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- In 1845, former governor James Doty
finished up work on his dream home--
a large log cabin built on Doty Island.
- The story of Doty is intertwined so much
with the story of Neenah-Menasha
that without him
you probably wouldn't have seen
the community develop in the same way.
- Doty's cabin,
now preserved as a Neenah museum,
gives an insight into the life
of a former federal judge,
territorial governor,
and congressman.
Doty also became a land speculator,
perhaps best known for persuading legislators
to move the state capital,
from Belmont
to a town site he was developing
called "Madison."
- Doty had given pieces of land
to the principal leaders of the Legislature.
He was very clever
and a man with great foresight,
even though he may not have been entirely ethical.
Doty was apprenticing to a lawyer in Detroit
and became the secretary to Governor Cass,
the governor of the Michigan Territory,
which at that point
included Wisconsin and Minnesota and Iowa.
And in 1820,
he joined a canoe expedition
led by Governor Cass
and they traveled through the Great Lakes,
down the upper waters of the Mississippi,
and then up the Wisconsin River,
and get to Lake Winnebago.
And it was a beautiful, placid,
smooth body of water
and, of course, we know that it was even more swampy
than it would be today.
And they come upon Doty Island
at the north end of Lake Winnebago.
We call it Doty Island now--
well because
James Doty ultimately homesteaded it.
- Doty Island split the Fox River
into two channels.
And rapids on both sides were a sure sign
of water power.
Here, Doty could envision
an ideal place for a settlement,
where the river would eventually provide
both transportation and power for manufacturing.
[Native American drumming]
At the time of Doty's visit,
a Ho-Chunk village known as "Menashay"
stood on the Island led by Chief Hootschope,
also known as "Four Legs."
Across the south channel stood an immense Elm
where local tribes would gather in council.
A collection of artifacts,
now displayed in Neenah's city hall,
shows abundant evidence
of the presence of Native Americans,
who have lived in the area
for thousands of years.
Just northwest of Doty Island,
treaty negotiations began
that would result in the Menominee Nation
ceding a large portion of their land
to the U.S. Government.
- But another part of that Treaty of 1831
was the establishment of
a education program, as it was called at the time,
for the Menominee.
The education program
established a village
in around where Neenah is today
to teach
farming and animal husbandry.
And so, there's a series of block houses
Hewn timber, squared-off timber log houses
with a dovetail type joint on the end.
There would have been a blacksmith shop appointed
and also a mill.
It doesn't last very long,
about two years.
In 1836, there is another treaty that is negotiated,
known as the Treaty at the Cedars,
where the Menominee cede additional territory,
lands now north of the Fox River,
including the lands where this mission is located.
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- In Madison, Governor James Doty
heard about plans to sell off the Menominee village
and contacted his friend and political supporter,
Harrison Reed.
- Harrison Reed was the editor-publisher
of the Milwaukee Sentinel .
And he had been a great supporter of Doty.
And apparently,
Doty tipped him off
as to when the land would be released.
- Harrison said, "I don't really have any money."
He was being paid by his subscribers
with things like chickens.
It was a barter system.
And he was just scrambling.
But this was an opportunity for him to become something.
- Reed placed a winning bid
on the village lands
and all the structures that were there.
- Even though the federal law said
that you had to pay for it in cash up front,
Reed, apparently, was able to get it on credit.
- Reed connected with an investor in upstate New York
named Harvey Jones,
a glove manufacturer from Gloversville,
who dreamed of building his own town.
They struck a deal to own all of the land together
and split the cost of improvements.
At the site, Charles Doty, son of the governor,
and Harrison Reed's brother, Curtis,
another supporter of Governor Doty,
all pledged to help Jones
with the building of a dam
across the South Channel.
- You had this
core of men
revolving around Governor Doty,
but none of them had any money.
And this is just, like, a recipe for disaster.
- Mr. Jones came in with the money, and
the other people in the group-- other four people--
were happy to take his money.
Things were okay for, like, a honeymoon period,
and then things went downhill very fast after that.
- Shortly after Harrison Reed
mapped out a village called Neenah,
Harvey Jones drew up his own settlement right next to it
and began selling lots.
Jones refused to pay Reed
his share of the land sales
because Reed owed him money
for the cost of improvements,
like the dam.
- Jones had the ability
to create a debt that Reed couldn't pay.
- Because of the physical nature of this location,
with two branches of the Fox River
draining out around an island,
out of Lake Winnebago,
two water powers,
there was an alternative.
- Leaving Neenah and Harvey Jones on the South Channel,
James Doty and his son, Charles,
raised funds to buy up
hundreds of acres on the North Channel,
and with Curtis Reed,
they platted out a village they called Menasha.
Back in Neenah, Harrison Reed announced
that he was suing Harvey Jones
and that he still owned a share of all of the lots,
which couldn't be sold without his agreement.
- Reed was able to stop the development in Neenah,
and it lasted for about 13 years.
- When Wisconsin achieved statehood,
James Doty was elected to Congress.
The federal government gave the new state
a large land grant,
to fund work on the Fox-Wisconsin waterway--
a series of locks, dams, and canals
on the Fox River.
The government would have to choose
where to build the channel--
Neenah or Menasha.
- You can understand that
when the federal government decided to build a channel,
that meant big money because it meant
people would move to that area,
businesses would move to that area.
- When Menasha won the bid,
bitter feelings persisted
for years afterward.
- There's a story that
Doty actually turned the map upside down,
and that's the reason the North Channel was selected.
I don't know that that's true.
That's part of the folklore, if you will.
- These were the things that became the seedbed
for longstanding debate between the communities.
- Each village fought to stop the township government
from paying for improvements to the other.
Finally, Neenah's village president, J.B. Hamilton,
petitioned the county board
to split their township in two.
- And that's how we have
Town of Neenah and Town of Menasha,
with the island split by the County
down the middle,
like Solomon would have divided the child
in the biblical story.