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THE WAUPACA POST June 3, 1886 EARLY DAYS IN WAUPACA (By Dana Dewey) The
three forties on which the best part of Waupaca stands including what is now
known as Bartlett’s additions were entered by E. C. Sessions on the 15th
day of June, 1849. Wm. Mumbrue made the
preliminary survey between the 12th and the 20th of
August of the same year. The
nearest grist mill was at Ripon and the marshes between Waupaca and that place
were so miry that they could not be crossed by a team until frozen. I came to Waupaca in October, 1849. About that time Mrs. Sessions informed her
husband that they were about out of flour and something must be done
immediately, so I took a coffee mill and went to work. After grinding three hoppers full I gave it
up as a bad job and tried to grind corn, but with no better success. Sessions and myself then went up the hill
back of the Dane’s Home, cut a white oak tree about two feet through cut out a
block two feet long, squared each end, bored a hole in the center and with a
pair of compasses made a circle, chisled and burnt a hole large enough to hold
about a peck of grain. Then we made a
hickory pestle about three feet long and five inches through it and with the
aid of a coffee mill for grinding buckwheat and this mortar and pestle for
grinding rain managed to get along until the 25th of December, when
a team went below and brought back some flour ground in a regular mill. There
was no post office in Waupaca in those days, the nearest being Oshkosh. John Vaughn used to go down and get our
letters, inquiring for Tomorrow River Mills, Waupaca Falls, Green Bush and
Walla Walla mail. A Capt. “Jack” ran a
steamboat from Oshkosh up the Wolf River to Gill’s Landing that fall and his
boat finally froze up in Partridge Lake.
He used to carry our letters for five cents each way, charging two cents
for newspapers. The letters for
Tomorrow River Mills were left with Henry Tetalot, at Weyauwega, Green Bush
letters were left with Simon C. Dow between Waupaca and Weyauwega. E. C. Sessions did the duty of postmaster at
Waupaca. Henry Tetalot was the first
settler at Weyauwega, coming there about May 15, 1849, and marrying a
squaw. He married so as to get the
position of Indian trader, but he managed to incur the enmity of the Indians
and the chief notified him that if he didn’t make himself scarce he would have
his scalp, and he left the next spring, taking his wife with him. Fremont
mail was left with a man named Mahew when was either the first or second
settler in Fremont. On 25th
of December, 1849, E. C. Sessions, W. B. Hibbard and myself started for Berlin
for provisions. We had to cut a road
through, and only went a little south-east of where Pine River now stands the
first day. That night we made a wind
break of our wagon box, cut some boughs, ate sparingly of the few provisions we
had and slept fairly comfortable until morning, when we ate the balance of our
provisions, the share of each in bread and meat being about as large as a man’s
three fingers. We expected to get
plenty to eat at Auroraville and thought we would get there by noon, but we got
there at night. A man named Daniels had
a sort of logging shanty and when asked for a supper said all the provisions he
had were on the table and the table was cleaned. He expected provisions that night, but they didn’t come ad so we
went without. We staid out of doors and
walked all night to keep warm after having cut brush, filled up a creek, and
poured on water to freeze and form a bridge over which we could get our oxen in
the morning. It froze hard enough
during the night to hold them and in the morning we started for Berlin. After crossing the creek Cooper saw a shanty
and made a break for it to get something for breakfast. Nobody was there but he found a little bread
and pork frozen solid, taking an axe he cut this into pieces and distributed it
among five men. There was about three
pounds of pork and a half loaf of bread.
We ate it and were might glad to get it although it was a pretty cold
dose for our stomachs. We then hurried
on as fast as we could towards Berlin.
When we got there all wanted some whiskey. I wanted warm water instead, but a doctor there took a tumbler,
filled it about half full of hot water and then filled it up with something
else, brandy I suppose. I swallowed it
and asked no questions. It was mighty
hot and it was brandy, it was the first and last liquor I ever did drink. At any rate I found in about half a minute
that it had a good deal of power in it for twisting my legs. A Mr. Strong kept a tavern at Berlin and
also a few groceries. Sessions
concluded to buy flour from him instead of going to Ripon and purchased three
sacks for which he paid $1.25 per hundred.
In Ripon it would have cost him seventy cents per hundred. I will give the prices on a few other
articles he purchased so the POST’s readers can compare them with present
prices. He paid $1 for 18 pounds of
brown sugar, $1 for 16 pounds of loaf sugar and $1 for 5 pounds of good tea. Potatoes were purchased for 38 cents per
bushel, pork 12 cents per pound. SOME OF WAUPACA’S FIRST
SETTLERS. O.
E. Druetzer had a government contract to carry the mail from Plover to Green
Bay, by way of Waupaca in the spring of 1850.
He first came to Waupaca about the first of March that year, looking for
a place to locate. He liked the looks
of the place and bought the square on which Beadleston Bros. Masonic and
Pinkerton’s block now stands of E. C. Sessions’. About
this time Silas Miller came to Waupaca hunting for a good location for a saw
mill and made a bargain with Sessions for his entire claims paying him
therefore eighty acres of land in Alto near Ripon, six head of cattle and six
thousand feet of lumber as soon as it should be sawed. Sessions and myself went to Alto to sell the
land and bring the cattle home. A sale
of the land was made but the cattle were sold before we reached Ripon. Sessions then came home, went up on the
prairie north-west of Waupaca and “claimed” the Gibbons farm which gave the
name Sessions Prairie to that rich body of land. Miller
came on and built his mill and sawed one Norway log and part of another on the
10th day of September, 1850.
W. C. Lord and another man came on in March, 1851, and bought the mill
site of Miller n which the Star Mill now stands. WAUPACA GIVEN A NAME. In
the fall of ’51 we applied to the Postmaster General to have a post office
located here. He wrote Sessions that he
would have to have a name. Sessions
forwarded the name “Waupaca.” The
Postmaster General answered and said he had give the office located at “The
Falls” that name but that Tomorrow River (Weyauwega) had applied for the same
name to be given that office and he had written them to send him another and a
few days later we learned that office had been given the name of “Weyauwega”. So if the Weyauwega men had been a little
sooner they would have had the name of Waupaca even if they didn’t get the
county seat. The name of the post
office at Walla Walla was bout this time changed to Lind. Greenbush died out. David
Scott (father of Winfield Scott of this city) was the first postmaster of
Waupaca, Geo. W. Taggart of Lind, and Giles Doty, of Weyauwega. The latter by some unknown means was
succeeded by Benj. Birdsell who held the office a long time. A SHARP CONTRACT. I
will now go back to Waupaca. When Lord
purchased his mill site of Miller he contracted to build a grist mill 30 x 40
ft., two stories high, and bought the privilege of drawing water enough from
the pond to keep three run of stone going all seasons of the year. And the power still has the same right or
did until Baldwin & Bailey combined the two. (TO BE CONTINUED) June 10, 1886 EARLY DAYS IN WAUPACA
(CONTINUED) (By Dana F. Dewey) In
the spring of 1851 after the purchase of the power for Lord’s grist mill as
related in last week’s POST, the scheme of building a grist mill fell through
for a short time as the man who came up with Mr. Lord to go into the mill
business with him backed out. Lord,
however got Wilson Holt to join with him in the enterprise and the mill was
built that summer, the first grist being ground on 19th of
November. We were all elated over the
building of the mill, for flour was a mighty uncertain commodity in Waupaca in
those days. When the mill was completed
there was about one hundred people in Waupaca. Land was so plenty and cheap but money scarce, so when we heard
that there was a bill before congress giving 160 acres of land to each actual
settler we all left considerably elated as we were on the ground and read to
take up the land. The bill never passed
and we bought what land we got of the government at ten shillings per
acre. Everything looked favorable in
the spring of 1852, for a village to be built on the site where Waupaca now
stands and building began to go up. N.
P. Judson built a house on the corner where Richard Lea’s house now
stands. O. E. Druetzer built on
Beadleston’s corner. Jake Dieter built the house back of Lytle’s known as the
“old Druetzer place,” now occupied by Mrs. Shuway. Henry Dieter built a board shanty on the barrel factory lot, back
of Hansen’s wagon shop. Black and
Johnson built the Rosche and Baldwin houses.
I put up a one story house on the place now owned by Mrs. Charles
Wright. There was a row of buildings
then up on the bank of the river where Bailey’s harness shop now stands. McIntire’s old hotel stood on the corner,
where Hansen’s tin shop now stands, and was known to the traveling public as
the “Exchange Tavern” and a lively old place it was, too. Main street south of Beadleston’s corner was
only a wagon track through the woods, and the bushes and trees on the ground
where Coolidge’s bank, Lea’s store and the other buildings in that block stand,
were so thick that it was hard for a man to push through them. I
went down to Menasha in the fall of 1852 to enter my land and tried to enter
two forties but the south forty that I wanted that I afterwards got the
receiver told me was out of the market, so I did not enter any but filed an
application on the two. In the course of
two or three weeks afterwards the receiver began to sell the land in Waupaca
county, beginning with the town of Larrabee.
Dreutzer went down to Menasha and made a bargain with a man named
Fitzgerald to bid off the land on which the village stood, agreeing to see him
through to a clear title, if he would make his title to Beadleston’s corner
good, but Spaulding, the receiver, wrote David Scott to send a man down to look
after the settlers’ interests, as Waupaca would be on the market in about a
week. Scott called a meeting of the
settlers and I was chosen to go down and take the minutes of the land taken up
by actual settlers and look after their interests and bid off the three
original forties and the one on sec. 20, lying directly north, for the parties
who were already on the land. These forties
were platted as a village and could not be entered as ordinary farm land, but
had to be bid off. I
went to Menasha as instructed and happened to be in the land office when the
village of Waupaca was put on the market, the three original forties and the
forty on section 20 which I afterwards (look up – copy cut bottom
of page off) Fiztgerald was there, ready to bid. He had heard somebody was down to bid
against him, and sized me up when I came in.
He probably thought he would scare me off for he offered $2500 for the
land the and first bid. I raised it to
$3000 it was then his turn to be surprised.
He bid over me and we kept at it until the land was struck off to me for
$4650. I settled my hotel bill, and
started home. (By the way, the men who
sent me down raised about all the money they could scrape together to pay my
bill and when I came to settle I was a dollar short and had to borrow it). When I got to the post office Judge Ware
asked me how I came out, and when the crowd came around told them. There was a high old time in Waupaca that
afternoon and Dreutzer kept in doors for over two weeks. The climate outside wouldn’t have agreed
with him just then. Through the efforts
of Wilson Holt congress passed an act that winter authorizing Judge Wheeler, of
Winnebago county to come to Waupaca and sell the parcels of land to actual
settlers for government price. This
Wheeler did in February 1853, and I purchased the two forties north of Chas.
Wright’s, comprising the Chas. Wright farm, and also the parcel of land
described as lot 18 in section 19, on which I had built. E.
L Browne accompanied Judge Wheeler to Waupaca and acted as his clerk when
selling the land. The two made a rough
plat of the village, and this was recorded.
When they had sold all the lots that had then been settled upon for
$1.25 per acre the Judge put up the court house square and called for
bids. As every man in town, nearly, had
made a purchase that day and put up all the money he had, there was no bidders
as there was no more money in town. As
he couldn’t sell it he gave it to the village or town for a public park. He was asked if the town had a patent for
the piece of land and the judge answered that he was authorized by congress to
transfer the land and whatever he did would stand. The square could have been bought for $2.50. On the 23d of Feb. 1853, I received my deed
at Judge Wheeler’s hands and he left that day for home.
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