[1] As the tide of emigration from the northeastern states rose higher, it bore along a goodly number who were not of the old American stock, particularly English and Irish, with some Scotch and Germans. Yet, many of these were natives of the states named and, if foreign born, had enjoyed so long an apprenticeship to the Yankee system of life as to enable them faithfully to represent it.
[2] Of whom England, Ireland, Scotland, and Canada combined furnished 1920, Germany 460, and Norway 340.
[3]Wisconsin Domesday Book, General Studies, I. History of Agriculture in Wisconsin, chap. 2.
[4] William Dames, Wie Sieht Es in Wiskonsin Aus (Meurs, 1849).
[5] For example, see William Dames, Wie Sieht Es in Wiskonsin Aus.
[6] See J. F. Diederichs, Diary. Translated by Emil Baensch. Account of a trip from Milwaukee to Manitowoc.
[7] Those who filed with von Rohr and on the same day (Nov. 5, 1839) took up most of sections 17, 18, 19, and 20. All of these lands were described by the surveyor as “second rate” and all had a heavy forest covering consisting of sugar maple, lynn, birch, alder, black and white oak, ash, elm, ironwood, etc., together with some cedar in the swamps. The land lay on both sides of the creek, along which was some meadow, but the big marsh was farther east.
[8] William F. Whyte, “Settlement of Lebanon,” in Wisconsin Historical Society, Proceedings, 1915, 105.
[11] This farm, located in the town of Greenfield, Milwaukee County, was afterwards divided among Kerler’s three sons. A portion of it, at least, is I believe still in the possession of the family. Louis F. Frank, Pioneer Jahre (Milwaukee, 1911).
[12] Michel Chevalier, Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States (Boston, 1839), chap. x, 112-113, 117, says: “Loading a wagon with a plough, a bed, a barrel of salt meat, the indispensable supply of tea and molasses, a Bible and a wife, and with his axe on his shoulder, the Yankee sets out for the West, without a servant, without an assistant, often without a companion, to build himself a log hut, six hundred miles from his father’s roof, and clear away a spot for a farm in the midst of the boundless forest.... He is incomparable as a pioneer, unequalled as a settler of the wilderness.”
[18]Germania (translated slightly differently in University of Pennsylvania Translations and Reprints), 11.
[19] J. H. von ThÜnen, Der Isolierte Staat (Berlin, 1875), 103 ff., “Ueber die Lage der HÖfe in Mecklenburg.”
[20] In southwestern Wisconsin, about 1870, a respectable German farmer announced to his relatives the marriage of his daughter to a man who had arrived but recently and had the status of a mere laborer. To parry all questions about the suitability of the groom, who was known to be addicted to liquor and other vices, the farmer added: “I’m very willing to give him my daughter, for he is the best ‘grubber’ I’ve ever had on my farm.”
[21] When John Kerler settled near Milwaukee in 1848, he bought a farm on which was no provision for sheltering livestock other than work animals. He built a barn at once, refusing to permit, for a single winter, the cruel American practice of leaving cattle out in the cold. His case is typical.
[22] See the author’s History of Agriculture in Wisconsin (Madison, 1922), passim.
[27] The Ohio Company’s grant, 1787, contained a reservation for religion as well as grants for education. Joseph Schafer, Origin of the System of Land Grants in Aid of Education, Wisconsin University Bulletin, History Series, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Madison, 1902).
[28] See Edward Eggleston, The Circuit Rider and The Graysons.
[29] Goodsell, who was one of the founders of Beloit College, removed later to Northfield, Minnesota, and became one of the founders of Carlton College. S. A. Dwinnell, Reedsburg (Wis.) Free Press, December 24, 1874.
[30]Madison City Express, March 14, March 23, and April 27, 1843. Strong and Hamilton are not reputed to have been total abstainers.
[31] The vote stood, for prohibition, 27,519; against, 24,109.
[32] The story was printed in the Columbian Centinel, Boston, December, 1789.
[33] See Diary of Sarah Connell Ayer (Portland, Me., 1910), 227.
[34] See Almon Danforth Hodges and His Neighbors (Boston, 1909), 217-218.
[35] “At sun two hours high,” says the Farmer’s Almanack, 1815, “the day is finished and away goes men and boys to the bowling alley. Haying, hoeing, plowing, sowing all must give way to sport and toddy. Now this is no way for a farmer. It will do for the city lads to sport and relax in this way, and so there are proper times and seasons for farmers to take pleasure of this sort, for I agree that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
[38] The death of Goethe occurred on the twenty-second of March. The news must have taken several days in travel.
[39] Prussians were apt to console themselves for the pusillanimity of King Frederick William III by harking back to the really strong if ruthless monarchy of Frederick the Great, familiarly spoken of as Der Alte Fritz.
[40] Guy Stanton Ford, Stein and the Era of Reform in Prussia, 1807-1815 (Princeton, N. J., 1922), 185.
[41] Victor Cousin, Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia. Translated by Sarah Austin. London, 1834.
[42] See Life and Works of Horace Mann (Boston, 1891), iii, 346 ff.
[43] Cf. Franklin’s views on the comparative thrift of English and of German laborers, and note his tentative explanation of the difference. The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin (compiled and edited by John Bigelow, New York and London, 1887), ii, 291 ff. Letter to Peter Collinson, dated Philadelphia, 9 May, 1753.
[44] By writers like Samuel Laing, in his Notes of a Traveller on the Social and Political State of France, Prussia, Switzerland, Italy, and Other Parts of Europe (London, 1854), especially 108-115.
[45]Life and Works of Horace Mann (Boston, 1891), iii, 346 ff. See also Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (New York, 1907), i, 40.
[46] See William Howitt, Rural and Domestic Life of Germany (London, 1842), passim. That portion of Carl Schurz’s work (see note 8 ante) which describes his boyhood life at Liblar throws much light on the amusements indulged in by the people. There is a delightful account of the SchÜtzenfest, or marksmanship contest, on pages 45-48 and pages 81-83.
[47] Albert Bernhard Faust, The German Element in the United States (Boston, 1909), ii, 472.
[51] It was managed by G. and J. Burnham, who had an investment of $10,000.
[52] This was John Braun’s. Best and Company had the largest investment among the German brewers, $7400, but their output was only $11,250. Other German brewers were Weizt, Englehardt, Stolz and Schuder, H. Nunnemacher, and H. Beverung.
[53] If our count is correct, the 1850 census lists as “clerks” fifty-one Germans. Doubtless many of these were serving in American stores.
[54] Or thirty-six, if we omit the teachers, some of whom at least were probably not liberally educated.
[55] The Lutherans included a Fr. Lachner, C. Eisenmeyer, and Ludwig Dulitz; the Evangelical preacher was Christian Holl, and the Methodist, Christian Barth.
[56] The Western Medical Society of Wisconsin, representing the counties of Grant, Iowa, and Lafayette, reported in December, 1850, that out of sixty persons engaged in the practice of medicine in that area, only twelve were entitled to be called “doctor.” Daily Free Democrat, January 8, 1850.
[57] “The University and the Germans,” Daily Wisconsin Banner, August 23, 1850.
[58] The remaining cases of marriages between Germans and Americans were briefly as follows: A whitewasher, born in Pennsylvania, was married to a German woman; tailor, born “in U. S.,” married to a German; a weaver, born in Germany, married to a woman born in Pennsylvania; a laborer, born in Ohio, married to a German woman; a stage driver, born in Ohio, married to a German woman; a minister (M. E.), native of Hanover, married to a woman born in Illinois.
[59]Daily Wisconsin Banner, August 1, 1850 (translation).
[63] “Events teach us,” said the Banner und Volksfreund, October 15, 1855 (in the thick of the bitter Barstow-Bashford campaign), “that the Shanghais (Republicans) despite their prating of antislavery, are further removed from actual human freedom than the slaveholders themselves. The occurrences of the past year, during which the Shanghais have been dominant in various state legislatures, have shown us that this party is the incubator of the temperance law.” This line was followed vigorously through the campaign.
[64] Note, for example, the Louisville, Kentucky, riots in which the Germans were driven from the city. The Wisconsin Democracy, in August, 1855, made that the excuse for a resolution refusing seats in the convention to men of Know-Nothing proclivities. See Argus and Democrat (Madison), August 29, 1855.
[65] See the Milwaukee American, 1855-1856, which was the party organ.
[66] Those belonging to the Turner Society are generally classified as “free thinkers.” The Turner Zeitung, national organ of the Society in 1855, was Republican in its politics, which probably influenced the result in Wisconsin.
[67] The Mayberry lynching. The lynchers were loggers from an up-river camp belonging to the murdered man.
[68] See his letter, MS, to Lyman Draper, August 28, 1855.
[69] In the year 1855 the Wisconsin Banner and the Volksfreund were united and became the Wisconsin Banner und Volksfreund.
[70] “Fifteen participators in the lynching affair were indicted and tried for the murder of DeBar in May, 1856. They were acquitted, as the testimony did not sustain the allegation that ‘he came to his death by hanging,’ there being a reasonable doubt as to his being alive when he was hung the last time.” History of Washington and Ozaukee Counties (1881), 358. Editor’s italics.
[71] See a brilliant editorial by Colonel David Atwood, in the Daily State Journal at Madison, for August 13, 1855.
[72] See the article in Banner und Volksfreund, July 28, 1855, entitled “The So-Called Republicans:” “We encounter in the Watertown Anzeiger the following appropriate article concerning the so-called Republican (vulgarly Shanghai) party, by which so many Germans were duped at the last election and which expects to repeat the same swindling tactics in the approaching election.” (Translation). The election of Coles Bashford as governor was due in part to German votes.
[73] “The temperance swindle,” says Banner und Volksfreund, October 16, 1855, “is an outflow of Puritan bigotry and comports with other of their pious pretensions, for example, such a rigorous observance of the Sabbath as will reduce all sociability to the condition of a Puritan graveyard. For this sort of thing, also, is the Republican party the fruitful soil. The Know-Nothings harmonize, in these matters, with the Republicans.”
[74] Success was to render it practically as cosmopolitan as a protracted career of triumphs had long since rendered the Democratic party.
[75] The Chicago and Northwestern. It follows in the sector south of Muscoda the old military road from Fort Winnebago to Fort Crawford. Towns taking some of Muscoda’s former trade are Montfort, Fennimore, and Cobb.
[79] Featherstonhaugh was obviously in error in calling that stopping place Prairie de la Bay. The context shows it must have been English Prairie. See his A Canoe Voyage on the Minnay Sotor, I, 199-201.
[81] The Portage canal was begun in 1836 by a private company. Its completion was promised in 1837. See Governor Dodge’s message to the Legislative Assembly, Belmont, Oct. 26, 1836.
[83] Hamilton went to California during the gold rush, finding, however, not a fortune but an untimely grave.
[84] See Abel, Henry I. Geographical, Geological, and Statistical Chart of Wisconsin and Iowa, Phila. 1838. The fare for passengers from St. Louis to Helena (it was doubtless the same to Savannah) was in the cabin from $10 to $15 and on the deck from $2 to $4.
[86] If the office was not open in 1847 it is hard to explain the language used by a correspondent of the Prairie du Chien Patriot, Feb. 23, 1847, who says: “The mail from ... Mineral Point to Muskoda goes but once a week. There is no post office in Richland County; their post office is at Muskoda.” The census of 1846 assigns to the northern district of Grant County 1,482 persons. It is possible to identify in the lists of heads of families six families whose later homes were at or near Muscoda. They are John D. Parrish, James Smith, Manuel Denston [Dunston?], Thomas Waters, Wm. Garland, and Richard Hall. All of these are met with again in the census returns for Dec. 1, 1847, where the “Muscoday Precinct of Grant County” is listed separately. The precinct seems to have included townships 7 and 8-1 W and townships 7 and 8-2 W, or the present towns of Muscoda, Castle Rock, Watterstown, and Hickory Grove. That precinct is credited with thirteen families aggregating 77 persons. Aside from the families mentioned above (except Denston) we find the names of S. [R?] Carver, J. Moore, N. Head, M. Manlove, D. Manlove, I. Dale, S. Smith, D. Smith, and A. Mills. Garland is credited with a family consisting of nine males and two females, which confirms the statement in the county history that he was managing a hotel in Muscoda at that time. Moses Manlove has a family of seven males and five females which suggests a second hotel or “boarding house.” Most of the other families mentioned probably lived some distance from Muscoda on farms. Aside from those in Muscoda Precinct of Grant County, several families living in Iowa County, township 8 1-E, must have depended for their supplies either on Muscoda or on Highland. These were John Pettygrove, A. Palmer, A. Bolster, three Knowlton families, Mathias Schafer, Henry Gottschall, Vincent Dziewanawski, and the two Wallbridges. If Richland County settlers really were, as reported, getting their mail at Muscoda, that would mean, according to the census, that 235 persons living north of the Wisconsin must have done some trading at that place. The county history says the old log house once used as the land office served in 1847 as the store.
[87] This is not true of the state lands, which went mainly to speculators first, then to settlers.
[88] Speech of Senator Cashman, Wisconsin Magazine of History, vi, 444-449 (June, 1923).
