Freitag Homestead

About the time the capitol at Madison was begun in: 1837, Josiah Pierce of New York landed at Milwaukee,, where he was almost immediately engaged to go to Madison and board the workmen. His was the second family in Madison. In the following November, he removed to a cabin which he had built during the summer in what is now the town of Washington, Green County. The cabin, whose dimensions were sixteen by eighteen feet, was on the line of nearly all the travel from the eastern part of the state to Galena, and there was hardly ever a night that some one did not stop there. Sometimes the guest was Gov. Dodge attended by his colored servant, who rode at a respectful distance behind the Governor, and carried his excellency's pistoL

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

This was the time of the "wild cat" currency. Apparently everybody could issue money and as much as he chose, and those who did not issue it had no trouble in getting it, though it was often not worth the getting. Mr. Albert H. Pierce, then seventeen years of age, could easily earn $30 a month at farm labor, but it took $50 dollars to buy him an ordinary coat. A man who was hauling flour from Galena to the garrison at Fort Winnebago once broke down near Mr. Pierce's, and finding he could not go on with the whole load, kindly sold Mr. Pierce two barrels at thirteen dollars a barrel. Mr. Noah Phelps, who helped survey Green County before the Black Hawk war, returning at the conclusion of his work to his home in New York state, wished to bring his family to Wisconsin in 1S37. ^e was neai"ly ready to start in May, when the banks suspended specie payment. As all his money was in bank notes, and as government land could be bought only with coin, he was obliged to wait. When specie payment was resumed the next May he was still ready to come, and in June, '38, he made the second home in the town of Washington. By iS42-'43, when the next settlers came to Washington, there were so many people in the county that residence in it was no longer presumptive proof of acquaintance with all its inhabitants. The settlers in the different parts of Washington seem to have had very little to do with each other, and it is now impossible for any of them to give a chronological list of the first comers. Samuel Holloway, of Illinois, went to made their claims. Elijah Roby, of Ohio, went in '46, and C. J. Simmons went in '47. Among the next settlers were Samuel O. Allison, of Illinois; Hiram Bain, of New York; James Richards, of Indiana; John Perine, Barney Becker, Wm. Tucker, James Crouch,

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 Washington Town - 12,189 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.