USA > Wisconsin > Walworth County > History of Walworth county, Wisconsin, Volume I > Part 4
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GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES.
One relie of the long Algonquin occupation is all but absent. that of Indian names on the county maps. Only Nippersink and Piskasaw have been so preserved, and these, without doubt. in such clipped and weakened forms as no Algonquin purist, trying to restore or re-create the classic dialects and
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WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
literature of his people, could accept as better than "pidgin" Indian. Some of the fathers of the county learned a few of the less difficult Pottawattomie words for familiar objects, but did not permanently enrich the pioneer speech with these graceful or vigorous terms. Bigfoot's English name was for a very short time given to his lake: but better taste prevailed, and his only monu- ment on the map is but a four-corners postoffice on the Illinois side of a state- line road, south of Walworth, though the adjacent prairie in that town is still so named locally.
The natives had named most of the lakes and creeks, and the present names are translations or paraphrases of the Pottawattomie or other original terms. But there were alternative forms of a few of these names, as if there had been difference of dialect or other circumstance. A few of these uncouth names have been preserved, though with some doubt as to accuracy of their spelling :
Bigfoot-Mang-go-zid, Muh-mang-go-zid, Mu-sha-o-zet, Mauk-suck. Mauk-soe, Pok-toh, Ke-che-sit.
Duck Creek-She-sheip-se-pec.
Duck Lake-She-sheip-bess.
Geneva Lake-Gee-zhich-qua-wauk. Kish-wau-ke-toe. Gee-zihig-wau- gid-dug-gah, Kish-wau-keak.
Honey Creek-Mish-qua-woc. AAh-moo-sis-po-quet-se-pee.
Sugar Creek-Sis-po-quet-se-pee.
Swan Creek-Wau-ba-shaw-se-pec.
Swan Lake-Wau-ba-shaw-bess.
Whitewater-Wau-be-gan-naw-pe-kat. Wau-bish-ne-pa-wau.
The government's surveyors were instructed to preserve in their field notes the native terms for lakes and streams ; but such a list as the foregoing would have been modified greatly or disregarded wholly in the usage of the settlers, few of whom came from Maine and none from Gulliver lands.
CHAPTER IV.
SETTLEMENT OF THE OLD NORTHWEST.
An early sequence of the peace of 1783 was the removal of the generally hostile Iroquois tribes from old Tryon county and farther New York to Canada, and the restriction of the remnant families and part tribes of friendly Indians to small and but temporary reservations in Genesee Valley. The great wilderness westward of the counties along the Hudson and the lower Mohawk were thus opened at once to peaceful settlement. Central, northern and western New York, and the bordering tier of Pennsylvania counties, filled rapidly with men of New England. Hunger for broader and more tillable fields, and thirst for the "unearned increment" of farm values and selling prices of village lots-better material conditions-were primary causes of this swift, noiseless flight from Egypt. But the secondary cause lay closely behind. These work-hardened men were organizers of towns, counties and states; and their influence upon political. industrial and commercial life was felt im- mediately. As they followed the course of the sun, having all the west before them and Providence their guide, they threw off much of the burden of older colonial ideas, and wherever they halted, they founded a more liberal New England, one of the nineteenth century then at hand rather than of the out- worn century of the Pilgrims. The great advance guard of the invasion har- ing secured a first choice of farms and town sites, the later divisions of this grand army, reinforced by a yet small European immigration, found the great lakes an easy road to the broad Northwest Territory. They carried with them their household goods and much besides. Caesar and his fortunes were but a light burden compared with theirs. If not all of these men were conscious of the near-lying possibilities and responsibilities before them, there were among them men who hoped greatly for themselves, for their country and for humanity.
Four states had grown from the joint cession of territory by Virginia, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and the fullness of time had arrived for Wis- consin, which was then known as an Indian country, a fair field for trade in furs and whisky, and as having in its southwestern corner a workable de- posit of lead ores. (The barbarous heraldry of the state seal quarters the
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WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
mattock with the anchor, plow, and sledge hammer, with a miner and a sailor as supporters, almost the last device that could occur to men who knew the state's real resources. But the motto. "Forward," is English and significant, and nearly atones for the blazonry). The establishment of a land office at Milwaukee and the contract-letting to surveyors for the work of finding and staking the corners of townships and of their sectional subdivisions was soon followed by the long memorable business crisis and panic of 1837. Though this was truly a national calamity, it had some determining influence on the general character of the first great wave of immigration to southeastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois-the latter then hardly less a wilderness than the former-and in some way wrought not ill for our county. Settlements and nearly atones for the blazonry. ) The establishment of a land office at tives, friends, and friends' relatives and friends-fleeing from commercial and industrial disaster in the East-to this rather than to some other segment of the western paradise. Many of these newer comers journeyed by the easy way of the lakes to Milwaukee, Racine and Southport, and thence by Indian trail or territorial road to their much desired journey's end; for, fair and fer- tile as were the fields passed over, there were friends and equally fair prospects but a day or two's travel forward. Not a few came overland from their old homes in covered wagons-"prairie schooners."
The stout-hearted men of 1836 and 1837 had builded better than they knew, though they had not worked blindly nor without large purpose. They had taken the first step which costs and also counts at so many of men's be- ginnings, and which made the way of their followers a little easier than their own had been. A colonial clergyman, preaching an "election sermon" to men of Massachusetts, in 1688, said that God had sifted a whole nation, that He might send choice grain into the New England wilderness. It was no inferior grain, sifted largely from the Eastern states with a not negligible quantity from the British empire and from Germany, which sowed this county with home-builders from whom was to proceed a generation of nation-defenders.
It is not now and here needful to exalt overduly the character and ability of the founders nor to set them greatly above the fair average of American citizens of their time. Few of them were saints, though a large proportion of them were God-fearing and man-loving, and nearly all were well bred in obed- ience to law and in respect for social order ; and all were in some way useful. each to others. Their new situation called into ready action the ancient virtues of hospitality to strangers at their cabin doors and of neighborly helpfulness and indulgence : though they differed sturdily, like men of many minds, wills, interests, and prejudices. Like comrades in arms, and like all who meet like
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dangers and difficulties, these men soon learned each other's general or special value, and neither could nor would they suffer a foible or two to hide true worth wholly out of sight; for, just then, men were more wanted than ideal perfection in men's garments.
The pioneers had left orderly, well-governed communities, where churches, schools, public records, newspapers, mails, roads and all such agencies as bind men together in large and in small communities are human nature's daily needs : and such were the needs of the men and women of Wal- worth after their first provision for shelter, food and fuel. Another early need. too, has been noted-that of "allotting a portion of the virgin soil as a ceme- tery, and another portion as the site of a prison," and these needs were not long neglected. The early settlers included men of such various callings that most of the work required by their simpler life could be done among them from passably well to skillfully. Besides the indispensable farmers, house- buiklers, mill-wrights, sawyers, millers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, and tailors, there came at once surveyors, physicians, preachers, teachers, lawyers, re- tailers, inn-keepers, and moneylenders. A community so meeting and form- ing on prairies and among venerable trees might be likened to houses framed, marked and shipped to a colony across the sea, there to "rise like an exhala- tion."
BIRTHPLACES OF EARLIEST MEN OF WALWORTHI.
As to the old homes, it may be said more specifically and without great inaccuracy that while every New England state, nearly every county of New York, and many counties of the Western Reserve of Ohio sent within a dozen years each its contribution. the greater number were from Vermont, western Massachusetts and Connecticut, the counties of northern, central and western New York, with those along both banks of the Hudson, the northern tier of Pennsylvania, and northeastern Ohio. But there were also noticeably men of New Jersey, the upper Delaware counties of Pennsylvania and of those along her southern tier: besides men who had first sojourned in Michigan, Indiana and Illinois. There were a few from "Evangeline-land," descended from men of Connecticut and eastern Long Island who went in 1760-61 to make Nova Scotia of Acadie, and Cornwallis, Horton, and Aylesford from the parish of Grand Pre, and also to set up for Rev. Thomas Handley a pulpit in place of Father Felicien's altar.
Men of foreign birth found their way here easily, though they were not at first very numerous. As transportation improved, their movement this way was somewhat quickened, and more noticeably after the Irish famine of 1847
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WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
and the German revolution of 1848-49. Irishinen diffused themselves through- out the towns and villages and most of them are now hardly known but as Americans. Germans lodged themselves at first in the towns along the east- ern county line, but have set themselves no such permanent limit. Hardly one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland is unrepresented here. Nearly every German state, large and small, has furnished the county with some share of its muscles and its mind, though the later arrivals appear to be chiefly from the northern parts of the empire. Norwegians came in time to buy govern- ment land, and their names are found mostly in town records of Lagrange, Richmond, Sugar Creek and Whitewater. There has never been a noticeable colored element of our population, owing, most likely, to the superior attrac- tions of the greater cities along Lake Michigan and Rock river. How much our foreign-born citizens are of us as well as with us may be inferred fairly from some hundreds of names of soldiers of the Civil war. The number of for- eign-born citizens now living here is but a small proportion of the whole popit- lation.
CHAPTER V.
SURVEYS-GENEVA LAKE TROUBLE-ARRIVALS.
Whencesoever they came. the men of 1836-61 were mostly of American descent, and all of American ideas, beliefs, feelings, habits and purposes, as they well proved in their later lives as well as in the current of all their lives. It was quite natural for these men, when their most pressing home wants were supplied by their activity and ingenuity, to call themselves together to or- ganize for local self-government ; and within six years a part of the lately un- bounded wilderness had been set off by mathematically determined county lines with sixteen township subdivisions, and as many new names added to the national gazetteer. Thus geographical definiteness took the place of New France and Northwest Territory, and town 3 north, range 18 east, became Spring Prairie.
CONTEST AT LAKE GENEVA.
He who first stands upon soil hitherto untrodden by civilized men, him- self for the hour the vanguard of westward-moving empire, instinctively looks about him for water and timber. Mills must be built, and water power sites are likeliest to be soon at a premium. Hence. at first sight the attractions at the foot of Geneva Lake were irresistible. Similar, though not equal, oppor- tunities at the lakes of Delavan and Whitewater and at the rapid places of the several creeks could not for long be overlooked. The sub-contract for establishing township lines from Beloit eastward to Lake Michigan had been let in 1835 to John Brink and John Hodgson, who, with Jesse Eggleston, Reuben T. and William Ostrander as assistants, began work immediately. Taking two tiers of towns at once they reached Geneva lake early in Septem- ber. They meandered ( in surveyor's sense ) the circumference of the lake and made the first official chart, showing its forni and area. At the foot of the lake Mr. Brink took note, on his own and Hodgson's account. of golden possi- bilities there, blazed and marked a few trees to indicate the priority of his claim to the town site and water right, and passed eastward with his compass and field notes. He was a native of Ontario county, New York, his birthplace near Geneva, which is at the foot of Seneca lake. He may have read of Lake
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WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
Leman and the city of the Allobroges and of John Calvin. However this may have been, he did not like the name of Bigfoot, by which Mrs. Kinzie, as early as 1832. had mentioned the lake, nor any of its Pottawattomie equivalents or alternatives-all barbarously uncouth and nearly irreducible to writing. Ile then and there named the lake for all coming time, and his good taste has never been questioned: for even the land office did not insist upon "Gee- zhich-qua-wauk," or "Kish-wau-ke-toe." The western end of this gift of the glaciers had been passed not infrequently by officers and soldiers on their journeys between Chicago and Fort Winnebago ( Portage City). AAbout 1830 Lieut. Jefferson Davis had ridden by that route, and in his latest years re- called his pleasing impressions of his view of the lake as he passed.
In 1832, as soon as Black Hawk and his tribe were defeated and driven across the Mississippi, the bloody disturbances-killings, scalpings and burn- ings-about Naperville ended forever. It was thus safe for Christopher Payne to leave the fort at Chicago and go in search of the mill site at the foot of Geneva lake, a fair description of which had been given him by a half- breed trader. He reached the Nippersink valley, in Bloomfield, but for want of food for a much longer journey forward he went back to Chicago. Had he found the trail and followed it for another hour or two he would have reached the object of his search about three years earlier than Mr. Brink's arrival, and the annals of earliest Lake Geneva would have lost a long and but moderately interesting chapter. Early in 1836 he set forth again, this time from Squaw Prairie, near Belvidere, and with him George W. Trimble, his son-in-law, and Daniel Mosher. At the end of two days he found the mill site and the unplatted city, but did not find (or he disregarded if he found) Mr. Brink's claim-marks. Having eaten their provisions, they went back, but came again in March, built a log house and returned to Squaw Prairie. Early in April they were a third time on the ground, and they began to build a dam across the outlet.
John Hodgson, of the surveying party, whose work had been to stake section corners within Mr. Brink's township lines, and William Ostrander had been left to occupy and improve the claim as made in 1835, and to prevent encroachment. They, too, had claims there. Mr. Payne came while they were at Milwaukee whither they had gone for provisions. The winter at Geneva was long and lonesome, and Milwaukee was more attractive, even in its infancy,-else Payne's three comings, in the course of two months, would not have escaped their earlier notice. On their return they tried what words and turf-throwing woukl do and then sent to Milwaukee for reinforcements. In the short meantime other men had become interested. Brink's men at
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WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
Geneva had sold a quarter interest in his claim to Charles A. Noyes and Orrin Coe : and Payne's son. Uriah, after the first defeat, had given his one- third share of his father's claim to Robert Wells Warren, for which the latter agreed to help in recovering and holding the larger remnant. Mr. Warren was as bold and persistent as Payne, and much more resourceful and politic than the old frontiersman. The needs of the situation soon compelled com- promise, and Mr. Ilodgson, acting in Mr. Brink's name, sold all rights in dispute for two thousand dollars. Peace was restored, but anger and resent- ment were not soon soothed into forgetfulness. On the one hand. Payne com- plained that he had been forced to "buy his own pocketbook" at an extortion- ate price. On the other side, Brink and Reuben T. Ostrander denied Hodg- son's authority to sell more than his own claim. Other men were coming to the building of a new city, and their ears were soon tired of these complain- ings.
ARRIVALS AT OTIIER TOWNS IN 1836-7.
While this war was breaking out Palmer Gardner had settled quite peace- fully on section 26 of Spring Prairie, and Gardner's Prairie was for long afterward a convenient geographical term for that part of the township. Though then unmarried, he built a cabin, broke ground, and raised a crop of grain and potatoes. He was not without neighbors, even in 1836. Ten or twelve families came that year, and a few single men besides.
In 1835 Major Jesse Meacham, a soldier of 1812-15, and .\dolphins Spoor set out from Washtenaw county, Michigan, to look before leaping into a new Troy. They marked their claims. and the next year came with families and goods to stay and pass thence into local history.
Asa Blood, later of Sugar Creek, and a young man named Roberts, of whom later trace is not thus far found in records, built a cabin near the village of East Troy, on the north side of Honey creek. Mr. Roberts appears to have made and sold an earlier claim in Troy. This later act and sign of pos- session was in the spring of 1836.
James Van Slyke had first halted, with his family, at the foot of the lake: but in the fall of 1836 he built his house near Bigfoot's village in the town of Walworth. A child, named Geneva, had been born at the other end of the lake, and Miss Van Slyke and her parents passed the first winter of her life in the new house at Fontana.
Ilarry Kimball came late in 1836 and made his claim on section 6, of Bloomfield, within easy distance of the settlement at Geneva, and went home to Cooperstown, New York. The next spring he came with his son, Oramel, and built his house.
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WALWORTHI COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
Col. Sammel Faulkner Phoenix entered the county, at its Spring Prairie gateway, early in July, 1836. After a few explorations of the country about Duck, Geneva and Swan lakes and Sugar creek, keeping Spring Prairie as his base of operations, he determined his settlement, early in Angust, by taking his movables to the bank of Swan lake outlet, and with him went Allen Per- kins. About two months later William Phoenix, the Colonel's cousin, reached the new city with his family. Henry, the Colonel's brother. presently came and the two became partners in business. Having founded his city and dedi- cated it to perpetual temperance, the Colonel named it in honor of Edward C. Delavan, of Albany. A few years later Swan lake was renamed Delavan. Mr. Perkins soon returned to the eastern side of the county, leaving all the honors and prospects at Delavan to the house of Phoenix.
Isaiah Hamblin came earliest to Lafayette, with his wife as evidence of his intention to stay. This was in June, 1836. Rev. Solomon Ashley Dwin- nell, Elias Hicks, Alpheus Johnson, Sylvanus Langdon, Charles Chauncey Perrin, and Isaac Vant came before the year's end-at least, to mark their several claims. Mr. Dwinnell notes that the following winter was unus- ually severe. Honses had been built, and some of these were occupied in spite of the difficulties of place and season.
Major John Davis, though unmarried, built near Silver lake, in Sugar Creek, and lived somehow through the winter of 1836-37 under his own ridge- pole. The next year brought him neighbors, but he moved onward. out of county annals.
Late in 1836 John Powers built his house in the town of Linn, not far from Mr. Payne's at Geneva and Mr. Kimball's in Bloomfield. His family came at next springtime, and thus perfected his citizenship of Linn.
The settlement at Elkhorn was planned in 1836 by LeGrand Rockwell, his brother, and their friend. Horace Coleman. Early in 1837 Mr. Rock- well and Mr. Coleman came to find the stake where the four central towns met. At Spring Prairie, Hollis Latham joined them. Within another fort- night Mr. Rockwell, with Daniel E. and Milo E. Bradley, but without Mr. Coleman, who thought not over well of the proposed site-perhaps because it lacked water power-were again at the pivotal stake. They built a cabin on section 6 of Geneva. Mr. Latham made his claim in the same section, and Albert Ogden, who had come with them from Milwaukee, chose his home in section 1 of Delavan. The elder Bradley had come in the interest of Lewis J. Iligby, who afterward bought land in section 5 of Richmond.
(4)
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WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
THE FIRST SETTLER.
Whatever honor may be due to the memory of the first actual settler within the county, that is the unquestionable right of Christopher Payne, a man who-to compare the smaller with the greater-was much of the texture and quality of the famous frontiersmen of the post-Revolutionary period, and a not unworthy forerunner of the men of the pioneer years. His priority of settlement, though it was by a few weeks only, is clear enough, and his easily admitted claim to such distinction may be regarded as yet stronger from his adventure in 1832. As to the great dispute, Judge Gale and Mr. Simmons, both high-minded men and good lawyers, were of opinion that Mr. Brink was wholly in the right. Had neither he nor Mr. Payne ever crossed the county line the first settlement would have been made early in 1836, and the site of Lake Geneva would not long have been overlooked nor unoccupied. Before the end of 1837 every town was more or less settled, though neither the towns nor the county had been officially named. In earlier records, as at the land-office, these minor divisions are described as towns 1, 2, 3, 4, north of base line on the boundary of Illinois and Wisconsin, ranges 15. 16, 17. 18 east of meridian passing northward along the western line of Lafayette county.
CONTESTED CLAIMS.
The first comers sometimes found worse to meet and overcome than the sullenly retiring Indians, hard winters and all the hardships of breaking ground for planting a new community. To mark a few trees, or even to build a hut, did not in every instance secure the actual settler in possession of his claim ; though public opinion, as represented by his neighbors, was on the side of equity-that is, was favorable to the man who came to stay as against grasping speculators. Judge Gale wrote of these perniciously enterprising gentry : "The alternating prairies, openings, and groves of heavy timber, meandered with numerous creeks and small rivers having an abundance of water power, carly attracted attention of explorers; and while the surveyors were at work in the spring and summer of 1836 these adventurers were thread- ing the valleys and selecting advantageous sites for imaginary villages and cities. These baseless claims were sometimes insisted on as real, when neces- sary to give priority over some 'intruding' actual settler who had made his claim at the same place: and the slight differences of memory between con- tending claimants were settled in favor of him who could rally to his aid the most pugnacious followers."
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WALWORTH COUNTY, WISCONSIN.
Mr. Dwinnell wrote that in 1837 the settlers organized associations for mutual protection in holding three hundred and twenty acres each,-each un- married woman one hundred and sixty acres. Fathers were allowed one hundred and sixty acres for each minor son. Committees were chosen to try and to settle disputed titles. An instance of committee-justice is told. The defendant in possession was found to have a clear right, but was obliged to pay half of the costs of an unreasonable neighbor's attempt to eject him. Few settlers had money, but such as had valuable timber claims were helped by the money lenders at the moderate rate of one hundred per cent. for three years' use. Such easy terms were quite providential for men who had soon exhausted such slender means as the cost of their westward movement had left them. To these several aids to prosperous settlement was added the long- famous currency of the period. Since wampum had just been demonetized. this paper stuff, when brought to this side of the lake, was in effect legal tender ; but not so if the latest holder, who had had no choice but to accept it. should try to move it in the direction of its source at Kalamazoo or Tecumseh.
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