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 18
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tery, Rear Admiral David Porter's navy squadron, and also the Sixth Wisconsin Infantry (the Iron Brigade).
The regiments represented were the Fifth, Seventh, Thir- teenth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth, Twenty-second, Thirty-fifth, Fortieth and Forty-second Wisconsin Infantry ; also the Fifteenth, Twenty-third (Mulligan Guards), Forty-seventh and Ninetieth Illinois Infantry ; the Twentieth Indiana Infantry ; the Seventh and Thirtieth New York Infantry; the Eighth Ohio Infantry ; Tenth Connecticut Infantry, and also Company F of United States Veteran Volunteers. These last carried a flag with crape on the staff and wore crape on the left arm. Following them was a martial band, in charge of Mr. Irish, and the fire department under Chief Engineer John Hawkins, the firemen wearing new uniforms. Three large wagons full of school girls, as decorators, were followed by a long procession of school boys marching, the route beginning at the high school building. Then eame a procession of carriages containing the speakers, Paul Broder for the Roman Catholic cemetery, Rev. George Bushnell for the city cemetery, Rev. H. P. Higley and Prof. Joseph Emer- son, and scores of friends. When the procession passed Memo- rial Hall about forty college students fell into line and marched behind the firemen. The decorators were in charge of Mrs. Cham Ingersol, Mrs. Colonel Johnson and Mrs. Colonel Crane. Esquire Broder fitly began his address, on "Mutual Forgiveness," with the quotation :
"For whether on the scaffold high, or in the battle's van,
The fittest place for man to die, is where he dies for man."
One paragraph was this: "The soldiers, by whose graves we stand, had little anger in their hearts. I have been told that, in the midst of battle, Federal and Confederate soldiers have been known to pause for awhile, by mutual consent lay down their arms, drink at the same brook out of the same cup, ex- change tobacco and coffee and for a time forget the deadly work in which but a few moments before they had been engaged. Can it be that we, after fourteen long years of peace, have failed to acquire the same magnanimity which they, in the short breathing times of battle, were wont to display? The experience of all life teaches us no worthier lesson than the wisdom of forgive-
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ness." After Dr. Bushnell's remarks to the effect that the re- bellion had made American free institutions permanent, the pro- cession marched back to Memorial Hall, where a platform had been erected on the east side of the building. Colonel Pettibone presided, Rev. Prof. William Porter (who is still with us) offered prayer and Rev. Henry P. Higley gave an address on our (then) thirty graves (now we have 201), for each of which, he re- marked, might be said as was written of the Swiss patriot, Arnold Winkelreid :
"Make way for Liberty, he cried ; Made way for Liberty and died."
"We belie the day if we say that these men did well to die for their country and then ourselves refuse to live for her and at our very best." The memorial marble tablets in Memorial Hall were then decorated and a noble oration for those honored dead was given by Prof. Emerson. A memorial poem, written several years before by Comrade Rev. T. D. Christie, was read, and the exercises were closed with patriotic airs by the band.
Another interesting sketch of Beloit life is the following word picture of "Beloit 36 Years Ago," by Joel B. Dow:
The city government in 1872 was vested in a mayor, eight aldermen, city clerk, city attorney, treasurer, city marshal and city surveyor. The mayor and common council served without pay. The mayor was then Samuel J. Goodwin; the city clerk, C. F. G. Collins; the city attorney, S. J. Todd; the city marshal, Parsons Johnson. Each received a salary of $100 a year. The entire police force was embodied in the city marshal, save two night watchmen, one for each side of the river. The total expense of running the city government did not then exceed $3,000. The population was about 4,600. There were two volunteer fire de- partments, Nos. 1 and 2. Two hand engines and water supply, a stone's throw from the river, provided in wells and cisterns, with license to utilize like private reservoirs when occasion demanded. There were no paved streets. There were no waterworks; "Charlie" Salmon was then barely a "prospect."
Two years prior to the opening of this story the city was swept by an epidemic of typhoid fever ; many of the leading citi-
EDWARD F. HANSEN.
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zens with others whom they led paid the penalty of combining wells and water closets for generations. There were no sewers, but a multiplicity of cesspools which conspired with closet vaults to contaminate the water. As a sanitary measure, then, to pre- vent a repetition of this and kindred epidemies, as well as to afford fire protection and encourage the introduction of manu- facturing interests, a waterworks system was planned and built, and, finally coming into the hands of Mr. Salmon, was commend. ably perpetuated. In 1872 there were no bathrooms, only in isolated cases, and these were conundrums. They were heated by friction-that is, the water-and the water was pumped by hand suction. There were no plumbers-nothing to plumb. No joints to wipe-no tears to shed over a plumber's bill. There were but two livery barns-Drury's, opposite the John Foster shoe factory, and Sam Allen's, where the Allen block now stands on East Grand avenue. The two stables were each equipped with two hacks. One of them kept a goat. The goat, for prudential reasons, when the weather was cold, slept in a hack. A stranger once attending a funeral here, and riding in the "goat hack," immediately behind the hearse, sensing the odor, suggested that the undertaker had been careless in his work, and that the corpse ought to have kept.
There were no electric lights. It was four years later than this, at the centennial in Philadelphia, in '76, that specimens of such lights were on exhibition as a possibility. In thirty-two years that "possibility" has lighted the world. Through the enterprise of W. A. Knapp, then a citizen of Beloit, and Wiley & Warner, still with us, Beloit was pushed into this "limelight" and two electric plants were installed.
In 1872 Joseph Hendley & Sons were responsible for all the gas light, and a few streets and part of the homes were lighted by their torch. Kerosene oil, with its odor, and candles galore, were the chief agencies then for perpetuating the day. There were no telephones. The "halloo" girls had not been born. The world was waiting for them. Some time after, their star was seen in the east, and while they were yet in swaddling clothes and in waiting the telephone became a fact in Beloit. George H. Ander- son, still a resident of Beloit, and Bennie Oliver (our Bennie) were the first to take their lives in their hands and admit that cach in turn respectively was the "central." Anderson was
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the American Express agent at the time, and the city clerk, and yet, in connection with this, he had time to handle all the business of the patrons of the telephone, with time to spare. Bennie was the lineman, the electrician, the "information girl," the collector and the solicitor, as well as the court of appeals in final settle- ment of disagreement.
There were no gasoline stoves, and so no skull and crossbones engraven on gasoline permits on the insurance policies.
There were no hardwood floors-hence no Mesheds or Kirman- shas. The sidewalks then were all of plank-the soft side up- and not a corn doctor within twenty miles of the city. Beloit college was still mainly a "prayer." The writer was a promising product of the college. President Chapin was then at the head of the college as its president, and associated with him were some of those grand old men-Emerson and Blaisdell and Bushnell and Porter-who laid the foundation upon which the present superstructure has been reared, and through whose unselfish labors both sides of the world have been made better. There were then but two ward schools, Nos. 1 and 2, on the east and west sides, and with them a congested high school. The kindergarten was looked upon as a heresy and its introduction finally contested as strenuously as was the street car proposition.
In 1872 Beloit had no factories, as compared with her status now along these lines. She ran to paper mills. They utilized two- thirds of the water power and gave back nothing. The help they employed were ragpickers and unskilled labor, and not enough of the latter to furnish recruits for the Salvation Army. They utilized the farmers' straw and impoverished the farmers' land. Aside from the paper mills, John Thompson, O. E. Merrill & Co., the Eclipse Windmill Company, Charles Hansen and the John Foster shoe factory were doing business on a prospective basis, and, all told, didn't feed one-half the men which one of our up-to- date institutions does today. There were three grist mills-the Blodgett mill, the Brooks mill, and the Old Red mill just west of the Keeler lumber office. The mill-race from the Turtle to the river was an open question along the south side of the city, and duck raising was a lucrative business.
There was but one "iceman," Dole by name, and the ice was doled out by him in spasmodic chunks and left upon the front steps or in the yard, to be utilized where it would do the most
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good. It was cut in Turtle creek, a good deal of the mossy bank and sand dune in the bottom of the stream being in evidence in the product.
There were two restaurants and ice cream parlors. One was manned by Ed Day and the other by Hank Talmadge, the two on State street. That both men survive and are well-to-do evi- dences the fact that they were masters of the situation and dispensed that which the people demanded. There were seven physicians-Strong, Taggart, Bell, Johnson, Brenton, Hunt and Merriman. There was no hospital, no appendicitis. The two gravestone men who followed in the wake of the physicians and took up the burdens they laid down were Jackson and Aekley. Both survive, and the former is still "taking up."
There were two banks, each with less than $50,000 deposits- L. C. Hyde and Davis & Washburn. The savings bank had been foretold. The Hon. S. T. Merrill, through whose constructive genius it was to be produced, was then wasting his substance in the riotous wasting of Rock river-he was president of the Rock river paper mill. Benjamin Brown's residence and six wooden stores had been burned in 1871, but he rebuilt that central business location, southwest corner of State and School streets, with a three-fold block of six (stone and brick) stores in 1872 and 1873.
There were three drug stores, Fenton's, Strong's and Greg- ory's, and three hotels, the Goodwin, the American house and Frank Salisbury's. There were four insurance agents, Parsons Johnson, E. P. King, Whitford & Heffren and Charles Kendall. There were six lawyers, Hon. S. J. Todd, Alfred Taggart, Horace Dearborn, Judge Mills and Richard Tattershall. The county seat at Janesville was reached by rail, stopping off at Clinton June- tion and a dinner with "Lote" Taylor.
Dr. George Bushnell was then the oracle at the First Congre- gational church, Rev. H. P. Higley at the Second, Rev. John MeLean, just beginning at the First Presbyterian church, and Dr. Fayette Royce at St. Paul's, Rev. Levi Parmerly at the Bap- tist, Father Sullivan at St. Thomas', with an itinerant at the Methodist. The church edifices, barring the first, were all back numbers and impressed the onlooker that the respective worship- ers were either poor in purse or poor in spirit, or were literally
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obeying the injunction to have with them neither purse nor scrip.
There were then no bicycles, no automobiles, no city car line and no interurban. The 4,600 to 5,000 people comprising the city were on foot.
The above outlines some of the salient features of Beloit thirty-six years ago. Let the gentle reader throw upon the canvas a picture of Beloit today, and the changes wrought during these years will be gratifyingly apparent.
The Beloit Tornado, 1883.
In the year 1878 a tornado swept over Shopiere and a couple of days afterward I saw where a house had been blown off its foundations and the material scattered along the path of the storm for half a mile, and where a green hickory tree trunk, about eighteen inches in diameter, had been completely twisted in two. We did not take warning, however, and the historie tornado of June 11, 1883, caught us all without any tornado in- surance. It came from the southwest and struck us at 5:50 p. m. Rushing suddenly up the river valley, it tore off the cover of the Northwestern railroad bridge and then divided into two branches. One of these darting onward up the river struck and demolished the East Side Paper Mill, splitting a long stone wall and throw- ing down one side of it while the other half was left standing, and there causing the only death we experienced, that of Edward Halloran, a mill hand; the second branch, turning to the north- cast, struck with its main force just about the width of Benja- min Brown's combined three blocks (southwest corner of State and East Grand avenue), tearing off two-thirds of the metal roofs, which were crumpled up like paper and dashed into the streets beyond, and pushing off the high brick cornice and part of the brick front, causing the owner a loss of $3,000 in ten minutes, but, fortunately, not injuring any one. From the solid stone walls of those blocks the tornado bounded upward and leaped northeast so high in the air that not even a shed was overturned; but it sheared off all the church steeples, First Pres- byterian, Baptist, Methodist and First Congregational, as though with one sweep of the scythe of Father Time himself. The tor- nado was immediately followed by a very heavy fall of rain, lasting about half an hour, which added much to the damage.
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Other Beloit Disasters.
By the unusually high water of the following spring the dam was torn out at the west end and a hole, estimated to be forty or fifty feet deep, was dug there by the torrent. This caused loss of waterpower, long delay and great expense, especially to the paper mill. Then within a year three large business failures had occurred, that of the Merrill and Houston Iron Works, west side, and on the cast side the Rock River Paper Company, J. M. Cobb, manager, by which failure President A. L. Chapin lost about $10,000 and S. T. Merrill his entire fortune (except what Lawyer B. M. Malone managed to save out as the property of Mrs. Merrill). Worst of all was the failure of the paper com- pany of Booth, Hinman & Co., in which more than $200,000 of the savings of Beloit people were swallowed up.
For many years also the city and town had been struggling under a great burden of railroad bonds. At one time, as we are informed, the debt could have been settled for about $40,000. Our most celebrated lawyer, Matt Carpenter, doubtless honestly, advised the Beloit authorities, however, to reject the offered com- promise, assuring them that they would not have to pay any- thing. The legal and final decision of the case was against Beloit and before the matter was settled by a final payment in recent years we had paid, it is said, in principal and interest on those bonds, about $250,000. This load was still being carried when, about twenty-five years ago, old Beloit took on that new lease of life which is so graphically described by Mr. Dow in his chap- ter on the last quarter century of Beloit manufactures.
This business revival included the building up of the new South Beloit by the Wheelers, and caused many additions to our city plat, the whole list of which is here subjoined as of historic interest :
Additions, west side-At a very early date, south of the south bridge, was platted Fisher, Mills and Goodhue's addition, and west of that, Adams'. Then north along the river came Hack- ett's first, west of that his second, and still further west Hack- ett's third addition. North of Grand avenue is Tenney's addi- tion, then Hanchett and Lawrence's next, Merrill's, north of that Noggle's, further north, Dow's addition and subdivision, and still further up the river Twin Oaks addition, and Edge-
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water. Besides small reserves and subdivisions we find, west of Hanchett and Lawrence, Walker's addition, and further north, Hopkins', then Rockwell's and, west of Dow's, the New School addition.
On the east side, near the state line, was Goodhue's subdi- vision (now occupied largely by the two railroads), and the old public landing became Rufus King's subdivision. Northeast of the dam are Peet and Salmon's, Wheeler's, Hackett's fourth ad- dition, Adams' addition, Riverside, Weirick and Dow's, Cham- berlain's, Yates', Argall's, Prairie avenue, Park addition, Eaton place, Groveland place, Strong's first, second and third; and, east of the city cemetery, Maplewood Park addition; south of that, Hillcrest Park, Hinman's addition, Pickard and Dow's ad- dition, Hubbard's, Merrill's, Fairview and Poydras Park addi- tions, Dow's second, East Broad, East End and Athletic Park additions, and south of the creek on Manchester street, Stras- burg's addition.
Then for South Beloit, south of the state line and about the mouth of Turtle creek, west of the Rockton road, is Goodhue's addition. East of that road and of the Northwestern railroad also, we have Eureka, Central, South Beloit original plat, Oliver's and McAleer's tracts, and, between the railroad and the Rock- ton road, Clark's addition and Oak Park addition. Latest, of all, recently in 1908, an addition has been platted on the west side of Rockton road. The successful efforts of the Wheelers and others which have secured several substantial manufactories for this region and have made South Beloit a place of about 600 in- habitants, with a fine public school and school building, deserves this separate and more complete record.
South Beloit.
Some of the pioneers of Beloit, notably Professor Jackson J. Bushnell and Dr. E. N. Clark, held a theory that the territory now known as South Beloit was a good location for a village. Before them Rev. Dr. Montgomery also held the same view, thought that the opposite hill from the one where the college is now located would be a good site for a girl's school or seminary and demonstrated his faith by building the residence, bought later by Bushnell and now known as the Wheeler homestead. In the early fifties Dr. Clark made a map or plat showing the
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west half of the Doolittle farm laid off in lots extending from the Clark residence on Oak Grove avenue north to Turtle creek. Nothing, however, came of these first promotings.
Their successor was W. H. Wheeler, who conceived the idea of opening up this territory as a manufacturing district. He was at that time president of the Eclipse Wind Engine Company, and in 1883 bought the Bushnell homestead and commenced negotiations with the owners of the farms abutting on the state line and lying between the Rockton and the Roscoe roads with a view of locating thereon the industry of which he was the head. Failing to reach any arrangement with the owners of the land, he moved the industry to its present location, where it sub- sequently became the Fairbanks-Morse Manufacturing Company. Continuing negotiations with the owners, however, he succeeded in 1901 in acquiring the property aforesaid, inducing the rail- road companies to put in a joint switch system, and in locating two industries, namely, the machine works of John Thompson & Sons Manufacturing Company and the Racine Knitting Mills. In connection with this movement 200 lots of the first recorded plat of the district were sold and the enterprise as a manufac- turing site was fairly launched.
At this writing the result of Mr. Wheeler's work in promot- ing industries and the development of South Beloit sums up thus :
Industries-Racine Feet Knitting Mills, John Thompson & Sons Manufacturing Company; Slater & Marsden, machine shop and foundry ; Kent's Boiler Works and Store Building; MeLean & Sons, planing mill; Atwood-Davis Sand Company; Askin & Green, coal business and eement contractors; Noren's laundry, and the Warner Instrument Company, the latter being univer- sally recognized as the highest class and most modern manufac- turing establishment of its kind to be found in the western coun- try.
As the South Beloit Land Association, Mr. Wheeler and his associates, C. E. Wheeler and George M. Allen, have effected total sales of about 500 lots and traets, constructed four miles of eement sidewalk, laying out and grading the corresponding streets, have put in about one mile of water main, sinee turned over to the Beloit Water, Gas and Electric Company, who have joined it to the Beloit system and have also extended their gas
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and electric lines into this district; they have also been instru- mental in the enterprises that have spanned Turtle creek with three steel bridges. About 100 good residences are now erected on this tract.
The start thus given south of the line has stimulated other promotions, the most notable of which is that of Robert B. Clark and Dr. Arthur C. Helm, who have built up a fine residence dis- trict along the line of the Interurban Electric railroad. Messrs. Rollin Radway, Dennis Hayes and George Shaw have also made good starts with their respective subdivisions. On the west side of the river, Messrs. Lou Raubenheimer and Harry Adams have. made a fine showing with their subdivision south of the state line road, now called Shirland avenue. All told, the several South Beloit subdivisions show a total population of about 1,200 people, which represents the growth since 1901.
That the pioneer founders of Beloit were men of muscle, brain and courage, who wrought conscientiously and with foresight and believed in what they did, is true; it is also true, however, that their successors have been men equally able to do things. We are just now, for the fifth time, raising $10,000 for Beloit college. Nevertheless, until the closing years of the nineteenth century, Beloit, though justly proud of her standing as an edu- cational, a social and religious center, and nominally a city, was only a town. Nothing worthy of much pride had yet been done in the line of public improvements, while our public utilities were not up to city standards. But when the time was ripe and the demand for these things became imperative by reason of the city's rapid development of commercial and industrial in- terests, there were not wanting men, who were able to grapple with and successfully solve the new problems. For example, pub- lic health and convenience demanded paved streets and sanitary sewers; owing to limitations in the city charter these could be obtained only on petition of persons desiring them, and such petitions were rarely presented. An ordinance, incorporating a part of "the general charter law," was therefore passed by the city council and became a city law, which stood the test of re- view by the Supreme Court of our state. Under this law a Board of Public Works was inaugurated, to have charge of public im- provements like street paving and a sewer system, and that is the source of the better appearance and improved healthfulness
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of our city. The growth along both these lines and in the mat- ter of cement sidewalks, also, during the past ten years, has been noticeable and gratifying.
In the direction of our public utilties. water serv- ice, gas and electric light, when the demand came for im- provement that demand was heeded. Men and money were found to carry on the work and under wise management as a merger company and with expenditure during the last two years of about half a million dollars on the enlargement and improve- ment of their plants, the water, gas and electric services of the city have been raised to a standard of excellence that is justly a cause for civie pride. In due time also has come the Interurban line, with its great power house in this city, giving us closer con- nections north and south, the new fireproof Hilton hotel, second to none in southern Wisconsin, and last of all our Beloit street railway, opened in July, 1907, and already considered by the pub- lie and by its owners a most gratifying success. The doubling of Beloit's population, also, within the last ten years reveals a manifest reason for our new watchword of "Greater Beloit," applied not only to the college but equally to the city, a busy, bustling, thriving city now of about sixteen thousand souls; a city of homes and good order; a city the products of whose mills and factories supply not only domestie wants but also the de- mands of a widely extended and extending foreign trade; a city in whose business houses and magnificent manufacturing plants are the visible evidences of commercial activity and thrift; a city, which is the home and proud possessor of Beloit college, an institution of world-wide fame and which just now in June, 1908, has brought its endowment up to the million dollar mark; a city, the beauty of whose external appearance gave it long since the designation, "Beautiful Beloit"; a city whose public monuments and utilities testify already to civic pride and the enterprise and publie spirit of her citizens; a city whose railway, postal, tele- graph and telephone services can hardly be surpassed. Beloit is, still further, a home not only of good work but also of good thought, a city whose transforming influence, as an educational, a social and religious and moral eenter, is recognized and felt in communities and regions both near and far away. Therefore it needs not the vision of a seer for us, looking forward from the height of such achievement, to forecast a future history of Be-
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