Dells Mill

When Eau Claire county was organized by an act of the legislature in 1856, there were but few settlers in the eastern part thereof. Probably the first settler was Andrew Thompson, who came, it is said, iu 1854, and settled and built a house on what was later Henry Brown's pasture in Otter creek. The valley was named Thompson valley. If he came in 1854, he was here at least a year, perhaps more, before the coming of others. In 1856 when the county was organized, Charles Hale, L. D. McCauley and J. A. Bride had settled in what has since been known as Scott's valley; Lorenzo and William Bennett and Charles and Scribner Chadbourne had located in Thompson valley ; George Diamond had settled on the Diamond farm in Diamond valley, and a little bunch of pioneers, James Woodbury, E. L. Hull, William Young and perhaps a few more, had settled near where the village of Augusta was soon to be. These, together with the first settlers in Augusta, Charles Buckman, S. E. Bills, John P. Stone and a few more, constituted at that time the population of the town of Bridge Creek.

Passage source: History of Eau Claire County, Wisconsin, Past and Present; Including an Account of the Cities, Towns and Villages of the County, published 1914.

July 4, 1857, the first fourth of .luly celebration in the town was held at the farm of Simon Kaudall. He had bought the William Young place and the people gathered there and had a regular old-fashioned good time. In the evening they had a dance and Alfred Bolton played the fiddle. Allen Randall was a little fellow at that time, five years old, and he had a regular Buster Brown of a time. That celebration and that dance were the first events in the social life of Augusta and Bridge Creek, and for years thereafter the spirit of fellowship and good will grew and the social life was of that wliolesome kind, unmarred by class distinctions that prevails when tlie people live near to Nature's heart. There Avas no fol-de-rol, no nonsensical tommyrot, nor any of that superior culture that marks the upper stratum of the modern social life. The people were hearty in those days, good-souled, and between the hours of toil had sense enough to have a good time.

Passage source: History of Eau Claire County, Wisconsin, Past and Present; Including an Account of the Cities, Towns and Villages of the County, published 1914.

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 Bridge Creek Town - 4,181 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.