Grant County, Wisconsin - Chapter 4: Grant County During the Thirties, 1900

Chapter 4: Grant County During the Thirties

When the legislature of Wisconsin, December 8, 1836, created the new county of Grant, it designated a committee consisting of Henry W. Hodges, James Gilmore, E. E. Brock, Orris McCartney, and Frank C. Kirkpatrick, to fix the seat of justice of the new county. They were to be sworn to a faithful discharge of their trust and were di¬ rected to reduce their determination to writing, sign it and deliver it to the Clerk of Iowa County, who should record it and deliver it to the Clerk of Grant County. If from any cause the commissioners should be prevented from fulfilling their duty, or if they could not agree upon a determination, then the seat of justice should be tem¬ porarily established at Cassville. The court, of which there were to be two terms in each year, was to be held at Cassville until the neces¬ sary public buildings should be provided at the seat of justice.

The commissioners did not choose any of the then existing towns or villages as the seat of justice, but a town which, at the time of the choice, existed only on paper. Glendower M. Price, of Cassville, had laid out a new town, March 1, 1837, on the southeast quarter of Sec¬ tion 3, Town 4, Range 3, which he called Lancaster. He agreed to pay the county $1,000 and donate certain lots of land in considera¬ tion of the location of the seat of justice at Lancaster. Cassville was a new and ambitious town ; Platteville was by far the largest town in the county, but their claims balanced each other, and Lancaster was near the center of the county while one of its rivals was at one side and the other near one corner of the county. So Price's offer was ac¬ cepted and on May 15, 1837, he made out a deed, for a nominal con¬ sideration, granting to the county of Grant all of Block 10; Lots 1 to 8 inclusive in Block 25; Lots 3 to 8 inclusive in Block 26; Lots 7 and 8 in Block 23; Lots 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, in Block 9; Lots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in

An account of the organization of the executive and judicial branches of the county government will be found in the Civil and Po¬ litical History, in this volume.

The first legislature of Wisconsin Territory directed that a census of the territory be taken, and this census, taken in 1837, showed Grant County to have a population of 2,763, mostly in the southern part of the county.

Roads And Ferries

The region west of the Fourth Principal Meridian, now having a government of its own, proceeded to get some roads, bridges and fer¬ ries. This region appears to have been neglected by the officials of Iowa County. Previous to 1837 some enterprising citizens had done considerable toward making roads by their own labors or at their own private expense. Daniel Burt, from his mill in the present town of Waterloo, had opened a road eleven miles long to Cassville, another to Potosi and another to Beetown. His experience in getting across Grant River is narrated on a preceding page. He has related another incident showing the difficulty of travel in those days. Soon after lo¬ cating at his mill-site he ran out of provisions and had to go to Paris for some. From his home to Paris it was only sixteen miles, but there was no direct road that could be traveled with a wagon. He had first to go to Orris McCartney's ; thence to Beetown ; thence to Lancaster ; and thence to Paris, or nearly forty-five miles. He made this trip in one day and got back as far as a cabin at the mouth of Snake Hollow, where he staid overnight. In the morning he determined to take a straight cut where wagon had never been before. He got a man to drive for him while he went ahead and selected a route, getting be¬ tween the trees whenever possible and cutting them away when he could not get the wagon between them. They reached Boice Creek with little difficulty, but here trouble began. The Mississippi was at flood and had backed up the water of the creek, till it covered the bottom to the width of a mile. For a considerable distance the water was over a man's head in depth. The wagon-box was new and tight. Leaving the wagon on what had been the high bank of the creek but was then covered with water two or three feet, Mr. Burt unhitched the horses, and swam them across to where they could get a footing upon the opposite submerged bank, with their whiffletrees and a log chain attached. Mr. Burt then swam back and fastening one of his ever-ready grape-vines to the end of the wagon-tongue, he swam out with the other end of the vine in his teeth and told his man to push the wagon into the deep water. The box had been fastened to the bolsters and it floated the wagon, which was towed by Mr. Burt to the opposite bank, where the horses could be hitched with the chain to the end of the tongue and draw the wagon out. The next great diffi¬ culty was met when they reached the top of the bluff on Grant River, near his home. It was a point where a track for rolling down logs had been cleared, but it was frightfully steep to drive down with a wagon. All the wheels were locked and a tree fifteen inches in diameter with a broad top was chained to the hind axle to check the descent of the wagon, and thus Mr. Burt drove safely down and reached home with his provisions uninjured.

Previous to the act constituting Grant County, there were very few roads in the county. The main one was the Military Road from Milwaukee to Prairie du Chien, entering the county at Wingville, run¬ ning along the Military Ridge, over the prairie to a point somewhat north of Patch Grove, thence down a valley to the Wisconsin, leaving thecounty by crossing that river at a ferry kept by a Canadian French¬ man named Jean Brunet, near the present bridge. This ferry had been chartered by the Legislature of Michigan Territory and was the first one in the region. Previously the hardy pioneers had been obliged to cross the wide streams in some such manner as Mr. Burt has described.

But to return to the roads. Before 1837, there was another road running from Prairie du Chien, or rather branching off the Military Road near the present Patch Grove, leading through Beetown, Snake Hollow (Potosi), and Paris to Galena. Another road led from Beetown to Cassville, in 1836, but the early settlers of Cassville had to go up around to where Patch Grove now is to reach the road to Ga¬ lena. In 1839 they were working a road through to Mineral Point, by way of the present site of Lancaster. There was also a road from Galena to Mineral Point, through the present townships of Hazel Green and Smelser, leaving the county in Section 12 of Smelser. It was mostly a prairie road. By going down the prairie ridge a few miles, the people of Platteville could avail themselves of this road in going to Galena, or to Mineral Point by going east a short distance over a prairie track.

A second session of the Wisconsin legislature, in November, 1837, appointed Jonathan Craig, William Davidson, and Stewart McKee as commissioners to locate and establish a territorial road from Osceola (a new town-site on the Mississippi near where Potosi now is) to Bel¬ mont, by way of Platteville. They were to meet on or before the first Monday in August, 1838. This was the first territorial road laid out in Grant County.

At a meeting of the County Commissioners, May 4, 1838, Martial Detantabaratz, of Paris, petitioned for a road from Platteville to Paris, a town located at the junction of the Platte and Little Platte Rivers. The Board appointed Ralph Carver, James Gilmore and James Dixon commissioners to locate such road, the petitioner to deposit $25, as required by law. At the same meeting Detantabaratz and others presented a petition for a road from Lancaster to Galena by way of Paris. James Bonham, Jonathan Craig, and Enos P. Wood were appointed to lay out the road.

Asa E. Hough, mentioned on a previous page as the founder of Gibraltar near the mouth of the Platte, petitioned for a road from Cassville by way of Lafayette (near the present railroad station of Potosi) to the State line in the direction of Galena. Elias Dean, Jona¬ than Craig, and Enos P. Wood were appointed to lay out the road.

Daniel R. Burt presented a petition to lay out a road from Cass¬ ville, via Burt's Mill, to Snake Diggings by the best and most practi¬ cable route. J. E. Dodge, F. A. Sprague, and Enos P. Wood were ap¬ pointed commissioners to lay out the road. At every subsequent ses¬ sion of the Board some new road or roads were authorized to be laid out.

The legislature at its second session, in 1837, granted three chart¬ ers for ferries with landings on Grant County shores. One was for a ferry across the Wisconsin on the Military Road, by Jean Barrette, who had bought out the Jean Brunet mentioned on a previous page. The second was to William Walker and Joseph H. D. Street for a ferry across the Mississippi at Cassville. It was to be a horse or steam ferry boat. The third charter was to James P. Cox and Justus Per¬ sons, for a ferry from Osceola to Jones's Island in the Mississippi and thence to Persons's Landing in Iowa.

At a meeting of the County Board April 2, 1838, a license was granted to Cox and Persons in accordance with the charter just men¬ tioned, and fixing the following rates of fare from Osceola to Jones's

Island : each person, 18 % cents ; each head of cattle, 16%; each hog, 4 cents, each sheep 3 cents; each carriage 8% cents a wheel; doable these rates for ferriage between Osceola and Persons's Landing. It may be wondered why such fractional rates were fixed and how change could be made. It was thus : most of the silver change in circulation was French and Spanish coin which had come into the country be¬ cause its commercial transactions were mostly with New Orleans and St. Louis, where these coins were still the commercial currency. These coins were of 6%, 8% and 12% cents value, so that these ferry rates could be paid with them better than rates of five, ten, or twenty cents.

Later sessions of the Board granted licenses for other ferries across the Wisconsin and Mississippi; and also the Grant and Platte, which, on the lower part of their courses, were unford able, especially at times of high water. Accounts of these ferries will be found in the histories of the several towns.

The first bridge in the county of which we have any record ap¬ pears to have been built at Paris ; at least Martial Detantabaratz ob¬ tained a license for one in 1839.

The Execution Of Oliver

In 1838 occurred the first execution in the new county. John Rus¬ sell borrowed a skiff from Edward Oliver, living near the mouth of Turkey River in Iowa, and came over to Cassville with it. He did not return, and Oliver came over to get it. Meeting Russell, a quarrel en¬ sued in which Oliver abused Russell badly. At a second meeting at a shooting match near Cassville, the quarrel was renewed, and Russell, smarting under Oliver's epithets, started to beat him, when Oliver drew a pistol. A man named John Allen stepped between them, but Oliver reached around him and shot Russell in the breast - shot him "like a white man," as he said. He was arrested and sent to Lancas¬ ter. There was then no jail and Oliver was kept in irons until the log jail was built. He claimed that he wanted to make a confession, and J. Allen Barber entered his cell to write it. Observing that the mur¬ derer had one hand loose from his shackles and was edging towards some implement that could be used as a weapon, Mr. Barber suspected a design on Oliver's part to kill him and make his escape, and he re¬ tired from the cell, leaving the confession unwritten.

The murderer was executed October 29, 1838, in the presence of fifteen hundred people, and his body buried in a lonely hazel thicket. The bones and coffin were dug up in digging a trench for a water-pipe, in June, 1897. His son, a youth of thirteen, tried to get laudanum to his father before the execution, for the purpose of suicide, but failed. After the execution he threatened to shoot the Sheriff, and was found waiting with a gun in a thicket near town, for the object of his re¬ venge. The Sheriff, Harvey Pepper, did not, however, execute the sentence on the condemned. That unpleasant duty was performed by a deputy, Lewis Reynolds.

Post-Offices In 1888

In 1829 the only post-office in the county was at Platteville, but by 1838 there was a goodly list of these distributors of information): Platteville, Lancaster, English Prairie (Muscoda), Hazel Green, Cassville, Gibraltar, Sinsinawa Mound, Van Buren (Potosi), Blast Fur¬ nace, Brooklyn, Port Hudson, Sinipee, Menomonee, and Wingville.

Paper Towns

Soon after the organization of the county the era of paper towns - towns which consisted mostly of a plat filed in the office of the Regis¬ ter of Deeds - began and lasted some years. There was Mendota, at the mouth of the Wisconsin; Fayette, at the forks of the Blue River ; Brooklyn, opposite the present town of Bridgeport ; and others. These will be more particularly mentioned in the Town Histories. They represent the unfounded schemes of speculators and the disap¬ pointing dreams of landowners. Brooklyn, however, obtained a post-office, but no inhabitants except the postmaster and his family.

Early. Immigration As J. T. Mills Saw It

Before proceeding to later dates we copy the following racy ex¬ tract from an address delivered by Judge J. T. Mills at a meeting of the Old Settlers' Association at Prairie du Chien :

" It was forty years ago that I stood at the foot of the Lower Rapids. They came to me or I to them ; no difference, we got to¬ gether. I occupied the same site then that the city of Quincy does now. You might have carried the embryo burg in a wheelbarrow, if you could have found one. There was a blockhouse on the bank, and there some mining adventurers and myself waited for steam naviga¬ tion. The voyage forty years ago required a large reserve of patience. Often we put our ears down to the water, as if the steamer was ex- pected underneath the surface, for "suckers" were then more numer¬ ous than any other passengers. I well remember one day, while re¬ peating this acoustic experiment, I heard a thumping in the water like a heart-beat, and soon, to my inexpressible satisfaction, I saw 'a smoke way down de riber.' Puff, puff, the discharge of a blunderbus, the ringing of a bell - no steam whistle then - and the strongly built steamer Warrior, Captain Throckmorton, landed on the shore. The mining adventurers rushed aboard and threatened to take possession of the vessel. 'On to Dubuque!' 'Forward to Snake!' 'Hurrah for Hardscrabble! ' were the watchwords yelled as vociferously as 'On to Richmond !' years later by the New York Tribune. But what was the Great West in 1834, as seen from the Father, and yet the child, of many waters ? Illinois above Rock River, with slight exceptions, was wholly vacant. The State of Iowa had not even been christened. The owl hooted from the forests that covered its bottoms or crowned its headlands.

If Campbell could make poetry out of this long howl, his muse would have been rampant, had he tried this voyage. These devil-eyed, white-teethed denizens of the forest amused us with their nightly sere¬ nade, whether we hissed or applauded.

"And still the wide prairies on either hand seemed opening to re¬ ceive the immense and teeming population destined to supplant Na¬ ture's husbandry by that of civilized man. The very soil, the streams and the woods that skirted them, seemed conscious, sitting up of nights and watching by day for ' the coming events that cast their shadows before.' The bear, the elk, and the deer heard all too fre¬ quently the crack of the backwoodsman's rifle. He was trespassing on the domain of the Winnebago, the Sac, and the Sioux. The Great Spirit had packed up his airy wigwam, converted it into a balloon and sailed westward, beckoning his children to follow; hard-fisted miners, men of 'mighty bone and bold enterprise,' had built their tene¬ ments of sods, palisades, and mud at different places. Galena, Nep¬ tune-like, had reared her head above the mud in which she floundered, and was visible to a considerable distance. Patches of corn and po¬ tatoes showed that a race of men were pressing into this region who could work the surface of mother Earth as well as burrow, gopher¬ like, in her bowels. These were the scattering drops, the earnest of that human flood that has swollen into millions, rolling westward on foot, on horses, on wheels, till the locomotive and thundering train behind commands the highway to California, has changed the front¬ age of the continent, has completed the American section of the thor¬ oughfare that encircles the globe, and changed the direction of com¬ merce. All this since 1834."