the larger lake, as if unseen
40
WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
bowmen lay forever in wait for unwary or daring trespassers. A little west- ward from the city of Whitewater, on the crest of a bluff, was an oblong mound measuring sixty-five feet from north to south, twenty feet wide, and at its middle about five feet high. Less than a half mile northeasterly were three conical mounds, about twenty-five feet across and nearly seven feet high. Besides these ancient works there were a few smaller burial mounds about the county, not older than the French dominion. This was shown by the contents, which included medals, buttons and trinkets of French make,- all taken by irreverent white despoilers from these family vaults. Stone and flint weapons and articles used in the lodges have been found and are yet occasionally found on or but slightly below the surface, in field and wood- land, everywhere about the county. Intelligent local collectors have especially noticed the abundance of these relics on both sides of Delavan lake.
It was for long a reasonable conjecture that the several low mounds on and about the Lake Lawn farm conceal evidences of pre-historic occupation of the shores of Delavan lake. In March, 1911, Ernest F. and Chester W. Phil- lips began to trench across mounds on the family property, and with much labor and persistence verified, at one point, the general surmise. At seven feet downward they reached an oblong pit, seven by nine feet, carried about two feet farther down into a stratum of loose gravel. The pit was floored with loose cobble-stones made even with sand, and its walls were also of loose stones in the way of skillful well diggers. Two skeletons sat in opposite corners, and twelve more were laid or piled between: but no relics of other kind had been placed there, nothing to hint that they were killed in battle. sacrificed to the gods of their enemies, drowned while the lake spirit was in angriest mood, or swept away by swiftly marching pestilence. \ local paper remarked truly: "The finding of these bones affords rare play for the imag- ination." The pit had been filled with loose carth. and a covering of clay baked from the top to something like the hardness of brick. The mound. rounded above all. is about forty feet across and four feet high. It is probable that the State Archaeological Society will in its own time describe with exact- ness and fullness, and will deduce with scientific care and conclusiveness.
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