USA > Wisconsin > Washington County > Washington County, Wisconsin : past and present > Part 5
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E
FEREE
NEW PUBLIC SCHOOL, SCHLEISINGERVILLE
TER
STREET SCENE, SCHLEISINGERVILLE
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a stretch of land along the rapids. Soon afterwards Byron Kilbourn of Milwaukee came along, stopped at the same place, and was delighted with the mill site. He went back to Milwaukee, got James Kneeland and Dr. E. B. Wolcott interested in the enterprise, and the trio bought eight eighty-acre tracts of land adjoining Higgins's holdings, and made him a partner. That was in the fall of 1845. Before the year slipped away, the surveyor Jasper Vlieth of Milwaukee had finished the plat of West Bend. On his own expense, E. B. Wolcott piled up a dam and built a sawmill and also a gristmill with the stip- ulation that the water power was to belong to him. The dam and the sawmill were finished in 1846, and the gristmill in 1848. The sawmill was rented by George N. Irish, and the gristmill was rented by Daniel Cotton and his brother. Meanwhile the settlers had come in platoons. In the summer of 1845 Isaac Verbeck took up land on the spot which later was nicknamed "Battle Creek" in commemoration of a family feud which came off there. He and M. A. T. Farmer had with their families moved from Pennsylvania to Waukesha county where two brothers of the former, Joseph and Willian Verbeck, had already settled. But they all liked the West Bend country better, which Isaac on his wanderings had come across and admired. So they, with two thousand pounds of luggage and furniture brought along from the East moved to the land of their preference. Among the luggage was a big chest which the practical Yankees had con- structed of four doors from their homes in the Keystone state. When it was taken apart, each one had a door for his shack. They moved into their temporary abodes in the beginning of November. In Jan- uary, 1846, Jacob E. Young arrived on foot. It was on a cold even- ing when he halted at Verbeck's shanty, coming from the south. The next morning his nimble-tongued daughter Jeanette told him of the land along the river bank. He took a look at it, and on the same afternoon hiked to Milwaukee where on the following day he ap- peared in the land office and bought a quarter-section of land, and in the office of Kilbourn, Wolcott & Co. appropriated two lots in the village. He paid everything with gold coin, having one thousand dollars of the precious metal on his person. In the land office he in his forgetfulness left his bag of gold lay. But the officer was an honest soul, and when Young came in distress for his treasure, he handed it back to him with an earnest admonition. In the spring he built him- self a roomy log house. In the fall his brother Christian arrived with his family and his mother. The aforesaid George N. Irish arrived in 1846 from Cedar creek and erected a log house in which he also
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kept a tavern which enjoyed quite a renown in pioneer days. He and Verbeck boarded the mechanics from Milwaukee, who erected and fitted up the mills. The log-house inn later developed into the "American House," the first hotel of West Bend. In August, 1846, Moses Weil arrived. He was born in 1798 in the former French province of Alsace, and, when in Paris, had witnessed the return of Napoleon I from the battle of Waterloo. He built the first frame house on the "Sharp Corner," and opened up the first general store. The lumber for it his son Paul hauled from Milwaukee on wagons drawn by oxen, and his assortment of goods he got in the same way. Of other early settlers may he mentioned : Jehiel H. Baker the mer- chant, and William Wightman the innkeeper, both arriving from Michigan in the summer of 1846; B. Goetter who in the spring of 1849 opened up the first brewery and later erected the "Washington House," one of the largest and finest hotels in the state at the time, and for many years the preferred rendezvous of the German pioneers ; John Wagner who came in 1848, and John Potter the merchant, who came in 1849; and William H. Ramsey who was the first male school teacher and taught the village school in the winter of 1847-48.
Young America .- This hamlet was founded in 1851 by Morris Wait, when he harnessed the rushing waves of the Milwaukee river with a dam and made the stored-up power run his sawmill. The mill was, according to pioneer notions, an up-to-date plant, but hardly had it "yanked out" lumber for three hours, when a fire started and con- sumed the building to the ground. It almost seemed as though that was the end of the village. But five years later, in 1856, it re- ceived another and stronger impetus, when Cook & Elliott built a flouring mill on the site of the burned sawmill. Again a fire frus- trated the efforts of the town builders. On September 19, 1856, the mill, after being almost completed, burned down. But it was rebuilt at once, this time of brick. On August 10, 1857, the mill- stones turned for the first time. The mill had two sets of stones which daily could grind one hundred and fifty barrels of extra fine flour which found a ready market in Milwaukee. The mill owners also ran a cooper shop, manufacturing their own barrels. A bridge was built across the river, which was considered the finest piece of iron bridge engineering north of Milwaukee in those days. Soon after its completion, the mill was sold to A. W. Coe who also fitted up a general store. Shortly before the outbreak of the Civil war he sold the mill to W. P. Horton, and he in turn soon disposed of it to Fred Hart. The milling business had for some reason received
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a kink, and several other owners vainly tried to bring it back on a paying basis. At last it was given up, and the mill was left to rust and crumble, and many other buildings shared the same fate. The place, once prosperous and promising, is today a very quiet and sequestered hamlet.
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Vol. I-4
CHAPTER VIII
THE FIGHT FOR THE COUNTY SEAT
Because Washington county has some thirty namesakes in the Union, who all hit upon the happy idea of calling themselves after the Father of the Country, it is necessary to say that this particular one lies in Wisconsin. It contains 431 square miles and borders in the south on Waukesha county, in the west on Dodge county, in the north on Fond du Lac and Sheboygan counties, and in the east on Ozaukee county. The latter formerly was a part of Washington county, but since the legislative act of March 7, 1853, runs its own affairs. The separation was the result of a heated quarrel about the seat of the county's administration. In newly settled parts quarrels of this kind were a staple article.
When on December 7, 1836, the Legislature had created the county, Port Washington was made the county seat. Until 1840 the county belonged to the judicial circuit of Milwaukee county, and had also its administrative machinery run from there. When on August 13, 1840, by the Act of Organization it received its own administration, and Port Washington had fallen in decay and was almost deserted, the necessity of the removal of the county seat was pressing. Thus Grafton received the honor, which was formerly called Hamburg. But when on February 20, 1845, the county received its own court, plans were again ripe for the removal of the seat. This time four places, Port Washington, Cedarburg, Grafton, and West Bend, fought for the honor which also included material advantages, and because each one was bound to get it, and consequently none could get it, the administration led a kind of nomadic life; it was a county seat on wheels, meting out justice and decrees here and there, where it seemed best. From 1847 until the separation Port Washington again was the county seat.
In 1848 it was attempted to settle the burning question by a popu- lar vote. Three elections were held, none of which brought the de- cision but plentiful were the accusations of foul play. Thereupon
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the people asked the Legislature for help. That high body, instead of ordaining a county seat, divided the county in a northern and a southern half to the great surprise of the inhabitants. Those of the south half which received the name of "Tuskola" were to vote on the measure. They, of course, voted against the division. In 1852 a vote was taken on the question of whether Grafton or West Bend was to be the county seat. Grafton won out, but the election was annulled because at one place gross irregularities were traced. This was too much for the patience of the lawmakers at Madison, and on March 19, 1853, they cut the Gordian knot by dividing the county from the north to the south, to stay divided. The smaller eastern half was named Ozaukee county and received Port Washington as county seat, while the larger western half, with West Bend as county seat, kept the old name of Washington county.
Thus ended the thirteen years' fight for a county seat. The follow- ing skirmishes by the opposition, like the hiding of the realty records when the authorities of West Bend wanted to get them in Port Washington, could not change the law, and are a humorous after- math of the affair.
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CHAPTER IX
SOME INCIDENTS OF PIONEER LIFE
All old settlers who came in touch with the Indians agree that they were peaceable and friendly. There is no case known where a white man was harmed by a redskin. The following little story throws a flash light on the relations of the two so widely different races to each other, of which the Caucasian was nevertheless destined to su- persede the Indian :
In the fall of 1847 three Yankee families ( the names of the families were Curns, Chasty [little May's], and McCormack [little Billy's]) settled on a tract of land a half a mile north of the former County Poor Farm. They huddled in a single shanty built of rough boards until log houses would be finished. Shanties and tents were the first abodes of the pioneers. There were two children among the new- comers, five-year-old May and three-year-old Billy. One day at the frugal dinner they overheard their parents talk of buying chickens as soon as somebody would get to Milwaukee. At that time Milwaukee was the nearest place where the settlers could do their buying. At three o'clock the children came home to get their afternoon lunch, saying that they intended to go to Milwaukee to buy chickens. No- body, however, took their babble serious, and no further attention was paid to them.
Night fell, but the children did not return to the shanty. The par- ents, plodding in their mind for an explanation, at length came to think that the little ones must have been in dead earnest when they talked of going to Milwaukee to buy chickens. Little May and little Billy had started on the way and were now undoubtedly lost somewhere in the wilderness. The anguish of the parents grew when hour after hour passed and the little tots were not found in the immediate vicin- ity of the settlement. The mother of May took her disappearance very hard, while the mother of Billy was less disconsolate although her boy was the younger one of the two. The few neighbors who had settled in the vicinity were aroused and helped to look for the chil-
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dren. All night the neighborhood was searched with lanterns, but it was in vain. The following morning each one took a gun and the search was continued. They dispersed in different directions, and the one that found the little ones was to call. But the sun was low in the west, and not a trace of them had been found. Now one of the men proposed that two of them should go to a settlement near West Bend to get someone familiar with the Indian tongue. Thence they should go to the Indian village not far away and get some of the Indians to join in the searching party.
This was done. After the Indians had learned what was up, they sent one of their tribe into the pasture to get two ponies. Two lank "Injuns" mounted them, and accompanied by two of their keen-scented dogs and led by the three Whites, the party started toward the south. It was growing dark when they arrived at the settlement of the three families, and following the advice of the Indians who with the aid of signs made themselves intelligible, the search was postponed until the following morning.
With daybreak the Indians and the Whites set out. It did not take long until the party came to a brook in the soft bank of which the footprints of little shoes could easily be seen. The dogs sniffed at the traces and followed them in a northwesterly direction. The Indians could hardly keep up with them, let alone the Whites. The steeple chase hunt may have lasted for twenty minutes when the dogs barked. A moment later the Indians found the children. In a swamp, beside a fallen tree, they sat. Fatigue and hunger had brought them to the verge of death, for they had wandered about the woods for two nights and a day without anything to eat and without protection. To slake their thirst, the little girl drew water with the palm of her hand and drank, and in this way also let her younger companion in distress drink.
Who can describe the joy of the parents over the recovery of their children, after a state little short of despair ? The mother of little May swooned when they laid her daughter into her arms. Her husband rewarded the Indians with a twenty dollar gold piece, a big sum in pioneer days. The father of little Billy loaded the Indian ponies to their carrying capacity with provisions. May and Billy grew up, the former probably with a dim recollection of the dreadful experience of her early youth, and both with a feeling of thankfulness for their Indian friends who had saved their life.
* * * * *
When the first settlers arrived in Washington county, the country
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was a vast wilderness-the forest primeval covered its plains and hills. Few of the younger generation can form an idea of wild lands and the life on them. The woods were so dense that it was impossible to see farther than a few rods in any direction. No street led through them save a casual Indian trail, and for days one could wedge through the rank vegetation to find a miserable board shack with a hopeful pioneer in it. In night time no light from some farm house shimmered through the darkness at almost every stone throw, as now-a-days. Very often the traveler had to take night lodging in the seemingly endless wilds, no matter how much he dreaded it. Here is another story of those days :
It was in the spring of 1847. In the northern part of Town Fre- donia, in the old county of Washington, a German had settled with his family. With united efforts they had cleared a small part of their homestead, when one morning, after some trees had been felled, the woman wanted to get the oxen to drag the logs away. One of them had a bell tied to his neck, the sound of which could be heard from the distance where the animals were grazing. She set out in the direc- tion of the sound, while her husband continued his work. But some time passed and she had not come back. Uneasy he went to the shanty expecting to find her there. But he only found the baby which had been left all alone while the parents had gone to their hard day's work.
The mother had followed the sound of the bell and had lost her way. More and more she had deviated from the right direction, and it grew dark without her having found the way home. It was a weird night for the poor woman. The wild beasts howled around her, and to the anxiety which befalls everyone lost at night came the harassing thought of her nursing baby and her worried husband. The sleepless night passed. In the morning she reached the clearing of a young man who did not understand her German address. Her knowledge of Eng- lish was confined to but a few words, but she succeeded in making him understand who her next neighbor was and that her home was near a little lake. The young settler offered the tired and hungry woman something to eat, and after she had rested awhile, he led her to the next lake in the town of Scott. They went around its entire shore but nowhere was a trace of a settlement. On the way back they met a set- tler who opined the lake to be Schwinn's lake in the southern part of the town of Farmington. They now started for that lake, the man walking ahead, clearing a way through the dense brush, and the woman following.
But night came again, and another day and another night, and the
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home of the woman had not yet been found. On the third morning they came to Schwinn's lake, sore-footed, worn out, and almost starved, only to be disappointed again, for the settlement was not there. They now turned to the north, and after a walk of a few more miles arrived on the clearing of a German, Mr. Beger, who was acquainted with the neighbor of the woman and who brought her home.
Before she reached her home, she heard the woods echo with the voices of men, for her husband and some neighbors had not yet given up the search for her. When she stepped into her hut, the baby shouted lustily at her. The family was united again, after the wild had separ- ated them for days. * *
* * *
As Washington county of today has a town which bears the name of an Indian chief, so a township of old Washington county, of that portion which was sliced off to end the fuss about the county seat, was named after an Indian chief's daughter. It is the town of Mequon. A pathetic story is told by an old settler of the life of that Indian maid. It was at the beginning of summer in 1845 when in the woods he met a young Indian and a pretty Indian girl. The former he had seen several times before. He was a spruce and friendly youth with whom he could lead a scanty conversation by means of signs. He showed him the ginseng root and other roots and tubers which were edible and savory, and formed a part of the Indian fare. He was not of the Pottawatomies who lived in the country about, but belonged to the tribe of the Menomonies who lived to the southwest, in the county of Waukesha. When he saw his white friend, he waved his hand at him to step closer. Pointing to himself he said: "Pewaukee;" and pointing to the girl he said: "Mequon." He then pointed to a bevy of wild pigeons which in those days were abundant in the woods, and his lips again uttered the word "Mequon." The settler concluded from this that the girl's name was "Mequon," and that the word meant "wild pigeon." It was probably the first time that one of the settlers of that section heard the word "Mequon." The settler learned that the girl was the only daughter of the old Pottawatomie chief Waubekee whose tribe had their village on the western bank of the Pigeon creek and the Milwaukee river, where the tepees snuggled behind a ridge which shielded them from the northwest winds and where running water was always at hand. When the southeastern part of the terri- tory of Wisconsin was divided into counties and towns, the old pioneers chose the name of Mequon for their town, in honor of that beautiful
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Indian princess. The original Indian name of Pigeon creek or Pigeon river was Mequonsippi, because its banks were the breeding place of innumerable wild pigeons. In the fall of 1845 the old chief Waubekee broke up camp and with his people moved north into the town of Fredonia where he stayed for a short time, and then moved farther north. The girl was seen several times later, but seemed to be in a very unhappy and run-down condition, and died shortly after the re- moval from Fredonia. Her lonely grave is said to be on the height skirting Elkhart lake. There is little doubt that Pewaukee and Meq- uon felt a strong liking for each other, that old Waubekee for some reason was opposed to a marriage, or had disposed otherwise of his daughter, and that she died of grief over her hopeless love. Pewaukee afterward was never seen again. The memory of the beautiful Indian maid still lingers in the parts where she once lived.
CHAPTER X
THE LEGEND OF HOLY HILL
The chains of hills which run through the county in a direction southwest toward south assume in the town of Erin the character of a miniature mountain country. They almost fill the eastern part of the township and give it a touch of ruggedness as bold as it is found nowhere else in the county. Surrounded by a retinue of lower hills rises the wooded cone of Holy Hill or Lapham's Peak or Hermit Hill -the vulgar sometimes call it the "Sugar Loaf"-to an altitude of 824 feet above Lake Michigan. If you add the height of Lake Michi- gan above sea level, 578 feet, you have a relative height of 1,402 feet. The hill is the second highest elevation in the state. But already its absolute height is quite imposing, and it is visible for miles around. It happened that a legend took hold of it, and for decades it has been a place of pilgrimage of the Catholics, and is known as such all over the state and far beyond its borders. A church decks its summit, and a monastery leans to its side, which is in charge of Carmelite monks. The legend on which the virtues and hopes of a pilgrimage to Holy Hill are founded and which may serve as a sam- ple of the origin of places where the most helpless of humans still hope for help runs thus :
Many years ago it happened that a farmer was on his way home from the village of Hartford to his farm among the hills. It was late at night, the full moon had just risen, and at his approach from the west the hill with inky blackness stood bold against the silvery light of the eastern sky. The outlines of the hill were as sharp as those of a silhouette, and on its summit the farmer could discern the shape of a cross and of a human being kneeling in front of it. He may have watched the queer spectacle for an hour, when the devotee slowly rose and disappeared in the dark woods on the hillside. One morning soon afterwards the farmer again saw the strange being performing religious exercises on top of the hill.
The news of the arrival of the hermit soon spread through the
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vicinage, and upon investigation it was found that he lived in a dugout made by himself in a crevice on the eastern side of the hill.
Nobody molested him. His only occupation seemed to consist of his pilgrimages to the summit and to prostrate himself in prayer. By and by he waxed more confidential with the people of the neigh- borhood, responding to their greetings, and casually entering on a talk about religious subjects. One farmer especially was favored with his trust, and to him he related his life story, the gist of which follows :
His name was François Soubrio. His birthplace was about twenty miles from Strassburg, in the former French province of Alsace. His parents belonged to the gentry of the country, and they intended their son for the priesthood. While he was studying, he fell in love with a prepossessing girl who lived not far from the convent where he prepared for his work in the vineyard of the Lord, and when he saw that she also loved him, he threw his vow of chastity to the winds and was publicly engaged to her. Whereupon he fell in disgrace with his family, and also incurred the ban of the church. To let the affair settle down a little, he bade his fiancée farewell with the promise to come back in a year. When at the end of the year he returned, he found that his love was as faithless as she was beautiful, and in a fit of maddening jealousy he killed her.
Thereupon he fled to America, landing in Quebec. He became a monk in one, of the monasteries of that old Canadian city. Many years he spent in retirement, while the harpies of remorse were torturing his conscience for the break of his vow and the still greater sin of a rash murder. The only relief from his soul's pangs he found in prayer, in penance, and in the reading of old French manuscripts which he found in some dusty corner of his cell. Among the latter was a manuscript which appeared to have been the journal of Jacques Marquette during the summer and fall of 1673, and in which was a detailed account of his memorable trip with Louis Joliet on the Fox and Wisconsin rivers to the Mississippi, and back on the Illinois, and along the western shore of Lake Michigan to Green Bay, from where they had started. His attention was particularly focussed on the report of a side trip during the voyage. On his return Father Marquette had landed on the mouth of a creek, and after a good day's walk west had come to the foot of a steep, high and cone-shaped hill which he ascended, and at the top of which he built an altar of rub- ble and erected a cross. In the name of his patron saint, the Virgin Mary-thus the record read on-he dedicated the place as holy ground
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for all times. After that he returned to the landing place of his boats and continued on his journey.
François, upon reading this, felt that now the way to the complete atonement of his sins had been pointed out to him. He fell on his knees and pledged himself to find that holy hill again, and to re- place the cross on its summit, doubtless decayed long since, by a new one. The description of the shore, and a map sketched by Joliet and added to the handwriting, made it easy for him to find the place again. He set out for it, but was taken severely sick in Chicago, which inter- rupted his travel. Both of his legs were partly paralyzed. Crippled he finally reached the hill. It was late at night, and on his knees he crept through the dense underbrush up to the top where he spent the rest of the night in prayer to the Virgin Mary. With daybreak he arose rejuvenated and in the full possession of his former good health. The palsy had disappeared.
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