History of northern Wisconsin, containing an account of its settlement, growth, development, and resources; an extensive sketch of its counties, cities, towns and villages, their improvements, industries, manufactories; biographical sketches, portraits of prominent men and early settlers; views of county seats, etc., Part 17

Author: Western historical co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago, Western historical company
Number of Pages: 1052

USA > Wisconsin > History of northern Wisconsin, containing an account of its settlement, growth, development, and resources; an extensive sketch of its counties, cities, towns and villages, their improvements, industries, manufactories; biographical sketches, portraits of prominent men and early settlers; views of county seats, etc. > Part 17

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

MRS. ANNA LEY, general store, Bayfield, widow of Peter 11. Ley, one of the pioneers of Bayfield. lle was a native of Prussia, and died June 16, 1876. Mrs. Ley was born in county Clare, Ireland. Her maiden name was Sexton. She was married to P. 11. Ley in 1854, in Detroit, Mich. In the Spring of 1856 they came to Bayfield and opened a store, and since 1857 have been in the same building. They had one child, who died before its father. Mr. Ley during his life served as Supervisor, Register of Deeds, etc. They were both members of the Catholic Church.

SAMUEL E. MAHAN, real estate, Bayfield, was born in Terre Haute, Ind .. Aug. 4, 1846 ; graduated in 1861 from the State University and began the study of medicine, taking one course of lectures at Ann Arbor, Mich. But his health not being favorable he went out to Kansas

HISTORY OF BAYFIELD COUNTY.

and entered mercantile life in Harvey County ; then he took a home- stead in McPherson County, where he remained till 1873, when he came to Bayfield. In 1877-8 was County Clerk; is now secretary of the Telephone Company of Ashland and Bayfield, and secretary of the Hydraulic Company of Bayfield, and has just closed his term as Indian Agent. In 1878 he married Miss Mary J. Boutin, of Bayfield. They have had two children, Frances Edna and Lucille Eugenia, only one of whom is living. Mr. Mahan is a member of the Masonic fraternity.

Janounão

J. H. NOURSE, merchant, Bayfield, the oldest son of Rev. James Nourse, was born in Washington, D. C., July, 1830. In 1853, just a few months before marriage, he was appointed by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, a teacher to Spencer Academy, Choctaw Nation, In- dian Territory. Failing in health, returned with his wife to Washing- ton late in the Fall of 1854. Bleeding from the lungs, in August, 1856, he visited Bayfield, and early in the Spring of 1857 brought his family to that healthy spot. In the Fall of 1858 took charge of a large hotel be- longing to the Bayfield Land Co., called the Bayfield House, and since burned. Taught the public school from October, 1861, to June, 1864; was County Treasurer during the same time and Town Clerk from April, 1860, to 1864; Collector of the port in 1863 and 1864; Receiver of the. U. S. Land-office from 1869 to March, 1872; taught the public school again from September, 1869, to March, 1871 ; has been in his present business since May, 1872 ; and from April of that year up to the present time (1881) annually elected Town Treasurer. His wife was Miss Isabel Rittenhouse, of Washington, D. C .; they have had eleven children, four deceased.

CAPT. R. D. PIKE, manufacturer, Bayfield, was born in Corcoran Co., Penn., April 13, 1838. He was taken to Toledo, Ohio, by his parents in 1845, and remained there, receiving the rudiments of an edu. cation. He came to Bayfield in 1855, but not having finished his edu- cation went to Detroit, Mich., and took a commercial course. In 1862 he enlisted in the 27th Mich. V. I .; was transferred to the Ist Cav., and at the battle of Appomattox he was promoted to captain, and after some service on the plains returned home in 1866 and commenced lumbering. At first he had a shingle mill, then a saw-mill, and finally has a mill that produces lumber, 40,000 of shingles, and 30,000 laths, and staves for fish

barrels ; he is also engaged in the real estate business. Capt. Like has been Chairman of the County Board, Clerk of County Court, and filled! other public offices. He became a member of the Masonic lodge in 1863 at Fort Howard.

RUSSELL ROBERTS, saloon, Bayfield was born in Canada West, Aug. 21, 1838. He was reared on a farm, and on leaving home in 1857, he engaged in the same business in Walworth Co., Wis. In 1860 he moved to Grand Rapids, and began lumbering and working as pilot on the river. In 1872 he moved to the western part of the county upon a farm, where his family now is. He engaged in his present business in Bayfield in June, 1881. In 1861 he married Miss VanVaulkinburg, of Ohio. They have six children-Julia, Jane, Fred. W., Frank, Mary A., William and Edna.

CAPT. P. W. SMITH, hotel, Bayfield, was born in Lowville, Lewis Co., N. Y., Aug. 24, 1827. When twenty years of age he went to sea in a whaler, and at Van Diemen's Land went on board of a merchant ship and returned to New York. In 1861 he raised Co. 9, N. Y. V. I .; resigned in May, 1862, on account of bad health, and came to Bayfield in the same year and opened a hotel, in which he has since continued. In the Fall of 1868, he went to Portage Lake; returned to Bayfield in 1869, and is now proprietor of the oldest hotel in the village. In 1856, he married Miss Sabina Sanders, of Toronto, Canada. They have two boys-Frederick W., aged twenty-four, and William J., twenty-one. Mr. Smith was appointed Sheriff in 1873, and elected in 1876; was Under-sheriff till January, 1880 ; has been Clerk of the Court, held town offices, and is now superintendent and director of the Hydraulic Co. of Bayfield, and a member of the Masonic lodge.

ANDREW TATE was born in the city of Washington, D. C., Aug. 23, 1823, and left that city on the 25th of April, 1857, and arrived at Bayfield 25th of May following. Opened a store and commenced read- ing law, and was admitted to practice in the County Court in 1858, and in the Circuit Court in 1861 ; was appointed County Judge in 1861 ; was elected District Attorney soon after ; was the first School Superin- tendent in the county ; was elected Clerk of Circuit Court, then County Treasurer ; also County Treasurer in 1880; was elected Supervisor in 1881 ; joined the Masonic lodge in Washington, D. C., in 1856, and is one of the charter members of Bayfield lodge, No. 215 ; joined the Odd Fellows in 1844 ; is president of the Bayfield Hydraulic Company. He married Miss Nellie G. Hall, of Bayfield, formerly of Ohio, in July, 1866. They have one child, Lilian.

B. B. WADE, District Attorney, Bayfield, was born in Oneida Co., N. Y., May 21, 1841. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1860, and was admitted to the bar in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., in 1863. In 1864, he took a trip to Colorado, where he practiced and mined, returning to New York in 1868. His health was not good, and he was recommended to the climate of Lake Superior. He came to Bayfield in 1869, and has remained here since, engaged in real estate business. Ile was County Clerk, and elected District Attorney in Fall of 1880. Mr. Wade is lieu- tenant of the Bayfield Rifles.

MRS. L. M. WHITTLESEY, relict of Hon. A. Whittlesey, who was born in Ohio, is a native of Massachusetts. They were married in Peoria, Ill., and came to La Pointe in 1854, and from there went to Ash- land, and helped lay out the village, living there till 1861, when he was ap- pointed to the land-office and moved to Bayfield, where they lived up to the time of his death, which occurred December, 1880. He had always endeav- ored to develop the resources of his adopted home, in which he recog. nized the capacity for a great and rich future. He held at one time a place in the Legislature of the State, traveling to Madison on snow-shoes. There is now in the capital a picture illustrating this incident. He was Indian Agent and Port Collector. He died, leaving a widow and one daughter. There were two children-Delia E., now Mrs. Green, and Jennie, deceased. Mrs. Whittlesey's mother, Harriette M., and her father, J. P. T. Haskell, moved to Ashland in 1855; the latter died in 1875, but the mother is living in Chicago at the advanced age of seventy-two. Mrs. Whittlesey now lives on the property left her by her husband in Bayfield.

HISTORY OF NORTHERN WISCONSIN.

BROWN COUNTY.

The region now known as Brown County is historic ground. Nearly two and a half centuries have elapsed since the first white man set foot upon its soil. It is necessary in this work to divide the record into two periods. We shall speak of the early history as an epoch ending in 1836, and of the recent history as dating from that year.

EXPLORATION OF GREEN BAY.

The first light thrown upon the history of the Green Bay region was an exceedingly faint gleam-indeed, scarcely perceptible. Upon the St. Lawrence, a small French settlement sprang into existence during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the controlling spirit of which was Samuel Champlain. This intrepid Frenchman, at an early day. gained, through reports of the Indians, some idea of the location of the Mas- coutins, who had, in fact, their homes upon the Fox River above Winnebago Lake, and of the Winnebagoes, whose ancient seat was around the head of Green Bay. They are mentioned, also, by one or two other writers cotemporaneous with Champlain, but in an exceedingly vague and unsatisfactory manner. All that was known of the Winnebagoes was, that they had, probably, at some remote period, come from a country bordering upon an ocean ; that they traded with tribes of the Ot- tawa River, and sometimes made war upon the nations on the east side of Lake Huron ; and that in their own country they were visited by a people living still farther west, who were without hair or beard, and who came to trade with them in canoes from far-distant hunting grounds. So little had been heard of the country to the northward and westward of the eastern shore of Lake Huron before the Summer of 1634, that it was, to that date, virtually an unknown region. Late in that year, however, a daring Frenchman penetrated the country of the upper lakes, and soon after made known to the world the existence of many savage nations before unheard of. This explorer was Jean Nicolet, whose adventures have already been spoken of on previous pages of this book. He was the first white man who set foot upon any portion of what is now the county of Brown. But he left a very brief account of his visit, and no description whatever of this locality and its surroundings, except a mere mention of a river-the Fox-and of his having journeyed up it until within three days' sail of a great water-the Wisconsin. In other words, he visited not only the Winnebagoes, but also the Mascoutins, returning the next year to his home upon the St. Lawrence. Such is the commence- ment of the history of Brown County.

One of the objects of Nicolet's visit to the Green Bay country was to smoke the pipe of peace with its savage occupants, and to counsel harmony among all the tribes of the upper lakes visited by him, to the end that all might be visited by the French from the

St. Lawrence for the purpose of trading for furs. Peace was promised ; but the Winnebagoes, immedi- ately after he left them, attacked the Nez Percés, lo- cated upon the eastern waters of Lake Huron, captur- ing and eating two of that nation. Five years subse- quent to this, they were themselves attacked by the Illinois, from the widely extended prairies of the South, and nearly exterminated. In 1641, the Pottawatomies left their ancient homes on the islands at the mouth of Green Bay, seeking refuge among the Chippewas at the Sault Ste. Marie, near the foot of Lake Superior, returning, however, some years afterward. To quote from an authority :

PLANTING THE CROSS AT THE BAY.

" There was none to follow Nicolet to the wild West till 1641, when a great " feast of the dead" given by the Algon- quins in Huronia [at the head of the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron], gathered there all the kindred tribes to take part in the funereal games, the dances, chants, and mournful pro- cessions of those decennial rites. Among the rest came the Chippewas from the Rapids [of Ste. Marie] which close to the vessels of man the entrance of the vast upper lake. These deputies, like the rest, were visited by the Jesuit missionaries ; and so won were the good Chippe- was by the gentle, self-devoting ways of those heralds of the Cross, that they earnestly invited them to their cabins at the Falls [of Ste. Marie. near the foot of Lake Superior], portraying with all the lively imagination of the child of the forests the riches and plenty that reigned in their sylvan abodes. Ever eager to extend their spiritual conquests, to enlarge the bounds of freedom in this western world (for there alone is liberty where dwells the Spirit of the Lord), the missionaries joyfully accepted the invitation of the Chippewas.

" By command of their Superior, two missionaries, Father Charles Raymbaut, thoroughly versed in the Algonquin customs and language, with Father Isaac Jaques, no less complete a Huron, were detached to visit them. On the 17th of June they launched their canoes at the mission house of St. Mary's [in the country of the Huron Indians], and for seventeen days advanced over the crystal waters of the inland sea [Lake Huron], amid the beautiful islands which stretch across the lake, clustering around the lake- gemmed Manitoulin, so hallowed to the Indian's mind. When they reached the Falls [of Ste. Marie] they found two thousand Indians assembled there, and amid their joyful greetings the missionaries gazed with delight on the vast field which lay before them. They heard of tribe after tribe which lay around, and ever and anon of the terrible Nadowessi [Sioux], who dwelt on the great river of the West [Mississippi]. Earnestly did the Chippewas press the two Fathers to stay in their midst. "We will embrace you," said they " as brothers ; we shall derive profit from your words ;" but it could not be so. The paucity of missionaries in the Huron country did not yet permit the establishment of that distant mission. Raymbaut and Jaques could but plant the cross to mark the limit of their spiritual progress ; yet they turned it to the South, for

HISTORY OF BROWN COUNTY.

thither now their hopes began to tend. After a short stay they returned to St. Mary's, and hopes were entertained of soon establishing a mission on Lake Superior ; but Raym- baut shortly after fell a victim to the climate, while Jaques began in his own person a long career of martyrdom, pre- luding the ruin of the Huron mission, the death of its apos- tles, and the destruction of the tribe."

The Jesuit missionaries, located in the country of the Huron Indians, always wide-awake to obtaining knowledge of the region lying to the westward and northward of Lake Huron, had, nevertheless, but mea- ger accounts of the country even down to 1648, One of their number in that year, says :

" A peninsula, or strip of land, quite small, separates this superior lake [Lake Superior] from another, third lake, called by us, "the Lake of the Puants" [Lake Michigan and Green Bay combined], which also discharges itself into our fresh water sea [Lake Huron] through a mouth which is on the other side of the peninsula, about ten leagues more toward the west than the Sault [Ste. Marie]. This third lake extends between the west and the south west, that is to say, between the south and the west, more toward the west, and is almost equal in size to our fresh water sea. On its shores dwell a different people [Winnebagoes], of an unknown language ; that is to say, a language that is neither Algonquin nor Huron [but Dakota]. These people are called the Puants, not on account of any unpleasant odor that is peculiar to them, but because they say they came from the shores of a sea far distant toward the west, the waters of which being salt, they called themselves the ' l'eo- ple of the Stinking Water.'"

EARLY INDIAN MOVEMENTS.

In 1654 is obtained, for the first time, some knowl- edge of the movement of the Indians upon the eastern waters of Lake Huron, to the westward, from fear of the deadly inroads of the Iroquois-those arch enemies of the Algonquins and Ilurons. One of the Jesuit missionaries writing from Quebec, September 21, of that year, says that a fleet of canoes loaded with furs reached Montreal, which came from the west a distance of four hundred leagues. In them came friendly In- dians ; some were of the Tobacco nation and others of the Ottawa. "All these tribes," says the writer, " have abandoned their ancient country, and have retired toward the more distant nations, in the vicinity of the Great Lake [Lake Michigan and Green Bay combined ]. whom we call the Puants [Winnebagoes ]."

THE FIRST FUR TRADERS.

The arrival of two Frenchmen-fur traders-upon the shores of Lake Superior in 1658, and their journeys to the westward and southwest, an account of which has already been given in this history, added to the stock of knowledge possessed by the civilized occu- pants of the St. Lawrence, concerning the region of the upper lakes, but shed no light upon the country immediately surrounding Green Bay. Ten years sub- sequent to this, Louis Joliet, whose name has been frequently given in a previous chapter, visited this region, reaching possibly the islands at the mouth of Green Bay ; but he has left no account of his explora- tion. The next year-1669-fur traders were here, and probably before that time; but they left no record of what they saw or of the tribes visited by them.

THE CATHOLIC MISSIONS.

The founding of the Mission of St. Francis Xavier upon the shores of Green Bay, on the 2d of December, 1669, by the Jesuit missionary, Father Claude Alloñez, and its precarious existence until 1687, have already been mentioned; so, too, the transitory Mission of St. Mark upon the Wolf River, the northern affluent of the Fox, has been spoken of; but in this connection, before proceeding to give the arrival of French ex- plorers at Green Bay, it will be proper to continue the recital of Catholic missionary effort in this vicinity to 1824.

Now it was that England began to dispute with France about the possessions of the West. Mackinaw was abandoned as a missionary field, and a great num- ber of Ottawas went to settle in the new port of De- troit. A list of the missionaries of the year 1701 in- forms us that there were two Fathers in the mission of the Ottawas, but as regards their labors and residences nothing particular is known. In the year 1704 the name of Father Nouvel disappeared from the list and the name of Father Jean Baptiste Chardon, was found for the first time.

In the year 1711 Jacques Marert was Superior of the mission and the communications between the dif- ferent stations were so seldom that fifteen years passed. during which time he did not see his brother Gabriel Marert, missionary among the Illinois.

In 1721 the historian Charlevoix visited those places, and is said to have found at the Fort of the Bay des Puants the amiable Father Jean Baptiste Chardon, a Jesuit, who had his chapel about one and a half miles from the mouth of the river. He evangelized the Sacs, but not finding them docile, he studied diligently the Winnebago language, in order to apply his care to this tribe. Charlevoix, ambassador as he was of the King of France, engaged the Sacs to respect their mis- sionaries and to listen to his voice, if they wished to retain the King's favor. His words had a good effect. R. T. Chardon was sent that same year to the Illinois, and was the last Jesuit residing at Green Bay.

The wars of the Foxes greatly embarrassed for the future the efforts of the missionaries.

In 1764 Rev. T. Marin Louis Lefrant and Pierre du Jaunay appeared in the catalogue of the Jesuits of the West; they were both stationed at Mackinaw in 1765, and visited regularly the different stations established along the shores of Lake Michigan. They were kept for a long time in happy memory by the Indians, and in 1820, an old man of the tribe at Arbre Croche still pointed out the place where P. du Jaunay used to say his breviary.

In 1765, two Jesuit missionaries, whose names tradi- tion did not preserve, were killed on the banks of Fox River, near the place where, in 1676, the church and residence of their predecessors were erected. Although no work of that time mentions this fact, the old in- habitants believe it to be certain, and show the ground that was soaked by the blood of the martyrs. Mar- geret O'Keewah, a one hundred-year-old Indian, who died February 13, 1868, ascertained the fact, saying that her parents often talked to her about two black gowns, whom the Indians had massacred, because they had

HISTORY OF NORTHERN WISCONSIN.

cast the lot on the children of the tribe, which made them all die. Their bodies, she says, were buried at the same place. Lastly the bull Dominy or Re- demptor issued by Clement (Jargauelli) dated Jan- uary 21, 1776, suppressing the illustrious order of the Jesuits, came to deprive their rough but glorious field of labor, of the intrepid, wise and pions children of St. Ignatius.

There was nothing left but one priest to guard the spiritual interest of the scattered faithful in Wiscon- sin and Michigan. It was a transigrau, Father Recol- lect, stationed at Fort Ponchartrain, at present Detroit, and who seems to have visited for the last time the Bay about 1793.

The settlement of the whites at the Bay dates from about the middle of the eighteenth century. Between 1744 and 1746, Augustin de Langlade, Parisian by birth and merchant at Michilimackinac, left that place with his family, composed of eight persons, to settle down in this part of the country. There had not been a priest residing at Green Bay since 1721, at which time Father Chardon left the place to go to Illinois. Aug. de Langlade was also obliged to send his wife and two of his children from Green Bay to Mackinaw, in a canoe, in order to have them baptized by the priest.

In 1785, the new colony numbered fifty-six ; two families of which had settled down on the left bank of the river and were composed of fourteen souls; whilst four other families erected their homesteads on the right bank and numbered forty-two souls. From the years 1792 to 1804, the colony of the Bay was aug- mented by some families (Canadian) so that at the be- ginning of the War of 1812 there were two hundred and fifty-two inhabitants. Michigan and all the North- western Territory was under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Quebec, of which the seat had been founded in 1660; the 19th of June, 1821, Pins VII. erected the Bishopric of Cincinnati, which was to comprise Ohio, Michigan and the Northwestern Territory. He appointed for this seat Rev. Father Edward Fenwick, of Maryland, of the order of the Dominique. The latter chose for his Vicar General, Rev. Gabriel Richard, a subjectian and priest of St. Anna in Detroit, Michigan, since 1799.

Thirty years had elapsed, and not a priest had been seen at the Bay, until at last, Father Richard came to spend a few days here in 1×22. He celebrated serv- ice in the house (not yet finished) of P. Grignon, situated on Washington street, now the property of Dr. Crane. Father Richard gave only one communion ; this was to Madame Veaux.

In 1824 they counted in Green Bay five hundred inhabitants. During the course of the following year, Father Vincent Baden, stationed at St. Joseph, with the Pottawatomies, came here regularly every year to give a mission of one month. Mr. Pierre Grignon had given, but without deed, six lots to build a church and a school ; this property, by the death of the donator, passed again to his heirs. A school-house, which was also to serve as a chapel, was built there (of wood), and Rev. Bodin appointed there a Frenchman, named Fauvrelle, to keep school therein, and permitted him to gather every Sunday the people, in order to read the gospel of the day, to sing hymns, and say prayers.

But Fauvrelle soon transgressed from the orders which he had received; he allowed himself to sing mass, omitting every time the consecration, and to make pro- cessions, accompanied by the soldiers of the fort.

DAUMONT DE ST. LUSSON.

Having thus traced the history of the Catholic mis- sions to the year 1825, we return to the year following the founding of that of St. Francis Xavier, and resume the narrative of French discovery and exploration. It was, as has been stated in a previous chapter, in 1670, that Nicholas Perrot visited Green Bay, to urge the tribes to the meeting to take place at the Sault Ste. Marie, the next Spring, under the auspices of Daumont de St. Lusson. Among Canadian voyageurs few names are so conspicuous as that of Perrot; not because there were not others who matched him in achievement, but because he could write, and left behind him a tolerable account of what he had seen. He was at this time twenty-six years old, and had formerly been an engage of the Jesuits. He was a man of enterprise, courage and address; the last being especially shown in his dealings with Indians, over whom he had great influ- ence. He spoke Algonquin fluently, and was favor- ably known to many tribes of that family. Upon his arrival at Green Bay, he was greeted with clamors of welcome. The Miamis upon the Upper Fox River, it is said, received him with a sham battle, which was designed to do him honor, but by which, nerves more susceptible would have been severely shaken. They entertained him also with a grand game of la crosse, the Indian ball play. Perrot gives a marvelous account of the authority and state of the Miami chief, who, he says, was attended day and night by a guard of warriors ; an assertion which would be incredible, were it not sustained by the account of the same chief, given by the Jesuit Dablon, who, as previously ex- plained, also visited this tribe. The result of Perrot's visit has already been given.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Author: Western historical co., Chicago, pub Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Chicago, Western historical company Number of Pages: 1052

Author: Western historical co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago, Western historical company
Number of Pages: 1052