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THE WAUPACA
REPUBLICAN POST June 5, 1913 LETTERS FROM WAUPACA
RESIDENTS Waupaca,
Wis., May 26, 1913. It
was in the year 1851, about the 5th day of May, when five men in the
city of Racine hired a team to take them to Fond du Lac, enroute for the Indian
land which had been proclaimed as having been thrown into market by the
Government. The names of these men were
Ansel Warren (then editor of the Racine Advocate), Richard and John Harney,
Thomas Marshall and M. R. Baldwin. I
think we arrived in Fond du Lac the third day; we then took Foot & Walkers
line, wading deep in water through a part of Fond du Lac to Black Wolf Point,
where the Harneys had a cousin living.
We chartered a little sail-boat to go up Wolf River to Gill’s
Landing. Getting into Lake Poygan, we
lost our course, not being able to find the cut-off which shortened the route
from following the crooks in the river.
Night overtook us and we tied our boat to a raft of logs, to stay for
the night. About midnight a
tremendously heavy thunder-storm came up, flashing and roaring frightfully, the
rain pouring down furiously, but we had to stand it. In the morning we managed to find our course and came on up to
Gills Landing Taking Foot &
Walkers line again, we came on and made claims about a mile north of what was
called Spencer’s Lake. There were a few
settlers at what was called Tomorrow River Falls, which is now the city of
Waupaca. The settlers were E. C.
Sessions, Joseph, William and Miles Hibbard, S. F. Ware, and Captain
Scott. Three of four log huts constituted
the buildings. Dana Dewey was
here. Winthrop and George Lord, Wilson
Holt and a man by the name of Judson came here the same year; Mr. Cooper,
Ambrose Gard, Chas. Bartlett and several others settling out in the
country. The Vaughns, the Chandlers,
Lyman Dayton and family, Vanhorn and family, J. H. Jones and several other
Jones, George W. Taggart and the Caldwells.
Weed, Gumaer and Birdsell had a sawmill in Weyauwega. The same year the squatters had a Fourth of
July celebration. The speaker of the
day who delivered the oration, was a young lawyer by the name of E. L. Browne, whom
almost everybody knows and have shaken hands with many times, and is an honored
and worthy citizen. Many people have
come to Waupaca since the early settlement; many have gone again, and very many
have gone to their final reward. If the
cost of living had been as high at the time of the early settlement as now, it
would not have been possible for the people to have obtained a living, for
there was no money here and no way to make money. Shingles were legal tender.
Every settler had to have a draw shave and a shaving horse, and go out
and hunt a pine tree that would make shingles and shave them, get a team and
haul them to Berlin and trade them for provisions for several years. They would also have to work in the woods
during the winter for twelve, fourteen or sixteen dollars a month, according to
the ability of the man. So you see how
far that would go now towards supporting a family and improving a new
farm. For twenty years very little
progress was made in this country; from 1851 to 1871 when the railroads began
to point this way, then things began to
look a little better. This Indian land,
with its barren sandbanks, as Evan Townsend stated in my hearing, when the Wisconsin
Central was being built through here, saying it was a good thing, for we could
almost raise enough to live on but if we had a railroad, we could get stuff in
here easier. Now our dealers are
shipping out thousands of carloads every year of the products of the soil; our
banks are carrying a million dollars in deposit in this city; our farmers are
retiring in affluence, and our city is the cleanest, the brightest, the best
governed; our school facilities the best; our churches numerous and we have the
most enterprising city of its size in this or any other state. M. R. Baldwin
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