Lafayette County Courthouse

Lieut. Richard H. Magoon, we here state, was a man of greatest energy and integrity in business ; repeatedly, from 1829 to 1836, rode on horseback from his furnaces in Wisconsin, four hundred miles, to St. Louis, through storm and cold, swimming rivers, the saddle at night his pillow, and often the sky his only covering. His grave is in the cemetery at Darlington. He had his faults, but, looking back upon his forty-seven years all crowded with business in the mines, he could have made the honest boast, that, although cast amid the license of a new country, he never visited a gaming-table, never deserted a needy friend, never liked a negro, intensely despised the lazy, invincibly kept his word of honor-bright, and his contracts to others always at par with gold.

Passage source: History of Lafayette County, Wisconsin, Containing an Account of Its Settlement, Growth, Development and Resources; an Extensive and Minute Sketch of Its Cities, Towns and Villages ... Its War Record, Biographical Sketches ... the Whole Preceded by a History of Wisconsin, Statistics of the State, and an Abstract of Its Laws and Constitution, and of the Constitution of the United States, published 1881.

The arrivals in other townships were necessarily limited, immigration being mostly confined to sections of the county wherein ore could be obtained in paying quantities. Fortunatus Berry settled near Gratiot's Grove, in White Oak Springs ; Col. William Hamilton, son of Alexander Hamilton, in Wiota Township, and engaged in mining and smelting, erecting the first furnace in the county, save the furnaces built by the Gratiots. This settlement was known as " Hamilton's Fort." Hamilton also platted a village, which he named Wiota, hoping to induce settlements and hasten improvements ; Jameson Hamilton began the building up of Darlington ; George Skellinger came to Gratiot's Grove ; Richard H. Magoon began smelting in Monticello, and afterward built and operated other furnaces in White Oak Springs ; Samuel Scales, Capt. Frank and Mr. Deering began the settlement of White Oak Springs. These were aided in their labors by the willing brawn and " pat " advice of those who also came during the same year, notably, James and John Woods, William, Thomas and Augustus Chilton, Andrew Clarno, Hugh McGeary, Anthony Miller, Crawford Million, Mathew Colvin, Col. James Collins, Jerry Adams, A. V. Hastings, Conrad Lichtenberger, George Lott, John Atchinson, Anson G. Phelps, David Southwick, Sample Journey, Frank Washburne, H. H. Gear, George and Marvin Watson, John Shultz, George F. Smith, John Williams, and others throughout various portions of the county, who exchanged the courtesies of pioneer life and united in acts of pioneer safety in Belmont, Kendall, Wayne, Argyle and elsewhere, though their names and the current of their lives have become obscured with the lapse of years. Added to these was a colony of immigrants, who came hither from Selkirk, a primitive settlement on the Red River of the North, This colony was made up, in part, of Antoine Bane, Joseph Varien, Peter Gorey, the Breckler and Rendsburger families, Gabriel Gorke and others, who established themselves near Gratiot's Grove, where they engaged in mining and smelting.

Passage source: History of Lafayette County, Wisconsin, Containing an Account of Its Settlement, Growth, Development and Resources; an Extensive and Minute Sketch of Its Cities, Towns and Villages ... Its War Record, Biographical Sketches ... the Whole Preceded by a History of Wisconsin, Statistics of the State, and an Abstract of Its Laws and Constitution, and of the Constitution of the United States, published 1881.

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 Darlington City - 105,727 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.