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WISCONSIN MAGAZINE 0/HISTORY 5 «..« -• ; Published Quarterly by the STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN March 1943 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE of HISTORY EDWARD P. ALEXANDER, Editor LILLIAN KRUEGER, Assistant Editor CONTENTS Chats with the Editor Edward P. Alexander 257 Forest Policy in Wisconsin Raleigh Barlowe 261 The Belgians in the North Country Lee W. Metzner 280 Early Beloit Physicians Harold M. Helm 289 Confirming Eand Titles in Early Wisconsin Frederick N. Trowbridge 314 The Welsh of Waukesha County Sadie Rowlands Price 323 DOCUMENTS: The Letters of Peter ]. Williamson (I) Henry Lee Swint 333 BOOK NOTES 346 THE SOCIETY AND THE STATE 367 The WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY is published quarterly by the STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN, 816 State Street, Madison. Distributed to members as part of their dues (Annual membership, $3.00; Life, $30). Yearly subscription, $3.00; single number, 75 cents. Communications should be addressed to the editor. The Society does not assume responsibility for statements made by contributors. Entered as second-class matter at the post office at Madison, Wis- consin, under the act of August 24, 1912. Copyright 1943 by the STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN. Paid for by the Maria L. and Simeon Mills Editorial Fund and by the George B. Burrows Fund. THE COVER RAILROADING IN WISCONSIN, 1875. Mr. George Banta, Jr., of Menasha has kindly furnished this photograph of an oil painting he commissioned Tom Dietrich, the Appleton artist, to do in 1942. This shows Mile Post 101 (later Worcester Station and about five miles north of Prentice), then the end of steel of the Wisconsin Central Railroad. The painting is based upon a contemporary photograph, and the engine details are mechanically correct. The locomotive shown was originally Milwaukee and Northern No. 3, the " Lyndon," manufactured by Grant Locomotive Works in 1872. The M. & N. was leased by the Wisconsin Central but later taken over by the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul. The coaches of the period, built by Barney and Smith of Dayton, Ohio, were painted an orange yellow. For more about Wisconsin railroads, see Chats with the Editor. WISCONSIN MAGAZINE of HISTORY @&*» Volume 26 March 1943 Number 3 Chats with the Editor EATH, striking suddenly and unexpectedly at Governor- Elect Orland S. Loomis on December 7, 1942, produced D a curious situation in Wisconsin. Loomis, the hard work- ing and conciliatory forty-nine-year-old lawyer from Mauston, had been the only Progressive Party member on the state ticket to be elected. He had defeated Republican Governor Julius Histo^Z R Heil °f Milwaukee hY a Plurality of 100,000. A / »//. Wisconsin governor-elect had never died before, and the Making . , , , , J-J ° the constitution and laws or the state did not say definitely who should become governor. Various theories were held as to the succession. A few people maintained that Governor Heil could continue to serve until the next regular election. Some thought that Governor Heil should either appoint an acting governor or call a special election to elect one. But most people seemed to believe that Lieutenant Gov- ernor Walter S. Goodland, eighty years old and a former lawyer and newspaper publisher at Racine, should fill the office. Lieutenant Governor Goodland did actually take over the reigns of govern- ment and began to continue the executive budget hearings where Governor-Elect Loomis had left off. Meanwhile, the attorney gen- eral prepared a case so as to let the Wisconsin Supreme Court decide who should act as governor. 257 258 CHATS WITH THE EDITOR [March On December 29 the supreme court handed down its decision as written by Justice John D. Wickhem. The court unanimously held that Governor Heil could not serve beyond the end of his term; that the vacancy in the office of governor resulted "in the devolution of the powers and duties upon the lieutenant-governor for the residue of the term"; and that since the lieutenant governor should act as governor, no election or appointment of an acting governor was necessary. Incidentally, in reaching its decision, the court examined carefully the debates of the constitutional conven- tion of 1847-48 as they appear in The Attainment of Statehood edited by Milo M. Quaife and published by the WISCONSIN HIS- TORICAL SOCIETY in 1928. In 1856 Wisconsin had witnessed another dispute about the governorship. Governor William A. Barstow maintained that he had been reflected the previous fall, but his opponent, Coles Bash- ford, charged fraud in counting the election returns. Both men were sworn in as governor; the supreme court, against BarstowJ s protest, took jurisdiction of the dispute; Barstow resigned leaving Lieutenant Governor Arthur MacArthur, grandfather of General Douglas MacArthur, holding the office from March 21 to 26, 1856; and the court finally ruled in favor of Bashford. On that occasion violence threatened for a time. Thus in the recent decision the Wisconsin Supreme Court showed its knowledge of the state's history by commending "the correct and public-spirited attitude" of the officials involved, "whose high-minded efforts to promote the orderly processes of government by a decision in this case evidence fidelity to their duties as citizens and public officers in a democracy." The state of Wisconsin deserves deep sympathy for its great loss in Orland S. Loomis whose ability and modesty promised much for the future of the state. But the state also is to be congratulated on the prompt and orderly solution of the problem of a successor, and also upon the impartial and wise manner in which Acting Governor Goodland has begun his administration. 1943] CHATS WITH THE EDITOR 259 IN NOVEMBER, 1850, the locomotive " Wisconsin" whisked a little train over the five miles of newly laid track of the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad between Milwaukee and Wauwatosa at the amazing speed of thirty miles per hour. Mayor Wtsconstn o , , , . „ „ ., - «.... Solomon Juneau and the Common Council of Mil- waukee were on board, properly impressed by their ^ dizzy progress, and President Byron Kilbourn and the road's board of directors also made the trip. " The track was found to be in capital order, solid as a rock," reported the newspaper story. The roadbed was soon completed to Waukesha, and in February, 1851, the first train service in Wisconsin began. Since 1850 the state has had an important railroad history. The Milwaukee Road, a successor of the Milwaukee and Mississippi, has come to control the chief east and west lines in the state, and the North Western system owns most of the north and south lines. The Wisconsin Central and its successor, the "Soo"; the Bur- lington with part of its Chicago to St. Paul main line in Wisconsin along the east bank of the Mississippi; the Illinois Central, the Northern Pacific, and the Great Northern—all have connections with Wisconsin. But unfortunately this significant phase of Wisconsin history has not been thoroughly explored. Balthasar H. Meyer, Frederick Merk, Frederic L. Paxson, and others have done excellent work in examining the chartering of the roads, the growth of the railway network, and the obtaining of federal land grants. There are, how- ever, few satisfactory studies of the Wisconsin railroads themselves. The Milwaukee and the North Western have both printed histories, but in both cases the authors have been interested in the legal aspects of the companies, their corporate structures, and the lines they have absorbed. Practically nothing has been said about the Irish and Scandinavian laborers who built the roads, construction problems, equipment and rolling stock, managerial policies, the engine and train men, and land colonization projects. These aspects of railroad history would put flesh and blood upon the dry bones of corporate structure. 260 CHATS WITH THE EDITOR Roy L. Martin's History of the Wisconsin Central (1941) an- swers more of our questions, though the historical scholar will sigh over its lack of footnotes and of an index. Encouragement is found, too, in unexpected places. An occasional Bulletin of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society enthusiastically sheds light on some problems, and the magazine Baldwin Locomotives (Octo- ber, 1930; January, 1931) carried two excellent though brief articles by Paul T. Warner on the motive power used on the Milwaukee Road. The railroad builders themselves have not been properly studied. Alexander Mitchell, a creator of the Milwaukee Road and one of the leading railway financiers of all time, deserves an exhaustive biography, and so, perhaps, does his energetic general manager, Sherburne S. Merrill. Albert Keep and Marvin Hughitt were two important presidents of the North Western whose administrations influenced Wisconsin and should be carefully examined. The railroads as a whole are interested in research into their history. The land colonization studies of Paul W. Gates for the Illinois Central and Richard C. Overton for the Burlington have been favorably received, and several railroads have trained historians in charge of their archives. The companies are glad to let qualified research students use these archives, and they are unbelievably rich in materials on the growth of America. Capable graduate students in our universities will look far before finding a more fruitful field for research than railroad history. When peace returns we hope that some of the keenest scholars will study the Wisconsin roads, and in the meantime this Society is interested in building up its manuscript collections on Wisconsin railroad history. Forest Policy in Wisconsin By RALEIGH BARLOWE Prelude to a Conservation Policy HEN Wisconsin's first sawmill was built at DePere in 1809 more than 30,000,000 acres of Wisconsin were Wcovered with an almost unbroken stretch of forests. By 1923 less than 2,000,000 acres of merchantable timber were left standing. This great change in landscape resulted from a period of unrestrained exploitation.