Albany, Wisconsin

In 1S40, five years after he came to the county, James Campbell built the first house in the town of Albany. It was near Sugar river, about a mile farther south than the present village of Albany. The same year, Mr. Higby built a house in Rock County, which was so near the north-east corner of Albany that it has been called the first house in the township. Mr. Campbell did not go to Albany to live until 1S41. It is his opinion, and the opinion of Mr. Christopher Martin, who came from New York in 1S40, and who lived with Mr. Campbell during parts of i84i-'42, that the next comers were Hiram Brown and Samuel Mitchell, both of whom were here before the end of '42, as were also John Broughton and Wm. Burgess. Some of the next settlers were Christopher Minert, Joshua and A. Whitcomb, S. L. Eldred, and Aaron Broughton in '43, Daniel Smiley, Asa Comstock, Wm. Webb, Israel Phillips, and A. S. Holmes in '44. Gilbert McNaught, and Aaron Kellogg, were among those who came in 184.5-46. Among the occasional residents of Albany was Reuben Folsom, or old Reube the wolf hunter, a discharged soldier who came from Fort Winnebago to Sylvester in 1S40, and who would have made a good character for one of Cooper's novels. Kind, generous and brave, with a fund of anecdotes equaled only by his wonderful power to endure hunger and fatigue, he was at home with all the settlers, but his most constant companions were his dogs. A cave in the bank of the river, a few miles from the village of Albany, is pointed out as one of his retreats.

Passage source: History of Green County, Wisconsin, published 1877.

The locality of the village of Albany was first known as Campbell's ford. The land comprised in the village was entered by James Campbell and Thos. Stewart, and through their influence Capt. E. O. Pond and Dr. S. F. Nichols went there in the spuing of 1846, and built a log cabin (the first in the village), which was occupied by the families of both until a frame house could be erected. With a yoke of oxen S. A. Pond, then sixteen years of age, hauled the lumber for the second house from Amos Sylvester's mill, being sometimes obliged to first cut the logs and take them to the mill. Both houses were east of the river, the log house about ten rods from where the dam now is, and the frame house on the ground where Mrs. Pond still resides. At that time there were but two frame, and two log, houses between the ford and Janesville. On a few rough shelves in one corner of Capt. Pond's house, the frame house, were kept the dry goods and the boxes and barrels of groceries constituting Albany's first store. The report that Pond and Nichols were going to build up a village at the ford attracted others. A. R. Bur- gor and John and Nelson Stevenson came with them, and in August, Robert Gleason, who was employed to build the mill the next year, removed there with his family. In '46, with the assistance of J. V. Richardson as surveyor, Pond and Nichols laid out the village of Albany. They also built a saw mill, and succeeded in getting a mail route established from Beloit via Janesville, Albany, and Exeter to Mineral Point. Capt. Pond was the postmaster at Albany. The next year, J. B. Sawyer and Dr. Stearns built the American House, Capt. R. H. Hewitt opened a general store, and several new families came. They all shook with the ague, and all talked proudly of their beautiful country and their noble river. In the mean time, the flattering prospects of Albany had led Messrs. Bugor and Stevenson to lay out the village of Independence, on the river, three-fourths of a mile below Albany, but Independence never grew beyond half a score of houses.

Passage source: History of Green County, Wisconsin, published 1877.

Zebina Warren's grist mill, R. J. & Wm. Richardson's general store, S. A. Pond's book and drug store, and a number of shops were among the acquisitions of Albany in iS49-'5o. A sad occurrence in May, '51, seemed for a time to blast the prospects of the village. Moved by a spirit of wild adventure, Wm. Richardson and S. A. Pond went over the dam in a skiff, and the former lost his life, the latter barely escaping. The Richardson brothers had just bought a large stock of goods, and had made preparations to build a large business block; but the surviving brother was so overcome with sorrow that he closed the store and left the place. But enterprise could not be stopped. J. H., L. H., and E. F. Warren became the successors of the Richardson Brothers, and E. Bowen, Robson and Prentice, Jas. Campbell, Hunter & Kellogg, E. B. Noble, Burt & Harris, John Lemuel, C. T. Barton, J. Johnson, J. Dunkleburg, T. Carrier, V. R. Vancuren, and a score of others were soon identified with the business interests of the village, which promised to become the largest village in the county, and even the death, before 1855, of several leading men, Capt. Pond, Zebina Warren, and Robson and Prentice among them, delayed its progress but a little time. S. A. Pond did a large real estate and brokerage business, and a Madison firm opened the Bank of Albany. S. & A. Johnson erected a sash, door, and blind factory, and T. Kellogg another grist mill. In May, '58, I. S. Dexter and Y. T. Lacy transformed Monroe's languishing "JefFersonian Democrat" into the Albany Times, in the control of which they were succeeded by Joseph Baker.

Passage source: History of Green County, Wisconsin, published 1877.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Albany Town - it names this place 87 more 87 times.