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>> ...As part of the
Wisconsin Historical Museum's
History Sandwiched In
lecture series.
The opinions expressed today are
those of the presenter and are
not necessarily those of the
Wisconsin Historical Society or
the museum's employees.
Kim Tschudy, a native of
New Glarus, has been active in
historic preservation for years.
He's published historic books,
including two in the
Images of America series, one on
Green County and the other on
the Swiss of New Glarus.
He's here today to share the
story of some of southern
Wisconsin's lost towns.
We like to call them ghost
towns.
So please join me in welcoming
Kim Tschudy.
[APPLAUSE]
>> Hello, everybody.
>> Hello.
>> Over the next 45 minutes,
we're going to be looking at
a number of lost towns mostly
in southern Wisconsin.
There will be a few surprises
there, a few that you have heard
of, and there will be a couple
of strange twists and turns
in all of this.
I hope you enjoy it.
The first one
is Sinnipee, Wisconsin.
Sinnipee is located in
Grant County, three miles north
of east Dubuque and 50 miles
from Galena.
It was founded in 1831 by
Payton Vaughan, a native
of North Carolina.
At that time, the Wisconsin
population was 40,000
Native Americans and 3,000
white settlers.
Vaughan's intent to develop the
town was to build a port where
area miners who were being held
hostage by Galena businesses
charging high prices for
supplies and shipping would be
able to get more reasonable
prices.
Vaughan and the miners in the
area in 1836 formed
the Sinnipee Company and built
a two story, the Stone House
Hotel and Ballroom.
During this time, the town built
up and Sinnipee consisted of
several stores, a bank, church,
post office, blacksmith shop,
and mill.
Now, think about this.
In 1836, the lots were selling
for $2,000 each.
At two different times during
Sinnipee's short history,
there were two prominent
visitors from Fort Crawford and
Prairie du Chien that came
to Sinnipee.
You'll probably recognize both
of their names.
Zachary Taylor and his future
son-in-law Jefferson Davis.
Sinnipee died out by 1839 when
the snow melt and spring rains
left in their wake big puddles
in the community streets, and
that became a breeding ground
for malaria and very quickly
more than half of the population
had died off, and the rest of
them pretty well left the town.
Vaughan died in 1845, and his
wife remarried John Fenley
of Kentucky.
Fenley's descendants were still
farming the land in the early
1970s.
Today, the only trace of
Sinnipee that you will find is a
small cemetery.
Gratiot's Grove in
Lafayette County.
The location of Gratiot's Grove
is probably not where you think
you would find it, at Gratiot.
Gratiot's Grove is actually
located 14 miles from its
namesake town, a couple of miles
southwest of Shullsburg.
Gratiot's Grove is founded by
Henry and Bugnion Gratiot in
1825 when they came to southern
Wisconsin to engage in lead
mining.
The nearest lead smelter at
that time was in Galena,
20 miles away.
So the Gratiots built their own
smelter.
Eventually, the Gratiot's Grove
had nine smelters operating.
The population at
Gratiot's Grove had grown to
over 1,000 people.
The Gratiots, because they were
French, had a good relationship
with the native Winnebagos who
trusted the French but not the
Yankees.
Because of his excellent
relationship with the Winnebagos
and his fluency in their
language, Henry Gratiot was
chosen to be the Indian agent
for the Winnebago in what would
become southern Wisconsin.
Today, all that remains of
Gratiot's Grove is this little
sign and the cemetery that's
right there.
The house to the right here is
the Henry Gratiot home built
in 1835.
It is the second oldest home
in Wisconsin.
It has been renovated a number
of times over the years.
There was a real bad fire in it
at one time that destroyed much
of the interior, and it was
completely rebuilt and it was
again restored just the last two
or three years.
If Henry came back today, he
would still recognize the
exterior of the house, but he
would be shocked at the inside.
But it has been a very good
straightforward restoration of
what he had built.
Next is New Diggings.
New Diggings was first settled
in 1824, making it the first
permanent settlement in
Wisconsin.
New Diggings is located about
five miles southwest of
Gratiot's Grove.
The Indians were the first
miners in southwest Wisconsin,
and they used the lead for
decorative and trading purposes.
The first white miners known to
be in the area came between
1690 and 1720.
To give you some idea how
quickly the lead rush developed,
the 1825 population in the area
was 250 people.
1826, one year later,
the population had reached
4,000 people.
Wisconsin's 1836 population was
11,000, with 5,000 in Grant,
Iowa, and Lafayette Counties.
During the Black Hawk War of
1832, which played out just
south of the border between
Wisconsin and Illinois, the
residents fled to forts in
Elizabeth, Illinois, and other
numerous forts in southwest
Wisconsin for the duration of
the war.
In 1844, a young Italian priest,
Father Samuel Mazzuchelli, came
to New Diggings, and he built
St. Augustine's church.
St. Augustine's is still
standing today, one of the few
buildings that is left.
It has been restored in 2007.
It is now in the National
Register of Historic Places.
Because there was some concern
about the Indians in the area,
Mazzuchelli built the alter in
such a way that as you're facing
the alter to the right side, if
you go up to it, you can find
that there's a little trap door
that goes underneath the alter
into a hole in the ground where
the schoolchildren could go if
the Indians were coming into
the area.
But there never was really any
problem with the area Indians.
Now, the Irish miners could not
pronounce that darn
Italian name.
No way.
So they just took to calling
Father Mazzuchelli
Father Matthew Kelly.
[LAUGHTER]
Mazzuchelli was a strong
believer in education, but also
in the separation of church
and state.
His schools were all open to all
religions, but if you happened
to be Catholic and you wanted a
Catholic religion for your
children, they stayed after
school for the Catholic
education.
Today, there are only two
buildings or businesses left in
downtown New Diggings.
And this is a shot looking at
New Diggings main street from
the south The building right
here is still existent.
That is a tavern.
And this is what the main street
looked like looking west.
That's all gone.
There are several of the early
buildings somewhat standing, but
each year they fall more and
more into disrepair, and they
will never be saved.
New Diggings, like so many
towns, fell victim to the loss
of the natural resource, which
is what is a typical strain with
almost all of the towns that
we're going to discuss today.
Either it was a natural resource
boom that they could take and
use or it was the loss of the
railroad or the railroad not
coming to their town.
Belmont, Lafayette County.
In 1835, the Wisconsin Territory
was formed by Henry Dodge and
was sworn in as territorial
governor on July 4th, 1836,
in Mineral Point.
Dodge first ordered the census
that showed Wisconsin population
center to be southern Wisconsin.
A Galena promoter,
John Atkinson, offered to build
a capital city for the new
territory, which was to consist
of four buildings.
One of the legislature, one of
the Supreme Court, a governor's
home, and a rooming house for
the legislature.
This move to have Belmont as the
state capital was highly
criticized by the Green Bay area
newspapers.
When the first legislature
convened on October 25, 1836,
only one building was completed,
and the legislators were forced
to sleep on the floor wrapped in
their coats.
It's interesting, the bulk of
the legislators were
protestants, but
Father Samuel Mazzuchelli was
called upon to do the invocation
for the first meeting of
the legislature.
There was a speculator.
You may have heard of this guy,
especially if you're in Madison,
James Doty who realized this
location was not going to work
out for the state capital,
and he purchased land in Madison
for $1500.
And we can see how that
worked out.
The state capital is about a
baseball throw away from here.
The first judge was Charles Dunn
who came in 1836, and continued
to live in the original Belmont
for 36 years.
The first legislature only met
for 36 days.
The capital was then moved to
Madison, but Belmont held on for
a number of years.
In 1910, the Women's Federation
of Women's Clubs bought the site
and restored the buildings.
But what also happened at that
time that killed Belmont was a
Milwaukee railroad that went out
to Platteville, located itself
three miles south in what is now
Belmont, and most of the
buildings from the original
Belmont were moved into the
current one.
The next three are three very
interesting communities that
never had a main street, but
they were communities
nevertheless.
The first one is Pleasant Ridge
in Grant County.
Pleasant Ridge is located about
seven miles southwest of
Lancaster and was birthed with
Wisconsin statehood in 1848.
Pleasant Ridge is not a town in
the traditional sense but an
ethnic settlement with a very
unique history that lasted
until 1961.
By 1900, Pleasant Ridge boasted
a population of 200 people.
All were black ex-slaves or
ancestors of slaves.
It was founded by
William Horner, a Virginia
plantation owner and slave
holder who moved to Wisconsin
in search of cheaper land and
over his concerns about slavery.
Horner sold his plantation,
freed his slaves, but he brought
with him seven of his former
slaves.
He purchased a large tract of
land and sold some of it off to
his former slaves for
$1.50 per acre.
After the Civil War began,
a Missourian, landowner and
slave owner, William Ross and
some of his newly freed slaves
accompanied Ross to
Pleasant Ridge.
1863 brought John Greene and his
family to Pleasant Ridge.
John Greene was unique to some
degree because he could read and
write, and he became one of the
leaders of this new colony.
Pleasant Ridge school was opened
to both blacks and whites where
they received an excellent
education.
Many of them graduated
from Lancaster High School
and went on to Macomb College
in Missouri.
Pleasant Ridge was one of the
first to integrate its schools
in the United States.
On the Civil War monument on the
courthouse square, there is a
listing of all of these
Civil War veterans from
Grant County.
Six of the names on there are of
blacks that served from
Pleasant Ridge, two of them,
a father and son, were both
killed in the war.
The next town in Cheyenne Valley
in Vernon County.
Vernon County is known for its
round barns, but a few people
know that Cheyenne Valley held
the largest rural black
population in Wisconsin.
This colony began with
Wisconsin's defiance of the
Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, and
the extensive part that
Wisconsin played in the
underground railroad.
Free blacks and those on the
underground railroad were aided
by the Quakers and others
of conscience.
Cheyenne Valley grew to a
population of 150 free blacks.
After the Civil War, the blacks
were encouraged to come to
a welcoming Wisconsin.
This is the second integrated
school in the United States.
The Cheyenne Valley was a
neighborhood of mixed ethnic
groups, all quickly adapted as
they shared schools, church, and
sports teams.
The people of Cheyenne Valley
became very successful farmers,
intermarrying with other
nationalities and races.
Thomas Shivers was born in a
Tennessee plantation, and he
became a large landowner.
His son Algie went to the
technical school of Sidelia,
Missouri, and learned modern
farm construction.
Algie built at least 15 round
barns between 1890 and 1930.
This quote truly sums up what
Cheyenne Valley was.
"Everyone was concerned about
their neighbor.
We didn't even know we were
integrated.
We just didn't think about
color."
This particular round barn is
just out of Hillsboro.
And this is, I believe, the
Shivers family, and this is the
Cheyenne Valley school.
I believe that one of the former
Madison city council members,
Michael Shivers, is a direct
descendant of the Shivers
family.
Next we come to French Town in
Dane County.
And we're honored to have with
us today the mayor of
French Town, Jerry Remy.
French Town was just north of
Belleville, and it was founded
by the French from St. Germain,
France, in the early 1850s.
Thirty-two families came to the
area to begin farming.
There was never a built town as
such, but they built a very
strong ethnic community.
Many of the businesses in
Belleville, including the
Francois Ford dealership, the
Paul, Jen, and John Deere
Dealership, Belleville Auto
Company and others were formed
by people that had their roots
in French Town.
They attended church at
St. Andrew's Catholic church
in Paoli.
A number of the original
families still farm in the
French Town settlement.
They brought with them their own
French dialect no longer spoken
in St. Germain.
Some years ago, Leo Pillar of
Belleville and his wife took a
trip back to St. Germain to see
what their homeland was like.
And they held a big banquet for
Leo and his wife, and Leo got up
and he addressed the group in
that French language that they
had used in French Town and only
the oldest of the citizens could
understand that language.
And Leo was the last speaker of
that language in this country.
So it died out with Leo.
Every once in a while,
the French Town descendants hold
a reunion.
The last one was held in 2013,
and 30 of the 32 families were
represented.
Sometimes all that remains is a
historical marker, a cemetery,
and a story about somebody.
Albert -- was a bachelor
Frenchman who was a beekeeper,
and he had his hives up in a
hill just behind the Belleville
school system.
And my understanding was that he
lived in a little hut up there
that was built somewhat into the
ground.
Okay, now we're going to go
across to the eastern part of
Wisconsin to Voree,
the Garden of Peace
in Walworth County.
And Voree sits right on the
county line.
Voree was a Mormon town founded
in 1845 by James Jesse Strang,
who was born in New York state.
Now, this doesn't look like the
type of a house that a future
king would live in, but it
was such.
Strang as a child was thought to
be mentally retarded and stupid.
The reality was Strang was very
intellectual and probably a con
man as well.
Strang had a divine vision and
commanded four of his followers
to go up this hill,
the Hill of Promise, and he had
them dig under a tree.
And they found three brass
tablets that were one foot by
two feet square written in some
very strange hieroglyphics, and
Strang pretended that he could
read them.
And all of this inspired Strang
to build a two-and-a-half-acre
Temple of Zion.
Strang's sister-in-law was
Moses Smith.
Let me start over here.
Strang's sister was the
sister-in-law to Moses Smith,
one of the founders of the
Mormon church.
Voree became admired and discord
over a number of numerous issues
and many moved to Beaver Island
on Lake Michigan where they
named the town that they
founded, surprisingly enough
they named it St. James for
Mr. Strang.
There, on 1850, Strang was
crowned the king.
He wore a discarded Shakespeare
actor's red robe and a crown for
his coronation.
Shortly thereafter, Strang
proclaimed that the lord had
commanded him to institute
polygamy, which caused a great
uproar.
Strang's despotic rule was
despised, and in the summer of
1856 two of his followers shot
and killed him.
There are still a few of the
buildings standing in Voree.
Another Mormon town, Zarahemla
is now Blanchardville and the
village of Yellowstone in
Lafayette County.
Zarahemla is the City of God,
was founded in the 1840s, and is
now known as Blanchardville.
By 1856, the town had a mill and
a number of stores.
The first Mormon settlers, the
Newkirks, the Kleins, the
Wildermooth families, were all
related by marriage, and some of
their ancestors are still in the
Blanchardville and New Glarus
area.
The Mormons that came here
combined farming and lead mining
with Newkirk Diggings at
Blanchardville and Fretwell
Diggings at Yellowstone.
The first Mormon families had
been dissatisfied with their
earlier religions and family
tragedies that turned them to
Mormonism.
The hotel and area in
Yellowstone is about seven and a
half miles west of
Blanchardville.
One of the early settlers there
was Zenas Gurley, a strangite
Mormon who came to the area
from Voree.
And he had a falling out with
Strang over the polygamy issue,
and so he split with him.
Gurley eventually went to
Salt Lake City where he rose to
a very high position
in the church.
Yellowstone, it was also known
as Scottstown, was one of those
towns that you come around the
corner and suddenly out in the
middle of nowhere is this
beautiful stone building.
And the story behind it was the
guy that built it thought that
the railroad was going to come
up that valley, but it didn't.
So he had this building and no
railroad.
And that was a very common thing
because the railroad that came
through Blanchardville killed
off two towns, and we'll get to
that one very quickly.
This building did serve as the
post office.
The owners have kept it up very
nicely.
The second floor still has an
intact dance hall in it that
they have chosen to preserve.
Today, there are new pioneers
moving into this same area.
The Amish farmers that have
moved in and have bought up
quite a few of the farms there.
Moscow in Iowa County.
Moscow, two miles cross country
from Blanchardville, was founded
in 1847 by Chauncey Smith
who built the mill on
the Blue Mounds branch of
the Pecatonica River.
At its height, Moscow grew to
110 people.
The businesses in Moscow
included a carding mill,
broom factory, blacksmith,
cheese factory, doctors office,
post office, hotel, and school.
It was a very well educated
populous, and they formed a
literary society for their
citizens.
In 1888, the Illinois Central
bypassed Moscow for
Blanchardville, and as the story
always goes, the town died.
Most of the buildings were moved
into Blanchardville.
Moscow had a very interesting
history.
In 1873, the Norwegians of that
area, and it is a very solidly
Norwegian area, staged a
Syttende Mai, which is the
Norwegian independence day.
They had heard the Ole Bull, who
was a Norwegian virtuoso violin
player, was in Madison at that
time.
And they decided they wanted to
get him out there to play and
speak at their Syttende Mai.
So they took a two-day buggy
trip to Madison to find out if
Bull would come out, and he
said, yes, he would.
So Ole came out and he spoke to
a crowd of 3,000 people.
After he was done, the crowd
starting cheering and they asked
him if he would play the violin.
He says, I have come to speak,
not to play.
[LAUGHTER]
And I don't have a violin.
This little 10-year-old kid
walked up to him, handed a
violin up to him, and said here,
and he played.
That violin is still in the
hands of the grandson of the
little kid that handed that
violin up to Bull, and he still
plays it and he can still play
the same songs that Ole Bull
played that day.
[LAUGHTER]
1933, they did a reenactment of
this, and at that reenactment,
they drew 2,000 people.
And then in 2003, they did yet
another reenactment of this, and
they had quite a cast of
characters there to play out the
parts.
State Representative
Steve Friess played one of the
speakers, and former Madison
mayor and Iowa County judge
Bill Dyke also played out
a part.
Dill in Green County.
Dill was one of these towns that
was founded strictly on the
railroad.
In 1888, the Illinois Central
railroad came through Dill on
its way up to Dodgeville, and
Dill was where the Milwaukee
road going west and Dill
crossed.
So this little town was formed.
Now, Dill is just one mile west
of Browntown, and they decided
that they should have a town
there because they had a depot.
The depot was shared by both
railroads.
It's an Illinois Central depot,
and the agent worked for both of
the railroads.
There was fierce competition
between the railroads, and it
was pretty vicious at times.
Then, one winter, a decision was
made that they needed to move
the depot across the river.
So they waited until the river
was solidly frozen, they jacked
the depot up, put skids under
it, hitched horses onto it, and
pulled it across the river.
Now, the hotel served the
passengers of both railroads.
There were 12 rooms in the
hotel.
They served meals.
And there was also a stockyard
in Dill.
Dill had its own homemakers
group.
And Dill died in 1942 with the
removal of the tracks from
Dodgeville back to Freeport
"for the war effort."
The only trace of Dill that
you'll find today is one green
road sign that says Dill.
And there's not another trace
that you can find.
And you would think that just
with 72 years or thereabouts
that you would find something,
but there's absolutely nothing
there.
I'll bet you didn't know that
oil was ever struck in
Wisconsin.
Well, you're about to hear the
real story of this.
Oil City was founded in the
Kickapoo River Valley in 1842 by
Esau Johnson, who was the first
permanent white settler in
Monroe County.
In 1866, an eastern named
Tickner arrived in Oil City
telling people that he was an
oil expert.
And after several days of
exploring around, Tickner came
back and he told the people that
he thought that the terrain
looked pretty darn good for
finding oil.
So Tickner began leasing land at
exorbitant prices for oil
exploration, and he reluctantly,
very reluctantly, sold stock to
the investors.
Exploration for oil began, and
several days later Tickner
discovered oil and he quickly
formed the Gem Petroleum
Company, which just drove the
price of the stock up even more.
After some drilling, a gusher
was struck at 700 feet with
liquid blasting 20 feet into
the air.
The only problem was
it wasn't oil.
[LAUGHTER]
They'd sprung an artesian well,
which is still running today.
But by the time he was found
out, Tickner was long gone and
a rather wealthy man.
Oil City was platted in 1870
with eight blocks and 72 lots
and all were sold by 1883.
At it's high point, Oil City had
a post office, a mill, a
blacksmith shop, stores,
schools, and a sawmill.
All hopes for a sustaining
Oil City died when the Kickapoo
and Northwestern Railroads
stopped building their tracks
seven miles south.
That just ended any hope that
Oil City ever had of becoming
any town of any significance.
And, like so many towns, because
of the railroad not coming,
Oil City's best days were gone.
This is Turtleville in
Rock County.
Turtleville is located north of
Beloit, was founded in 1838 by
John and Abel Lewis, the
brothers found that Turtleville
would provide them with the
water power they needed for
their sawmill.
By 1850, this town had a stone
schoolhouse, a baptist church,
and blacksmith shop and several
stores.
1850 also brought an Englishman
to town, William Hodson.
He was quick to build a flour
mill and a distillery.
He hired a lot of local
residents for this.
He then built this house, which
was 17 rooms with 12 feet high
ceilings, gardens, fruit trees,
all kinds of amenities that you
would never expect at that
period of time.
Then the Civil War broke out,
and Hodson's loyalties during
the Civil War were with the
Confederacy, and in order to try
to hurt the federal government,
he was selling unstamped
whiskey.
[LAUGHTER]
In 1857, one of his employees
turned him in, and Hodson
eventually had to pay a fine
of $98,407.
To put that into 1867 terms,
that's a lot of money.
[LAUGHTER]
Eventually, the government
foreclosed on him, and his
property was sold at public
auction for $3,000 and for all
of his holdings.
He spent his last days wandering
in and out of taverns drinking
whiskey and playing his violin
in Janesville.
Today, all that remains is the
cemetery and this bridge which
is in the National Register of
Historic Places.
Ulao in Ozaukee County is very
close to what we now know as
Grafton.
It was just north of Milwaukee
and built on a steep bluff, as
you can tell here,
on Lake Michigan.
It was founded by
James T. Gifford in 1847.
Gifford was a perceptive
businessman.
He built a 1,000 pier out onto
the lake to entice steamships to
stop at Ulao.
Gifford knew that it was
difficult for the steamers to
fuel in Milwaukee because they
had to negotiate the river,
which was very shallow.
So he built this pier for them.
He bought wood from the area
farmers who were clearing their
woods so that they could get
cropland.
He moved the wood to Ulao and
then out to the bluff where he
devised and built a large shoot
that slid the wood down to the
lake shore.
This provided steamships with
a much better fueling stop.
And consider that each steamboat
coming from Chicago to Buffalo,
New York, or vice versa, could
use up to 600 cords of wood for
that trip.
To put into perspective, it took
10 acres of wood just to fuel a
one-way trip.
Gifford's sister, Jane Gifford,
married a Luther Guiteau and
moved there in 1850 with their
son Charles who was described as
a high strung and excitable boy.
Charles later described himself
as an adult as an evangelist, an
insurance salesman, a writer,
and orator, and a conman.
[LAUGHTER]
Charles went east and made
a very good nuisance of himself
trying to get a job with
the government, and they
obviously saw through him and
nobody would hire him.
So he ambled around for some
time, and in July of 1880 a
distraught Charles bought a gun
and he went to the platform at
the Washington, DC, train
station where he shot and killed
President Garfield.
And as the wood supply died out,
so did Ulao.
But a new group of inhabitants
stayed for a short time:
Mormons that were retreating
back from Beaver Island.
Two of the buildings still exist
today.
Now we're getting closer to
home.
Dover in Dane County.
Dover is located just three
miles west of Mazomanie, founded
in 1844.
But its inception began two
years earlier in Liverpool,
England.
Letters were set to a group of
Englishmen thinking of making
America their home became
Dover's genesis.
They formed the British
Temperance Emigration Society
and Savings Fund to promote
emigration to America.
Each family was to get 80 acres
of land, including a two-story,
14 by 20 log cabin and five
acres of land under cultivation.
Emigration began in 1844, and by
1850 the population was
nearly 700.
Dover had stores, a wagon shop,
blacksmith shop, hotels, post
offices, and a coopers shop.
Dover's most famous citizen was
John Appleby.
John Appleby invented the
knotter that was used on early
grain binders, and that patent
has still been kept current and
it is still used on the latest
models of the old small square
balers.
Something that really stood the
test of time.
Dover's demise came when the
Milwaukee and Mississippi River
Railroad decided to bypass
Dover.
They had wanted to go through
Dover, but the farmers near
there wanted so much for their
land that they switched their
route and went through
Mazomanie, and with the arrival
of the railroad in Mazomanie,
Dover died and quickly passed
into the history books.
Helena, Wisconsin.
Where is Helena?
Well, that kind of depends on
when you ask the question.
Helena has been in three
locations but always on the
Wisconsin River.
The first Helena was laid out by
Governor Henry Dodge and was to
be used as a river port.
In 1831, Daniel Whitney moved
the town to the shot tower where
he owned the shot tower himself
and was making lead shot.
The town was moved once again
closer to the Wisconsin River
and railroad, but the town never
flourished in this location.
The town was abandoned during
the Black Hawk War of 1832.
Many men from Helena went off to
fight in this war.
After the Battle of Wisconsin
Heights, the buildings were torn
apart to make rafts.
General Atkinson arrived on
July 26th, and over two days
they tore down enough buildings
that they could build rafts to
get Atkinson's 1,300 men across
the Wisconsin River.
The mid-1850s were good to
Helena.
It boasted a post office, a
hotel, a ballroom, a five-story
warehouse, a 120-foot wharf for
river steamboats.
But by the mid-1860s, only 50
residents remained.
Frank Lloyd Wright's uncle,
Jenkin Lloyd Jones, bought the
property for the Tower Hill
Pleasure Company, an educational
retreat boasting a pavilion,
dining hall, stables, icehouse,
cottages, and lawn houses.
La Rue.
I would imagine, have any of you
ridden at Mid-Continent Railroad
Museum?
Okay.
Then you're familiar with
La Rue.
La Rue had quite a history for
a very short time.
The 1890s a number of iron mines
were opened up, and that gave
La Rue its boom town moment.
The iron ore brought to La Rue
two saloons, a hotel, a general
store, union church, and a grade
school.
To serve the mines, the Chicago
and Northwestern Railroad
extended their line two miles to
service these mines.
The mines operated on the two to
three shift per day operation.
And many of the miners were
Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish.
There's one big problem with the
mine.
And that was water infiltrating.
And that closed the mines down,
and it reopened, another mine
opened some years later mining
quartzite.
The last employee there left
in 1960.
We're going to skip past a
couple of these because of time
constraints.
Exeter in Green County.
In Exeter there were women who
were tough, as you can tell.
[LAUGHTER]
This is their 1939 women's rope
pulling team.
Exeter was founded in 1828 by
William Deveise, a Virginian who
had been in Exeter one year
earlier.
Two traders, McNutt and Boner,
had a trading post just outside
of Exeter in 1828.
During a drunken brawl, McNutt
killed Boner with an ax, making
this the first murder in
Green County.
And interpreter named
Van Sickle, who worked with
them, was a witness to
this murder.
McNutt left Exeter immediately
to go to Fort Blue Mounds to
turn himself in for the murder.
Shortly thereafter, McNutt
arrived at Fort Blue Mounds and
so did Van Sickle.
McNutt was transferred out to
the jail at Fort Crawford where
a trial was held.
Van Sickle was the witness
to the murder, but McNutt
was found innocent because
Van Sickle was a noted liar.
[LAUGHTER]
They didn't really have that
much doubt that he probably did
commit it, but they couldn't
trust the witness.
The first dance was held in
Exeter in 1842, and the first
Fourth of July was celebrated
in 1843.
The highlight of this Fourth of
July event was when an area
character, Lickfield, got up on
a whiskey barrel, and there were
plenty of whiskey barrels in
Exeter, and delivered a speech.
"Let us recount the history of
that great struggle in which
they so nobly fought, bled,
and died.
The hand of the omnipotence was
against them, but by the grace
of God they conquered."
George McGee built this store,
and nobody is sure, it could be
1850s, it could be early 1860s.
When he opened it up,
he had an open house and a dance
in the second floor.
He had people coming from as far
away as Beloit, Janesville,
and Rockford.
Now, you think about that, in
the 1860s that's 65 miles, and
people came that far for this.
William Deveise, the founder of
Exeter, enlisted in
the Black Hawk War of 1832,
and he served with both
Albert Sidney Johnson and
Joseph E. Johnson, who went on
to become Confederate generals.
Deveise was General Atkinson's
aide-de-camp, and Deveise lived
in the area until he died
in 1885.
He was 95 years old.
The other thing that's
interesting about Exeter, you
think a good northern state like
Wisconsin, the men would all
enlist in the Union army during
the Civil War, but they didn't.
A number of them enlisted in the
Confederate army because of
their southern roots.
Attica, Green County.
Attica is mid point between
Monticello and Albany.
It's one of only two townships
that is not regular size.
Fourteen of the 16 townships in
Green County are six miles
square.
Attica did not like the town of
Exeter, so they got themselves
out of it and became a part of
Brooklyn township.
So you look at that line, and it
goes like this.
There's that little blip, and
that's where Attica is.
Attica was also named Winneshiek
and Milford before becoming
Attica, taking its name from
Attica, New York.
On the east side of the river,
White Breast and his Winnebago
people had a huge village there.
By 1845, there was a gristmill,
a cooper, blacksmith shop, a
wagon shop, and many other
businesses.
I don't have a photo of it.
This building right here was the
blacksmith shop.
That has been restored and is
now in the National Register of
Historic Places, and it is a
restaurant, a very good
restaurant.
Stewart or Postville was founded
in 1838 by John Stewart from
Ohio.
The first post office was
located a couple miles away at
Farmers Grove, then moved to
Stewart or Postville.
The town name was changed to
Postville because there was
another Stewart post office in
Wisconsin.
The new town name was attributed
to Gilbert Post, who built the
first hotel.
Green's Prairie Cemetery is
where Fighting Bob La Follette's
father was first buried.
And he was at some point exhumed
and moved into Madison to be
alongside his wife.
This man is Carl Blaser, the
longtime owner of the Postville
blacksmith shop.
The Postville blacksmith shop
started in business in 1856.
It has its fourth owner at the
present time, and it has never
closed.
And it's going great guns.
They do metalwork all over the
United States now.
Schultz, Green County.
Schultz is three miles south of
Monticello.
Its biggest claim to fame was a
murder in 1919.
A hired man on a farm just to
the east of Schultz killed
his boss.
He said, "I really didn't want
to kill him, but I had to.
And I liked the man."
But he killed him nevertheless.
So the sheriff's department is
called out and they arrived and
the guy is holed up in the
house.
And by the time this whole
fiasco was done, the cops had
fired 2,200 rounds into the
house.
The murderer never got a scratch
on him.
[LAUGHTER]
The farmer was dead.
He shot and killed
Sheriff Solbraa, and there was
a World War I veteran who
came and said, well, we need
to storm the place, and he
got killed as well.
The hired man ended up in
Mendota for the rest of his
life.
I'm going to have to jump
though these.
We're going to back up just one.
How many of you have ever heard
of Martintown?
Oh my gosh, this is not a
response I expected.
Where did you hear of it?
>> We live there.
>> We live close to it.
>> Pardon?
>> We live near Browntown.
>> Okay, you're cheating.
[LAUGHTER]
Yes?
>> I lived in Browntown.
>> Pardon?
>> I lived in Browntown.
>> Okay.
Anybody else?
Where have you heard of it?
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> Okay, typically every one
of you has probably heard the
name Martintown, but you
wouldn't think about it.
Oftentimes in the spring, when
there are flood watches, flood
warnings, high water warnings,
and you'll hear the weather
service say the Pecatonica River
is one foot above flood stage at
Martintown.
Martintown is the gauging
station.
We're going to finish up with
my favorite one.
Centerville in Decatur,
Green County.
Centerville was just a marvelous
town.
My gosh, just look at it.
[LAUGHTER]
You're laughing, why?
Don't you see anything there?
It was such a beautiful...
Centerville had a beautiful wide
main street, buildings,
two- and three-story buildings,
businesses, a beautiful town
square, parks, everything you
could possibly want.
Small houses, big houses,
exquisite houses.
What happened was the town was
laid out and speculators that
laid out the town had these
beautiful drawings of
Centerville and they went to
Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit,
Cleveland, Philadelphia selling
these lots in this beautiful
mecca in southern Wisconsin.
These people showed up to claim
their lots, and the only thing
they found were the red
surveyor stakes.
There was never a nail driven
there, and the speculators were
long gone.
Any questions?
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]