Kemp01

Waupaca County Post

December 18, 1919

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF EARLY SETTLERS IN COUNTY,

AGED DESCENDANT DIES

(A.J. Hutton)

In the early fifties two Englishmen, brothers, settled some nine miles west of the little village of Waupaca Falls, on what at that time was commonly called the Indian Land. Their names were John and William Kemp. They had been pioneers in Canada and, later, in the town of Lamarton, Fond du Lac County.

Like most of the early settlers of the Waupaca region, they were intelligent, industrious, honorable, up-right men – ideal men to lay securely the foundations of local civil government in the wilderness. The Kemp family became one of the leading families in the Town of Lanark, and the record of their lives is a large part of the history of the town.

John Kemp had no children. William Kemp and his wife, Mary Bilton Kemp, were the parents of five sons and two daughters. The “Kemp boys” were skilled in the craft of the woods. They were trappers, hunters and fishermen. They knew the wild animals, their haunts, their habits, and the meaning of their voices. They knew the feathered songsters and their songs. They knew the trees and plants and flowers. They knew where to look for the sweet wild strawberry. They knew where to find the hollow trees in which the bees had stored their treasures. They knew all the “arts of the pioneer life. They could build a log cabin and without brick or mortar could furnish it with a chimney. They ran breaking team, and did more than their share in opening farms and causing the wilderness to blossom.

Above all, their word was as good as their bond. They gave every man a square deal which is the modern way of saying they followed the Golden Rule. They helped their neighbors in distress. They were the kind of men that make democracy safe and our institutions secure. Four of the brothers served in the Civil War.

James Kemp, the last of the second generation of kemps, died at his home in Waupaca Nov. 15, 1919. One who has known him, and all the Kemps, from his boyood, pays this tribute of respect to his memory of all the men and women in the first two generations of the Kemp family.