WAUPACA REPUBLICAN POST

Thursday, June 30, 1910

 

VISITED WAUPACA IN 1849

 

 

The visit of Martin Burnham to this city last week recalled to his mind the fact that his recent visit was the sixty-first anniversary of a visit to this place when at the age of twenty-one he had started to seek his fortune in the West.

 

He had left his native state of Vermont with only $10 and after traveling by stage over the Green Mountains he had taken passage on a canal boat on the Erie Canal across the state of New York.  He then came by the Great Lakes to Plymouth, Wis., where a second cousin, E. C. Sessions, had a claim.  From this point five young men proceeded in a northwest direction looking for a place to find cheap land on which to make homesteads.  The company consisted of the Hibbard brothers, Joseph and William, their cousin, E. C. Sessions, Martin Burnham, a second cousin of the three, and Wm. Pratt, a brother of Mrs. Joseph Hibbard.  These five sturdy young pioneers proceeded to a point on [the] Wolf river near Gills Landing, where they stayed over night with a friendly Indian.  In the morning they proceeded to what is now Weyauwega where one shanty had been built for the purpose of sheltering the workmen who had started to the erection of a grist mill.  Asking questions of the men at work on the mill and buying some flour and bacon the party of five sought out the first town site up river basing their judgment in this regard upon the prospect for water power.  At night they reached Waupaca Falls and camped on the high point overlooking the falls or in front of the present residence of Albert Breit at the north end of Main street.  A thunderstorm set in with the darkness, so peeling a tree they covered their scanty provisions with the bark and having no tent they concluded they would protect themselves as best they might from the steady down pour of rain and stood up during the darkness.  When morning came the rain cleared and the party prepared a hasty breakfast and then proceeded to stake out three eighty-acre claims where the city of Waupaca now stands.  These claims were made for Sessions and the two Hibbards as Pratt was unfavorably impressed by what he saw and he decided at once to return to the East.  Young Burnham had no intention to return home but, having the California gold fever, decided to find out some place where he might earn money with which to proceed further west.  On the second day the party started back for Weyauwega and finding that to reach the place before dark they must take the shortest cut, they rolled their trousers above their knees and pushed along through the swamp along the south shore of the river through what now composes the fine farms of Fred and Herman Mittelstadt, where later a corduroy road was made to save the detour south through Lind.

 

In Sheboygan county the young men found work and later took their several ways, Pratt returning home, the Hibbards and Sessions returning with their families in the fall, and Burnham to Chicago where he worked during the winter of the ‘49 and ‘50 when the city did not exceed 20,000 population.  Only one railroad had at that time been proposed for Chicago and this was in process of building, having been laid twenty miles or half way to the city of Elgin.  This road was laid of old track that had been taken up in some eastern state where the new Trail was being laid.  The old rails consisted of strips of iron, laid on wood bed pieces.

 

It is not proposed to give an account of the trip to California with its thrilling adventures and the visit to Portland, Oregon, when it was a town of 300 inhabitants only so far as it links the early history of Waupaca to that of other western points at a time when the red man held undisputed sway where cities were to rise in the decade from 1850 to 1860.

 

We were much interested to hear this only survivor of the five white men who staked out Waupaca tell of the experiences he had in those thrilling times an and note the interest he still has in Waupaca and the other points he visited before he returned to the East with a substantial supply of the yellow metal that later formed a nucleus in his purchase of a tract of fine prairie in the corn belt of Eastern Illinois.

 

This interest in Waupaca and its early settlers has been sufficient to call him here on several occasions.  One of these visits of which he is pleased to recall was when in June, 1899, he met at Waupaca by appointment with E. C. Sessions of Reno, Nevada, and they celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their first visit to Waupaca in ‘49.  At that time these two were the only survivors of that company of five who staked out three claims several months before the government survey had been made or the Indians removed to a reservation.  Shortly after that meeting Mr. Sessions died.  At the age of eighty-two Mr. Burnham visited Waupaca and not only noted the changes that have marked this city in sixty-one years, but by a close inspection of the Veteran’s Home noted wherein it differs from the Soldier’s Home at Danville, Ill., where only old soldiers are cared for and the wives and widows of soldiers must be cared for elsewhere.  He was also pleased with the fine scenery at the Chain O’ Lakes, the accommodations for summer visitors at the lakes, through the convenience of the electric road connecting the city and the resort where he and his friends partook of a dinner after a trip of several miles about the lakes.