Grant County, Wisconsin - Chapter 23: Watterstown, Hickory Grove, and Castle Rock, 1900

Chapter 23: Watterstown, Hickory Grove, and Castle Rock

This town was organized in 1856, being at first included in the town of Fennimore. As the old settlers have generally died or been replaced by foreigners, but little can be said of its early settlement. Among the old settlers were Joseph Guernsey, Henry Morgan, L. B. Arnold, John Barris, John Bloyer, Randall Murley, John Ramsour, Arnold Petty, Jacob Scott, and a Mr. Blue from whom Blue River was named. The town includes all of Town 8, Range 1, except a few sec¬ tions cut off from the north end by the Wisconsin River. It consists of bottom lands of the Wisconsin and the hills bordering that river and its small tributaries. It is settled largely by Bohemians and other foreigners. The principal town officers have been as follows :

But few incidents of sufficient importance to be recorded have oc¬ curred in the town. On April 27 1878, an affray occurred between two mulattoes, James Brooks and Albert Hamlet, in which the latter was killed. They were working a farm together and had an alterca¬ tion and fought it out, Brooks with a shot-gun and Hamlet with a pitch-fork. On the trial the jury failed to agree and Brooks was dis¬ charged.

Blue River Station

When the Milwaukee & Mississippi Railroad was built a siding was made six and a half miles west of Muscoda. Some time after¬ ward it was made a flag station and called Blue River Station. In

1865 a depot was built there. In 1862 Joseph Elliott put up a build¬ ing there which he used as a residence and store. This and the sectionhouse were then the only buildings in the place. In 1863 D. C. Perrigo bought the land immediately about the station and laid it out into village lots. He also built a residence and put in a store. A postoffice was established here this year with Mr. Perrigo as postmaster. Augustus Matthews caine in the same year, and built a house. A few years later Mr. Perrigo sold his store to Charles S. Taylor, who was appointed postmaster. A. B. Miller put in a store about the time Taylor came. Taylor soon left and Mr. Perrigo was again appointed postmaster and held the office until 1869, when he was succeeded as station agent by William Northey, who was appointed postmaster. In 1879 Northey was succeeded by David A. Taylor as station agent and postmaster. The place now has two stores, and only five or six dwellings.

The first school ever taught in the place was taught by Mrs. Ed. Carroll in a little building near the track just east of the station. The present school-house was built in 1866, the first teacher being Miss Eleanor Bailey.

A lodge of Sons of Temperance was established here February 2, 1873, with about twenty charter members, William McMullen was Patriarch and Andrew Harris Division Deputy. The charter was sur¬ rendered in 1878.

A lodge of Good Templars was established in the spring of 1878, but it had a short existence. Another lodge, Blue River Lodge, No. 388 was instituted March 18, 1888.

This town was organized in 1856, having previously been1 a part of the town of Fennimore. As it had no mines antf was not first-class farming land, and remote from thfe highways of commerce, it was very little settled at the time this county was being settled by immi¬ grants who were natives of the Eastern and Southern States. In later years, when the native Americans were emigrating from the county instead of into it to settle, the hillsides and ridges were taken up mostly by the frugal. and hard-working Bohemians and Norwegians, who could make a living where Americans could not. The prominent citi¬ zens of the town are pretty well shown in the following list of town officers.

This town was organized in 1856. It is Town 7, Range 1, and contains thirty-six square miles. The surface is much broken by the deep valleys of the Blue River and its tributaries, with their rocky bluffs and clay ridges - consequervtly, it is not very good farming land, and for that reason, and as it contained no valuable mineral deposits, it was not settled until the native Americans had begun to emigrate from the county to the farther West, and the town was settled mostly by Bohemians.

The town was originally called Blue River. Its present name and that of its only village was taken from a peculiarly-shaped rock near the village.

The village of Castle Rock is situated on the Fennimore Branch of Blue River in Sections 30 and 31. The nucleus of the settlement was the mill built by D. R. Sylvester about 1854. The village plat was surveyed in October, 1856, by William N. Reed, of Lancaster. D. R. Sylvester was the proprietor.

By Castello N. Holford

The Arena said of this book: "The author has succeeded in mak¬ ing the wildest flights of the imagination seem like solid matter-of-fact reality - a quality which gives their charm to the immortal romances of Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote."

"Books giving us a history of the future - a future bright with the millennial morn of the optimist, or dark with the goblin-haunted night of the pessimist - books in French with a future French and fantastic, or books in English, with a future Anglo-Saxon and matter-of-fact - are much in vogue. But of books giving a history of the past as it might have been if the current of events had been turned at some crit¬ ical point by some man with sufficient virtue and mental power, com¬ bined with the power which some fortunate material circumstance might have given him, I know not one * * * Let us then take what pleasure we may in figuring a man of great wisdom, foresight, and genius, with an unselfish devotion to the welfare of humanity, placed with immense power at the parting of the ways in the course of human events, seizing the opportunity to turn the march of bewildered and struggling humanity into the path leading up and away from the dangerous marshes over which dance the deluding ignes fatui of ancient errors, and under which lie the black quagmires of antique evils. "

The book will be sent, postage paid, on receipt of price by C.N. Holford, Arlington, Va., or W.H. Holford, Bloomington, Wis. F>rice, paper cover, 28 cents ; cloth, 78 cents.