Dane County, Wisconsin - Chapter 4 (1 of 2 so headed), 1905

Whether or not the first settlers choose the best land is a question which has long been in dispute, and unless other localities can furnish more conclusive evidence than is found in the history of Dane county the question is likely to remain without a definite answer. However, there are some fairly clear lessons to be learned in the varying choice of land by different classes of people at the same time, and the changes in this respect from one time to another. Without doubt the early farmers were "economic men" to the extent that they intended to take, other things being equal, the most productive land available ; but it must not be forgotten that production meant to them, just as it does to an economist, the return for outlay; or it may not be overstating the case to say they were looking for the greatest net gain. This net gain is by no means a simple homogeneous quantity, and moreover, it must be reckoned for a term of years. The farming class is usually credited with only moderate long-sightedness, and in the case of the pioneers they may well be forgiven if they were more concerned for the welfare of their immediate families than for remote posterity. They took the land that promised in their judgment, the greatest reward within the near future ; but in the matter of judgment there was a great lack of uniformity.

In the first place the land near the capital was taken With little regard to quality, and in the main this was a wise move, though not to the extent that might be supposed. Outside of the city limits the farms of the town of Madison will not average as high in price at the present time as those of several other towns which lie at the maximum distance from a market. Contrary to some of the histories of Dane county the first entries were not those made by the speculators in 1836 with a view to owning comer lots in the law-making city. From the entry-book it is seen that a small quantity of land was sold in 1835. A Mr. Rowan entered thirty-five acres on the east side of Lake Monona and settled upon it, and several sections were bought the same year by speculators. In 1836 the land around the Four Lakes was taken, each buyer hoping the capital would be located in his neighborhood, or at any rate that a popular summer resort would grow up on the lake shore, and thus contribute to his prosperity. A few hundred acres along the Wisconsin River were taken by men, who in their mental vision, saw a great commercial center near where Prairie du Sac now stands. Mr. Brigham and others took land near Blue Mounds in hopes of fortunes from digging lead. Thus nothing can be predicated as to the sort of land chosen by the real tiller of the soil until such purchasers began to arrive in 1839 or *40, and little can be known of the motives governing selection after 1854 because the unoccupied land was by that time very scarce.

The difficulties in the way of definite results in this chapter can hardly be exaggerated. In the first place the geological maps are not scrupulously accurate and it cannot always be determined from them whether a particular piece of land is hilly or level, prairie or woods. In the next place there was often a variety of considerations that resulted in a particular selection; perhaps it was a choice between having neighbors or being isolated; perhaps a choice between congenial neighbors and those with whom even conversation was almost impossible. Nearness to a highway, to a river thought to be navigable, even to places where it seemed game would be abundant, turned the scale against odds which would now seem of greater weight ; but oftener than either or all of these, the question of securing a convenient supply of wood and water was the controlling influence. Again the settlers "squatted" on the claims until they were compelled to enter them, that is until the land came into the market, and thus the time of entry may or may not show the order in which different claims were taken.

until wheat could be grown ; in many cases a house could be dispensed with for some months; but in no case could the use of water be foregone while a well was being sunk, and although it may seem that hauling fire-wood a few miles is a matter of no great consequence, the man who knew the West only through the medium of exaggerated reports telling of awful storms and cold, hardly dared risk living more than a stone's throw from fuel.** However, there are some few facts among all this tangled mass which speak out distinctly. That the settlers were almost without exception discriminating in their choice of land is seen by the shape of the farms taken. In the great prairie region where-^e quarter-section is about like another, the buyer or homesteader almost invariably prefers a farm in as compact shape as possible ; but on the patchwork surface of Dane county there was much difference in forties falling within one general class, and as a result the farms present every possible combination of forty acre lots. Often a hundred sixty acres was made up by a row of forties across the section, or not infrequently they cornered only, and occasionally one man would own land entirely surrounding some forty or eighty which was rejected on account of being too swampy or too hilly. The first settlers having once made these selections, the later arrivals were compelled to make purcfiases equally irregular in contour. Some of these inconvenient farms have since been made more compact by exchanges, but irregularity is still the rule.*^

Of the swamp land approximately half was taken by choice before the act of 1851 gave it to the state, and after that date it sold about as readily as other land until only a small quantity remained.*® This was owing to the scantiness of hay to be had on the drier land, also, shallow wells could be made in this low ground affording water for stock or .even for house use.

The most interesting and at the same time the hardest questions to answer, are those relating to the choice between prairie and wooded land. In the first place there were so many little

^One German when advised to take land out in the open remarked that he expected to carry all the family fire-wood on his back for some years to come and a few rods was far enough.

groves scattered about the prairies, and so much open land distributed through the woods that a great many settlers were enabled to choose both woods and prairie, or other open land, and have the advantages of wood and water without the disadvantages incident to a farm composed wholly of either woodland or prairie. No doubt this was the wisest choice possible, and as nearly as may be learned from the old settlers, such a choice was made mainly by the New England, New York, and English people, while the Germans, Norwegians, and Irish preferred the woods.

It will be remembered that a considerable part of the oak land of Dane county consisted of "openings" and the choicest of this was, indeed, desirable land; it was easily plowed, and especially while winter wheat was the main dependence, yielded the best returns ; plenty of wood was found upon it, and yet the matter of grubbing out stumps was not formidable. Hence those who much preferred prairie to solid timber land still might take the "openings" in preference to either.

The Germans and Norwegians were not at all' averse to hilly land, perhaps because they were accustomed to hills at home.** The foreigners were almost without exception afraid of wind storms and for this reason avoided the open. The first three Norwegians to enter claims in the county chose them in the oak land near the northeast comer of the town of Albion. However, the Norwegians were keen in the choice of land as in other things ; they soon learned to take the oak openings in preference to the more thickly wooded land, while many of them settled on the border of the prairie.*^® It was the Ohio farmer who feared the prairies least; he had seen something of them before and had learned by experience the comparative ease of subduing such soil in contrast to the slow and laborious task of ridding the land of brush and stumps. "Wheeler prairie" and "Stoner prairie" were named in honor of the first settlers, both from Ohio ; and "Tobacco prairie" in Rock county was also settled by Ohio farmers. In the north part of Dane county is "Dane prairie" much the largest prairie within the county, covering an area equal in size to

^History of DaM0 County, p. 562, article by H. A. Tenney. "<*From statements made by Professor J. Q. Emery of Albion, Wis., who has been familiar with the Norwegians of Dane county almost from the first.

It is in the settlement of this prairie, if at all, that general preferences can be traced. The records of land sales throw very little light on the subject, the reasons for which are already enumerated. It is therefore necessary to rely on other data, which fortunately are abundant and, conclusive. Here as elswhere the woods were taken first, it being nearly all occupied before any considerable part of the prairie was settled.*'^ One emigrafit who had traversed the length of the prairie - ^perhaps twenty miles - with his ox team, was asked if he thought the dreary waste would ever be inhabited, and answered ; "Yes, but not in your day or mine," yet the good man lived to see farms on the prairie selling for seventy-five dollars per acre, while the wood farms were worth not over one-half or two-thirds that amount. The last and strongest objection to living on the prairie was the difficulty of digging a well. This was before the time of drilling wells, and the farmers, with only powder and pick found it almost impossible to go 'any distance into the solid magnesian limestone with which this tract is underlaid, yet there was little if any water above it. The demand for more wheat land made a marked advance in the early '50's. The price of wheat, taking a boom at this time, overcame nearly all the prejudice to any land that could possibly produce that cereal. During the winter of 1853-4 many attempts were made to dig wells on the prairie, some of them being sunk to a depth of seventy-five or eighty feet; but no water of any consequence was found. At the same time wheat had reached the remarkable price of two dollars a bushel, and nothing further was needed to bring a general rush of wheat growers to the prairie ; even the question of drinking-water was of secondary importance, and in not a few cases all the water used was hauled from Lodi, a distance of five miles or more. It was the restless Yankee who left his little cabin and clearing to begin again on the inhospitable prairie. These "Yankees" were either directly from New England or were those already initiated to pioneer life in western New York or Ohio. The German was the last to i^Tbe account of the settlement of Dane prairie is taken from statements of old settlers, principally by Messrs. Cbas. Loper, Robert Steele, Jas. Steele and Amos Chase, all of whom have lived on or near Dane prairie for half a century or more.

leave the shelter of the woods, as is seen by the solid German settlement of Roxbury and the west part of Dane, one of the most thickly wooded districts of the county. It is true that the Germans have long since learned to appreciate the prairie, but it was after the first and hardest problems had been solved. As to the English and Scotch it may be said that they, like the Norwegians, were rapidly Americanized and were soon awake to the advantages of open land. But for staying qualities the German and the Norwegian take front rank. Without any exception they have done better than merely to hold their own in every locality where they have settled, while the Yankees, English, and Scotch have been carried on to become pioneers again, or have quit farming altogether and moved to the city.

Let us not be misunderstood. There was no class of settlers who at first preferred the bleak prairie ; very little of the prairie other than mere fringes was taken till late in the '40's.'^^ Sticking so closely to the woods was a corollary to the proposition that wheat was the only crop to be raised. Wheat did yield better on the stiff clays of the woods than in the more friable soils of »the openings arid prairies, and it was the general belief that clover and timothy, which began to relieve the monotony of wheat growing, would also succeed better on the same kind of soil.*^^ A traveller, in 1842, gives a glimpse of pioneer life, and incidentally adds a little testimony to the statement that New Englanders were among the first who settled the prairie.*** The problems to

"The causes for this, both true and imaginary, are set forth in contemporaneous writings: "Some of them [i. e., roads] lead through extensive prairies where timber Is scarce, but we apprehend that even these large prairies will be found more available than many suppose. . . . As we were crossing one of these prairies a short time since we found a man in the midst of It, quite out of sight of land, as we say, building a fence and going ahead with a farm. He got the rtiils ready split, four miles distant, at ten dollars per thousand." - Madison Argus, July 28, 1846.

M "Dined at the house of a thriving New Englander, who from small beginnings, is now the proprietor of five thousand acres of prairie land; he has enclosed several fields of Indian corn with ditches instead of rails - answering the double purpose of staying the prairie fire and keeping ofC cattle ; he had sunk a well and built a stable, barn, and hogpen, on a large scale* and like a wise man had lived up to this time in a simple log-and-mud cabin. I am really at a loss to know how the good people of this country - this ontof-the-way place - ^find all the good things they set before travellers, especially the New Englanders." - lAfe in the West, p. 260.

»"The prairies are of two kinds, the dry and the wet. The dry is arable land. The wet prairies are called sloughs o'r bottom land ; they are not considered be solved by the farmer who took prairie lancl,°'^ were in some ways more perplexing, than those of making farms in the woods, and sOme of these were of a nature not likely to suggest themselves to one wholly unacquainted with the work of subduing raw prairie. The woodland could be plowed at any time of year when the weather permitted, and the settler could utilize all his spare moments in clearing and breaking for the next season's sowing. But not so with the prairie. Even, if he should succeed, by an almost infinite expenditure of strength, in breaking the sod late in the summer, he could reap little except disappointment the following year. Again if he was too anxious, and did the breaking very early in the spring, the results were only less unsatisfactory. The mistake of breaking too deep was also a common one. To get good results prairie should be turned in thin furrows during the early summer and left to rot without the interference of a "sod crop" for the remainder of the season. All this seems simple to the western-bred farmer, but was a hopeless series of conundrums to those meeting these conditions anew. Fortunate indeed was the man who felt the need of information and experience.'^* One of the most pitiful pleas in favor of woodland over prairie appeared in an agricultural paper in 185 1, just about the end of the period when there was actually free choice between the two. The matter of health is very often mentioned as a reason for taking one or the other kind of land. Another writer tried to get at the matter statistically and found that among twenty-seven families who moved to the prairie, there was a certain number of deaths, while among a like number of .dwellers in the woods for the same period of time, the number of deaths was not so large. There are no data on this question on which to base conclusions, but it is generally agreed that fever and ague, the great bane of pioneer life, flourishes best in a damp country where a great amount of vegetable matter is undergoing decomposition.

fit for tillage [and are] valued only as a resort for cutting hay, or as a range for cattle. All land of this character [i. e., both the wet and dry prairie] is generally avoided in the selection or purchase of land." - Madison EwpresB, April 16» 1846.

M"When I commenced making a farm on the prairie I found myself engaged in a task by no means without its difficulties and perplexities. Whatever I had learned of farming In the East had to be principally learned over again bere - I looked in vain for well tested and enlightened experiments - ^what was the best season of the year in which to break prairie; how deep should it be broken?" - ^Madison Evpresf, May 19, 1841.

Be this as it may, the prairies of Wisconsin have long been exonerated from the charge of unhealthf ulness ; and the modest woods of this section of the state can hardly be termed dark or damp forests. Nevertheless the great amount of surface water, often stagnant, was the cause of much sickness in the early days of Wisconsin settlement.*^

iB true tlie prairie mania has eyer prevailed among the eaatem farmers coming to settle amid the West. This is the result of a fancied convenience among new settlers and a wish to gratify that thirst for novelty which is inherent In the minds of those who have been reared among the hills and valleys of the New EIngland and Middle states, where nature in her prairie beauty has never appeared. But that prepossession in favor of prairie farms i» rapidly yielding to the formation of a more rational conclusion. The absence of many of the common conveniences of life which are enjoyed in the timber - ^the want of health and the failure of crops from year to year are obstacles in the path of prosperity which exist upon the prairie and which -can never be wholly surmounted. These will henceforth prove a barrier to their settlement, and will have a tendency to direct emigration to a forest liome. The angry winter wind which sweeps over their heads in its course sfor hundreds of miles, unbroken by any obstacle, save the slight undulations apon the bosom of the prairie, where neither tree nor shrub appears to shelter the weary traveller from the keenness of the blast which often threatens thim with immediate destruction, - the scorching rays of the summer sun -maddening and destroying the brain, and other manifestations in nature, all «peak to the settler, in language not to be misunderstood, of disease and 4eath in its most horrible form. There disease in every form destructive to Tegetable life is stalking abroad and ever and anon lays its withering grasp upon the fruits of the foil of the laboring man and deprives families and neighborhoods of the means of subsistence, leaving poverty and destitution to prey upon its victims, until anotiier year shall have rolled its sluggish course, bringing but too often in its train the same fearful consequences. This is not an overwrought picture." - Wisconsin Farmer, III, 145.

Preference for woodland lingered till long after wheat ceased to be the principal crop : *'Upon the whole it is our opinion that, everything considered, the oak openings are the best lands for a farmer of moderate means. These lands seem to be less rich In the vegetable producing elements than the other two [timber and prairies] but such is not the fact as demonstrated by experience. The soil of the oak openings is of a lighter color, but it produces the finest crops |0f cereals, including com end also esculent roots. It plows very kindly, is never miry like the prairie, where the reapers have sometimes become useless in wet seasons because they could not be worked in deep mud. The openings produce as much to the acre, and of a plumper, heavier grain ; manure works a more permanent benefit ; they raise heavier crops of clover and other grasses and the use of plaster is attended with wonderful efr ect, frequently doubling thef crop of hay ; orchards thrive better ; they supply fuel and fencing material ; also stones for cellars, wells, and handsome imperishable fences.

"All these advantages mentioned in connection with oak openings also belong to the timbered section and the latter have the further advantage that, once cleared, they do not, like the openings, send forth a crop of useless and tangled grubs which are very expensive to eradicates*' Thus prairie is the poorest land. - Trans. State Agfl Boo,, IX, 406.

recurring, at the risk of tedious reiteration, to the endless reasons, and almost lack of reason, which attend the selection of different land by different people ; and in addition, that the writer had no thesis to maintain or theory to prove. In answer to the question "Did the first settlers take the best land?" no sweeping answer can be given. The greatest mistake was no doubt in rejecting the prairies so long ; quick returns - ^and this was of vital importance in most cases - ^were more easily had here, where a little skill in the use of the breaking plow enabled a man to turn virgin soil into cultivated fields at the rate of two or three acres a day, while in the woods not a quarter of the same results could be had. The patience and toil of those who cleared up the woodland was eventually rewarded, and where this land is not too hilly or stony, it has proved to be excellent in wearing qualities, though on an average it must still rank below the prairies, as the latter have always excelled in the production of Indian corn. Many of the old pioneers who still remain look with chagrin from their rough farms, worth fifty dollars per acre, to the smooth, inviting fields of their prairie neighbors, worth fifty per cent more, and recall the time when they rejected the latter in favor of the former. Yet no doubt they were temporarily better off making the choice they did than had they undertaken the greater task with the possibility of greater gain in the long run, and "for many of them there was no long run." They took the land they thought was best, and for a period it was. On an average the land which was best ultimately was not taken first, but this was due largely to the particular class of settlers who took it.**

V Since writing the above, I have received a letter from Mr. Robert Steele of Lodi, Wis., which corroborates almost all the statements made in the chapter respecting the choice of' land by the diflFerent settlers. He adds that the Oermans of the northwest part of the coontyt who were mostly from the Rhine country, hoped to raise grapes on the sunny hillsides of Roxbury. Some of them did so, and made several thousand gallons of wine per year for a brief period. Mr. Steele thinks, however, contrary to one of the quotations above, that there was a general tendency for immigrants to choose land resembling that of their former homes, an example of which is the location of the Swiss in the hilly country to the southwest of Dane county.