USA > Wisconsin > Rock County > Rock County, Wisconsin; a new history of its cities, villages, towns, citizens and varied interests, from the earliest times, up to date, Vol. I > Part 14
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A sadder case is that of an emigrating party from Colebrook who left the steamboat at Detroit and started to cross the state of Michigan with a team of four horses. The roads were so bad
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that one of the horses died of fatigue before they had made half of the distance. Soon afterward another horse was so exhausted that he could not pull. It was necessary to lead him by a rope. Then they came to the sand hills at the southern bend of Lake Michigan and it became necessary to lighten the load in every possible way, for there was danger that the other horses would fail, or perhaps die in the road. Delicate women were obliged to get out and walk in the sand carrying infant children on their backs. It was impossible to stop on the road. Houses were ten to twenty miles apart. Shelter and food for man and beast must be found every night. While these toilers were trudging through the sand darkness overtook them, accompanied by rain. There was nothing to do but push on. Continuous movement was the price of life. With eyes straining to see a light they toiled on fainting with hunger and fatigue and drenched with rain. About 9 o'clock their hearts were gladdened by a distant twinkling light. They hastened to reach it. They found it a short distance from the road. It was an Indian wigwam. The occupants were very civil. They invited these foot-sore travelers to the shelter of their lodge, but it was so filthy that the pilgrims, weary as they were, could not bring themselves to enter it. So they turned back to the lonely road and resumed their journey, for near three hours longer. Midnight brought them to a house in a con- dition of mind and body that can be better imagined than de- scribed. This was the Crosby party. One of these women, whose trembling limbs had at last borne her to a door, was Mrs. Crane, and the babe whom she carried was my friend Ellery Crane, who has given me these facts. They reached their journey's end in August, 1837. Mrs. Crane never recovered from the effects of that terrible journey. Her health was undermined by it. She lingered a few years and died at the age of 33.
There was another branch of the early emigration to Beloit to which I think that Dr. Horace White must have given the impulse. It came from Bedford, a town in the extreme southern part of New Hampshire, Colebrook being in the extreme north- ern part. Among the families represented in this emigration were those of Colley, Riddle, Dole, Atwood, Houston and Gordon. My mother was a native of Bedford. As the movement originated in Colebrook and as our family was the only connecting link be- tween the two towns, which were separated from each other by
I.s. Referat.
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the whole length of the state, I conclude that the Bedford peo- ple took the Beloit fever from us and that S. G. Colley was en- rolled as an original member of the New England Emigrating Company at my father's instanee, and that the others were sim- ilarly induced to come later. However that may be, it is eertain that my mother with her two sons, aged three and one, respective- ly, came hither from Bedford, in company with Mr. Colley and his family, and Mrs. Atwood and her daughter, in the summer of 1838, arriving here on the 25th of June of that year. My father had returned to Beloit in November, 1837, but did not bring his family because there was then no place to put them. There were only three log houses in the town in 1837 and those were all oceu- pied by the male workers who were preparing the ground for their wives and children. In 1837 Caleb Blodgett erected a house of boards, the product of Goodhue's mill. This was the begin- ning of the Rock River house, situated where the Goodwin house now stands. The fact of immediate interest to the White family was that when Blodgett moved out of the old log house they were enabled to move in.
(Dr. White soon moved to a board house on the west side of State street, about midway between Broad and School streets, and that was their family home until he died there, December 23, 1843. This graphie incident of Horace White's childhood in Beloit is historic. Where the central bridge was built in 1842 the crossing of Rock river was provided for, several years before 1840, by a self-aeting ferry. A large tree, jutting out from the bank at the north end of the public landing, north side of Publie avenue, held the east end of the ferry rope, which was fastened at the other end to a similar tree on the west side of the river. The rectangular, flat-bottomed ferry boat was attached at both ends to this rope by two similar arrangements of rope and pulley and grooved wheel, one for each end of the boat, both wheels moving easily on the long ferry rope and affording a kind of moveable anchorage. When the west end attachment was short- ened up, making that end of the scow point diagonally up stream. the force of the current would slowly push the boat across to the west bank. Then, after the wheel rope at the west end was lengthened and that of the other end shortened, causing the east end of the boat to point up stream, the current of the river flow- ing southward would gradually work the boat back to the east
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bank. This was a New England way of harnessing the stream, reproduced by the New England men here. One day when the ferry boat had been left at the east bank, unattended but duly arranged for return, little Horace jumped aboard and unex- pectedly began to move out from shore. Our Horace, viewing that prospective voyage to foreign parts, felt something of the apprehension with which his Roman namesake contemplated a near voyage across the Adriatic, only instead of "tomorrow we cross the great deep," with our Horace it was "right now." The future journalist, however, with instinctive appreciation of the value of a want ad, well published, at once raised his voice in unmistakable expression of desire for help. His ad was an- swered promptly. When the ferry boat reached the west bank a gentleman there, who had noticed the situation, met him with soothing assurances, readjusted the boat ropes for his return and, persuading him to stay on board, started it back. In a few min- utes the friendly current had pushed the ferry boat to the east bank and little Horace, springing ashore after his foreign travel, no doubt ran home a happier and wiser lad.
One summer evening, in that same earliest era of Beloit life, another little boy, Webster Moore, about sunset was sent on an errand from his home (now 537 Public avenue) to the isolated and distant house of Alexander Douglass (now about 820 Park avenue) and lost his way. As he did not return the family and friends became alarmed. a large number of men searched for him through the woods with lanterns, and long after midnight he was found crying in despair on the thickly wooded bank of Turtle creek, about a mile northeast of his home.
During the editor's own boyhood here (1845-55) all that re- gion of Beloit northeast of the corner of Chapin and Church streets was quite generally covered with a forest of burr oak and hickory as far as to the location of Clinton Babbit's Turtle creek farm, called Hemdoka, and indeed for half a mile north and northwest of that. Where Mr. Babbit's house was located, about three-quarters of a mile northeast of Beloit college, Bradford Colley claimed to have seen at an early day several Indian tepees or frames for wigwams, standing as the Indians had left them, and told Mr. Babbit they had belonged to some of Black Hawk's Indians, who called that place Hemdoka, "the camp on the bluff.")
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Those early villagers, disliking the Indian name, Turtle, as too slow, and Blodgett's name for the settlement, New Albany, as too fast, in the fall of 1838 held at the Beloit house several public meetings for the purpose of choosing something better. As no agreement could be reached the matter was finally left to a committee of three. Mr. R. P. Crane, then in Florida, wrote to the Beloit "Journal" in February, 1878, that this committee consisted of Johnson, Hobart and himself. L. G. Fisher, Esq., of Chicago, in a letter published by the Beloit "Journal" March 28, 1878, said that the committee chosen were Major Charles Johnson, Horace Hobart and L. G. Fisher. Mr. William Jack, who was present when the name was reported, personally stated to the editor in Beloit in the year 1899, that Mr. Fisher was cer- tainly a member of that committee. (There may have been two committees, appointed by different votes or parties of settlers.) L. G. Fisher states that the committee retired to a shanty nearby and, at first, one of them suggested that a name be made with letters of the alphabet drawn by lot. Major Johnson proposed Ballote, hinting that it was the French for beautiful. As many of the settlers had pleasant remembrances of Detroit, Mr. Fisher wanted a name which would sound like Detroit, and spoke the words, Balloit, Beloit. The latter name, approved in committee, was reported to the assembled settlers by Major Johnson and un- animously adopted. Rock county, formed by act of the Wiscon- sin territorial legislature December 7, 1836, derived its name from the famous "Big Rock" on the north side of Rock river at Monterey, in Janesville, which rock marked a fording place and was an old Indian landmark.
Our record of those earliest pioneers of Beloit, prior to the purchases of the New England Company, includes besides Caleb Blodgett and family and John Hackett, Major Charles Johnson, John Doolittle and the Goodhues, father and son William (our first mayor), also a family whom Blodgett persuaded to come from Meacham's Grove in January, 1837, Chauncey and Mrs. Tuttle with four sons, Chester, Frank, William and George. The last, who was then ten years old, is now living in his residence at the northeast corner of Church and Chapin streets, Beloit, hale and active yet. There were also a Mr. Delamater, Z. Jones and brother, and James Carter, a millright. The first members of the New England colony to arrive after R. P. Crane and O. P.
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Bicknell, who both came March 9, 1837, and Dr. White. March 13, were Henry Mears and wife, April 15, with her sister Maria and brother Horace Clark coming a little later; Dr. George and Edward Bicknell, who arrived together in July, 1837, followed in the same month by Mrs. John Hackett, Alfred L. Field and Ira Hersey, who with their four ox team brought welcome supplies of meat and flour. Others sent out by the company and arriv- ing that year were August 9. Horace Hobart (afterwards a deacon), Benjamin I. Tenney, Asahel B. Howe, wife and daugh- ter, James Cass and wife, Mr. Israel C. Cheney and Mrs. R. P. Crane and her infant son, Ellery, eoming with Thomas Crosby, wife and infant child, mother and brother. On his first arrival Mr. Crosby built himself a log cabin, the third house of the place, on the east bank of Rock river, where the east side paper mill afterwards stood, but soon moved with his family to the New England company's boarding house. which Mr. and Mrs. Crosby conducted during its first year. Mr. Crosby entered land about five miles directly east of Beloit, became a successful farmer and lived there on his farm to the age of eighty-seven. He was one of the early trustees of the First Presbyterian church of Beloit, of which his daughter, Cornelia, is still a member. His name was repre- sented in the Wisconsin legislature of 1875 and for nine years in the chairmanship of our Rock County Board of Supervisors by his son, George H. Crosby, who is yet a member of that body.
In a twelve by sixteen shanty, which had just been built by Crane about five rods east of the northeast corner of present State street and St. Paul avenue, on Sunday, August 13, 1837, Horace Hobart conducted the first public religious service held in this community, a prayer meeting, the singing being led and the first prayer offered by Ira Hersey. One week later there was another religious gathering in the same place, at which Mr. A. L. Field read a sermon and led the singing. Similar services were held there August 27 and September 3, and then followed. the first publie preaching service held September 10, in another place as described later.
During that same year, 1837, appeared other settlers, not con- nected with the New England company, among them Walter Warner, Benjamin Cheney, David Noggle, William Jack, Charles M. Messer, surveyor, and Bradford Colley with his widowed sister, Mrs. Ann Jane Atwood, skilled nurse of most of the pioneer
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babies (including the editor. born here in 1845), and who lived in Beloit until her death. December 7, 1903, at the age of ninety- two years.
Early in 1838 came Samuel B. Cooper and family and John P. Houston (father of John E.), and Alfred Field's father, Peter R. Field, deacon of the church at Colebrook, N. H., with his wife, Hannah, and her sister, Mrs. Nancy Crane, mother of Robert P., also Samnel G. Colley and wife and John Burroughs, teacher. In that year also Israel Cheney brought here his wife and five daugh- ters, one being Mrs. Moore, carrying her infant son, Webster, and becoming next year the mother of Abbie, who is now Mrs. William B. Strong. The four blooming girls, Caroline (Mrs. Hill), Azuba (Mrs. Carr), Lovisa (Mrs. Dyer, of Chicago), and Lucena (Mrs. Rice Dearborn), while yet in their father's wagon, starting ont from New England, were seen (he has told us), by young D. K. Pearsons as the teams stopped for a few moments at his father's door; their beauty made such an impression on his youthful mind that he afterwards inquired and learned where they had gone and so was first led to take that interest in Beloit which has been manifested since he became the wealthy Dr. Pear- sons of Chicago. in sueh generous gifts to Beloit college. Novem- ber, 1838, came Mr. and Mrs. Smith from Hampshire, England, with their son Henry H., about fifteen years old. who is still liv- ing in Rock county. Other influential pioneers, who should be mentioned are, coming in 1839, John C. Burr, tinner, with his mother, Elizabeth ; Rice Dearborn from Vermont, Alexander Gor- don from Maine, and John Hopkins, second deacon of the first Congregational church, which had been organized December 30, 1838, also the first superintendent of the first Sunday school, begun as a union school in October, 1839. But he is more widely known and will be longer remembered for his survey of the vil- lage of Beloit, which he made, evidently that same year, for Horace White and others, and which is our first recorded survey. 'It was manifestly based, however, on the Kelsou survey, herein pictured, which had been started and probably finished in the fall of 1837. (I have learned that Hopkins used a somewhat worn chain, while the later surveyor, Rice, measured with a standard pole. This may explain the unpleasant faet that the two surveys do not perfectly agree, often differing several feet in a long block.)
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Then in 1840 came the first pastor of the First Congregational church, Rev. Dexter Clary, who will be mentioned further in the account of churches, and in October arrived Benjamin Brown, of Framingham, Mass., with his bride of the same birthplace and her little daughter, Lucy, by a former husband. (As one illus- tration of that Puritan descent, which so many of those Beloit pioneers could show, we give here their full family record.)
[Benjamin Brown was of thoroughly New England and Puri- tan stock, derived from John Brown of Watertown, near Boston, who, April 24, 1655, married Hester Makepeace, of Boston, Mass. Their grandson, William Brown, of Lexington, Mass., 1723-1793, in 1747 served in the French and Indian war and that same year purchased a slave, Crispus Attucks, who having run away to Bos- ton in 1760, was killed in the Boston massacre of March 5, 1770, the first blood shed in the Revolution.
In 1746 William had moved to Framingham, Mass., bought the outlet of Cochituate lake and built there a saw mill, a grist mill and one of the earliest fulling mills of New England. In 1772 and 1775 he was chairman of the Framingham Committee of Correspondence. He was a member of the First Provincial Con- gress, which at Concord, Mass., October 26, 1774, provided for enlisting companies of minute men; was also a member of the Second Provincial Congress, meeting in 1775, and was elected annually as Framingham's representative to the general court of Massachusetts from 1777 to 1785. In 1752 he had been made deacon of the second church of Framingham and was continued such until his death there in 1793.
Of his twelve children the eleventh, Ebenezer, married in 1788, Keziah Nixon, daughter of Captain (afterwards General) John Nixon, and their eighth and youngest child, born in Fram- ingham, June 8, 1803, was this Benjamin.
His mother trained up her children to a strict keeping of the Sabbath from sundown of Saturday to the sunset of Sunday. Often on a hot Sunday afternoon in summer little Benjamin was' given Watt's Hymns and Pilgrim's Progress and ordered to his chair with a strict injunction to not get off it until the sun went down. The average New England boy of those times was a re- versed Joshua with reference to the sun on that day. The instant that luminary disappeared in the west the boys would all rush
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off to the town common and there enjoy a delightful Sunday evening of games and general hilarity.
It is worthy of note that Benjamin's maternal grandfather, John Nixon (1725-1815). captain of the Sudbury minute men, led his company and was wounded at the battle of Lexington, April 19, 1774. and as colonel led the Middlesex regiment at the battle of Bunker Hill, where he was wounded again. July 8, 1776, from a platform near the Walnut street front of the State House in Philadelphia, John Nixon read the Declaration of Independence to a vast concourse of people, the first public reading. He was made a brigadier, and also a salaried member of the first Con- tinental navy board, November 6. 1776. At the battle of Sara- toga, or Bemis' Heights, where he commanded a brigade, the near passage of a cannon ball impaired his hearing, but he continued in commission until 1780. One of his daughters married a farmer, named Warren, a relative of that celebrated patriot, Dr. Joseph Warren, the General Warren who was killed at Bunker Hill.
Deacon William's eldest son, Roger (born September 12, 1749), a Revolutionary captain, and a colonel, by commission from Governor John Hancock. dated July 12, 1790, married Mary Hartwell. of Lincoln, Mass. Their son, James, farmer, and eap- tain of minute men (1784-1875), was married November 4, 1807, to Nancy Fiske (1789-1858). and lived his long life at Framing- ham. Mass., village of Saxonville. Their second child was Lucy Ann (November 20, 1809-September 1. 1869), who first married Augustine Leland, a graduate of Brown university, 1834, and then, as a widow with a daughter, Luey, was married May 14, 1840. to Benjamin Brown.
Note .- On a pleasant afternoon in June, 1812, when Captain James Brown and his man were ploughing on the home farm at Saxonville, twenty miles from Boston, a galloping horseman sud- denly drew up in the road beside the field, shouting, "War de- clared with England! Minute men, turn out! The governor orders you to report to him on Boston common by noon tomor- row!" and rushed on. The captain took his horse from the plough. and with traces dangling rode him around to the dif- ferent members of his company. directing them to gather at his house immediately after supper prepared for a march. They came as called, marched all night, and he reported to the gover- nor at Boston before breakfast next morning, the first company
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in. For his promptness he was at once made a major with posi- tion on the governor's staff. and later became a colonel.
His wife, Nancy Fiske, was the daughter of Deacon John Fiske, a Puritan of the Puritans.
In the eighth year of King John of England, A. D. 1208, the name of Daniel Fisc, of Laxford, is appended to a document issued by that king, confirming a grant of land from the Duke of Loraine to the men of Laxfield, a town about eighty miles northeast of London.
In the time of Henry VI. (1422-1461). Symond Fiske, prob- ably a direct descendant of Daniel, held lands in Laxfield parish. He was Lord of the Manor of Stadhaugh. (A hangh was a cleared field, and Stad, or Stead, means an established home. Hence our word homestead.) The Fiske armorial bore three gold stars with the significant motto. "Macte virtute sie itur ad astra" (Good doing leads upward), evidently derived from Virgil's Æneid, book IX., lines 640-641 (Literally: Forward with manli- ness. So one goes toward the stars). Below the shield is the name, Ffiske. Above it is a helmet in profile, which signifies that he was simply an Esquire. In the parish register of Lax- field, which begins with the sixteenth century, one of the earliest names recorded in 1519 is Elizabeth Ffyske.
The fourth in direct descent from Symond, Robert (and Sibil Gold) Fiske, lived at Broad Gates, Laxfield, eight miles from Framlingham, Suffolk county, England. (The termination, ing- ham, means "home of one elan.") Their son, William Fiske. born 1614, came to America with his brother John in 1837 and settled at Watertown, Mass. (John, who heads a separate group. located at Wenham or Salem.)
The Fiskes were noted for their strong religious proclivities, inherited from English ancestors who had to flee from their native land to escape being beheaded or burnt at the stake.
At Laxfield in the evil days of "Bloody Mary," Rev. John Noyes was burned at the stake, and Foxe's Book of Martyrs says that he was visited on the evening before execution by his brother-in-law, Nicholas Fiske, an act which required more than ordinary courage. Another ancestor, John Fiske, after being hunted for nearly a year, escaped to America in disguise. Being a reverend graduate of Emmanuel college, Cambridge, England,
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he beeame here an eminent preacher, and, as Cotton Mather says, "did shine in the golden candlestick of Chelmsford."
The second William Fiske (1642-1728), was for forty years a deacon in the Congregational church, of which Rev. John Fiske became the first pastor in 1679. William's son, Ebenezer, was a deacon, and his grandson, the third William Fiske, was a staunch Puritan, who moved to Amherst.
The eighth generation in direct deseent from Symond was Nathan Fiske. of Watertown, Mass .; the ninth, Nathaniel; the tenth, John (1682-1740) ; the eleventh, Isaac (1714-1800), a weaver of Framingham, Mass., who November 11, 1736, married Hannah Haven, of the same place. Their third child, John, 1741- 1819, a justice of the peace and representative, married Abigail Howe, and had ten children, of whom the eighth was Naney, the mother of Lucy Ann, who became wife of Benjamin. mother of William Fiske Brown.
Note .- The youngest sister of Lucy, Naney or Anna Fiske (later Mrs. Charles Washburn, of Worcester, Mass.), taught Greek and Latin and fitted young men for college. One of the boys whom she so taught in Worcester was Benjamin D. Allen, the very efficient choirmaster and professor of music in Beloit college, in 1900. Another was George W. Smalley of the London Times.
Note 2 .- Fiske is Scandinavian for Fish. This name was in- troduced into England at the time of the Danish invasion.
Miss Fidelia Fiske (a missionary at Ooroomiah, Persia), says that it explains our word fiscal. Mueh of the Danish government dues was collected in dried fish, and in Denmark quintals of fish were once used as currency. The revenue officer was therefore called "the Fiske." and the government revenue "Fiscal."
Note 3 .- The one exception to the Puritan record of this family was Benjamin's older brother, William (1797-1846), a sea cap- tain, who had two ships plying between New York and Vera Cruz, Mexico. He was a Free Thinker, and became a Roman Catholic when he married a Spanish lady. Donna Maria Guar- dero, of Tabasco, Mexico, in which province he lived and died.
Note 4 .- But from the Revolutionary record and loyalty of the family there has not been even one exception. The twelfth child of Benjamin's older brother, Joseph. of Saxonville (1793-1882), Captain William Henry Brown. of Natick, Mass. (born 1834, who
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served through the Civil War and led his men in twenty-three battles), furnishes me the following autograph letter of General John Nixon to General Heath, written in September, 1776. Nixon was in command of Governor's island, in New York bay, but on the approach of the British fleet (August 30) had withdrawn his little garrison. This letter was evidently written when he was at Harlem Heights and about September 10, 1776, and is inserted as a part of authentic but unpublished American history :
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