Marathon County, Wisconsin - Chapter 3, 1913

Chapter 3

Wisconsin as a Territory - Act of Congress approved April 20, 18^6 - Population when Organised - Counties - First Lumbering on Black and Wisconsin Rivers - Attempts to Improve Navigation at Little Bull Falls - Railroad Charters Applied For - Constitutional Convention of I84J - Population in I847 - Admitted as a State May 29, 184S - The Public Domain.

Wisconsin As A Territory

The act of congress, establishing the "Territory of Wisconsin," was approved April 20, 1836. It included then all which is now embraced in the state of Wisconsin. It was first organized in four counties: Brown, Crawford, Iowa and Milwaukee.

After much debating and voting the first legislature, meeting then in Belmont, passed an act, on November 28, 1836, fixing Madison as the capital. Provisions were made for the erection of a capitol - or state house. Augustus A. Bird w'as appointed as one of the commissioners to begin and later supervise the work. Pursuant to his appointment, he left Milwaukee May 31, 1837, with thirty-six workmen and six yoke of cattle for Madison. There was no road then and they had to make one, cutting out trees, repairing bridges, etc., which kept them on their way until June loth, when they arrived at Madison.

From 1825 to 1830 the settlements were limited to the lead regions, and the older towns near Green Bay and Prairie du Chien, but now lumbering began.

The first mill was erected on Black river in 1819 by Colonel Shaw, but worked on a very small scale, on a fall of six feet, and under the hostility with the Indians, who burned it the following year.

In the winter of 1827-1828, Daniel Whitney obtained permission from the Winnebago Indians to make shingles on the Upper Wisconsin. He employed about twenty-two Stockbridges and one white man to supervise them.

Major Twiggs, commanding at Fort Winnebago, ordered Whitney to leave the country, and upon his refusal, standing upon his lease with the Indians, Major Twiggs took half of the shingles and burned the other half. They had made about two hundred thousand. The shingles taken by Major Twiggs were used in the building of the fort, and Whitney had the melancholy satisfaction of asserting that he had furnished the shingles for the military barracks free of charge. By the arbitrary act of Major Twiggs, Whitney lost about $1,000 by the transaction, a large amount of money in those days.

In 1 83 1 Whitney obtained government permission to erect a sawmill and cut timber, and then built the first mill on the Wisconsin river at Whitney Rapids in 1831-1832.

Grignon and Merrill obtained a similar permit, and put up a mill at Grignon Rapids in 1836, .and when the Indian title was extinguished in 1836, mills were put up in succession at Grand Rapids, one at Mill Creek, one at McGreer Rapids on the Plover, and one at Conant Rapids in 1837. That was the beginning of the lumber industry on the Wisconsin.

With the extinguishment of the Indian titles the pinery man appeared, though with no more intention of staying than the lead miners at Galena, but the settlement already attracted the attention of the government, and m 1842 congress established the first post route, from Fort Winnebago via Grand Rapids to Plover Portage.

The necessity of improving navigation on the Wisconsin river was also early recognized, and the territorial legislature authorized Alb. Brawley to build and maintain a dam and boom on the Wisconsin river between sections 31 and T^2, township 24, range 8 east, which dam became afterwards the property of the Stevens Point Boom Company.

The census of 1842 was 46,678, in which census the county of Portage appears with 648 inhabitants. That county included all the territory from Fort Winnebago up to the state line, including the present counties of Columbia, Wood, Portage, Marathon and all directly north from Marathon county to the .state line.*

*The county of Columbia was formed out of territory of Portage county. The village of ''Portage City" retained its name, but the new county was named Columbia, and thus it happened that Portage City is in Columbia county.

An act was passed in the session of the legislature of 1842 locating a territorial road from the Fox river, opposite Green Bay to the Wisconsin river between Plover Portage and Big Bull Falls. This road may have been located, but if it was there is no record of it, and it certainly was not opened farther than Plover if it was opened at all.

An important act was passed by the legislature in 1845 (important if it had been carried out, but it was not) incorporating "The Wisconsin Navigation Company, with authority to erect a dam across the Wisconsin river below the Little Bull Falls of such height as would raise the water on the falls as high as the surface of the water above them, with a slide for the passage of rafts and boats, and to receive tolls for the passage of lumber, shingles and timber."

A number of charters were asked for the construction of railroads; but the members evidently entertained the notion that the granting of a charter for a railroad upon any particular route would injure the prospects of the construction of one upon any other route, and so they were all defeated. A correspondent of the Galena Gazette, writing from Madison, and who probably gave expression to the opinions of many of that time, said :

"The only points on Lake Michigan and the Mississippi river to be connected by a railroad for the next 50 years, are Chicago and Galena," - which shows that as late as 1846, there was little confidence in the future of Wisconsin, but that correspondent proved a false prophet.

Still the population of the territory was growing, and growing rapidly now. The census in 1846 showed a population of 155,277, exclusive of La Point, Chippewa and Richland, from which counties no returns were received.

The question of sumptuary laws received attention from the territorial legislature as early as 1847, which passed a local option law, by which the electors of the municipalities were annually to vote "for license" or "no license," and if a majority of the votes cast in any municipality were "against license" then no license could be granted for the year next ensuing.

On November 28, 1847, an election was held for delegates to a convention to formulate a constitution for a state government, and the act further provided for the taking of a census between the first and fifteenth day of December, 1847, which census was taken with the following result:

The convention met, formulated a constitution, which was submitted to a vote of the people, and was on March 13th, 1848, ratfied and adopted by a vote of 16,797 y^^s to 6,313 noes, and by act of congress approved May 29th, 1848, Wisconsin was admitted as a state, being the seventeenth of the states admitted, and the thirtieth in the list of states.

And Representative Citizens 49 The Public Domain Indian Treaties

1816, August 24th, at St. Louis, with the Ottawas, Chippewas and Pottawatamies residing on the Illinois and Wisconsin rivers, and lands relinquished by the Indians, except nine miles square, at Prairie du Chien.

1825, August 19th, the several tribes in Wisconsin defined the boundaries of their respective claims, and on August 5, 1826, the Chippewas assented to these boundaries.

1837, July 29th, at Fort Snelling, the Chippewas ceded the land south of the divide between the waters of Lake Superior and those of the Mississippi.

1842, October 4th, at La Point, the Chippewas ceded all their remaining lands in northern and northwestern Wisconsin (being all they still claimed) to the government.

1848, October i8th, the Menominees ceded the remaining of their lands, and by this treaty all Indian titles were fully extinguished in Wisconsin.