MAGAZINE O/HISTORY

WISCONSIN MAGAZINE o/HISTORY

5*——' " OB IT

Published Quarterly by the STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN June 1949 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE of HISTORY CLIFFORD L. LORD, Editor LILLIAN KRUEGER, Managing Editor

C 0 NT E NTS

Chats with the Editor Clifford Lord 385 The Original Typewriter Enter- prise, 1867-1873 Richard N. Current 391 Wisconsin's Flowering Wilderness Lillian Krueger 408 Rufus King and the Wisconsin Constitution Perry C. Hill 416 Historic Sites in Our State Park Program Raymond S. Sivesind 436 Zebulon Montgomery Pike's Mississippi Voyage, 1805-1806 W. E. Hollon 445 DOCUMENTS: Silas J. Seymour Letters (III) 456 COMMUNICATION R. N. Hamilton, SJ. 472 BOOK NOTES 474 THE SOCIETY AND THE STATE 498

The WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY is published quarterly by the STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN, 816 State Street, Madison, 6. Distributed to members as part of their dues (Annual Membership, $3.00; Life, $50). 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 1949 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 ATOP " THE HILL," among century-old elms and within nodding distance of Lake Mendota, stands BASCOM HALL, its stone walls pitted and patinated. Bascom, once known as " Main " and later as " University Hall," is one of the oldest buildings on the University of Wisconsin Campus. The rambling structure faces down the elm-vistaed " Hill" and milelong State Street, at the end of which is situated the magnificent State Capitol and Madison's busy Square. Bascom's existence was en- dangered in 1916 when its dome was completely destroyed by fire. It continues to house the offices of the President, of some of the faculty, and a group of classrooms. In recognition of the University's centennial year, venerable Bascom Hall is pictured on the cover. " Chats with the Editor" contains information relating to the Centennial. WISCONSIN MAGAZINE of HISTORY ^S^ Volume 32 June 1949 Number 4

Chats with the Editor

A S THIS ISSUE goes to press, the observance of the one hundredth i-k birthday of our State University comes to its official close. JL JL Opened February 5, 1849, in the old Female Academy of Madison, with twenty-odd students preparing for collegiate studies, . . the institution has fulfilled the most sanguine dreams UntversttyrT . . . , i • i 1 ^ . . or its rounders and has taken its place among the Centennial . , , ,. ... r , . , , . T nations leading institutions or higher learning. It stands today, in the words of its centennial slogan, " Rooted in the past, serving the present, forming the future." The year has been a memorable one for the University community and for its friends all over the State. The National Edu- cational Conference on "Higher Education in America," attended by leading educators from all over the nation, appropriately opened a year of rich and varied features. The Curti and Carstensen Cen- tennial history of the University has made a notable contribution to our understanding of the evolution of higher education in this country. A number of learned societies, including anatomists, agronomists, physicists, chemical engineers, mathematicians, geo- graphers, historians, ornithologists, business educators, political scientists, and the National Society of Phi Beta Kappa, have met or are still to meet at Madison in honor of the University's Cen- tennial. Fourteen symposia have been held and two more are scheduled, devoted to such subjects as the burning of pulverized coal and the generation and utilization of high pressure steam, the frontiers of housing, steroid hormones, combustion flame and 385 386 CHATS WITH THE EDITOR [June explosion phenomena, the humanities in American society, significant history, labor-management relations, science and civilization, co-curricular activities on the college campus, American regionalism, the inter-relation of law and the American economy, labor relations and social security, organic chemistry, the conservation of Wisconsin's natural resources, education, and plant growth sub- stances. Special art exhibits included a survey of art techniques, the State centennial exhibition of contemporary Wisconsin art, decorative art in Wisconsin, the annual student art show, the annual rural art show, the work of the new artist-in-residence, Aaron Bohrod, and the University's own art collection, climaxed by the great show of old masterpieces from the Metropolitan Mu- seum of Art. Concerts by the New York Philharmonic with Leopold Stokowski conducting, Fritz Kreisler, Florence Quartararo, Todd Duncan, Gregor Piatigorsky, Vladimir Horowitz, and Burl Ives have brought an unusually rich offering to the campus in the field of music. The theater program has been featured by the world-premier performance of " I Know My Love " starring the Lunts, Margaret Webster's productions of "Hamlet" and "Mac- beth," and "Man and Superman" with Maurice Evans. The Founders Day Banquet and the Centennial Dinner were outstanding events, and special exhibits, including those on the history of the University prepared by the Society, have enriched the campus year. , : • j ,. j •• A centennial is always a good time for the taking of stock, and there is ample cause indeed, despite ever-present budget difficulties and building problems, for the people of Wisconsin and the leaders of the University to take satisfaction at the progress of the University in its first century. The character and richness of the centennial observance has made the centennial year 1948-49 particularly memorable in the University's history, and should be a source of genuine gratification to Professor William H. Kiekhofer whose successful labors as chairman of the Centennial Committee have climaxed his years of devoted service to the University of his native State. 1949] CHATS WITH THE EDITOR 387

THE SOCIETY will meet this fall on the Lawrence College Campus at Appleton, September 9-11. Two dormitories will be turned over to the Society for living quarters. College dining facilities will serve the meals. Meetings will be in the . Conservatory of Music and the famous and beautiful memorial chapel. With a campus which fronts on the main street of modern Appleton and backs on the historic Fox River, Lawrence College, which like the Society is older than the State, offers most attractive facilities for our meeting. An exceptionally strong program is being arranged, and everything points to a notable meeting. Tennis courts and the college pool will be available for the more athletically minded. Walks about the lovely campus on both sides of the river will attract others. Vacations will be over. The September dates hold the probability of avoiding the extreme heat which marked our Manitowoc meeting two years ago. Be sure to mark the dates now: September 9—11.

ONE OF THE important provisions effecting historical work in the State enacted so far by the 1949 Legislature permits the establishment of local or regional depositories for the preservation of

count Jy and local records. It expands the legal powers Local , . t t , . . , . . HI p i of county and local historical societies to enable them to accept custody of such records. It authorizes school, village, town, municipality, city, and county officers to offer, and the State through this Society to accept for preservation title to such non-current records as in the Society's judgment are of permanent historical value and are no longer needed for administrative purposes. It is then mandatory upon this Society, wherever possible, to place such records in the custody of a proper local depository. This depository may be the local historical society, the county historian, a public library, public museum, "or similar agency or institution in the area of origin." Title is placed in the Society simply to insure continuity of responsibility for records of permanent historical value against the demise of a local historical society, the abolition of the office of a county historian, 388 CHATS WITH THE EDITOR [June or the closing of some library or museum in whose hands such records had been placed. It was made clear by the Society from the outset that the whole intent was to keep the records available and safe in the area to which they were of most interest. We wish to see those records of permanent interest preserved. We wish to see them preserved locally. We wanted legislation to permit the establishment of a records preservation system on the county and local level to match that which we established two years ago on the State level. Now we have it. There is nothing mandatory about the act. It is purely per- missive. This leaves a heavy responsibility on those interested in history at the local level to see that valuable records are not destroyed but are made available to a local depository under the provisions of this act. All too frequently the demands for additional filing space cause house-cleanings in governmental offices. All too frequently in such cases the wheat is discarded with the chaff. Now, working with local societies and other depositories, and with local officials, we may hope to see such records preserved in the hands of interested local groups. The previously existing legal obstacles to this procedure have been cleared away. Local vigilance to see that valuable records are not destroyed, local responsibility to see that they are cared for in local depositories after their usefulness to local officials is terminated are the keys to the success of this program.

REVAMPING THE LAW to fit contemporary conditions, the 1949 Legislature has also designated the Society as the State's public documents depository and exchange agent. These functions were abdicated by the State Law Library four years ago. Documents T r . n . , TT . Last summer, representatives or the Society, the Uni- * y versity Library, the State Law Library, the Free Statute T., <~ . . J i. T • i • -D r Library Commission, and the Legislative Reference Library agreed that such a documents depository was a necessity. They further agreed that in view of our very extensive collection in this field the Society was the logical institution to assume this 1949] CHATS WITH THE EDITOR 389 function. Adequate authority existed in various sections and chapters of state law to effect this agreement, which was approved by the Governor last June 26, but the present Legislature has revised and codified these provisions, placing them in a new section of the statutes governing the Society. Ever since June, Miss Davis has been receiving shipments, some small and some large, of public documents volumes which were being discarded by the Law Library. So far these shipments have totaled six small truckloads, with more to come. In the process the Legislature has revised the sections of State law dealing with the distribution of Wisconsin documents, has expanded the distribution provisions to cover near-print and other reproduction in addition to printed documents, and has officially charged the Society, rather than the Free Library Commission, with the preparation of the Checklist of Public Documents, which in fact has been prepared and published by the Society ever since 1918!

THE PROBLEM OF money is ever with us all, yet there has been on the books for many years a law permitting county boards to appropriate only $500 (or less) to a county or local historical , society. When the law was enacted, that sum Financing the . , . , . , ^ ° . went much cfarthe t r than it does today, and County Society . , . ,. , . , . J J already two counties are exceeding their legal authority in this regard by granting larger sums to their historical societies. The State Society was able to persuade the present Legis- lature—without much difficulty—that this limitation should be removed. Chapter 59.08 (30) which formerly read that county boards could "appropriate not to exceed five hundred dollars in any year to any local historical society...," now permits them to " appropriate money to any local historical society..." There was a general feeling in the Legislature that county boards could be trusted not to be really extravagant in this field. They are probably right, but again the way has been cleared, and we wish our auxiliaries well in their attempts to persuade their county boards of the very real merits of a sound historical program at the local 390 CHATS WITH THE EDITOR and county level. Perhaps the regional depository for public records, where undertaken, will prove a useful lever in this regard.

ON APRIL 14-16 the Mississippi Valley Historical Association returned to Madison for its annual convention for the first time in more than thirty years in observance of the Centennial of the University of Wisconsin. It was in many ways a memorable meeting: memorable for what in the opinion of your editor v/as one of

,r. . . . the finest programs in many years for a convention MtSSlSStppt £-ii. • i i r , • i Tr 77 or rprofessional historians; memorable for the sunul- Valley ' , f . . --.. . taneous presence at the annual banquet of the . Governor, the Chief Justice, and the President of the State University; memorable for the introduction of group singing to the evening smokers by Craven's Chorus, and to the Friday supper by the enchantment of the Swiss music furnished by R. B. Burkhalter of Madison and a group of his charming young pupils; memorable to the editor because of the wonderful cooperation of staff and local members in handling the local arrangements. Since the convention unfortunately had to be held on Easter weekend—the only weekend on which the Legislature would adjourn in time to have hotel accommodations ready for the convention—what was expected to be a record- breaking crowd was kept somewhat below expectations. Some hundred rooms in private houses had been listed through the generous cooperation of our friends and members in Madison to take care of any emergency overflow which happily did not develop. The wonderful cooperation of the hotel managers in Madison and the generous amounts of cheese and beer which local producers contributed to the smokers helped convince our visitors that Madison's reputation as a convention city had not been over- drawn. Among the many who helped so cheerfully, it would be unfair to single out any individuals for special comment in the space available. However, the thoughtfulness of Mrs. Oscar Renne- bohm in opening the Executive Mansion for a special tea for the ladies of the convention was one of the feature attractions which contributed to the convention's over-all success. The Original Typewriter Enterprise 1867-1873

By RICHARD N. CURRENT

HE TYPEWRITER came out of Wisconsin. In its first practical form, it was developed in Milwaukee, between 1867 Tand 1873. The two men who did most in its development, the inventor C. Latham Sholes and the promoter James Densmore, had been publishers of Wisconsin newspapers.1 As pioneer journalists, both Sholes and Densmore had got to know all phases of the task of converting words into type—they had become familiar with the challenge of the deadline in a region where experienced printers were not always easy to find. It was natural for these men, with such a background, to turn eventually to the problem of making a machine to write with types. The story of their success adds a footnote to a familiar thesis: throughout the history of technology new labor-saving devices have appeared most often in relatively unsettled, "frontier" areas of the world, where there has been a chronic manpower shortage.2 To show the early evolution of both the typewriter business and the typewriter itself, the experimental years from 1867 to 1873 may be divided into three periods according to the kind of

DR. RICHARD N. CURRENT is May Treat Morrison Professor of American History at Mills College, Oakland, California. Previously a resident of Appleton, he was a member of the history faculty at Lawrence College. A biography of Philetus Sawyer has been completed by Dr. Current, and will be published by the STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY during 1949. 1 Sholes (1819-90) went from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin in 1839 and thereafter published or aided in publishing successively the Green Bay Democrat, the Madison Inquirer, the Kenosha Telegraph, and the Milwaukee Sentinel and News. For brief accounts of his life, see Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography (rev. ed., New York, 1915), 5:515, and George lies, Leading American Inventors (New York, 1912), 315-37. Densmore (1820-89) went from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin in 1848 and thereafter published or aided in publishing successively the Oshkosh True Democrat (later Democrat), the Kenosha Telegraph (as a partner of Sholes), and the Elkhorn Independent. For a sketch of his life, emphasizing his journalistic career, see Richard N. Current, " The First Newspaperman in Oshkosh," Wisconsin Magazine of History, 30:408—22 (June, 1947). 2 See the discussion of this thesis in Abbott P. Usher, A History of Mechanical Inventions (New York, 1929), 3-4. 391 392 RICHARD N. CURRENT [June paper the machine would accommodate in each of the main stages of its development. At first, it would take only thin, tissue paper. Next, it would take thick paper but only in fairly short pieces. Finally, it would take paper of any standard weight and of any length whatsoever.

AN ARTICLE IN THE Scientific American gave the Milwaukee enterprise its start. The editors of this periodical, one of whom, A. E. Beach, was himself the inventor of a writing machine, made it their policy to stimulate all kinds of mechanical invention in the United States. In their issue for July 6, 1867, they published an account of a " type writing machine " which an Alabaman by the name of John Pratt had recently exhibited in England. This device carried all its types on a movable " solid electrotype plate." In front of this plate a vertical framework held a piece of paper and a " carbonized sheet," and a " minute hammer " striking the paper from behind knocked it against the carbon and one of the types to make the impression. After describing this machine of Pratt's, the Scientific American went on to say: "The subject of type writing is one of the interesting aspects of the near future." Writing was about to be revolutionized—" the laborious and unsatisfactory performance of the pen must sooner or later become obsolete for general purposes," and the "weary process of learning penmanship in schools " must be " reduced to the acquirement of writing one's own signature and playing on the literary piano above described, or rather on its improved successors." These words came to the attention of C. Latham Sholes, and he got an inspiration from them.3 Sholes, then forty-eight, was no longer active in the newspaper business. As Collector of the Port of Milwaukee, he received an income large enough to keep himself and his numerous family alive, and he had ample leisure to devote to his hobby of invention. With his tall, emaciated figure, his flowing white hair and beard, his whimsical ways, and his dreamy look, he fitted perfectly the popular conception of an inventive genius. And he was an 3Scientific American, n.s., 17:3 (July 6, 1867). For Sholes's own reference to this article, see ibid., 27:77 (Aug. 10, 1872). 1949] ORIGINAL TYPEWRITER ENTERPRISE 393 inventor in fact as well as appearance. He had recently got a patent on a device for printing consecutive numbers, which he was still laboring to improve. In Kleinsteuber's machine shop, where he did his work, several other aspiring inventors were also busy with their respective hobbies. Among these men were Samuel W. Soule, a former printer who was helping Sholes, and Carlos W. Glidden, son of a retired ironmonger, who was devising a spader that he hoped would take the place of the plow.4 At about the time the Scientific American broached the subject, Glidden suggested and Sholes and Soule agreed that the three of them should cooperate in a project to make a typewriting machine.5 Except for what they had read about Pratt's invention, they knew little or nothing about what any previous inventor had done along the same line, and they went ahead without bothering to find out.6 Moreover, none of the three was a trained mechanic. To make their models they hired one of Kleinsteuber's machinists, Matthias Schwalbach, who had got much of his experience as a blacksmith and tower-clock maker in Germany.7 So began the typewriter enterprise, in Kleinsteuber's shop. The Milwaukee inventors adopted a plan that was fundamentally different from Pratt's. Instead of putting all the types on one solid 4 lies, American Inventors, 320-21; Milo M. Quaife, ed., Henry W. Roby's Story of the Invention of the Typewriter (Menasha, Wisconsin, 1925), 27-29, 55-56; Charles E. Weller, The Early History of the Typewriter (La Porte, Indiana, 1921), 46; [Alan C. Reiley], The Story of the Typewriter, 1873-1923 (Herkimer, New York, 1923), 35; and R. F. Howard, "Typewriter History Previously Untold," Typewriter Topics, 3:7-10 (May, 1906). 5 Glidden claimed to be the " original projector " of the Milwaukee enterprise. Glidden to the Editor, Scientific American, n.s., 27:132 (Aug. 31, 1872). And Densmore con- ceded that much to Glidden: " All he did to the invention, in reality, was to suggest the effort of making a machine of the kind. ..." James to Amos Densmore, May 20, 1876, in the Densmore Collection. This valuable collection of manuscripts and early typescripts is in the possession of Mr. Clint Densmore and Miss Priscilla Densmore, of Marquette, Michigan. Miss Densmore made the present study possible by opening these materials freely to the author. All letters cited in the following footnotes, except where another location is indicated, are in the Densmore Collection. 6Roby says (Quaife, Roby's Story, 28) that at the outset Sholes " knew generally what other men had done "—which implies that he had investigated the subject. But lies says {American Inventors, 323) that in the beginning " no one of the three partners undertook any systematic inquiry as to what their predecessors had done." In a letter to Densmore, Sept. —, 1869, Sholes himself mentioned his "research" into "previous efforts in this direction " as if he had recently looked into typewriter history for the first time. 7 Howard, in Typewriter Topics, 3:7. Densmore complained that not only were Sholes and Glidden ignorant of the " use of tools" but Schwalbach also, " though a man of good natural talent—of good ideas," was " bred a blacksmith," was " quite deficient in sight," and was a " very bungling coarse workman." James to Amos Densmore, Oct. 1, 1871. In this letter Soule was not mentioned, for he had left the enterprise before it was written, but apparently he had considerable mechanical skill. 394 RICHARD N. CURRENT [June plate, they put each type on a separate hammer, or type bar. Then they set in a horizontal position a metal disk with a hole in the center and radial slots around the circumference. In each slot they hung a type bar on a pivot, and from each type bar they ran a wire down to a trivet and another wire back up to a key lever. When they pressed a key, a type bar would swing up from underneath and strike at the hole in the disk, then fall back by its own weight. From the rear of the machine they extended an arm forward to support a small metal plate, facing downward, over the hole; this metal piece, only a fraction of an inch square, they called a "platen." Under it they arranged for an inked ribbon to slide. Between the ribbon and " platen," above, and the disk holding the type bars, below, they placed a sheet of paper in a frame which gripped it at the edges, held it flat, and moved it to space the letters and change the lines. When they wrote on this machine, the types struck upward from below, pressed the paper up against the ribbon and "platen," and thus printed on the upper surface of the paper. (Each letter came into view as soon as the paper moved a space or two and brought the letter out from under the tiny "platen." So, contrary to previous accounts of it, this was a "visible" typewriter.) The paper of course had to be extremely thin—thin enough that the types could make their impression through it.8 Sholes and his co-workers completed their first model in Sep- tember, 1867. It looked something like a cross between a small piano and a kitchen table. In fact, Sholes had brought down from his attic an old kitchen table on which to hang the mechanism, and he had patterned the keyboard on that of a piano, arranging

8 In describing a model of the original Milwaukee machine, Frederic Heath has said that " the writing was on a tape of tissue paper " and " could not be seen till it was completed." Quoted in lies, American Inventors, 324. Another writer says of this machine: "As it printed from the under side, the operator could not see what he had written...." Howard, in Typewriter Topics, 3:8. It is true that the types did come up " from the under side," but the writing nevertheless appeared on top of the paper (a sheet, not a "tape") where the operator could see it as he went along. The types were under the paper, but the ribbon was above it, and the types had to make their impression by knocking the paper against the ribbon. As James wrote to Amos Densmore on May 20, 1876, " We had struck the types up through the paper, and we could only write on thin, tissue paper." The specification of the first patent is explicit: " The types are arranged in a radiating series, and are pivoted to a disk, at whose center each type is made to act upon the paper through an opening, against a platen, under which an inking ribbon is automatically impelled." Patent Office Report, 1868, 2:175. 1949] ORIGINAL TYPEWRITER ENTERPRISE 395 figures and letters in numerical and alphabetical order. Awkward and cumbersome though it was, the thing worked—it actually wrote, but only in capital letters. Sholes sent this machine or one like it to his friend Charles Weller in St. Louis, and Weller used it for nearly two years (until he could get a new and improved model) to transcribe the notes he took as a shorthand reporter. Meanwhile, though the inventors continued to work on refinements, they were confident their basic job was done. They thought it was time to find someone to finance the manufacture of their machine. So Sholes typed out a letter and sent it to his former newspaper associate of Kenosha, Wisconsin—James Densmore, now of Meadville, Pennsylvania.9 Densmore, almost the same age as Sholes, was quite the oppo- site in appearance and personality. He was a huge, powerful man —energetic, aggressive, and bold, though also crotchety, quarrel- some, and sometimes domineering. Before going to Wisconsin, in 1848, he had read law and had gained admittance to the Pennsyl- vania bar. During the Civil War he joined his brothers in the oil business in western Pennsylvania. After the war, with his brother Amos and his friend G. W. N. Yost, he took out patents on a railroad tank car, then formed a partnership to use the patented cars in shipping oil to New York. Soon he gave this up and went to work as an attorney for Yost, who was now managing a farm- implement factory at Corry, Pennsylvania.10 By 1867 Densmore had made or was making various amounts in profits from the oil-shipping business, in proceeds from a dam- age suit against the Erie Railroad, in salary payments from Yost's Corry Machine Company, and in interest on a debt of $10,000 that Yost owed him. Eager to invest what money he had, as soon as he got Sholes's letter he offered to buy an interest in the Mil- waukee project. In two months he closed the bargain. He agreed to pay Sholes, Glidden, and Soule $200 apiece and to provide funds to start manufacturing and in return, they agreed to give

9 Weller, Early History, 17-25; lies, American Inventors, 323, 326; Quaife, Roby's Story, 32, 34-35, 44. " Sentimental " considerations " impelled" Sholes to " go first" to Densmore for financial aid. Sholes to Densmore, Feb. 18, 1882. 10 Current, in Wisconsin Magazine of History, 30:409-11, 418-19. 396 RICHARD N. CURRENT [June him an undivided one-fourth interest in the invention.11 Not till he went to Milwaukee in March, 1868, did Densmore actually see the invention he had bought a share in. By that time there were two versions of it. One was the machine, already described, in which type bars and key levers were connected by long wires. The other was a simpler and more compact variation of the same machine in which no such wires were necessary—the key levers merely " kicked " the type bars up. Taking models of both versions to Washington, Densmore secured a patent on the simpli- fied or "direct action" machine in June and a patent on the original machine in July, 1868. (The fact that the second invention was patented first has misled students of typewriter history.)12 That same summer, in Chicago, Densmore undertook to manufacture " direct action " machines for sale. Associated with him in this venture were Soule, inventor of the kicking-up principle, and E. Payson Porter, head of a school for telegraphers in Chicago. After making fifteen typewriters, some of which Porter used in his school, Densmore abandoned the effort. He concluded that the invention, in either of its existing forms, was good for nothing except to show that a successful writing machine could con- ceivably be developed.13 So ended the first chapter of the typewriter story.

AFTER GIVING UP the Chicago venture, Densmore went back to Pennsylvania to resume his work for Yost. But he continued to "James to Amos Densmore, May 20, 1876; to Lavantia Douglass, Sept. 9, 1884; and to Sholes, Nov. 6, 1884; Quaife, Roby's Story, 34-35; lies, American Inventors, 328. 12 The first patent was numbered 79,265 and dated June 23, 1868. The second was numbered 79,868 and dated July 14, 1868. Patent Office Report, 1868, 2:175, 234; 4:803, 887. It has been supposed that the second patent represented an improvement on the first. Thus Reiley (Story of the Typewriter, 48) says: "The first model... (Patent of June 23, 1868) shows a machine so crude. . . . A second model... (Patent of July 14, 1868) ...shows a great advance over the other." The truth is pretty much the other way around. The machine that was patented first was invented second and was thought to be an improvement. The Patent Office model of this machine looks crude only because it is incomplete—there was just enough of it made to illustrate its basic principles. The time order of the two inventions, as well as the difference between them, is made clear by a remark of Densmore's: " The first invention they [Sholes, Glidden, and Soule] made. .. was patented July 14th, 1868. . . . All there is really new about their second invention, which was patented June 23rd, 1868, is what Soule called the ' direct action.'" James to Amos Densmore, March 26, 1876. 13 James to Amos Densmore, May 20, 1876, and to Sholes, Nov. 6, 1884. Weller (Early History, 35—37) suggests the nature of the machine manufactured in Chicago and mentions its " being used in a commercial school in Chicago, of which Mr. Porter was the principal." However, Weller misdates this manufacturing attempt, mistakenly suppos- ing that Densmore " came upon the scene for the first time in 1870." 1949} ORIGINAL TYPEWRITER ENTERPRISE 397 be fascinated by the typewriter idea. He corresponded with Sholes and kept urging him to redesign the machine so as to make it really practical. Sholes, meanwhile, began for the first time to look into the record of what previous inventors had done. He came to the conclusion that all had failed because they had violated one or more of " several fundamental ideas " which both he and Densmore considered "essential to success." These requirements were " that the machine must be simple and not liable to get out of order," " that it must work easily and be susceptible of being worked rapidly," and " that it be made with reasonable cheapness." Densmore kept insisting on one further point, that a successful machine must be capable of writing on paper of ordinary thick- ness.14 This last requirement Sholes finally met by devising a revolving cylindrical platen to replace the flat framework as a paper carrier. As early as 1833 Charles Thurber had used a cylinder for this purpose, but Sholes now employed it in an entirely novel way. His cylinder, nearly three inches in diameter, rotated to space the letters and slid along its axis, automatically, to change the lines. That is, the types wrote around a revolving drum, which turned with an intermittent motion controlled by a ratchet escapement. The paper, wrapped around and clipped to the drum, could be no wider than the drum's circumference or longer than its axis. In September, 1869, just two years after the completion of his first thin-paper machine, Sholes had his new "axle" machine in working order. Though recognizing the faulty workmanship of his model, he was sure he had perfected its principles so as to fulfill all requirements. "I am satisfied the machine is now done," he wrote to Densmore on it.15 On the whole, Densmore was enthusiastic. He valued the " new departure " highly enough to think that he and Sholes should keep it to themselves. The other partners were losing interest anyhow. Soule was leaving Milwaukee for New York, and Glidden was "Sholes to Densmore, Sept. —, 1869; James to Amos Densmore, May 20, 1876, and to Sholes, Nov. 6, 1884. 15 Sholes to Densmore, Sept. —, 1869; James to Amos Densmore, May 20, 1876; Weller, Early History, 27-30. Sholes typed a letter to Densmore, Oct. 28, 1869, on card- board an eighth of an inch thick, and added a penciled note in which he triumphantly asked, " Is this paper thick enough? " 398 RICHARD N. CURRENT [June devoting his time once more to his own invention, his mechanical spader. Neither Soule nor Glidden had contributed to the development of the revolving platen, and neither now received a share in its ownership. They both decided to sell their rights in the original patents to Densmore and leave the whole invention to him and Sholes.16 Now becoming the majority owner of the enterprise, Densmore had high hopes for its future, but he also had his doubts. Before attempting to manufacture again, he resolved that the machine must prove its worth in rigorous tests. He and Sholes sent models for testing to Weller in St. Louis, James O. Clephane in Washington, D.C., and other court reporters elsewhere. As he observed machines in actual use, Densmore kept finding fault with the invention.17 His criticisms annoyed Sholes but impelled him to go on making improvements. The inventor soon adopted a new keyboard, of Schwalbach's devising, which consisted of four rows of metal key levers and buttons set in ascending banks.18 How Sholes came to make further refinements is told in a recollection by Densmore: I think in March, 1870, we made a machine for Burnham, of Chicago. At that time, our " space-key" was a black key, in shape and size just like one of the type-keys. After Burnham had had his machine about a week, I called on him, on my way through Chicago, as I was coming home [to Meadville]. He then suggested that I have two space-keys,— one at each side of the key-board,—and that they be made with a broad lip to extend out laterally.... The idea so commended itself to me that I wrote then and there back to Milwaukee to have it done; and when I got to Meadville, I wrote again; and as I went on to Washington directly, as soon as I got there I wrote again. These letters were taken to the shop and read or handed 10 Densmore to Amos Densmore, May 20, 1876, and to Sholes, Nov. 6, 1884; lies, American Inventors, 328. Roby says (Quaife, Roby's Story, 45-50) that Densmore "en- croached more and more on the inventors' rights and percentages in the property " and crowded Glidden and Soule out. There is no real evidence, however, that Densmore ever used force or fraud. Sholes himself wrote to him, Oct. 5, 1869: "There is perhaps no particular reason why Mr. Glidden should come in [on the "axle" machine]. The interest might be used, as I said, to enable us to control the machine, but it does not seem to me they [Soule and Glidden] should be excluded. If you would make an arrangement to buy Soule out, and I guess you could, and in the bargain have him make a new and perfect machine {i.e., model], it might be well." Densmore did make an arrangement to buy Soule out. James to Amos Densmore, May 20, 1876. "Sholes to Densmore, Oct. 18, 31, 1869; lies, American Inventors, 328; Quaife, Roby's Story, 41-45. 18 Schwalbach afterwards said that " while he continued to work for Mr. Sholes for $3.00 a day, during the winter of 1870, he took up the work independently in his home." He "worked out the four-bank key board, and in the spring of 1871, he laid his completed model before Messrs. Sholes and Glidden." Howard, in Typewriter Topics, 3:8. 1949] ORIGINAL TYPEWRITER ENTERPRISE 399 to Glidden, as he was there every day. Sholes directed Schwalbach to make the two space-keys as I had written, and when he had got the levers done, Glidden suggested, "why not put a flat bar across, from one lever to the other, and thus have a space-key all the way across? " The idea had only to be stated to be adopted.19 Sholes also began to experiment with other improvements, including a spring motor to replace the clumsy weight that had powered all his early models.20 Though Sholes was steadily improving the invention, Densmore did not yet consider it perfected when, in the summer of 1870, the two men received an invitation to exhibit their machine with the object of selling out their interests in it. Sholes, having neither aptitude nor taste for business affairs, left the decision to Densmore, who made up his mind to sell if his price could be met. In Septem- ber he got a testimonial from Weller in St. Louis, told Sholes to bring a model from Milwaukee, and went himself from Washing- ton to join Sholes in New York. There he found that the prospec- tive buyers were D. N. Craig and George Harrington, officers of the newly formed Automatic Telegraph Company. Craig brought in, as an expert to appraise the machine, the young Thomas A. Edison, whom he had recently hired to perfect the automatic telegraph. Edison was not very favorably impressed. " The alignment of the letters was awful," he was to recall long afterward. So Craig and Harrington decided not to buy the invention, but they did give Densmore an order for several machines.21 Others also gave him orders, and so the following summer (1871) he undertook to manufacture in Milwaukee enough typewriters to " supply the present demand, pay up the debts, and have one or two over to sell." He soon found that he must not only "superintend the making" but also direct a further redesigning of the machine. What was needed was to make it more durable —in particular, to design it so that the types would stay in line. 19 James to Amos Densmore, May 20, 1876. 20Sholes to Densmore, Oct. 31, 1869; Sholes to Weller, April 21 (facsimile), July 30, and Sept. 28, 1870, and Feb. 14, 1871, in Weller, Early History, 32-34. 21 Weller to Sholes and Densmore, Sept. 30, 1870; Densmore to Sholes, Nov. 6, 1884; Weller, Early History, 35-37; F. L. Dyer and T. C. Martin, Edison: His Life and Inven- tions (2 vols., New York, 1910), 1:144-46. Dyer and Martin (p. 146) quote Edison as taking credit for perfecting the typewriter: " The typewriter I got into commercial shape is now known as the Remington." There appears to be absolutely no ground for this claim of Edison's. He did invent a device that became the basis for the stock ticker but was of no use as a typewriter. 400 RICHARD N. CURRENT [June

This was hard to do, because the short, stiff wires, which now directly connected key levers and type bars, pulled at an angle rather than straight. Four men—Sholes, Glidden, Schwalbach, and Densmore's inventive stepson Walter J. Barron—set to work on the problem. Glidden rigged up a system of intermediate levers to get a straight pull. Sholes disapproved, but Densmore encouraged Glidden to go ahead. Then, after spending two months and $1,000 on experiments, he discarded Glidden's scheme as too complicated, too " trappy." Meanwhile Barron suggested and Sholes and Schwalbach perfected an alternative method of pulling relatively straight. At the end of the summer of 1871 Densmore himself finally reached the conclusion that Sholes had first arrived at nearly four years earlier. Densmore said: "I think we are justified in saying that the invention is done, and the machine is now ready for the manufacturer."22 And he thought a manufacturer was now ready for the machine. He had been corresponding with John Hoskin, owner of a mowing- machine factory at Massillon, Ohio, and John B. Waring, a New York businessman. Together, they assured him they could sell the invention for a good price. So, taking with him three different models and a patent he had just secured on the rotating cylinder, he met Hoskin and Waring in New York on September 6, 1871. They both seemed pleased. " But time has passed," he wrote a few weeks later, " and nothing has been done." He continued to display the machine in New York and had "two or three other parties looking at it.3' To all of them he offered a "liberal chance" if they would "make some machines and try the merits of the invention," but he could find nobody willing to take that chance. Dark though the future of the typewriter now appeared, Densmore refused to abandon hope. "I believe in the invention," he declared, "from the top-most corner of my hat to the bottom-most head of the nails of my boot-heels " His faith was needed at this moment, for it was beginning to appear that the process of inventing was not yet through, as both he and Sholes had come to believe. Up to this time they had made all together about forty machines, no two of them exactly alike,

22 James to Emmett Densmore, June 18, 1871, and to Amos Densmore, Oct. 1, 1871. 1949} ORIGINAL TYPEWRITER ENTERPRISE 401 and the task was beginning to seem endless. Densmore had already spent some $10,000 and had long since run short of cash.23 Never- theless, the invention would again have to be basically redone. With the abandonment of the " axle" machine and the development of its successor, the second phase of the enterprise ended and the third began.

SOME TIME IN 1871 D. N. Craig, of the Automatic Telegraph Company, told Sholes that the typewriter would be much more useful, to the telegraph business at least, if it could be made to accommodate a continuous roll of paper. Before the end of the year Sholes conceived a way of meeting Craig's need. This required a fundamental change in the operation of the cylindrical platen— it must move longitudinally to space the letters and rotate to change the lines. Early in 1872 Sholes had a working model of what he called a "continuous roll" machine. Since the types wrote on the under side of the cylinder, he had to add a hinge so that he could swing up the carriage to see the line he was writing.24 In refashioning his typewriter he infringed a patent that Charles A. Washburn, then of San Francisco, had recently obtained. Often before, Sholes had used devices already patented, but the patents had expired and the ideas were public property. In the future the Milwaukee enterprise would have to pay a license fee to an outside inventor.25 In the summer of 1872 Densmore began his third and most serious effort to manufacture typewriters for sale. Leaving Klein- steuber's shop, but taking Schwalbach along with him, he rented and equipped with improvised machinery a wheelwright's mill that stood on a narrow strip of land between the Milwaukee River and the Rock River Canal, where cheap water power was available.

23 James to Amos Densmore, Oct. 1, 1871, May 20, 1876, and Jan. 17, 1884; to Sholes, Nov. 6, 1884. The patent on the " combination of a sliding cylindrical platen . .. with a revolving axle" was numbered 118,494 and dated Aug. 29, 1871. Patent Office Report, 1871, 2:674. 24 Sholes to Densmore, Jan. 24, 1878. 25 The Washburn patent, number 109,161, was granted Nov. 8, 1870. Patent Office Report, 1870, 2:882. In 1875, after the Remingtons had begun to manufacture the Sholes typewriter, Washburn hoped to induce the Colt armory to manufacture his own machine. " Of one thing I am very confident," he then wrote. "—that is, I can run Sholes' machine out of the market." Washburn to C. C. Washburn, Oct. 6, 9, 1875, in the C. C. Washburn Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society Library. But nothing came of this boast, and Washburn had to be content with a royalty from the Sholes typewriter. 402 RICHARD N. CURRENT [June

He now reconstructed several old "axle" machines and built a number of entirely new "continuous roll" typewriters (which were sometimes referred to as "Harrington" machines, because some of them were intended for George Harrington, the associate of Craig in the Automatic Telegraph Company). Densmore was turning out machines one by one, not mass-producing them, and so he was able to incorporate changes in design as he went along. On some machines he put a treadle (a dubious "improvement") so that an operator could throw back the carriage by pressing his foot. To lessen the nuisance of type-bar collisions, which were frequent, largely because of the alphabetical order of the keys, he adopted a new arrangement that he and Sholes had worked out. This revision fixed, once and for all, the basic pattern for the present standard or " universal" keyboard.26 Now that the Milwaukee enterprise was running its own factory, Densmore decided the time had come to write out a formal statement of ownership and management. So he drew up an " agreement of trust," which he dated November 16, 1872. In, it he proposed to define the respective shares in any forthcoming profits and to provide " that all interests should be united in one business management." He divided the whole property into tenths. Of these, he assigned four to himself, three to Sholes, one each to his own brothers Amos and Emmett, who had advanced various sums to aid the enterprise, and one to Glidden, who had given aid to Sholes after abandoning his interest in the original patents. In the agreement Densmore recognized himself, by implication, as business manager. According to its actual terms, he and Sholes were to be joint trustees; if Sholes should die, his duties would devolve upon Densmore; if Densmore should die, the trust would cease.27 Afterwards, Densmore was to keep and to enlarge his share in the property, but Sholes was not. The inventor did not value his 23 Sholes to "Walter J. Barron, June 9, 1872, facsimile in Reiley, Story of the Typewriter, 51; Sholes to Barron, Oct. 5, 1872; Densmore to Barron, Nov. 8, 1872; Densmore to Lavantia Douglass, Sept. 9, 1884; Quaife, Roby's Story, 67-69; Frederic Heath, " The Typewriter in Wisconsin," Wisconsin Magazine of History, 27:263ff (March, 1944). 27 There is a copy of the agreement in a letter of James to Amos Densmore, Jan. 17, 1884. Glidden was largely responsible for Densmore's decision to put the agreement in writing: ". . . Glidden set to work to tease for a paper defining his interest." James to Amos Densmore, May 20, 1876. The terms of the agreement resulted in a long dispute between Densmore and Mrs. Phoebe J. Glidden. 1949] ORIGINAL TYPEWRITER ENTERPRISE 403 own invention very highly. Though confident from the beginning that he could design an efficient and durable machine, he believed the typewriter at best would prove no more than a passing fancy, no more than a mere toy. All along, he was anxious to sell out, to get cash for his interest, feeling as he did that his immediate needs were real and certain while his future profits were extremely doubt- ful. Densmore, insisting that the invention would some day be " worth a million," tried again and again to dissuade Sholes from parting with any of his share in it. This advice Sholes refused to heed.28 From his share he gave Glidden the one-tenth that the latter was credited with in the agreement of trust. Soon afterward he sold one of his remaining three tenths. (In time he was to sell both of the shares he had left—one to Densmore and Yost in 1874 and the other to Densmore and D. G Roundy in 1880.)29 The prospects for the manufacturing attempt in 1872 seemed to justify Sholes's pessimism. In the improvised factory Schwalbach and his workmen were botching the job. From the sale of typewriters Densmore was getting no profits to divide. Instead, he calculated that his machines, poor as they were, were costing him more than he was able to sell them for. The outlook was not improving when at the end of the year his old friend Yost visited him in Milwaukee. Yost advised him that the ideal place to have typewriters manufactured was the factory of E. Remington & Sons, makers of guns, farm implements, and sewing machines, at Ilion, New York. Indebted to Densmore as he was, Yost offered to help him make the necessary arrangements with the Remingtons. Dens- more—who had set up his own factory only as a last resort after failing to enlist the aid of capitalists who could provide a more suitable plant—was willing to try again.30 28 Sholes to Barron, June 9, 1872, in Reiley, Story of the Typewriter, 51; Sholes to Amos Densmore, Oct. 29, 1872, and Aug. 26, 1878; James Densmore to Sholes, Nov. 6, 1884. 20 In 1872-73 Sholes sold a tenth interest in fractions—one-twentieth to Amos Dens- more for $2,500 and one-fortieth each to Henry Sherman and D. C. Roundy for $1,000 apiece. In 1874 he sold a tenth to James Densmore and G. W. N. Yost for $10,000 in promissory notes. In 1880 he sold a tenth to Densmore and Roundy for $3,000. (These amounts were by no means all that Sholes received for his typewriter inventions.) There were many delays in making payments, and Sholes finally came to the conclusion that he had been defrauded. Though this is not true, his thinking so is quite understandable. 30 Densmore to Barron, Nov. 8, 1872, and to Sholes, Nov. 6, 1884. Users of Milwau- kee-made typewriters, who gave testimonials in an advertising brochure published about 1874 {The Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer, New York, n.d.), included the following: 404 RICHARD N. CURRENT [June

So, about the middle of February, 1873, he and Yost took the latest model of the machine to Ilion. On March 1, as trustee of the typewriter enterprise, he signed a contract with the Remingtons. They did not buy the patent rights, as is commonly supposed. They merely agreed, first, to have their mechanics remodel the machine so as to suit it to mass production and, Second, to manufacture 1,000 units to start and 24,000 more at their discretion. They paid Densmore nothing—he had to pay them. He had to borrow $10,000 and turn it over to them as an advance payment, and he had to guarantee their head mechanic a royalty. Still, he was more than satisfied with the arrangement. At once he formed a partnership with Yost to set up a general selling agency. His plan was this: he would pay the Remingtons to make typewriters, he and Yost would distribute them, out of the net proceeds he would pay royalties to Sholes and others having claims, and he and Yost would divide the remaining profit.31 He was soon to be disillu- sioned. In fact, he was to wait more than a year before he even had any machines to sell and nearly ten years before he began to make much money.32 The Remington contract of 1873, which ended the third phase of the original enterprise, marks a big turning point in typewriter history. This contract was to lead eventually to the establishment of a successful and profitable business; it was to lead also to the introduction of the typewriter into general use. But the essential work of developing a practical instrument had already been done. The first Ilion machines, though streamlined somewhat and en- cased in metal instead of wood, were in principle exactly like the last Milwaukee machines. After 1873, only two or three really Western Union Telegraph Company (main office and also "Central Division"), Chicago; Dawes Brothers, Attorneys, Fox Lake, Wisconsin; Pinkerton Detective Agency, Chicago; Porter's National Telegraph College, Chicago; Office of the Second Assistant Postmaster General, Washington. 31 Densmore to Sholes, Nov. 6, 1884; "Memorandum of Agreement" between E. Rem- ington & Sons and The Type-Writer Company, Dec. 1, 1876 (which indicates some of the terms of the original contract); National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 3 (1893) :317. The reminiscence of H. H. Benedict, a Remington official in 1873 who long afterwards recalled the negotiation of the contract, is quoted in Reiley, Story of the Typewriter, 56—58. Reiley is mistaken when he says (p. 58) that " in due course of time the Remingtons acquired complete ownership" of the patent rights. The Remingtons never did so. 32 Densmore and Yost received their first machines to sell on July 1, 1874. The typewriter business did not become really profitable until after 1882, when the firm of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict (who later bought the Milwaukee patent rights and the Remington typewriter works) became selling agents for the Remingtons. 1949} ORIGINAL TYPEWRITER ENTERPRISE 405 basic improvements remained to be added—among them a shifting mechanism, to print lower-case as well as upper-case letters, and a front-stroke arrangement, to make the writing visible at all times.

ULTIMATELY THE TYPEWRITER was to make possible the growth of both big business and big government. Yet neither businessmen nor government officials showed much interest in a writing machine in the beginning. The early demand came from stenographers (court reporters) and from telegraphers. With such men Densmore placed most of the several dozen machines he made—at a time when he could induce very few government bureaus or mercantile and manufacturing firms to try them out. Stenography and telegraphy provided the " felt need " for the invention, and telegraphy and stenography helped to inspire it in other ways as well. For instance, Sholes put together his first partial model out of parts of telegraph apparatus.33 Both he and Densmore were interested in shorthand as amateurs, and as early as 1869 he conceived the idea of a stenotype.34 So there was from the start a close relationship between typewriting, on the one hand, and shorthand reporting and telegraphy on the other. There were also affinities between the early typewriter and the piano and the sewing machine. The piano, with which Sholes was familiar, gave him ideas for his first designs. The sewing machine offered him a challenging example of what could be done by mass production to convert a complicated piece of machinery into a cheap and widely used instrument. Hence, to speak of a " literary piano," and to predict for the writing machine as great a success in the " literary world " as the sewing machine already enjoyed in the " stitchetary world," as some contemporaries did, was by no means to indulge in mere figures of speech. If Sholes's first typewriter looked something like a piano, the last Milwaukee model faintly resembled a sewing machine.35

33 Weller, Early History, 7-9- 34 Sholes to Densmore, Sept. —, 1869. Sholes then wrote: "The more I think of it, the more I deem it possible to use the machine as a reporter of speeches. It is necessary to resort to a system of abbreviations and word' signs to accomplish it. ..." 33 Sholes wrote to Densmore, Oct. 31, 1869, about a visitor who had examined the latest model of the typewriter: " The Colonel talks about it very much as you do, anticipating that it will become as important in the literary world, as the sewing machine is in the stitchetary world." 406 RICHARD N. CURRENT [June

There was a connection, too, between the Pennsylvania oil business and the Wisconsin typewriter enterprise. It was chiefly money derived from the former which financed and made possible the latter. As is true of most if not all inventions, the typewriter was the work of many minds and hands. As is also usually true, a number of men have claimed excessive credit as its inventor. Sholes himself was always very modest about his own claims. At times he even went so far as to disown the Ilion machine altogether. Many of the supposed improvements that Densmore had insisted on in- corporating, Sholes disapproved, whether or not he had originated them himself. To his way of thinking, the final Milwaukee model, the one the Remingtons adopted, was still much too bulky and complex. He preferred another model, one that he had fashioned entirely according to his own taste. The " little abortion,'' he fondly called it—a tiny, compact portable which he could set on. his lap. In the summer of 1873 he planned to take this small machine to the Vienna Exposition, so as to exhibit the typewriter at its best. (At the last minute he had to call off this trip.) 36 The Scientific American, which Sholes acknowledged as the source of his original inspiration, refused to return the compliment by honoring him. Instead, this magazine asserted that all Sholes and his colleagues had done was to copy two previous inventions —one (the product of its own editor A. E. Beach) a device causing types to strike at a common center, and the other (the product of Charles Thurber) a carriage with a cylindrical platen.37 In fact, neither Beach nor Thurber had designed a practical machine. The Milwaukee inventors, whether they copied them or not, did combine the Beach and Thurber principles, but they also added many new features, and they brought the whole inventive process to a culmination by producing a truly efficient device. Of all the Mil-

36 Sholes to Amos Densmore, April 26, 1873, and to James Densmore, Oct. 31, 1879. 37 The Scientific American gave favorable publicity to the Milwaukee enterprise in a front-page article, Aug. 10, 1872 (n.s., 27:177). Thereafter the magazine had nothing good to say about Sholes and his associates. Several articles asserted or implied that Beach alone, or Beach and Thurber, invented the typewriter. Ibid., 34:51 (Jan. 22, 1876), 40:383 (Dec. 18, 1886), 41:271ff (April 30, 1887). 1949] ORIGINAL TYPEWRITER ENTERPRISE 407

waukee group, Sholes was much the most productive. He, no doubt, deserves his reputation as "father" of the typewriter.38 As promoter of the pioneer enterprise, Densmore deserves equal fame with Sholes, the chief inventor. Densmore supplied money, got patents, set standards and made criticisms, co-ordinated the work, and finally found a manufacturer. He gave the invention its apt name typewriter.^ Above all, he provided the " pluck " and the " faith " that kept things going when all others were ready to quit. As Sholes afterwards wrote to him: It is possible I have done something towards the enterprise, and it is quite possible, had it not been for me there would have been no enterprise. But while this is only possible, in my case, it is very certain, that there would have been no enterprise, had it not been for you. And the Lord made an individual, who did not amount to shucks until after he had breathed into him the breath of life, and he became a living soul. And if the Lord won't get mad at the comparison, I will say that in about that light I regard your relations to this enterprise. It became a living soul only as, and after, you breathed the breath of life into it.40 So said the inventor about his own role and the role of the promoter. In truth, it was the combined effort of both of these men —who had met in Madison in 1853 as editors from Kenosha and Oshkosh—that gave America and the world the typewriter.41

38 Densmore, who before he died had occasion to know many typewriter inventors, considered Sholes the " most fertile " of all. In a letter to his brother Amos, May 20, 1876, he hastily summed up the contributions of the various members of the Milwaukee group, as follows: " There is absolutely nothing of his [Glidden's] originating in the present machine: Soule invented the pivoting the type-bars in the circle; Sholes invented the combination of the one-fold and two-fold vibratory letter-space ratchets, which make the letter-space movement; Schwalback {sic] invented the key-levers and the way they are combined with the type-bars, and also the spring-pulley which propels the carriage; while Sholes again invented the present cylindrical platen, the carriage, the way of putting in and moving the paper, the ribbon-spools and way of moving the ribbon, the method of drawing back the carriage, and also the adjustable hangers, for ready adjustment and alligning [sic] the types." 39 Current, in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, 40:420n; National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 3 (1893) :316. More correctly, Densmore coined the word typewriter, for he used the hyphen. Type writing was an expression already in use in 1867. The first Remington-made machines bore the name " Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer." Glidden insisted on the inclusion of his name, but " Sholes & Densmore Type-Writer " would have been much more appropriate. 40 Sholes to Densmore, Feb. 21, 1877. 41 For the first meeting of Sholes and Densmore, see Current, in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, 30:418. Wisconsin's Flowering Wilderness

By LILLIAN KRUEGER

HAT IMPRESSED the pioneers in territorial Wisconsin— and in the period immediately following—was not only Wthe stretch of forest wilderness, but also the rare beauty of the flowering landscape. They have left their concise scientific records and their nostalgic reminiscences; their poignant word-of- mouth tales which have descended with their farms, from fathers to sons. From such eyewitness accounts has emerged this brief narrative, "Wisconsin's Flowering Wilderness." In 1852 one such settler writes: "In the gloomy retreats of forest life, what can be more refreshing and delightful than the companionship of flowers? " In spite of the Sturm und, Drang of those lonesome years, the aesthetic found expression in more than a few of the pioneers. One of these was Richard Dart, who arrived in Green Lake County with his father and two brothers in the summer of 1840. It is this family for which Dartford (now Green Lake) was named. No doubt those who have summer homes on Green Lake will know exactly what farm site Richard Dart is describing in an article which he contributed to the WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY publications some forty years ago. Although the first Dart farm was situated one-half mile south of Sandstone Bluff—a well-known rocky height once surmounted by an antlered deer—the family later bought a farm to the south, on Green Lake Prairie. In writing of the settlement of that county he describes the great variety of prairie flowers as " fields of changing beauty/' such as he had never seen. The greenhouses of New York and Chicago

Miss KRUEGER, of the Society's staff, spoke before the Milwaukee Rose Society, on Wisconsin Centennial Day, on this subject. The occasion was the planting of a Provence rosebush, 104 years old, the gift of Mrs. E. A. Hentzen, Milwaukee. It was planted in the garden of historic Kilbourn- town House, in Estabrook Park, Milwaukee. This account is a condensed version of her talk. 408 1949} WISCONSIN'S FLOWERING WILDERNESS 409 could not equal the bouquet that he could gather at any time, he exclaims enthusiastically. The landscape was a great flower garden, bright with a profusion of double lady's-slippers, shooting-stars, field lilies, and other varieties. When Dart had reached old age, some of these wild flowers still lingered beside the railway tracks —the last line of defense. So fond were the Darts of the blossom- ing landscape that time after time they attempted to transplant some of the flowers, but only the shooting-stars could withstand the change, he writes. The tea-plant carpeted the oak and clay openings, for miles around, its white blossoms resembling those of the buckwheat. It was sought by the housewife who dried the leaves and from them brewed her tea.1 Another observer of the colorful Wisconsin landscape was Carl De Haas. He was a German emigrant who arrived in America in 1847 and settled at Calumet Harbor, on Lake Winnebago. In his Winke fur Amtvcmderer, a sort of a guidebook for those who were considering migrating to the New World, he describes Wisconsin in detail. Of the countryside he writes that tall blue, yellow, and white flowers, the blue ones especially numerous, made the prairie into a vast garden. Many red flowers grew in the forests, and the wild roses formed long hedges. He makes reference to the small white flower which commonly grew on the prairie, which was used for tea, doubtless Dart's tea-plant.2 The Fond du Lac City Directory, 1857-58, contains further information on the area surrounding the city in which the historian notes the brilliant colors of innumerable wild flowers. These prairies remind him of cultivated gardens, miles in extent. He regrets that cattle, plowshares, houses, and fences have destroyed or replaced the beauty of this expanse, but a thoughtful artist came to the rescue and painted " the remaining specimens to the number of about sixty [varieties]." 3 Mark Harrison, an artist at Fond du Lac, had lately collected a prairie bouquet and accurately reproduced it upon canvas. " He has done ample justice to the subject producing an admirable picture;... besides he has conferred a

1 Wisconsin Historical Society, Proceedings, 1909, p. 261. 2De Haas volume (Elberfeld, 1848-49), 78. 3 Directory, 1857-58, pp. 6-7. 410 LILLIAN KRUEGER [June lasting obligation upon Society by preserving specimens which will soon be extinct. The painting is in the possession of Mrs. Darling of this city," according to the regional historian.4 It is a delight to read the story of a young Scotch lad, whose innate love of nature could not be suppressed. In 1913, when John Muir was an old man, he wrote the story of his boyhood. And what a spirited reliving of youth the account turned out to be! In 1849 at the age of eleven, John with his father, a brother, and thirteen-year-old Sarah, preceded the mother and four other children to a farm on Fountain Lake, some ten miles from Portage. It was a lonely, untamed area, in contrast to the Scottish town of Dunbar, on the stormy North Sea, which they had left. The father arrived at the farm and hurriedly built a log hut upon a hilltop while the children awaited his return at near-by Kingston. John reveled in his new experiences and tells with rare sensi- tiveness of his first glimpse of the homesite: To this charming hut, in the sunny woods, overlooking a flowery glacier meadow and a lake rimmed with white water-lilies, we were hauled by an ox-team Oh, the glorious Wisconsin wilderness! ... Everything new and pure in the very prime of the spring when Nature's pulses were beating highest 5 The lad followed the plow at the age of twelve, and his holidays were January 1, the Fourth of July, and part of each Sunday, for there were church services and Sunday school to attend. His father was a very exacting man, and the young boy performed adult labor, splitting up to 100 rails a day. Sixteen to seventeen hours of work daily were required of him, during the hot summer months. The price paid was high in America, but a born naturalist, his heart forever sang a song. When following the plow in spring, there was much to see to feel and to love. Refreshing rains fell at short intervals.... Corn- and potato-planting and the sowing of spring wheat was comparatively light work, while the nesting birds sang cheerily, grass and flowers covered the marshes and 4 Mrs. Darling was no doubt the wife of Dr. Mason Darling who was among the founders of Fond du Lac, arriving in 1838. Mark Harrison came to America as a child. He was primarily interested in painting biblical and historical subjects although he did portraits and landscapes. It is said he lived the life of a recluse at Fond du Lac, where he arrived in 1852. His paintings were sold in the East and in Europe, but earning a living as an artist in early Wisconsin was a precarious undertaking. The writer was unable to find any trace of this picture although search was made at Fond du Lac. Thanks to Miss Leila Janes, Fond du Lac public librarian, for assistance. 6 Muir, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (New York, 1913), 62-64. ; . -

- K \j)WH^> V

• PASQUEFLOWER Flower photos —Vi'isco nsin Conservation Department,

YELLOW LADY'S-SLIPPER 1

"''..• * . WHITE WATER LILY "'

LOTUS 1949] WISCONSIN'S FLOWERING WILDERNESS 411 meadows and all the wild, uncleared parts of the farm, and the trees put forth their new leaves, those of the oaks forming beautiful purple masses as if every leaf were a petal; and with all this we enjoyed the mild soothing winds, the humming of innumerable small insects... and the freshness and fragrance of everything 6 He rejoiced in the meadows which were covered with grasses and sedges, and in the abundance of fragile orchids and ferns. Foun- tain Lake was bordered by shining green rushes, and just beyond the rushes floated white and orange water lilies, forming a magnificent border some fifty feet in width. On bright days, when the lake was rippled by a breeze, the undulating lilies and sun-spangled water made a picture of radiant beauty.7 On Sundays John and his brothers would drift in their boat on the lake, he recalls, and gather the waxy lilies, which remained fresh throughout the week. He writes almost extravagantly: No flower was hailed with greater wonder and admiration by the European settlers in general—Scotch, English, and Irish—than this white water-lily the most beautiful, sumptuous, and deliciously fragrant of all our Wisconsin flowers. No lily garden in civilization we had ever seen could compare with our lake garden.8 The immigrants were especially fond of the pasqueflower. Even when the prairie had been burned over, the hairy, silky buds strug- gled up through the dull gray ashes and dark cinders, " giving beauty for ashes in glorious" purple abundance. Several species of lady's- slippers, or Indian moccasins, grew in the Muir meadows and on the shady hillsides: yellow, rose-colored, and some almost white. Curiously shaped, resembling the Indian moccasins, they too were greatly admired by the inhabitants. Beautiful Turk's-turban was somewhat rare, but many orange lilies grew beneath the burr oaks. Butterfly weed, its brilliant scarlet flowers growing in vivid masses, attracted the butterflies.9 With the autumn came a splendid array of asters, goldenrod, sunflowers, and daisies, contrasting with several varieties of ferns along the shady margin of the meadows. These wild flowers Muir described at great length; of the domestic varieties he made but a single statement:' " Flowers were planted about the neatly kept log or frame houses [in this region]." We shall always be indebted to him for the lively account of his

6 Ibid., 201. * Ibid., 118. sIbid., 119. Ubid., 119-22. 412 LILLIAN KRUEGER [June out-of-door boyhood; there are tales of arduous labor, but his narrative shines with the joy of youth and with the wisdom of a naturalist. Sensitive to the beauty around him and resentful of its destruction was a pioneer ornithologist, naturalist, and botanist, Halvor L. Skavlem, who was born in Rock County, October 3, 1846. An authority on Indians and Indian relics, he knew well the history of the red man and his habitat in the Koshkonong region. Con- tributor to and compiler of The Skavlem and Odegaarden Families, he records therein the vivid impressions of a growing boy during the early 1850's, in southern Wisconsin. As a little tot, he chased butterflies, gathered arms full of prairie flowers, and hunted bird nests. He speaks of the slow-moving " breaking " team, consisting of five to seven yoke of oxen. These mild-eyed creatures moved around the doomed land " leaving a black trail, that day by day, increased in width, bringing certain ruin and destruction—absolute annihilation—to the plant habitants who had held undisputed possession for untold centuries," he writes with vehemence.10 Skavlem explains the method employed in preparing the land for breaking. The thick grass cover is first fired: he tells of a perfect firing day, clear and warm, a gentle breeze blowing in a direction to keep safe the homestead. Great bundles of dry grass are pulled up, ignited, and carried by the workers up and down the edge of the land as they light the grass.11 Soon the area is encircled by flames and great clouds of smoke. While "new fields are being born," he asks: What of the hundreds of happy bird-homes that the morning sun brightened and warmed? All,—all are gone wrecks of nests, scorched eggs and charred bodies of little baby birds, disfigure the face of Mother Earth It was not until the next day that the little boy reali2ed the loss of his flowery play-ground and the many bird-nests that he had " spotted." 12 Skavlem, at one with many nature lovers, found himself on the side of a losing cause. Even as great trees are cut down to make way for boulevards, apartments, suburban additions, and expanding 10 Skavlem . . . Families, 235. 11 Ibid., 236. 12 Ibid., 236-37. 1949] WISCONSIN'S FLOWERING WILDERNESS 413 highway systems, we who love the growing things of earth re- luctantly forgive the destruction: in the name of progress, it must be so. While the prairies were being converted into fields of waving grain, the pioneers planted flowers,an d shrubs, and orchards, which in a way replaced the disappearing flowering landscape. These flowers and shrubs, nurtured with tender devotion, often were " ties of remembrance," which bound the homesick immigrants to the lands of their birth. An enthusiastic gardener who helped replace the flower beauty that was being obliterated was the Swedish botanist, naturalist, and ornithologist, Thure Kumlien. Educated at Upsala University, he left Sweden as a young man, arriving in America in 1843. His great interest in bird study made th& selection of his farm site near Lake Koshkonong—the broadening of the Rock River—fortunate indeed. It " is in the direct path of the principal bird migration routes of the United States," and the wild rice and celery attracted thousands of game and shore birds.13 Thure's was a busy life: not only did he attempt to develop a farm, but the collecting of bird specimens, bird eggs and nests, and their sale required many hours. The eminent Louis Agassiz is quoted in the early-day press as believing Kumlien to be the greatest authority in the world on bird nests. Kumlien's home was located on a picturesque elevation, Lake Koshkonong glistening in the distance. A profusion of lilac bushes, some distance from the house, bordered the front yard. These were in bloom recently though the old farmhouse has disappeared. A stone walk divided the dooryard, and near the gate there was a stone-walled flower bed, 2J/2 feet in height, which tapered toward the top. English purple violets and English yellow primroses grew in the bed and crowded through the stone crevices of the wall. The primroses in this quaint and lovely flower bed were brought from England, a gift to Thure from a friend and flower-lover, James Clark, who lived at near-by Albion.

13 Angie Kumlien Main, " Thure Kumlien, Koshkonong Naturalist," Wisconsin Magazine of History, 27:27 (September, 1943). 414 LILLIAN KRUEGER [June

Thure's homesite was gay with other flowers: a bright coral honeysuckle trained like a bush, pansies, valley lilies, and a yellow rosebush added beauty and fragrance in contrast with the deep green of the hemlocks, spruce, and Austrian pine.14 Kumlien was interested not only in the cultivation of flowers and shrubs and trees about his farm home, he also was well acquainted with the great variety and beauty of the wild flowers and grasses that grew in the Koshkonong region. While collecting bird specimens and eggs and nests he noted, too, the flower and plant world about him. We know that he taught a young lad of his acquaintance botany and took him on field trips to marsh, meadow, forest, and lake where grew the choicest flowers: the lotus, pitcher plant, and a dozen kinds of orchids. In I860 he found a new aster which he sent to Upsala University, where it was named Aster Kumlieni, in his honor. His reputation as a naturalist needs no further proof than this appreciation expressed in a letter by his friend who once had lived in the same region: " How we miss you! Plants & birds & no one to tell us their names." 15 In the 1830's and 1840's the scholarly Increase A. Lapham, Wisconsin's notable all-round scientist, compiled records of the plant life found in Wisconsin. In one account he comments on the great variety as well as on the great quantity of these interesting and useful plants. The stately pine, towering above the forest trees, and the simplest " wild wood flower " in the State came under his observation. " The broad prairies are covered with a profusion of flowers of every form and hue—which are changed with every change of the season," he writes.16 In an extensive enumeration, a little later, including the discoveries of several scientists, Lapham

14 The writer is indebted to Mrs. Angie Kumlien Main, Fort Atkinson, for supplying information about her grandfather, Thure Kumlien. 15 Main, Wisconsin Magazine of History, 27:332-33, 335. Kumlien's "On the Rapid Disappearance of Wisconsin Wild Flowers " was prepared for the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, and published in its Transactions, 1875-76, 3:56-57. He lists between thirty and forty wild-flower names in Latin. To a " layman " the great variety of orchids appears impressive. Thanks to Professor Norman Fassett, University of Wisconsin, Botany Department, for translating the Kumlien Latin list into English. 16 Wisconsin: Its Geography and Topography... (2d ed., Milwaukee, 1846), 71-74. Lapham brought out, in the year of his arrival at Milwaukee, 1836, a brief Catalogue of Plants and Shells Found in the Vicinity of Milwaukee, on the West Side of Lake Michigan. 1949] WISCONSIN'S FLOWERING WILDERNESS 415 lists 849 plant species. Many of these plants were found within a radius of thirty miles of Milwaukee. He cites the results of trips made by scientists in the Lake Superior and Upper Mississippi River areas, and in Crawford, Rock, and Dane counties, but the specimens most numerous were listed from southeastern Wisconsin. Of this lengthy report Lapham says: "It is, doubtless, very far from being complete; many species remaining to reward future explorers."17 This narrative has dealt only with the very early flowering landscape of Wisconsin. We may be sure that during the interim of a century the Darts, the Harrisons, Muirs, Skavlems, Kumliens, and Laphams—there is a long procession of them—have continued to compile the natural history of the State. Official and enthusiastic individual conservationists and agencies are extending the boundaries of our parks; at the same time they have brought about the enactment of protective measures which prohibit the injury, destruction, or removal of certain wild flowers—without permission. We have lost the vast flowering prairies described in pioneer " literature," but through wise conservation efforts we may wander over hill and through valley, marsh, and forest and recapture " pieces " of early landscape beauty. The fuzzy windflower shouting its head off, " Spring is here! " the pungent cowslip lighting the lowlands, the fragile orchid hiding in the deep, damp shade, the showy lotus dreaming on the placid lake, the lavender aster and feathery goldenrod nodding farewell to summer—all are there for us to enjoy, precious remnants of the past.

17 American Association for the Advancement of Science, Proceedings, 1849, pp. 19-62. Lapham names the following scientists who have contributed to the earliest records of Wisconsin plants: Thomas Nuttall, D. B. Douglass, John Torrey, Thomas Say, Lewis de Schweinitz, and Douglass Houghton. Rufus King and the Wisconsin Constitution

By PERRY C. HILL

INTRODUCTION

UFUS KING of Massachusetts1 was an author and signer of the United States Constitution, later became George Wash- R*" ington's minister to England. His son Charles was editor of the New York American and president of Columbia College. Charles's son Rufus the Second2 fulfilled the inheritance from both his father, the journalist-educator, and his grandfather, the lawmaker-diplomat. He was an author and signer of the Wisconsin constitution, editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel, a founder and first president of the Milwaukee school system, a member of the first Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin, finally Abraham Lincoln's minister to the Vatican. The same Rufus launched a military tradition in the family as an adjutant general of New York and a major general of the United States army. His son Charles the Second was an adjutant general of Wisconsin and a brigadier general of the United States army. The third Rufus is a captain of the United States navy, now retired.

PERRY C. HILL is the chief of the Milwaukee Sentinel's Madison News Bureau since the summer of 1946. He was graduated from Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, in 1933. During the recent war he served in the United States navy, with the rank of lieutenant commander upon release. "Rufus King and the Wisconsin Constitution" was the subject of the paper read by Mr. Hill at the Society's Annual Meeting, August 20, at Milwaukee. 1 When James Duane Doty bought up and laid out the capital site at Madison, he named some streets for signers of the United States Constitution. Hence King Street is for Rufus the First. Edgar G. Doudna, " Wisconsin—The Thirtieth Star," Wisconsin Blue Book, 1948. 2 This Rufus lived from about 1847 to 1861 at the northeast corner of Mason and Van Buren streets in Milwaukee, and the house stood until 1915. Old settlers may recall the site was long known as " King's Corner." General Charles King, " Rufus King: Soldier, Editor, and Statesman," Wisconsin Magazine of History, 4:371-81 (June, 1921). 416 KING AND CONSTITUTION 417

Surely few families can boast such a line of distinguished and useful citizens through five consecutive generations. A significant gap on the shelves of American history is waiting for a biography of the second and busiest of the Rufuses, in whom the glittering and various talents of the tribe came to fullest flower. This paper will not fill the hundredth part of that gap. After a new sketch of the main features in his career, it will be confined to examining his extraordinary influence on the nature of the constitution under which Wisconsin became a state. This is a peculiar- ly appropriate study in the centennial year of statehood because it is aiso the centennial of that constitution. After King had helped scuttle the first draft and produce an acceptable one, it proved a sturdy document indeed. It has outlived all but six of the twenty- nine state constitutions then extant.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Rufus King was born January 26, 1814, in New York City. He was graduated from the United States Military Academy, fourth in his class, at the remarkable age of nineteen. In the engineer corps he acquired a lifelong respect for then Captain Robert E. Lee, under whose command he helped build Fortress Monroe. He next developed an attachment for the capital city of Albany, New York, where the army sent him to help improve the navigability of the Hudson River. A trip to survey the southern boundaries of Michigan planted the seed of westward attraction. After three years, King was still a brevet second lieutenant, and decided the army of those days was too slow a career for a man of energy and talent. He resigned his commission and got a survey- ing job from his uncle, James King, president of the New York and Erie Railroad. But Albany soon attracted him again, and in 1838 he adopted his father's profession as editor of the Albany Advertiser} Here young Rufus quickly came under the eye of the new governor, William H. Seward. At the age of twenty-five he became adjutant general and served throughout Seward's four-year regime.

8 At this time Charles King had been editor of the New York American for fifteen years. 418 PERRY C. HILL [June

Thurlow Weed, able editor of the Albany Evening Journal and ruthless political boss of New York State, also took the bright young man under his wing. For four years King was Weed's associate editor, absorbing Whig doctrine at the master's feet. Meanwhile the Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, a staunch but somewhat lonely outpost of Whiggery in a wilderness of rampant Democracy, had run through six editors in its first eight years. In search of stability, its owners went east for advice from Thurlow Weed. Perhaps sensing a chance to advance the Whig cause, he recommended his own associate editor and let King go. Still only thirty-one years old, King plunged into the new life with tremendous zest, as if realizing he had finally found his true career—leadership in a new community in a rich territory about to become a state. He reached Milwaukee September 20, 1845, and within a month he was serving on the policy committee of the Territory's " first educational convention " 4 at Mineral Point. By December he was on a citizen's committee to draft the school provisions for Milwaukee's first city charter. In 1846 he became the first president of the school board, an office that embraced the functions of the superintendency. He was returned to the board in thirteen of the next fifteen years, with three more terms as president. When an appointive, salaried superintendency was created in 1859, King was given the job.5 Rufus King was an editor, like Weed, who not only pontificated in print on public affairs, but personally engaged in politics. Out- side his columns as v/ell as in them, he helped organize the intense campaign to defeat the proposed State constitution written by the 1846 convention. That done, he contributed to the upset election of a Milwaukee Whig as territorial delegate to Congress. Later in the same fall of 1847 he himself was the only Whig elected from Milwaukee County to the second constitutional convention. The Whigs put him up for mayor in 1848 and 1850, but the Demo- cratic machine carried his opponents to victory.

4 Joseph Schafer, " Origins of Wisconsin's Free School System," Wisconsin Magazine of History, 9:27-46 (September, 1925). 61 am indebted to the Milwaukee school administration for delving into its records to clarify these facts. They are set forth with greater detail at the end of this sketch. 1949] KING AND CONSTITUTION 419

With remarkably high scruples for those partisan days, Governor Nelson Dewey, a Democrat, carefully named six Democrats and six Whigs as the first regents of the State University in 1848. Among them was King, who served six years. The indefatigable "Little General" (so dubbed by the opposition press) also busied himself in and about Milwaukee during the next dozen years as follows: He helped organize and lead the Milwaukee Light Guard (1846), fire engine company no. 1 (1847), St. John's Episcopal parish (1847), the Milwaukee Boat Club, a cricket club, the first Milwaukee Baseball Club (I860), the Odd Fellows, the Sons of Temperance,6 the Fourth of July Commission, the Poor Relief Commission, music and horticultural societies, the Excelsior Society of native New Yorkers. He was a fervent promoter of government enterprise in the improvement of rivers and harbors. King lost financial control of the Sentinel in the panic of 1857 although remaining as editor. His talents did not run to acquisitive- ness, and the $2,000 salary provided for him as superintendent of schools in 1859 came in handy. But it also became a lure for the Democrats, and King lost the job a year later. He was then obliged to seek political patronage, for which he qualified by leading Wisconsin Whigs into the new Republican Party and vigorously supporting the candidacy of Lincoln. So in the spring of 1861 King journeyed to Washington, where his old friend Seward was now Secretary of State, and asked for the Milwaukee postmastership. He found it had already been promised to another, whose petition he himself had signed a year before—he had quite forgotten! 7 As he was ruefully preparing to leave the capital, word came that Seward, unasked, had obtained for him the appointment as the first United States minister to the Vatican. King had his family in New York and his baggage on the boat when he heard the news of Fort Sumter.8 He hurried to Washing-

0 He installed a Madison division while he was a delegate to the constitutional convention. 7 This episode is recounted by General Charles King in the " Rufus King " sketch. 8 His successor as editor of the Sentinel was C. Latham Sholes, who became most famed for his subsequent invention of the typewriter. 420 PERRY C. HILL [June ton, resigned the Rome assignment, and volunteered for the army. Lincoln put him on the first appointment list of general officers, and on King's recommendation sent ex-Governor Alexander Ran- dall of Wisconsin to Rome in his stead. General King organized the Iron Brigade of Wisconsin and Indiana volunteers, but soon was placed in command of a division under General John Pope in northern Virginia. He came to grief when his forces suffered a surprise attack by Stonewall Jackson on August 28, 1862. King held his ground until nightfall, then with- drew toward the main body of Union forces. Next morning the field of hy encounter witnessed a juncture between Jackson and Lee, and the disastrous Second Battle of Bull Run promptly ensued. Trying to lighten the onus of that defeat, Pope let it be supposed he had ordered King not to yield the ground. King was easily able to prove he had never received any such orders and had not been apprised of Lee's approach. Pope himself later wrote to King: " I am perfectly satisfied you did the very best you could under the circumstances." But suspicions are never as easily removed as planted, and King felt himself under the cloud of that defeat for the rest of his life, so that it affected both his health and his spirit.9 He was removed from the fields of action and assigned to court martial duty in Washington, then to division commands in the defenses of the capital and at Yorktown. In the fall of 1863 Randall asked to be relieved at Rome, and King was sent. A dramatic episode in his Italian career was the capture of John Surratt, supposed accomplice in the Lincoln-Seward assassination plot. Tipped off that Surratt was hiding out as a Papal Zouave, Minister King, although unarmed with an extradition treaty, successfully negotiated with the Vatican for the fugitive's arrest.10 The Vatican mission had been instituted as part of the Civil War diplomatic policy. By 1867 controversy was rising over the temporal authority of the Papacy, and Congress had no wish to become involved. Furthermore, Americans had received a con-

9 General Charles King is authority for this statement and the letter from Pope. See " Rufus King " sketch. w Lloyd Lewis, Myths after Lincoln (New York, 1929). Surratt went free when the jury disagreed. RUFUS KING

1949] KING AND CONSTITUTION 421 fused impression of the Papal attitude toward Protestant worship on the legation premises, and the mission became unpopular. Over King's protests Congress deleted the appropriation, and at the year's end he came home. King made a social visit to Milwaukee upon his return, but then took up residence in his native city of New York, and obtained a salary as deputy collector of customs. Broken in health, he retired in 1869 and died October 13, 1876, in his sixty-third year.

THE FIRST CONVENTION The long campaign for Wisconsin statehood was on the verge of success when Rufus King came to the Territory in Septem- ber, 1845, as editor of its leading Whig organ, the Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette. The following summer, after Congress had passed the Wisconsin admission act, he launched his editorial campaign on the issues of the forthcoming constitutional convention.11 His first two editorials were powerful arguments against the dangers of conferring upon legislatures the power to borrow money. He pointed to " one appalling fact connected with national or state debts—never yet has one been fully paid off! "12 His persuasive theme was this: "Abuse of taxation cannot extend further than the ability of the people in any one year to pay, whilst the abuse of the borrowing power may be felt for ages to come." King was off on the right foot, for the pay-as-you-go principle became one of the foundation stones of the Wisconsin state government. He was less in tune with posterity in his next plea, for empowering the State to engage in internal improvements; the constitution still withholds this power, except as amendments have made specific exceptions. King also urged the convention to give Wisconsin free suffrage, free schools, and a " single district" system of representation. The 11 Editorials were unsigned, of course, but I am assuming throughout this paper that when the Sentinel spoke it was King speaking. It is unlikely there was any other author- ship, as newspapers then were virtually one-man affairs. The columns uniformly bear the distinctive stamp of one man's style and thinking, and in any event they certainly reflect King's views. 12 Milwaukee Sentinel and Gazette, July 28, 1846. Hereafter dates of Sentinel issues will be inserted in the text where portions are quoted, instead of in footnotes. 422 PERRY C. HILL [June last was a vital Whig plank; if each county were to elect at large the whole number of legislators to which it should be entitled, the Whigs feared the Democratic Party machine would rule the roost; the only hope of a minority party was to have a separately defined district for each legislative seat. Surprisingly, we find King favoring from the outset the then "radical" notion of an elective judiciary.13 But he wisely urged the safeguards that were ultimately adopted: holding judicial elections separately from political ones, giving judges comparatively long terms, and forbidding them to seek other offices. In the preconvention period King also took a strong position on the most explosive of all the constitutional issues—"bank or no' bank." Many banking firms of the day were usurious, and often irresponsible in issuing what then passed for paper currency.14 In Illinois the reaction had been so violent that the practice of banking was simply outlawed in toto. The same extreme remedy was widely favored in Wisconsin, and "antibank" became a Democratic Party tag. Repeatedly and with eloquent persuasiveness throughout the period of constitution-making, King predicted business would stagnate and Wisconsin could not go forward without orderly access to loans and credit and currency. The remedy for banking evils, he insisted, was not abolition but wise regulation by law. One of the first letters from the Sentinel correspondent at Madison after the convention opened October 6 was the starting signal for King's course of opposition to the draft constitution of 1846. It reported the proposal of an antibank article even more drastic than most Democrats had expected—an absolute ban on all laws to permit banking, and outlawry of all bank currency from other states. This, wrote King, is "utterly preposterous and if not rejected by the convention will be by the people " (October 14). Next day 13 Surprisingly, too, the chief foe of this "ultra " democratic notion was one of the most prominent Democratic delegates, Edward G. Ryan of Racine. But in later years Chief Justice Ryan had repeatedly become the beneficiary of popular election to the bench, and admitted it worked better than he had feared. 14 "Shin plasters" from other states flooded the Territory. The local banking house, Alexander Mitchell's Wisconsin Marine and Fire Insurance Company, scrupulously redeemed all its scrip with legal tender but still did not escape immense unpopularity. 1949] KING AND CONSTITUTION 423 he hurled a fine philippic at the author of the antibank article. It is reproduced as a sample of King's proficiency in the ad homi- nem type of dialectic then prevalent in journalism: Of all extraordinary reports ever submitted to a deliberative body we think that of Mr. Ryan of Racine on the subject of banking caps the climax. We hope our readers will preserve and ponder upon the remarkable document. The ''Blue Laws" of Connecticut were nothing to it. Draco, who wrote his code in blood, was a mild and humane legis- lator compared with Mr. Edward G. Ryan. But what else could be expected from the way in which the report was made? The committee was appointed Thursday afternoon, and on Friday morning Mr. Ryan appears with his cut and dried document and modestly asks the Convention to engraft it upon the Constitution! To be sure his committee had had no consultation; had not even considered the subject at all; had not even been called together, but Mr. Ryan had saved them all this trouble by doing the thinking himself, had submitted the results of his cogitation to his colleagues, one by one, that morning and they, with one exception, " acquiesced." And this is the way Mr. Ryan goes to work to form a Constitution for Wisconsin. Why, a village debating society would treat a subject of this nature with more respect.15 Two days later King returned to the attack: It is an old saying that "all have their hobbies," and this is true as well of bodies of men as of individuals. The favorite hobby in our Convention is the question of banks. Mr. Ryan first trotted it out for his own particular use. But he has already a dozen competitors for the jockeyship, each more ultra than the other. We beg leave to remind these gentlemen of the fate of Phaeton who, undertaking to drive Old Sol's flaming chariot one morning, not only set the world on fire but tumbled himself into the sea. We don't apprehend that any of these gentlemen will set the world, or even Wisconsin, on fire, but they might catch a tumble; and tho' no brains should be spilled, bones might be broken. With the convention barely into its third week, the editor again forecast the shape of things to come. He wrote (October 20): Perhaps the people won't consent to be clogged by the ball-and-chain enactments of Messrs. E. G. Ryan, Moses Strong and Co. And next day again: The (Rock County) Democrat's gentle hint to the Convention not to insist upon doing up all the legislation for the next 20 years will, we fear, be thrown away upon that body. The members seem to assume 15 But King let his feeling run only against the man's particular act, not against the man himself. He was quite ready to give credit when due. A short while later (November 2) he wrote: " Among the few really able speeches made at Madison is that of Mr. Ryan on the suffrage question. After reading it we are more than ever inclined to marvel at Mr. Ryan's eccentric course on the subject of currency and banking." 424 PERRY C. HILL [June that all the wisdom, all the experience, all the honesty and all the democracy that is likely to be found in Wisconsin for the next generation is now concentrated at Madison It remains to be seen whether the People will remain quiet and unresisting while their would-be masters thus attempt to pinion, gag and blindfold them. By October 28 he was convinced that "whatever hopes the people may have originally entertained of any good results from the convention must have been well nigh dissipated," and that its handiwork in present form "will be condemned and rejected by a large majority." A month later the convention was still locked in struggle, and Editor King went out to see it for himself. At close range it didn't look so bad as from afar. He wrote back to his paper (November 24) that the members seemed to have their ears to the ground and might yet revise their product to make it acceptable. But while that letter was in the post, the convention adopted Ryan's antibank article beyond revocation, and King sent another letter after the first declaring "the fate of the constitution was sealed" (November 26). Back at his desk, he soon (December 10) drove another nail in the coffin of the 1846 draft when the convention refused to adopt his " single district" system. And when the reckless Demo- crats finally inserted an iniquitous article on homestead exemption and married women's property rights (of which more anon), King was enabled to damn them doubly in spades (December 14) by the fact that the caucus on the subject had profaned the Sabbath. The unhappy convention adjourned in some disorder on De- cember 16, and seemed so well discredited that our editor was able to take a philosophical view of the final report from his Madison correspondent (December 22). The convention president, Don A. J. Upham of Milwaukee, had run out of patience with our man and punched him one.16

161 have not learned the identity of the correspondent. That his reports were strongly biased by the policies of his paper is certainly true, but that was the approved reporting technique of those days (and is not totally extinct today). An amusing specimen of such reporting came from another correspondent at Southport (now Kenosha) during the campaign over ratification (March 20, 1847): "The great constitutional meeting of the odds and ends of all creation came off here last night. It was a very luminous affair indeed. . .. The peculiar situation of a majority of those present made it somewhat difficult to select sober officers. . . . Next (in the parade) came pallbearers of the abortive constitution, with 1949] KING AND CONSTITUTION 425

As an aftermath King got a chance to denounce the late convention (December 29) in terms that ring familiarly to readers of some Wisconsin newspapers today. After they had voted a constitutional ban on extra compensation for public officers, the delegates concluded by blandly voting themselves an extra 50 cents a day out of the territorial treasury.

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST RATIFICATION King immediately set out to defeat the 1846 draft constitution with all the considerable powers at his command. He not only wielded his editorial pen against it, but took a personal role in the political campaign, as we will later find his foes attesting. He was shrewdly able to combine two objectives in the campaign—as a constitution maker, to scrap "a wicked and worthless instrument"; as a Whig politician, to disrupt the Democratic Party. He played upon a division of Democratic opinion to defeat the constitution and, conversely, used the constitutional issue to widen the Democratic split. It was neat strategy, and it worked both ways. The newspaper campaign took the usual form, in that heyday of personal journalism, of a running feud with the Milwaukee Courier, mouthpiece of the proconstitution Democrats. Almost daily for weeks on end, the rival editors referred to the opposition print and to each other by name and by various names. Each advanced his own views by refuting and ridiculing the most recent expression by the other.17 King launched the fight in earnest with an editorial (Janu- ary 14, 1847) that is quoted here at length as both a statement six sickly looking torches, immediately followed by the seven new-born disciples of James D. Doty as chief mourners. . .. When you shall see the (Southport) Telegraph's report of the meeting, don't be alarmed. The editors must make up to show on paper what they failed to do in fact." "John A. Brown, editor of the Courier, wrote on January 13, 1847: "With his usual fairness the editor of the Sentinel and Gazette has commenced his attacks upon the constitution now before the people of Wisconsin for their sanction or rejection. . . . The Little General charges us with endorsing it as a ' party measure ' and with appealing to the party alone for support, and says we do not invite the people at large to vote for it. ... All (such attacks) show a recklessness worthy of the pupil of Thurlow Weed." 426 PERRY C. HILL [June of some of the issues and a specimen of the journalistic campaign- ing: The Courier in this city undertakes to advocate the constitution by abusing all who venture to oppose it As the instrument itself does not admit of defence, this mode, perhaps, of answering the attacks of its assailants is the best that suggests itself " Old federalism," says the Courier, "will contend that the people at large ought not to be trusted with the election of their judges" and that " the logrolling system of legislative elections is the only safeguard of judicial integrity." What " old federalism" would do, in the premises, were it alive, we can't undertake to say, but Brother Brown, no doubt, knows all about it. At any rate, the chief opponent of the elective system in the Convention was Mr. Ryan of Racine, a political friend of the Courier's and very possibly one of the " old federalists" of which that print speaks. " Old federalism" again, according to the Courier, " cannot abide the provisions which guarantee the natural rights of women." We do not precisely know what " natural rights" are guaranteed to the women by the constitution, but if the Courier refers to the right to keep their real and personal property distinct from that of their husbands, we have a very distinct recollection that Mr. Marshall M. Strong, another of the Courier's political friends, was one of the chief opponents of this provision and resigned his seat in the Convention because it was adopted. Nay, a majority of the Convention itself, wicked "old federalists" that they were, voted, upon a "sober second thought", to expunge this very article; but the motion failed, at that stage of proceedings, for want of a two-third vote The Courier thinks that one great beauty of the constitution is that " it places the reins of government in the hands of the many, not in the hands of the few ". This, we suppose, is something so unusual for modern democracy to do, as to require a special note of admiration. But in this, as in everything else, the "progressives" proved recreant to their own principles and by voting down the Single District System showed their distrust of the people and their determination to keep, as far as possible, the election of representatives within the control of party caucus and subject to the action of party machinery How emphatically did the vote on the question give the lie to those cheap professions of democracy in which the "Tadpoles"18 abounded. Finally the Courier objects to the "personal attacks upon the framers of the constitution". These, it says, are made only with a view to prejudice the people against the instrument itself. This is an ingenious attempt to screen from deserved censure the men who disgraced the Convention by their disorderly conduct, and who finished by defrauding the Territory of fifty cents extra per day.... It is not surprising that the apologists of the constitution should seek to hush up the stories about the misdoings of the Convention. No doubt they feel but too sensibly that the constitution h2s sins enough of its own to answer for, without having visited upon it the faults and follies of its authors. 18 Derisive nickname for proconstitution Democrats. 1949] KING AND CONSTITUTION 427

Meanwhile the Territorial Legislature was in session, and anti- constitutionalists wanted it to provide in advance for a second convention, so there would be no delay if the first draft should be defeated April 6. Tadpoles, naturally, wanted no part of this lest it be interpreted as throwing in the sponge before the vote was taken. King went to Madison and personally reported progress of the bill, presumably lobbying for it at the same time. He hailed its passage by the senate (February 15), angrily witnessed its death in the house four days later. Meanwhile Ryan was stumping the Territory on behalf of the constitution. In line with the policy of spreading confusion among the Democrats, King accused him (March 1) of a determination to get the antibank article enacted at all costs, despite Ryan's known objections to the elective judiciary and other features.19 And King was careful to bestow public praise upon anticonstitution Democrats who had the courage to buck the party line (March 5). The editor climaxed his campaign with a two-day " Address to Laborers and Mechanics" (March 22-23). His theme was the clause in the constitution whereby forty acres or a homestead worth up to $1,000 were to be exempted from attachment for debt. Democrats hailed this as an instrument of salvation for the poor debtor, but King sought to persuade workers they were being deceived, that it was really a dodge for the rich to escape their just debts. He scoffed at the Democratic defense that any defects could be easily amended—by only one legislative act plus a referendum— and that the people better take this constitution or they might get worse. He exhorted the laborers and mechanics in a magnificent peroration: Who ever before heard the facility of amendment urged as a reason for supporting a constitution? Will you vote for a constitution made for rogues? Strike down the constitution made to protect the rich swindler. Rebuke the demagogues who have dared to insult your understanding by offering so wicked and worthless an instrument for your adoption Let not the youngest and loveliest daughter of the Con- federacy be known only for her loose morals and easy virtue. 19 Ryan was a brilliant orator, but of course in the Sentinel his speeches were referred to as "lengthy harangues" (March 16). 428 PERRY c. HILL [June

King next urged foreign-born residents to be deaf to Demo- cratic insinuations that the Whigs, if they had their way with writing a constitution, would circumscribe the vote (March 25). He pointed out the defeated bill for a second convention would have let the foreign-born vote for delegates. On March 30 King was among twenty-two leading Whigs who published a ringing exhortation to the electorate to rise up and smite the constitution. A week later they did, by a vote of 14,119 for it and 20,231 against it. This was an astounding victory for King and his cohorts, in view of the minority situation of the Whigs. Intensity of interest and feeling generated by the campaign can be measured by the fact that the 14,000 losing votes exceeded any winning total in the previous history of the Territory. And the 34.000 aggregate vote was half again as large as the turnout at the comparatively calm ratification a year later, despite a huge population growth in the interim. By April 13 it became clear that only three of the twenty-six counties had returned a majority in favor of the discredited document. King congratulated the people for attaining to such wisdom despite the natural strong desire for statehood, and for so emphatically rebuking the Couriers effort to invoke party loyalty ahead of principle. - Editorial post-mortems continued through May. King listed the main issues on which the constitution fell: the homestead exemption clause; the bank article, especially its extraordinary attempt to outlaw foreign currency in denominations under $20 while permitting circulation of larger bills; the provision that married women could hold property separately from their husbands, which was viewed as sacrilege against the marriage bond and an open door to swindling; the lack of a single district system, and too short judicial terms. Then spoke the man of letters as he added (May 6): "Its language was inelegant; the arrangement clumsy; and the entire instrument cumbersome and involved." A footnote to the great victory over the Tadpole constitution was a paragraph in the May 27 Sentinel reporting the demise of its Tadpole rival, the Courier. On this occasion King showed no 1949] KING AND CONSTITUTION 429 rancor toward the unhappy editor, Brown, whom he had already crushed, but contented himself with saying, " Goodbye, John! " Meanwhile, however, Brown had written a swan song bearing bitter witness to King's effectiveness in winning the campaign by cooperation with anticonstitution Democrats: The resolutions [for an anticonstitution meeting] were dictated by Rufus King and N. P. Tallmadge [a Democrat and former territorial governor]. The plan of the campaign as agreed upon at Madison was discussed by General King... and Mr. Noonan (Josiah Noonan, Demo- cratic postmaster of Milwaukee) in the backroom of the post office, matured by Messrs. Noonan and King in the dark recesses of the Sentinel office Whig documents were printed at the Sentinel office and cir- culated all over the territory, forwarded from the Milwaukee post office under addresses in Mr. Noonan's own handwriting.20 Citing some derogatory remarks by Noonan about the first convention delegates, and interpreting them to reflect on the judgment of the voters, Brown suggested: Perhaps, since Mr. Noonan has "shown them up", the voters will be more modest in the future and allow him to select for them the delegates to the next convention; or what would be just as well, let him and General King make a constitution and pass it at a mass meeting convened in the backroom of the postoffice. During the summer of 1847 King busied himself in consolidat- ing the political prestige gained by the Whigs in the April referendum. Candidates to succeed Democrat Morgan L. Martin of Green Bay as territorial delegate to Congress were John H. Tweedy, Milwaukee Whig, and Moses M. Strong, Mineral Point Democrat. They had opposed each other as leading spokesmen in the first convention. Tweedy was of unimpeachable character, while Strong was at least not invulnerable to ill report. Strong's recent advocacy of the unwanted constitution also made him a weak candidate. Tweedy was elected. King and the Whigs had scored their second great upset within five months.

THE SECOND CONVENTION Once the first draft had been rejected, the writing and ratification of a second were anticlimactic. The public were too tired 20 Letter of May 26 to the Detroit Free Press, reprinted in Milo Quaife, ed., The Struggle over Ratification, 1846-47, Wisconsin Historical Society, Collections, 28:620 (1918). 430 PERRY C. HILL [June to get excited again so long as the features they had so clearly frowned upon were removed or modified and no other "ultra" notions were added. And the Tadpoles had lost their stomach for the fight. King was able to note (November 8) that Democratic papers were conceding the merits of a general banking law and single districts, and agreeing that the exemption and women's property clauses had to be abandoned. So the process was got through with relative serenity. Governor Dodge called the Territorial Legislature into special session in the fall of 1847, and it decreed a new convention to meet December 15. The Sentinel masthead daily listed the Whig nominees for the seven delegate seats from Milwaukee County, with Rufus King heading the list. Being himself a candidate, King confined his editorial comments to urging election of sound men, especially Whigs. His dual role was criticized anyway, and he felt obliged to spell out his policy (November 29): " The Sentinel, from an obvious dictate of propriety, has scrupulously abstained from any and all allusions to the candidates on the Democratic ticket." The election November 28 resulted in a Milwaukee County delegation of six " Locofocos"21 and one Whig. King outran the rest of his ticket to win seventh place, barely nosing into the delegation. Elsewhere in the Territory, however, the Whigs made heavy gains. The first convention had comprised 124 delegates and only 18 were Whigs—a futile minority. The second convention had only 69 members and 25 were Whigs—better than a third.22 The Boston Post commented: "Milwaukee County has elected six Democratic delegates to the state convention and the Whigs one, Rufus King, but there is more rejoicing over him than over the other six."23 With King's election the Sentinel entirely ceased to editorialize about constitutional questions. But just before he left for Madison,

21 Somebody once prankishly doused the lights at a meeting of a Democratic faction in New York, and the business was concluded by the light of a kind of friction matches called " locofocos." King extended the nickname to Democrats generally. 22 Convention statistics from Milo Quaife, ed., The Attainment of Statehood, Wisconsin Historical Society, Collections, 29 (1928). 23 Quoted in the Sentinel and Gazette, January 4, 1848. 1949] KING AND CONSTITUTION 431 he published this statesmanlike expression of his philosophy in the making of a constitution (December 10): For ourselves, we hope to see party lines and party distinctions kept out of sight in the Convention. The issues which divide parties, and the measures they respectively advocate, are necessarily ephemeral, indis- tinctly marked and subject to constant change. A constitution should be fixed, stable and certain; made, not for any one party, but for the whole people; and so made that all may alike and equally enjoy under it the rights, privileges and immunities of citi2enship. To engraft upon the fundamental law of the state, which is intended, in its chief parts, to endure for years, perhaps for centuries, any of the party dogmas of the day, would be both a wrong and an error. This was one of the great mistakes of the late Convention; a mistake which led to the rejection of their handiwork by an unlooked-for and overwhelming majority. King himself apparently acted as the Sentinel correspondent at the second convention. Although the reports refer to Delegate King in the third person, they are written with a delegate's knowledge and in King's style. But this time they are completely objective reporting, except for occasional remarks on the fine weather and how nicely everything is going and the prospects for early conclusion of the business. This last type of comment was characteristic of King. He was a hustler and expediter. Way back before the first convention he had written (October 1, 1846): "If the business is properly cut out, and distributed among a sufficient number of working committees during the first week, and a resolute purpose evinced from the start not to tolerate long talking merely for talk's sake, we are not without hopes that the work may all be done up in four or five weeks." That proved a forlorn hope; the first convention lasted ten weeks and labored in vain. After three weeks, King was already impatient with its dawdling and most unkindly remarked (Octo- ber 29, 1846): "Two dollars a day is a good deal more than some of the members can earn at home, and they seem disposed to hang on to their perquisites as long as they can." In the second convention he was appointed on the rules committee, and it made its report the same afternoon. He was on the committee to draft the executive, legislative, and administrative articles of the constitution. The executive article was ready by 432 PERRY C. HILL [June the sixth day, the administrative on the seventh. The legislative article had to await the census report; that came in December 29, and the article was reported out of committee on the thirtieth. On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, which was a Friday, King was among the majority who refused to adjourn until Monday. The result, under the rules, was a Christmas morning session. At- tendance was so sparse, however, that no business was transacted. The convention did do a day's work on New Year's Day and all other Saturdays (travel was too slow to permit weekends at home—from Madison to Milwaukee was a two-day journey). And Expediter King put through a resolution to hold evening sessions into the bargain. The convention, it is true, had the first draft for a starting point. But it was so extensively overhauled, reorganized, and rewritten that the product was in effect a new document. Ornate language was reduced to simplicity (wherein we can presume Editor King's influence), and the number of articles was cut from nineteen to fourteen. All this was done, and fully debated, in just seven weeks. King was more fluent with his pen than with his tongue. He did not himself indulge in the " long talking " that he rebuked in others. He presumably did his best work in the cloakroom and the committee chamber. Not a single major speech by him is recorded in the journal. Two other yardsticks have been used, therefore, to appraise the extent of his influence on the product of the convention: (1) comparison of his votes with the out- come on significant roll calls; (2) comparison of major features in the 1846 and 1848 drafts with King's known views. Out of 242 selected roll calls tabulated by Quaife,24 King found himself in the majority 69 percent of the time, in the minority 31 percent (he was absent only once). In view of the fact that he was in a one-third political minority, it is significant that he and the majority of delegates were in accord more than two-thirds of the time.25 Much more significant is the fact that his minority position on many roll calls ultimately came to be the judgment of the con-

24 Quaife, ed.f The Attainment of Statehood, Wis. Hist. Soc, Colls., 29 (1928). 25 Though a minority member, King was chosen to preside over the committee of the whole at seven of its thirty-nine sittings. 1949] KING AND CONSTITUTION 433 vention. Six times he voted in vain, for example, to beat down a homestead exemption provision, but finally it was omitted. At various times majorities voted against having a lieutenant governor, providing two-year instead of one-year senate terms, submitting the bank issue to referendum, increasing judicial terms, letting Negroes vote; but in the end King's view prevailed on all these points. King really got steam up over just one big issue on which he could not prevail. He felt strongly aggrieved that Congress, in creating the states of Michigan and Illinois, had given them some territory plainly assigned to Wisconsin in the Northwest Ordinance. Four times he tried to obtain a proviso that Wisconsin's acceptance of the admission act would not prejudice her right to claim in- demnity for the misplaced acreage. But the majority feared Congress might not accept the constitution with such a proviso in it, and they were willing to resign themselves to the shrunken boundaries. King was an advocate of limited state participation in internal improvements, and lost that point, too. He voted in vain for higher public salaries, for a weak executive whose veto a majority could override, a more ambitious militia organization, an even smaller Legislature than was provided. Being in the printing business himself, he was on the short end of eleven roll calls that awarded convention and State printing by contract to the lowest bidder. Nevertheless, from King's standpoint the 1848 constitution contained these major improvements over the earlier draft: Separate property rights of married women—omitted. Homestead exemption—no specific provision, merely an injunction upon the Legislature to enact "wholesome laws" on the subject. Banks—"bank or no bank" referendum authorized; if carried, general banking laws authorized subject to referendum.26 Legislature—reduced from a maximum of 160 members to 133. Judicial terms—increased from five to six years. Election districts—single districts substituted for countywide elections. Amendments—by two consecutive Legislatures, instead of one, subject to ratification. 26 King was further vindicated when the bank referendum carried in 1851 by 31,289 to 9,126 votes, and the first general banking law was ratified in 1852 by 32,826 to 8,711. 434 PERRY C. HILL [June

Suffrage—Legislature authorized to extend suffrage subject to referendum.27 So little public heat was generated by the second convention that King contented himself in the ratification campaign with the usual editorial appeals to "get out and vote." The Wisconsin, however, which had come into being as the Couriers political heir, needled the Whig organ about how "the Sentinel" voted at the convention, and King felt called upon to defend himself editorially (February 8, 1848, et. seq.) against the Wisconsins charge that " the Sentinel's " votes on election districting had been aimed at " gerrymandering " the State. A relatively light vote on March 13, 1848, overwhelmingly ratified the new document, 16,799 to 6,384, and King wrote a glowing last line to the story of the two-year struggle (March 21): " No state has ever entered the Confederacy with fairer character, maturer growth, or brighter prospects, than Wisconsin."

KING AND THE MILWAUKEE SCHOOLS In previously published sketches of Rufus King are several vague and sometimes discrepant remarks about his connection with the Milwaukee school system. I therefore asked Walter E. Rilling, secretary-business manager to the board of school directors, to consult the official records. He caused a thorough search to be made and very promptly furnished the results. The details were only incidental to the subject of this paper, but are appended at length so that the fruits of Mr. Rilling's research may be preserved in some kind of proper form. The source of data on the beginnings of the school system is an historical paper delivered before the Old Settlers' Club on Septem- ber 2, 1895, by Attorney James M. Pereles, who had been president of the school board the previous year. He recounted that Rufus King was chairman of a special committee of five citizens of the village of Milwaukee to draw up the school provisions for the proposed city charter in December, 1845. The committee report said: "Its president shall serve the board as clerk; he will be required to make periodic examinations of the schools and report the result thereof to the board; thus serving the new city in three capacities—its president, its clerk and its superintendent of schools." 27 A clause to allow Negro suffrage had been submitted separately with the first draft and emphatically rejected, 7,664 to 14,615. Under the 1848 constitution, however, Negro suffrage was promptly approved in 1849 by 5,265 to 4,075. 1949] KING AND CONSTITUTION 435

King was among the common council appointees to the first school board after the city was incorporated in the spring of 1846. He presided over the first board meeting April 16, according to Pereles, and was elected president at the next meeting (no date given). Thus he became in effect the first superintendent, although without the title and without pay. Though the president was to serve as clerk also, Pereles reported that the second meeting elected a separate secretary. There are later references to a board secretary in 1851 and 1852 records, and the revised by-laws of 1852 provided for an executive committee that appears to have had in large part the normal duties of a superintendency. Hence the exact extent to which President King additionally functioned as clerk and superintendent is still unsettled. An 1859 law provided for the separate appointment of a salaried superintendent, who also was to be secretary of the board. The board elected King to this office and voted him a $2,000 annual salary. A year later the job went to another man; it seems to have become politically attractive when the salary was attached. King continued as a board member, however, until he entered the army upon the outbreak of the Civil War, and thereafter he did not resume residence in Milwaukee. Mr. Rilling ascertained that King served continuously on the school board from its creation in April, 1846, until he left Milwaukee in April, 1861, except for the first half of 1851 and the interval from May, 1856, to April, 1858. He was board president in 1846 and 1847, again from July, 1851, to April, 1852, and from April to April 1853-54. And he was the first salaried superintendent-secretary, from April, 1859, to May, I860. Historic Sites in Our State Park Program

By RAYMOND S. SIVESIND

MANITOWOC'S meeting, Superintendent Harrington of the Conservation Department's Forests and Parks Division ex- A plained the provisions and objectives of then recently-enacted legislation pertaining to State parks. "Areas which possess historic values of significance authenticated by the STATE HIS- TORICAL SOCIETY" were specified as eligible for inclusion in the State park system.1 Since April 1, 1948, the services of the Society have been engaged by the Conservation Department to carry on research and to make recommendations concerning the future development of the First Capitol State Park, at Old Belmont, and the Nelson Dewey Memorial State Park, near Cassville. Besides being very appropriate choices for early action because of a revival of interest in them during this centennial year, these two sites have several characteristics which make their simultaneous treatment especially convenient. The First Capitol State Park comprises approximately two acres, and at the present time serves chiefly as a local picnic area. The First Capitol, or Territorial Council House, was rescued from its " horse and cattle barn " status about thirty years ago and returned to its present location, near the original site it occupied in 1836. Today it stands as a dignified memorial to the first Wisconsin Territory legislators, impressive in the simplicity of its rural surroundings, and bounded on east and west by scenic Belmont and Platte Mounds. However, most visitors have expressed to the

RAYMOND S. SIVESIND is on the staff of the STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY as a field supervisor. This paper which deals with the contemplated restoration of historic sites in Wisconsin was read before the Society's Annual Meeting, August 19, at Milwaukee. 1C. L. Harrington, " Historic Sites as a Part of the State Parks of Wisconsin," Wis- consin Magazine of History, 31:273 (March, 1948). 436 HISTORIC SITES AND PARK PROGRAM 437

custodian a keen disappointment in the barrenness of the Old Capitol's interior. Last month a meeting was held to consider the fate of the only other building which dates back to the Belmont of 1836, a structure identical in size to the First Capitol, and commonly referred to as the old Supreme Court Building. Planned for the territorial court, it was not used by that body for its very brief session,2 but after housing a variety store for about three months, it was remodeled into a residence and occupied for nearly thirty-five years by the family of Chief Justice Charles Dunn. The annual sessions of the supreme court were held in Madison after 1836, but it is very probable that many of Judge Dunn's official duties were performed from his Belmont residence, not only on the supreme court level but also in his capacity as district judge. In 1849, the marriage of Governor Nelson Dewey and Catharine Dunn was solemnized in the Dunn residence, and ten years later, the Dewey's first-born son died there while visiting his grandparents.3 Of perhaps greater historical significance was the use for a six-month period, of a small lean-to at the rear of the building by the Belmont Gazette, firstnewspape r founded in Wisconsin west of Milwaukee. The Gazette has proved to be the writer's most helpful single source of information relating to the village of 1836.4 The territorial session at Belmont was a short one of forty-six days' duration, and the few contemporary records reveal a sharp diversity of facts and opinions. The Belmont partisans enthusiastically praised the site as a most natural selection, and its opponents were equally enthusiastic in their condemnation. Governor Dodge's proclamation designating Belmont as the meeting place5

2The supreme court convened December 8, 1836, in "the Council Chamber of the Legislative Assembly," according to the " Official Minutes of First Session, Supreme Court, W.T." signed by " Chas. A. Dunn, Ch. Just." 3 The deaths of " Little Charlie" Dewey, Kate Dunn, and Mamie Dunn within one week's time in " Father Dunn's house" are recorded in Nelson Dewey's 1859 Diary. The entry (February 26) reads, "It is a sorrowful house and many hearts are sad and full of grief." Dewey Diary in the Wisconsin Historical Society Library. 4 A complete file of the entire twenty-four issues, originally the property of John B. Terry, member of the first territorial council fom Iowa county, is now in the possession of the STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY Library. 5 A notable exception was the Milwaukee Advertiser, September 15, 1836, which mildly reproved Galena, Illinois, papers for their " premature discussion" of questions relating to " the Seat of the Government." 438 RAYMOND S. SIVESIND [June had drawn an immediate fire of criticism from the newspapers of the Territory. The Wisconsin Democrat at Green Bay predicted that the " Legislative Assembly, in consequence of a want of accommodations, will find it necessary to take up their blankets and adjourn to meet at some more hospitable place." 6 The Belmont Gazette replied that the buildings "in which the members find shelter are inferior to none in the Territory " and that " the fears of the Green Bay editors need be entertained no longer." 7 A contributor to the Du Buque Visitor went to the extent of accusing Governor Dodge of "acting in concert" with John Atchison in the establishment of Belmont,8 which elicited from the proprietor of the village an affidavit to the effect that " Gov- ernor Dodge had no interest in the city of Belmont, at the time of its location, nor has he at any time since, nor has he now any interest directly or indirectly in said city"9 The very obvious prejudice prevailing against Belmont from the very opening of the session prompted Governor Dodge to include, in his message to the joint session of the Legislature, the promise that since "the permanent location of the Seat of the Territorial Government is a subject of vital importance to the people of the Territory... my assent will be given to its location at any point where a majority of the Representatives of the people agree it will best promote the public good." 10 The final selection of Madison was the beginning of the end for Belmont. The heated exchanges of journalistic blows were matched by equally spirited charges and countercharges on the assembly and council floors. A stubborn minority submitted in turn thirteen capital sites,11 in defiance of the well-organized group standing fast for the selection of Madison, or the "City of Four Lakes." Even in defeat the minority published its protest that the Legis-

6 Wisconsin Democrat, Oct. 20, 1836. 7 Belmont Gazette, Nov. 9, 1836. 8Du Buque Visitor, Oct. 2, 1836. 9 Belmont Gazette, Nov. 17, 1836. 10 Original Message of Governor Dodge to Territorial Legislature, October 25, 1836 (in Governor Dodge's hand), Territorial Papers, 1836, MSS in possession of Wisconsin Historical Society Library. 11 Fond du Lac, Helena, Milwaukee, Racine, Belmont, Mineral Point, Platteville, Astor, Cassville, Koshkonong, Wisconsinapolis, Wisconsin City, Prairie du Chien, not to include Burlington and Du Buque on the west side of the Mississippi. Wisconsin Territorial Council Journal, 1836, p. 47, and Wisconsin Territorial House Journal, 1836, pp. 84-87. 1949] HISTORIC SITES AND PARK PROGRAM 439 lature, by virtue of setting up Burlington as a temporary seat of government until suitable accommodations could be provided in Madison, had actually thereby established two seats of government, contrary to Congressional stipulations. Furthermore, Madison was held ineligible insofar as it did not exist at the time the Legislature convened.12 Adjournment of the Legislature had its immediate effects in blighting the growth of Belmont. Two weeks after adjournment, an auction was held to dispose of the territorial furniture and surplus supplies. Shortly thereafter, D. P. Dillon announced the removal of his store stock to Galena, and the Belmont Gazette indicated its intention to follow the Legislature to Burlington, which " by so doing away with our present remoteness from any regular thoroughfare of communication, will place us on an equal footing, in regard to news, with our contemporaries." Five months earlier, the Gazette had predicted that Belmont, situated in a " commanding position" and unsurpassed " in point of beauty and healthfulness" occupied a place "where the natural avenues of the country unite " and " must ever possess superior advantages for the transaction of business." 13 Less than a year later, a prominent visitor who could write uninfluenced by political or financial interest, observed that Bel- mont, " since it has lost the chance of being selected as the Seat of the Government is going down... it cannot at present, as the Country is not sufficiently farmed, be supported as a town or a place of business." 14 Death came officially to Old Belmont when the Platteville branch of the Mineral Point Railroad (now the Chicago, Milwau- kee and St. Paul) passed three miles southeast of the village, and a new Belmont was established on the railroad line. For nearly twenty years, Old Belmont was known as Grandview. Then in 1884 the Chicago and North Western touched the old village and established a station there called Leslie. With the abandonment 12 Belmont Gazette, Dec. 14, 1836. 13 Ibid., March 2, 1837, and Belmont Gazette advertisement in Du Buque Visitor, Nov. 9, 1836. 14 Journal of William Rudolph Smith, Book 2, in possession of Wisconsin Historical Society Library. See entry of August 29, 1837, describing his trip to Belmont as a guest of Governor Dodge. 440 RAYMOND S. SIVESIND [June of train service, Leslie died almost as sudden a death as its predecessor. Plans are now nearing completion for a beginning, at least, of restoration work on Old Belmont. A list of the furniture provided by proprietor John Atchison for the use of the territorial Legis- lature is contained in a bill filed by him just before the end of the session.15 According to it, only the speaker of the house and the president of the council had desks, the members having to content themselves with small tables. The exact size of the latter is not yet known, but an item in the Burlington Territorial Gazette, announcing the second session of the Legislature, boasted that Burlington would afford many conveniences not enjoyed at Bel- mont, particularly one: "instead of being crowded round a small table as heretofore, each member is provided with a desk—a very great improvement, all will agree." The story of Old Belmont contributes a brief but significant chapter to our State's history. Its future development as a historic she will doubtless depend upon the action taken on the Old Court Building, or Dunn residence. If that building deteriorates much beyond its present condition, the moving and restoration costs will steadily increase to a point where it will be difficult to secure approval for the expenditures required. If it is acquired and restored now, it is possible that in the future a long-range program aiming at the restoration of the entire village of 1836 may be attempted. That would eventually require the construction of four additional buildings, and the acquisition of more land than the present two acres. Besides the two structures surviving today, Atchison had provided a house for Governor Dodge, and had built a rooming-and-boarding house, which was managed for him by a sister of the governor. A tavern, standing just outside the village limits and operated by Colonel John Moore, from whom Atchison had purchased the Belmont site, and Ephraim Lobaugh's blacksmith shop complete the picture. A factor which complicates restoration beyond that of the Old Capitol is the park site itself. It is bordered on the south and west by roads leading to "new" Belmont and to Rewey; therefore 15 Territorial Papers, 1836, MSS in possession of Wisconsin Historical Society Library. 1949] HISTORIC SITES AND PARK PROGRAM 44l the direction for the most practical expansion of the present two- acre tract lies to the north and east. Unfortunately, the building erected for Governor Dodge's use and the rooming house stood across the road west from the present park, and the Dunn residence stood across the road south of the Capitol, in a location now occupied by another farmhouse. Nevertheless, research will be continued on the Old Belmont story and its significance discussed and evaluated, after which it is anticipated the Conservation Commission will determine the appropriate course of action. The problems surrounding the development of the Nelson Dewey Memorial State Park, near Cassville, are quite different in character. That park site of 770 acres, acquired by the State in 1935, presents no space problem. There are five original buildings, one reconstruction, and ruins of two others. Although the mansion house is not the "palace in the wilderness " built for Nelson Dewey at an estimated cost of $75,000, the present structure has the same red brick exterior, and the room partitions follow the same general pattern as the original, which was three stories high, with Gothic dormers and broad balconies. Describing the once glorious estate, the daughter of Dewey's chief carpenter writes: "It was the show- place of Wisconsin with its beautiful green lawns, gardens and orchards, stables of imported horses, and other buildings, and miles of stone fences, and roads with arched stone bridges, comprising in all an estate of about 2000 acres."16 Another writer remarked that "out of uncouth surroundings, it became a marvel of beauty and attractiveness. Wide, open balconies looked out upon green lawns and waving meadowlands, while in the eventide, from the lofty windows and observatory which crowned the mansion, the green slopes of Iowa hills could be seen in the distance/'17 During his early years Nelson Dewey had acquired considerable money and landholdings through fortunate investments in mining and land ventures, in addition to a good income from legal fees at a time when land and mining claims were objects of frequent litigation. After skyrocketing politically to become the first gov-

16 Mathilda Candler, Grant County News, March 22, 1935. "Honorable J. W. Seaton, Lancaster Teller, Dec. 12, 1889. 442 RAYMOND S. SIVESIND [June ernor of the State at the age of thirty-five, Nelson Dewey was practically a forgotten man following his two terms in that office. He served one term in the State senate, and then returned to Cassville to engage in farming and land speculation. He purchased the Cassville village site through foreclosure sale, and remodeled the Denniston House at a cost of $15,000. In 1858, the family moved to Platteville for a five-year period, during which Dewey figured quite prominently in school and village affairs. His Autobiography continues: "In the spring of 1863, I moved back to Cassville, and have lived in Cassville since that time, and had my home there, although my family have lived in Madison a part of the time." That sentence summarizes the story of Nelson Dewey's last twenty-five years, concealing in typical Dewey fashion the keen disappointments that accompanied the quick decline in his political and personal fortunes, and the desertion by his immediate family. The elaborate mansion containing a thousand-dollar furnace, extensive plumbing, and other unusual facilities for the time, in addition to its expensive furnishings, failed to provide the expected family happiness and contentment. Mrs. Dewey and their daughter disliked the "uncouth surroundings" and preferred the society atmosphere of Madison, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and later Wash- ington, D.C.18 On January 1, 1888, a year and a half before his death, Dewey began his Diary for the new year with the comment: "At the beginning of this year, I do not have much to record. I am reasonably well and living at Cassville, Wise. My daughter Katie... is living in St. Louis Her mother, I suppose, is with her. I do not know where my son Nelson Dunn Dewey is, not having heard from him since 24th day of July, 1885." Considerable time and effort have been expended in an attempt to trace the missing son, in the hope that his family in turn might have retained records, books, or personal effects which would be of definite value in our restoration work. From clues found in the governor's diaries, inquiries were sent to Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota, Utah, and Montana. The cooperation was

18 Mrs. Dewey died in Washington, D.C, March 16, 1898; her daughter, Mrs. Catharine (Katie) Dunn Dewey Cole, died in the same city July 13, 1922. 1949] HISTORIC SITES AND PARK PROGRAM 443 nothing short of wonderful. A chamber of commerce secretary in Nebraska took time to search two years of newspaper files for the 1885-86 period, in addition to checking business directories and tax records, verifying that young Dewey had briefly operated a storage and commission business in his city. A similar inquiry to South Dakota resulted in the letter being successively forwarded to the editor of South Dakota's oldest newspaper, thence to a Carnegie Library authority on early South Dakota history, and finally to a niece of Governor Dewey residing in Burlington, Iowa. A very fine letter from that niece, a daughter of William Pitt Dewey, provided a major part of the solution to the search for young Nelson, or "Nettie," Dewey. A granddaughter of John Jay Dewey, second physician to practice in Minnesota Territory and brother of our first governor, has not only been extremely helpful in providing information but has also been our most generous contributor of Dewey items. In addition to this marvelous display of interest and cooperation shown by people outside the State, residents throughout Grant County have devoted considerable time and effort to the project. Five people whose average age is approximately ninety, and who knew either Governor or Mrs. Dewey personally, have been inter- viewed and photographed to complete the Dewey story. The STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY has twenty-five of Dewey's diaries, and three others are in the possession of the Nelson Dewey Park at Cassville. Most of the entries are brief and of little value for our present purposes. The Society also has nine boxes of Dewey papers and correspondence which have revealed previously unknown facts of importance and have provided new clues for a continuation of the search. The story of the mansion at " Stonefield," as the Cassville estate was named, is as brief as it was tragic. On January 2, 1873, the house was gutted by fire, and his mounting financial difficulties rendered Dewey incapable of rebuilding.19 Only a small part of the furniture was destroyed, but with lands heavily mortgaged and a steadily shrinking income, much of the furniture which had

19 The house was later rebuilt for Walter Newberry of Chicago, and after its acquisition by the State, extensive repairs were carried on through W.P.A. (1937-38). 444 RAYMOND S. SIVESIND been stored in the substantial stone outbuildings was gradually disposed of to meet living expenses. Approximately fifteen authentic pieces of furniture have been recovered. The extent of immediate restoration at Cassville, too, is as yet undetermined. Plans submitted to the Conservation Department recently suggested the refurbishing of six rooms on the first floor and two on the second. The basement has been well-cleaned and repaired, and its many rooms would be of interest even if not equipped with the once elaborate heating and plumbing systems and the complete basement kitchen from which the prepared meals were sent to the dining rooms above by means of dumb-waiters. Both of these State parks possess possibilities for long-range programs. Some day, perhaps, Old Belmont will rise again with its present Old Capitol surrounded as in days of old by Governor Dodge's home, the old boarding-house, Dillon's variety store with its collection of books whose advertised titles range from " Byron's Life and works in seventeen volumes" to "Six Months in a House of Correction,"20 and the blacksmith shop from which Ephraim Lobaugh "earnestly solicited that share of patronage that industry, integrity, and attention to business merits."21 Similarly, the story of " Stonefield" reveals a remarkable chapter in Wisconsin agriculture and industry, in addition to the family history of our first governor. Besides the stables of imported horses for whom a large stone-walled shed was especially designed, Dewey had, at the peak of his operations on the estate, eighty milk cows and a ten-acre vineyard, altogether requiring at times the services of fifty employees. The 1948 season witnessed a tremendous increase in the number of visitors at this historic site. Perhaps during the years ahead, the house can be restored to resemble again the happier days when the family first moved into it. Of those days Nelson Dewey wrote, " A surprise party was held about the house which passed off pleasantly." 22

20 Advertisement, Eelmont Gazette, Dec. 7, 1836. 21 Ibid., Nov. 23, 1836. 22 January 4 entry in Nelson Dewey's 1867 Diary, in possession of Wisconsin Historical Society Library. Zebulon Montgomery Pike's Mississippi Voyage, 1805-1806

By W. E. HOLLON

T WAS Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1806. Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike and three companions stood on I the top of Cheyenne Mountains up to their waists in snow. The thermometer read four degrees below zero. Pike, shivering in his cotton clothes, stood for several minutes and drank in the scenery. Beyond a distant valley towered an enormous mountain, above a chain of peaks. "I believe that no human being could have ascended to its pinacal," Pike later remarked in his journal.1 Little did he imagine that he was now gazing at his own great monument, literally at the peak of his career. All of his life he had been slowly but surely approaching the spot where he now stood, a fact of which he was not conscious. But the tremendous towering bulk of the giant mountain was impressive enough. The lieutenant turned to retrace his steps, remembering that he and his half-frozen comrades had not eaten for two days. He was not strong either. None of the Pikes were. Even so, it was the tradition of his family, sick or well, to act. Ill half of the time, Zebulon Pike, our lieutenant's father, served in the army almost forty years. Zebulon Montgomery Pike was the valorous major's second child of a brood of eight. He was also perhaps the sturdiest of the lot.

W. E. HOLLON is an assistant professor of American History at the University of Oklahoma, Norman. From this sketch of Lieutenant Pike one learns that he came within some twenty-five miles of the source of the Mississippi River, William Morrison having reached the lake the preceding year. It was not named Lake Itasca until 1832. 1Zebulon Montgomery Pike, Exploratory Travels through the Western Territories of North America (London, 1811), 221. Pike's journal was first published in Philadelphia in 1810. It quickly went into English, Dutch, French, and German editions. All quota- tions from the journal herein given are from the English edition. 445 446 W. E. HOLLON [June

Though he lost his life at an early age, he outlived all of his brothers and sisters but two. Four of the Pike children died in infancy, The rest, excepting Zebulon Montgomery, were stricken with tuberculosis and either died in youth, or lingered into maturity as helpless invalids.2 But in Zebulon Montgomery the restless spirit of the line survived and overcame all handicaps. With the exception of William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, Pike is the best known of the early Louisiana explorers. His name is well remembered even today because of his discovery of the great peak in Colorado in 1806.3 But, few individuals, other than historians, know that the young lieutenant commanded the first organized American expedition to the source of the Mississippi in 1805. It was this journey that established Pike as an explorer and caused General Wilkinson to select him to lead the Arkansas expedition the following year. The story of Pike's Arkansas journey is better known than his Mississippi journey. He was captured by the Spaniards while encamped in present Colorado in 1807 and taken to Chihuahua for questioning. Many Americans, as well as Spaniards, believed that the motives of the Arkansas expedition were in some way related to the sinister plans of James Wilkinson and of Aaron Burr.4 Con- sequently, when Pike returned to the United States in July 1807, at the time of the Burr conspiracy trial in Richmond, he was faced with charges of treason.5 His enemies labeled him " a parasite of

2 Several of Pike's personal letters to members of his family, written between 1800 and 1813, have been preserved and are in the possession of the Pike Family Historical Associ- ation, West Newton, Massachusetts; the Western Reserve Historical Society Archives, Cleveland, Ohio; and the Charles B. Pike Collection, Chicago Historical Society. The contents of these letters furnish a mirror of Pike's character and personality and indicate that he was constantly distressed by the ill health of his brothers and sisters and parents. 3 It is generally believed that Lieutenant Pike was the first American to scale the great peak in Colorado which is today an enduring monument to his memory. Pike not only did not climb to the summit of the peak, but he prophesied that this feat would be impossible. But in July, 1820, Dr. Edwin James reached the top of the mountain, and for several years it was marked on the maps of the West as " James' Peak." Not until the middle of the nineteenth century did the famous peak take the name " Pike's Peak," in honor of the first American explorer in present Colorado. 4Kyle S. Crichton, " Zeb Pike," Scribner's Magazine, 82:452-67 (October, 1927) goes further in condemning Pike of treason than any other writer. " At his best," Crichton states, " Pike was highly unethical and untruthful." 5 Pike was much chagrined because of the charges of collaboration with Wilkinson and Burr. He immediately demanded and received a letter of exoneration from the Secretary of War. General Henry Dearborn to Major Pike, February 24, 1808, War Records Division, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 1949] PIKE'S MISSISSIPPI VOYAGE 447

Wilkinson/' and the " beast of Santa Fe." 6 They likewise claimed that he was responsible for the murder of one of his men who had threatened to reveal the true purposes of the Arkansas expedition.7 Guilty or not, Pike remained in the army until his death at the siege of New York in 1813. His military services, personal character, and the manner in which he died would belie the suspicion that he was capable of committing treason. Doubtless, Pike was naive, egotistical, and extremely ambitious; otherwise, his greatest fault lay in his unquestioning faith in and friendship for the ne- farious Wilkinson. For had there been no James Wilkinson to promote him, Zebulon Montgomery Pike would hardly be remembered today. His loyalty to Wilkinson and his association with a man of such low character is a paradox in an otherwise unblem- ished career. Wilkinson was an individual about whom trouble always gathered. Vain, bombastic, and incompetent, he was a master of petty treason with a gift of scandal. With few exceptions he was one of the most inefficient and specious characters in public life in the history of the United States—no mean achievement within itself. Historians have debated for several decades the question of Wilkinson's motives in authorizing the Mississippi voyage in 1805 without having previously obtained permission from the President or Congress. Some have maintained that the first expedition formed a part of the General's own private plans and that they were in some way related to the activities of Aaron Burr.8 But the evidence here is not conclusive.9 Wilkinson was acting within his

6 Natchez Weekly Chronicle, September 16, 1809, Mississippi State Archives, Jackson, Mississippi. In addition to the Chronicle, the New Orleans Gazette was also an avid critic of Pike from 1807 until 1812, during which time the officer was stationed in Louisiana. Both papers constantly rang the charges of treason. 7 New Orleans Courier, December 2, 1809, ibid. The Spanish governor of Chihuahua made the charge that Sergeant Meek of the Pike expedition murdered one of " his " men in Mexico. Whether Governor Nemiso Salcedo was referring to one of Pike's men as being murdered, or one of his own Spanish soldiers, is not clear. Pike emphatically denied the charge; the real story of Meek's action appears lost. 8 See James P. Jacobs, The Tarnished Warrior (New York, 1938), R. O. Shreve, The Finished Scoundrel (Indianapolis, 1933), and Walter F. McCaleb, The Aaron Burr Con- spiracy (New York, 1936), for rather complete accounts of the Wilkinson-Burr affair. 9 The best annotated edition of Pike's journal is that edited by Elliott Coues, The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike (3 vols., New York, 1895). Although the editor has considerable praise for Pike as a valorous explorer, he leaves no doubt of his suspicion of the lieutenant's being a " dupe " of the infamous General Wilkinson. Coues 448 W. E. HOLLON [June legal authority as commander of the United States Army and governor of Louisiana when he ordered an exploration of the Upper Mississippi Valley. Furthermore, he informed Jefferson of his action soon after the Pike party left St. Louis and the President gave his full approval.10 On July 24, 1805, the purposes of the Mississippi voyage were enumerated by Wilkinson in a letter to Pike. The young lieutenant, who had already served eleven of his twenty-six years in the army, was instructed to ascend the Mississippi to its source, noting the principal geographic points in a diary and measuring distances by time. In addition, Pike was ordered to investigate the fur trade in the North, establish peace among the various Indian tribes, particularly the Chippewa and Sioux, select sites for future military establishments, procure specimens of plants and animals, and as- certain the latitude of the principal rivers and important places along his route.11 Although Wilkinson made only a passing reference to the fur trade and fur traders of the Northwest, it is probable that this was one of his chief concerns. Agents of British trading companies had long exercised a powerful influence over the various Indian tribes of the Northwest, while at the same time realizing a handsome profit from their trade. Wilkinson no doubt was confident that he could gain something for personal as well as for official ends from the projected Mississippi voyage. He had already arranged for goods from a Baltimore merchant, and these were to be shipped to St. Louis in army barges, without charges for freight. The personal interest of his commanding officer was doubtless far from the young lieutenant's mind as he and his twenty companions embarked at Bellefontaine in their seventy-foot keelboat further asserts that the real purposes of Pike's second expedition, to the source of the Arkansas, were different than those proclaimed. There is much evidence to support this contention, but it is not sufficiently positive to condemn Pike as a traitor. 10 In his annual message to Congress, December 2, 1806, President Jefferson remarked: " Very useful additions have also been made to our knowledge of the Mississippi by Lieutenant Pike, who has ascended it to its source, and whose journal and map, giving details of his journey, will shortly be ready for communication to both houses of Congress." See James D. Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1797, 1:408. 11 Wilkinson's original letter of instruction to Pike is now in the War Records Division, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 1949] PIKE'S MISSISSIPPI VOYAGE 449 on August 9, 1805. The journal kept by Pike constitutes the principal source of our knowledge about this expedition. From it one easily perceives that the voyage lacked much to be desired by way of adequate planning and amount of supplies and equipment. (Pike had less than a month to complete preparations before departing.) No exact record of the quantity and type of supplies which were carried is available. The only official reference in this respect is made in a letter from the Assistant Military Agent at St. Louis to the Military Agent at Philadelphia. On July 19, 1805, the former wrote: " I am at present at a very considerable expense in fitting out Lieutenant Pike, for I believe, the headwaters of the Mississip- pi, and repairing two large boats stiled Stoddards and Lewises. To meet these expenses I shall shortly draw on you." 12 Judging from the lieutenant's diary, he carried several small barrels of flour, whiskey, corn meal, pork, gunpowder, salt, and tobacco. Quantities of calico and knives were taken as presents for the Indians. Lead, writing paper, ink, flags, hunting dogs, tents, clothing, blankets, and sundry provisions were also included. Equip- ment for the entire expedition seems to have cost the government about $2,000. Only the crudest scientific apparatus was procured. Lieutenant Pike had a watch, a thermometer, and a simple instrument for determining latitude. He later complained that all three were of poor quality and inaccurate, but they were the best to be had at that time and place. Oddly enough, no surgeon was appointed, although several army doctors were available, and events were to prove the need of one. Yet worse, Pike was given no interpreter and so was often at a loss in dealing with Indian chiefs. Another lieutenant of subaltern grade might have relieved Pike of some of his exhausting duties and responsibilities. Yet he raised no objection to the manner of his going, and his diary and letters reveal no doubt in his mind of the adequacy of his previous experience. He looked forward with confidence, reason- 12 Clarence Mulford to William Linnard, July 19, 1805, John Sibley Papers, typed copy, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis. 450 w. E. HOLLON [June ing that he would rather trust his own resources than share command and honors with another. Doubt of his ability was not like the man, and if it had been, he would never have reached his objective, in the face of innumerable hardships. Though many in his day had better limbs and muscles, few if any possessed so stout a heart. Pike was stubborn and self willed, and his mind reached out towards the unknown with an ambition singularly steadfast. Unfortunately, the diary which Pike kept does not contain much description of the country north of St. Louis. We gain a clearer picture of how this region looked in the early part of the nineteenth century from William H. Keating's account of Major Stephen H. Long's Mississippi expedition in 1823.13 Obviously Pike recorded from day to day only what he was instructed to do, as he did not at first perceive the possibilities of publishing his writings. Typical of the daily entries in Pike's journal is the one of Sep- tember 3, 1805 (as the Americans neared the mouth of the Wis- consin River), which reads: Embarked at a pretty early hour. Cloudy. Met two peroques of Indians; they at first asked..." if we were for war, or if going to war? " I now experienced the good effect of having some person on board who could speak their language; for they presented me with three pairs of ducks and a quantity of venison, sufficient for all our crew for one day; in return, I made them some trifling presents. Afterward met two peroques, carrying some of the warriors spoken of on the 2n inst. They kept at a great distance, until spoken to It is surprising what a dread the Indians in this quarter have of the Americans. I have often seen them go round islands to avoid meeting my boat. It appears to me evident that the traders have taken great pains to impress upon the minds of the savages the idea of our being a very vindictive, ferocious, and warlike people. This impression was perhaps made with no good intention; but when they find our conduct toward them is guided by magnani- mity and justice, instead of operating in an injurious manner, it will have the effect to make them reverence at the same time they fear us. Distance 25 miles.14 For several hundred miles above St. Louis the river in 1805 was remarkable for its great width and for its hundreds of small islands. In some places the stream seemed to lose itself in innumerable channels among these countless islands. Frequently the dis-

13 See William H. Keating, Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of Saint Peters River (2 vols., London, 1825). "Pike, Travels, 15-16. 1949] PIKE'S MISSISSIPPI VOYAGE 451 tance from bank to bank was as great as five or six miles and much of the surrounding land was inundated during the rainy seasons. From St. Louis to the Falls of St. Anthony [now Minneapolis} all consisted of prairies and woodlands. Vines and underbrush grew thick among the trees, while the prairies lay carpeted with grass. As Pike approached the region of modern St. Paul and Minne- apolis, he noted in his journal the ranges of bald hills which traversed the country at perpendicular angles to the river. Birch, elm, and cottonwood grew in the valleys and along the banks of the stream. "But this irregular scenery is sometimes interrupted by a wide extended plain," he remarked, " which brings to mind the verdant lawn of civilized life, and would almost induce the traveler to imagine himself in the center of a highly cultivated plantation." 15 Above the Falls of St. Anthony the Mississippi became deeper in places, but generally more narrow and crooked. Scrub oak dotted the prairie-like landscape. A continuous chain of islands in the river extended northward like stepping stones and the frequent falls and cataracts impeded the progress of the advancing party. But wild game, fish, and fowl were in such abundance that Pike was led to remark that the country was truly a hunter's paradise. Well that it was too, since the difficult work of navigating the Mississippi caused each member of the expedition to eat approximately eight pounds of meat daily.16 By the middle of October snow began to fall, and traveling by boat became increasingly difficult. Pike had long given up the thought of completing his journey before winter set in, unavoidable delays and difficult navigation making such an accomplishment impossible. Accordingly, on October 16, 1805, he and his party stopped at the mouth of Swan River, not far from present Little Falls, Minnesota, and constructed a stockade and laid in a supply of meat. He estimated that he was now 233 miles above the Falls of St. Anthony and about 1,500 miles from St. Louis.17 15 Coues, Expeditions of Pike, 306-7. 16 Pike and two professional hunters who accompanied the expedition supplied most of the game for the others. Frequently eight or ten deer were killed in a single day, and the meat consumed immediately or preserved for future use. 17 Actually, the Americans were only 111 miles above the site of Minneapolis. 452 w. E. HOLLON [June

Several weeks later, on December 10, the commanding officer and twelve companions departed from the stockade, the rest of the party remaining behind. The river was no longer navigable and supplies had to be transported by sleds which had been constructed. These sleds were each dragged over the snow, ice, and rocks by two or three men harnessed abreast. During this last lap of the voyage, Pike and one or two companions generally traveled in advance of the sleds, frequently stopping to build fires for the others. Only five or six miles each day were possible under such conditions. The site of Brainerd, Minnesota, was reached on December 23. The country above presented a dreary prospect of high rocks, snow, dead timber, and hundreds of lakes. Aside from the few visits to the various trading posts of the North West Company, the Pike expedition continued along the Mississippi until it reached the area of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, on January 26, 1806. A few miles above this point the river forked, one branch flowing from Lake Winnibigoshish to the northwest, and the other from Lake Leech, which was almost due west. This latter fork was the one taken, and the Pike party reached Lake Leech around 2 P.M. on February 1, 1806. Almost six months after leaving St. Louis the principal objective of the expedition had been realized. " I will not attempt to describe my feeling on the accomplishment of my voyage," Pike commented in his diary, " for this is the main source of the Mississippi."18 Lake Leech was considered the main source of the Mississippi by the traders and trappers of the Minnesota region in 1806. Today this lake is approximately thirty miles due west of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and during the wet seasons of the year it is sometimes capable of supplying a greater quantity of water to the Upper Mississippi than any of the other northern sources. However, Lake Itasca, near Clearwater, Minnesota, is now generally considered the ultimate source of the great river.19 Pike knew1 of Lake Itasca's

18 Pike, Travels, 82-83. 19 Lake Leech was the nearest Pike got to the " true source " of the Mississippi, Lake Itasca, about twenty-five miles due east, as the crow flies. The first American known to have reached Lake Itasca was William Morrison, a merchant and trader at Kaskaskia, Illinois. 19493 PIKE'S MISSISSIPPI VOYAGE 453 existence, but he believed that Lake Leech was the more important of the two bodies of water. On March 5, 1806, Pike and his men returned to the stockade on Swan River to await the break-up of the ice on the Mississippi before attempting the descent to St. Louis by canoe. The ice had sufficiently melted by April 8, and the men joyously started their homeward trek. Three weeks later they arrived at St. Louis, thus ending a journey begun eight months and twenty-two days previously and covering a distance of more than 5,000 miles under adverse conditions. The accomplishments of the Mississippi voyage in 1805-6 have been described by one western historian as " disappointingly meager."20 To evaluate properly the achievements of the expedition, it is necessary to examine the results in relation to the original objectives. First, though Pike did not reach what is now considered the true source of the Mississippi, this fact is relatively unimportant, since he arrived at a point twenty-five miles from Lake Itasca. Second, his gestures towards the North West Com- pany proved futile. Foreign fur traders in the Minnesota area continued to violate the laws of the United States. Also, practically all of the principal tribes of the region visited by the American explorer allied with the British in the War of 1812, some fighting as far as 1,500 miles from their homes. Furthermore, Pike's efforts to establish peace among the Sioux and Chippewa was of little avail—these two nations soon renewed their traditional wars in spite of their promises to the contrary. Pike had been instructed by Wilkinson to bring several warriors of both tribes to St. Louis for a council meeting with the military governor. It is perhaps unfair to criticize the explorer for his failure to achieve this point, but it is significant that he was unable to persuade a single Indian to return with him.

Morrison visited the lake in 1804 and again in 1811-12. But it was not until 1832 that Lake Itasca received its present name. The explorer Henry Rose Schoolcraft in that year proclaimed the lake as the true source of the Mississippi and chose the name Itasca from the Latin words VeriPas, Caput (truth, head), by combining the last letters of the first word with the first letters of the second one. See Coues, Expeditions of Pike, 23n, 331. 20Robert E. Riegel, America Moves West (New York, 1947), 138. 454 w. E. HOLLON [June

Cheerfully ignoring these apparent failures, Pike seriously believed that he had achieved permanent peace among the various Indian tribes with whom he had held council. Never one to underestimate his accomplishments, he recorded in his journal on March 13: " If a subaltern with but 20 men, at so great a distance from the seat of his government, could effect so important a change in the minds of those savages, what might a great and independent power effect, if, instead of blowing up the flames of discord, they exerted their influence in the sacred cause of peace? " 21 As far as the scientific and geographic information acquired by the Mississippi expedition, it is not an understatement to say that little additional knowledge in this respect was obtained. Pike did not locate a single stream or lake that had not been previously discovered and named. The maps which he made were not only poorly drawn, but rather inaccurate as to latitudes, distances, and directions. Furthermore, his journal itself contains many obvious errors and contradictions; it is badly arranged and edited, and difficult to follow.22 On the other hand, something can be said relative to the accomplishments of the Mississippi expedition. Pike's diary, poorly written as it was, nevertheless was published in 1810 and did awaken much interest in the Upper Mississippi Valley region. Also, the young lieutenant acquired valuable tracts of land from the Indians which later became the sites of important army posts in the West, particularly Fort Snelling. Still further, he called attention to the activities of the foreign fur traders in the region. The latter had been guilty of smuggling goods into the country without paying the necessary duties.23 Probably the most important result of Pike's Mississippi expedition was the fact that the explorer focused attention upon the

21 Pike, Travels, 96. 22 Pike later wrote to General Wilkinson the following comment relative to his journal: " The daily occurrences written at night, frequently by firelight, when extremely fatigued, and the cold so severe as to freeze the ink in my pen, of course have little claim to elegance of expression or style; but they have truth to recommend them, which, if always attended to, would strip the pages of many of our1 journalists of their most interesting occurrences." (This document, written at Bellefontaine, July 2, 1806, is now in the War Records Division, National Archives.) 23 Pike estimated the annual loss to the United States at $26,000. 1949] PIKE'S MISSISSIPPI VOYAGE 455 important boundary question relative to Louisiana and Canada. The British in 1806 claimed most of the present state of Minne- sota and part of the region north of the Missouri River. In 1818 when the United States and Britain established the boundary between Canada and Louisiana, we were able to profit considerably from Pike's previous explorations. Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike would be little remembered today as an explorer if he were judged solely by the Mississip- pi expedition in 1805-6. For him the significance of that expedition lay in the experience he acquired—experience that was to prove extremely helpful on his more important journey into the American Southwest in 1806-7. Documents Silas J. Seymour Letters (III)

Harriet Gorum was a friend of the Seymours. Silas appears to have visited at Madison, and she writes of their moving into a new house. Several Gorums are mentioned in her letter, and she expects that there will be "a real Gorum Settlement yet."

Madison, Wis Dec. 30, 1849 Respected Friend, I am now seated with my pen in hand to fulfill my engagement made nearly 3 months since to you. I did not think when I made the promise that it would be so long before I should fulfill it but I have been waiting for some help and am now obliged to make my own com- mencement—but enough excuses. We are all in the enjoyment of good health and comfortable circumstances living in our new house. The lower part is done off and

THE final installment of the excellent Silas J. Seymour correspondence appears in this section. These letters are in the possession of Seymour's granddaughter, Mrs. RUTH SEYMOUR (CHRIS) BURMESTER, who resides on Grandfather Seymour's farm near Reedsburg. The introduction to the series, printed in the December Magazine, was written by Mrs. Burmester who generously supplied the information used in annotat- ing the letters. These family epistles traveled between New York State and Wisconsin, to and from Silas. His series of letters which have been printed cover the years 1846-50 and 1854. Leaving his parents, his sisters Clarissa, Julia, Naomi, Emeline, and his brothers Jared, Enoch, and Elijah in New York State, Silas arrived in Wisconsin in 1849, accompanied by his sister, Elizabeth. That year he selected and purchased a farm in the town of Dellona, Sauk County, and moved into a shanty which he erected on the land in the untamed Middle West. Mary Conine from " out East" became his wife in 1851. Their children were Ellen and Ida, Merton E.—the father of Mrs. Burmester—Walter, and Arthur. The daughters died in childhood; all of their sons were graduated from the University of Wis- consin. Silas was a member of the State assembly, 1876—77, and was instrumental in creating the State Board of Health. His death occurred on April 24, 1899. The spelling and punctuation were faithfully retained in these letters; repetitious and somewhat irrelevant parts were omitted. Without a doubt the readers will enjoy the warm family portrayals which record a phase of the winning of the Middle West.—EDITORS. 456 SEYMOUR LETTERS 457 we have wood enough and boys to cut it to keep us warm if we keep within doors. But is it not cold out? If it is not I am mistaken. We have some snow—enough to make good sleighing and I have been improving it in going to church today in an old school house where I almost froze my feet. It did not remind me of La Grange much—and I used to think that an average uncomfortable place on a cold day ... but I do not want you to think I am homesick. No not I. My friends arrived here the last of October all in good health and in the short space of one week from the time they left home My cousin, Daniel Sheldon came here with George and has bought him 80 Acres—40 of it broke and fenced—four miles from Madison on the same road Uncle Benedict has got 160 Acres paid for and a house built and I believe are much more contented than they have been. Samuel has taken a school in the district where they live. He commences it on Monday. John Fries [?] is keeping " Bach." I think it a pity for young men like you and him to live alone when there is so many young ladies that would esteem it a privilege to be your company if only you would let them know you wanted them. We have made some improvements about these diggins since you were here I think you would hardly know the place since we have moved into our new house. Every vistage of the shanty has been removed and we have a fence around the lot this side of the road and all of the timber is chopped off. We have a fair view of the town—also the Third Lake from where our house stands and an occasional cool refreshing breeze gets strayed away over here from the Fourth Lake, altho' it is not in sight. Gilbert and wife were here two weeks since on their way to Illinois where they intend to spend 6 weeks. They were here 3 days only and I believe did not like the place as well as they expected. They will return to Ceresco and stay for the present. They were in good spirits and we had a first rate visit with them. It seemed as though we were in York State again—so many of us together that had recently come from there. I do not know but we enjoyed ourselves as well as though we had been there. Sarah Ann [Gorum] came here in October from Ceresco and glad was she to get away from there. She did not enjoy herself very well there I should judge. She is not at home now but is at work about one mile from here.—has been at home today. She wishes me to remember her to you and give you her compliments and do you remember the Ontario House and what we had for breakfast? 1 1 It seems reasonable to assume that Harriet and Sarah Ann came west with Silas and Elizabeth. 458 DOCUMENTS [June

Uncle James Gorum writes that he has not sold his farm yet, but thinks he shall have time enough to start the first of May and I have another Uncle that is coming West in the spring by the name of Fish. I expect we will have a real Gorum Settlement here yet. I received a letter from Elizabeth about one month ago. She stated to me that she had been very homesick and that had it not been for you and the rest of her relatives wishing her to stay, she would have went back East My sister Charlotte was married in the month of October to Mr. Geo. Carver of Ohio. They came in company with George as far as Buffalo—and she has gone to Ohio to live. We have received two letters from them since they arrived there. She likes the country very much and says she is in the full enjoyment of the honeymoon Take some liesure time to read this when your house work is done up and please answer it. Good night and a Happy New Year. Your friend H. GORUM

More than two months ago the family back in York State had sent $20 to Silas by an old and trusted friend, Thomas Collins. Neither Thomas nor the money has yet appeared. Clarissa is much concerned over her brother's financial stress. La Grange, N.Y. Jan. 21, 1850 Dear Brother Silas, We received yours three weeks from date and were glad to hear from you but were sorry to hear that you were so much in want of the common necessaries of life. If Thomas Collins has not yet reached you and you have received aid from no other source, you must have suffered greatly before this. My confidence in Thomas' honesty is not yet shaken and can but think that you will receive the money if you have not already. We hope in mercy that you have; and are now enjoy- ing the good procured with it. The taking of money from letters has now become so very common, that we hear weekly of such thefts being committed, and for that reason we sent the $20 as we did. Naomi was home holiday week and read your letter. She thought when she left home that she would send you $10 in a letter immediately after her return to Perry. If she did so, you will probably receive 1949] SEYMOUR LETTERS 459 it soon and can help yourself with that. Mother thinks should the $20 reach Barraboo that you had better purchase a cow and not suffer for food even if Jared does not get land right away. He is young yet and can wait a year or two for his farm, rather than have you suffer. He left some money at home, thinking that Mother might need some during the winter. We have spent 20 shillings of it and will enclose the remaining $13 in this letter—reserving for ourselves one dollar against the time of need. I would gladly remit my mite if I had it to give—and as for Pa—I think it will be hard getting anything from him till next fall Then he says that he will let you have enough to pay for your Oxen. How much dependence there is to be placed upon this you know as well as I do. I hope if it is among the possibles that you will come home next fall and see to things. We have lived more comfortable than usual this winter, but how Pa will end in his trades is more than I can divine for he has made smashing work of it lately. In the first place he raked together all the money he could by peddling and partly paid for a steer. He then took 20 bushels of wheat of the 60 he raised and sold it to buy another with; then swapped the cow for another and is to pay $5 to boot; then exchanged the heifer for a 3-year old heifer and is to pay $5 to boot between them and now has gone away with the pretension [intention] of selling the spotted steer for a cow that gives milk All send love Your Affectionate sister CLARISSA ... My health is good for me in winter. I have been home most of the fall and winter... am now working for my board and attending writing school taught by Charles Durfee. John & Julia intend writing soon. They are all well there. If you cannot be comfortable where you are now living—take your cattle and go to some- where where you can, Ma says.

"I see some lonesome times,}} writes Silas from his shanty in Dellona. He is answering Elizabeth's letter written on Decem- ber 23 and is giving her some advice on matrimony. Baraboo, Feb. 3, 1850. Dear Sister Elizabeth, I received your letter of Dec. 23 one week ago, a little more than a month from the time it was written and right glad I was to hear 460 DOCUMENTS [June

from you once more. I got your other letter in due time and answered it as soon as I could. I hope you will pardon me for that short letter for I was in a great hurry and had but a few minutes to write it in and you must know that I had the blues some because of not hearing from you. I got a letter from Clarissa and one from Jared and one from Laura [Ostrander] the same week that I got yours. So you see I had lots of news for one week and plenty to do to answer them all in proper time. Jared is at Fordham's boarding and going to school I would thank you very much if you would just stand by and see me cook a meal of victuals and then if my work did not suit you, just take hold and show me how to do it up right. I am very much obliged to you for the fine setting out you gave me in regard to cooking; but I assure you I have made no such mistake as you seem to think I might. I have not baked any Johnny cake yet without salting it—nor steeped the teapot without tea in it because I ha'nt got any teapot. I make my tea in a tin cup. I have no particular trouble in cooking for myself, only the time it takes up, which is about one-half of the day—but when I have anyone to eat with me " that's the rub." I can suit myself better than I can others. When Amelia and you come to take tea with me I'll do my best, but you needn't expect any gingercake—with or without ginger in it. If you get a Johnnycake or some Irish bannocks, together with potatoes and pork, you may think you get a pretty good supper for this new country. Perhaps you do not know what Irish Bannocks are. Well, they are short cakes minus the shortening. Well, now Lib, to tell you the truth, this batching is hard business, and I am heartily sick of it. I have kept c batch' some 4 or 5 weeks and don't like it at all. If I was not entirely alone, it would be different. But as it is now I see some lonesome times. I find it very difficult to get candles and what little I read evenings is by firelight. Oh, I wish I could step in and see you this evening. I should enjoy myself very much. I should like very much to make Uncle James' folks a call too. I think it will be some time before I shall get those ponies and start for California—but there is no knowing what I may do yet. I hope however that I shall be able to get a living without digging gold. I shall try it a while yet at any rate. I had a letter from H. Gorum a short time since. They were all well there and she seemed to enjoy herself very well with her friends 1949] SEYMOUR LETTERS 461 who had arrived from the East. George was talking of buying a place about V/i miles from Dea. Gorum's. I had a letter from Mr. Morgan not long since. There was no particular news in it. He said "// reports ivere correct Naomi might be suspected of intending to commit matrimony." You probably know as well as I how much dependence to put in such reports. They may be true and may not. Feb. 9th It is now a week since I wrote the above and I will now try to finish this letter and mail it today as I am going to Reeds- burg. I have just finished eating my Johnnycake and roasted potatoes and salt—and washing the dishes—and it is now just daylight. I am seated alone in my cabin. O! how often I look at the fire—then out of the window—then the door—and say to myself " I wish Lib was here now." Now, Lib, about that question you asked me. I hardly know what to say. In making a choice of a companion for life there are many serious things to think of. Advice, in such a matter is often miscon- strued, but I hope you will regard what I have to say on the subject as coming from a brother who loves you dearly and will do all in his power to make your situation as comfortable as possible. In the first place, on your decision depends your happiness for life. Therefore, do not be in a hurry about it. Again, the happiness of your suitor may depend on it, too. Therefore, study thoroughly his character. If he be true and what you suppose him to be, you ought to regard him with favor. Above all things treat him kindly. Unkindness often makes a good-hearted, generous man a cross, fretful, miserable being. This I know from experience. Again, the thoughts and opinions of your relatives who may be acquainted with him should receive all due respect. Now Lib, I advise you to think of the matter carefully and thoroughly before you decide and then do just as you think best. Who is your man and what is his occupation? Is he temperate? How old is he? In short, tell me all about him. Remember Naomi's narrow escape before you make up your mind. The West is full of such men. I am getting out rail timber on my farm this winter. I worked out nearly all the time till about 6 weeks ago. I have cut and drawn timber enough for 1800 or 2000 rails—and want to get enough for about 2000 more but the sleighing is about gone and I do not know whether I can or not. I expect to finish my house in the spring. Give 462 DOCUMENTS [June my love to Uncle Jame's folks when you see then Mr. Cheeseborough does owe me a dollar and you may get it and use it. Please write as soon as you get this. It is time I was going, so Good Morning. Your affectionate brother, SILAS My health is very good for me and I do not fear the ague at all here. I hope you will not have it any more but I am afraid your cure is not permanent. What did you cure it with?

Elizabeth, interested in Silas' welfare, sends him a recipe for mince meat pie, and describes her social life. The "California- fever," raging in the Koshkonong and Whitewater areas, is a part of her newsy letter. Koshkonong, Wis. Mch 10th, 1850 Dear Brother Silas, I received your letter of Dec. 10th about 6 weeks after date, and right glad was I, too, you had better believe for I began to think you was either sick, dead, married, or gone to California, or all combined and your letter relieved me very much. Your letter of Feb. 3 reached me last week—and so there you are all alone in the woods in that 'ere shantee with no one to talk with or laugh at. It is Sunday and I suppose you are about getting supper. O, how I should like to see you with your sleeves rolled up and making those " Irish Bannocks "—your hands and arms covered with flour, grease and other cookables. I really wish you would either get married or send for me for I pity you from the bottom of my heart and think every time I have anything nice to eat—how I wish Sile had a piece of this!" I hope you will remain well and not get sick for if you do I am afraid you will die all alone. I am going to send you a receipt for making mince pies which I have just found out. I ate some made so the other day and as it is a very cheap way and makes first rate pies I will send it to you. You may find it useful. Take one pound of boiled meat, fresh if you have it—if not, salt meat will do, and two pounds of boiled potatoes, chop fine, and mix together and add half a pound of cramberries. If you have not got cramberries, a tea- cup of viniger will do but the other is best. Season with salt, pepper and alspice, moisten with hot water—your judgment will tell you how 1949] SEYMOUR LETTERS 463 moist to make it so that you can stir it like pancake batter or about as soft. Stew the berries first. This preparation will make five or six. Do you make light bread?—do you get plenty of meat and any butter? I am at Uncle Bliss' now—have been here two weeks, and don't know how much longer I shall stay. I shall go to doing housework if I can get a place a few weeks. I never was so well and happy in my life. I have enjoyed myself first rate this winter—have attended singing school this winter. I went to Jaynesville New Year's Day. Do you recollect Mrs. Farmer requested us to call on her relatives there by the name of True? Well I saw some of them there—two Miss Trues—and got acquainted some with them. Mr. Wilkinson's folks from Covington live at Jaynesville. Have you got any near neighbors that are Yankees or are they all Irish and that sort? Do you do your own washing or have it done? Are you making maple sugar on your farm? Does the road go by your place and is Reedsburgh growing very fast? Amelia is teaching school in the woods and is intending to teach there all summer. I had a long letter from home a few days ago. They were all well. Jerry had got home from Chili and said he was going to come West next fall if nothing happened to hinder. Clarissa was going to teach next summer if her health remained good. Aunt Miller was very well for her; there was no particular news in it about anyone else but spoke about all of the neighbors, even to Capt. Cook and John Thompson. Don't you remember Sile how we raised particular purga- tory with /. T's dinner basket a few days before we came away? Our folks said in their letter that Capt Cook was coming to Wiscon- sin—if he does I hope he will be haunted with fleas, misquitoes and other wild animals—and have the ague till it shakes some of the wickedness out of him if possible. Most of the men around here have either started or are about to start for California. Fifteen are going from Cold Spring (which will leave about 6 or 7 men there) and about 50 from Whitewater. March 28th. It is now more than two weeks since I commenced this letter Mr. Cheeseborough gave me that dollar he owed you. Amelia has got home from her school and is not going back on account of some difficulty in the district. She and I were talking 464 DOCUMENTS [June about you today and we thought we would like to get hold of your socks and shirts and darn & patch them up and Aunt Betsey said she would like to see you and have a real talk with you. I have been at work for one of the neighbors a week or two. I don't get homesick at all this winter and am as fat as a pig and never was so well in my life. The California men that started a week or two ago are all coming back frightened. One man came back last Saturday He went as far as the Mississippi and saw so many going that he got frightened and came back. One load from Cold Spring got back last Monday. They went as far as Council Bluffs. They said there was 40,000 men encamped there waiting for the grass to start before they ventured any farther; and they said there were so many going that they thought a great many would starve before they got there and they thought they had better come back. Hay was from 25 to 40 dollars a ton and oats 12 shillings per bushel at Council Bluffs. Aunt Emeline wrote me a letter a fortnight ago urging me very hard to go there and stay with her this summer but I shall not. She said they were all well at Aztalan. She said Uncle Eben would write to you but did not know where to direct a letter. I had a letter from Cousin Rowena a few weeks ago She was attending school in Oswego. She sent you her love and said she would like to see you wielding a pudding-stick. It is a beautiful clear morning and the prairie chickens are crow- ing in every direction. Aunt Betsey and Amelia send their best love to you I must stop now for I am going to Whitewater with Mr. Cheese- borough's folks and will finish it when I get back so good-bye for the present. April 8th I have just returned from a visit of a week at White- water and guess I will finish this letter now. I got a letter from Naomi and one from Sarah Ann Gorum last week. Naomi wrote that she was well and the rest of the folks. Pa had done very well peddling this winter and spring. Miller Burroughs is dead. Irene is sick with the consumption and is not expected to live long. She said Jerry had sent some money to buy him some land. Are you going to buy it for him near you? Have you got what Pa sent you by Tom Collins yet? I want you to write me a long letter in answer to this and tell me everything you can think of. 1949} SEYMOUR LETTERS 465

Sarah Ann Gorum said in her letter that Harriett was at Ceresco. The folks were all well George had got him a farm and put up a log cabin and they were going to move into it soon She said when I wrote to you I must give you her best love and tell you not to let batching trouble you too much.

ELIZABETH. Naomi wrote that one of Uncle Elezier's boys had run away. She did not know which one.

Silas' brother Jared writes about the high wages he has received while working as a farm hand. He is an ambitious and hard- working Yorker, " tough as a knot" he says.

Covington, N.Y., Mch 17, 1850 Dear Brother Silas, Our folks received a letter from you last night which was very gladly received. I am at home and have been some over a month during which time I have worked one month for Mr. Maher for $8 and I have chopped four days at home and calculate to chop about 15 cords of stove wood which I think will last our folks most all summer. I came home about the last of January. I went to school 3 months. We had a very good school I am going to hire out as soon as I can find a place to work. Wages are very high here this summer. They are from $11 to $15 per month. I want to commence work for somebody the first of April. I could send some $8 of money but I don't think I could send any more now for there is some owing to me that I have worked for. It is in good hands. Ma thinks that I had better not send any and I guess that I won't send it as I suppose you don't care much about it now. When you wrote your letter I had not heard that our folks had sent that $20 of mine but I suppose that it is safe enough but whether you ever get it or not I don't know—I was up to Mister De Witt's today and he said that Mr. Congdon knew where Thomas Collins post office address was. So I suppose you have got the money before this time. Thomas Collins they say is in Fondulac—where that is I don't know. They say that he is tending saw-mill. I cannot learn anything very different about his whereabouts. We are all well as usual. I weigh 143 lbs. and have chopped about 30 cords of stovewood since I stopped going to school—besides helped 466 DOCUMENTS [June saw 142 pine saw-logs, so you see I am tough as a knot. Pa has sold the old cow and the yearling heifer and got 3 4-yr old steers—besides the pair he had before you went West. He drives them yet and they look pretty hard up. I don't think that our folks will have any cow again this summer as he says he is going to break 2 of his other steers and then he will have a team. I was in Perry the other day and saw Naomi She told me that she wanted to go to Wisconsin next fall Your very Affectionate brother JARED SEYMOUR Pa intends breaking up all the ground he can for corn and wheat. He says that he shall pay you all he owes you next fall and I guess he will if the wheat turns out well. It looks well now.

March 18, 1850 Dear Brother Silas, Ma is not at all well today and thinks that she cannot write in this letter. She was very glad to receive yours and will answer it perhaps some other time, and has commissioned me to write for her now. We are all very glad that your hard times did not continue any longer and that the money went safe and that there is so good a prospect of your earning something the coming summer. We hope that you have seen the hardest times that you ever will, in Wiscon- sin—or any other place. Fon Du Lac is the name of the place where Thos. Collins is—(or was)—the last time we heard from him. Mr. Congdon's given name is Charles. Ma and Jared say that you must not send back that $3. We can get along without it and it may do you much good. Naomi is intending to come home in a few weeks and spend the summer which will give me a chance to do something for myself—if I am able—as I hope I shall be—for I have not been so healthy a winter, in a great while. Ma thinks that she had rather wait a while longer before she goes to Wisconsin—at any rate, not until she can be made more comfortable than she is here. I think that Pa means to send your money up in the fall. Write as often as you can. Yours affectionately CLARISSA 1949] SEYMOUR LETTERS 467

Dear Brother Silas, As there is a few lines left, I thought I would write a little... Elijah and myself have been attending school this winter, but our school is out now. Elijah has studied large Mitchell's Geography this winter and I think he learned quite fast. I have studied grammar, geography, analysis and arithmetic from your affectionate sister EMELINE

At last! After many months, word comes from Thomas Collins! Although his letter does not say that he is enclosing the $20, it is known that the money was received by Silas. Fon du lac June 14, 1850 Mr. Seymore [sic] Dear Sir I now take time to write a few lines to you to inform you that your letter has come to my hand and I will now try to answer it—for I had given up ever hearing from you for your letter was so long coming and I was careless last fall and did not take the name of your town nor the poste office and I had to write to Mr. Goram in Madison and waight for an answer from him and you see it has been a round a bout way to find you and you must excuse me this time and I will have my thinking-cap on the next time I have any business to do in a Strange land, for I think that this will teach me a lesson for next time. I have been in the pinery this winter and I think I shall go East next fall and I think that I shall stay there when I get there. I do not think that this country is what it was " cracked up to be." for it is a hard sight for the farming part of the community for everything is all drying up and it looks bad for this time of year. I think that you said that some of the old neighbors in Covington was dead and some of them was sick and ready to die. It is healthy here this summer. When you write home you must send my respects to your folks. I do not think of anything more to write about this time. THOMAS COLLINS Fon du lac, Wise. 468 DOCUMENTS [June

In the fall of 1851, Silas J. Seymour took the advice of his sister Elizabeth, contained in her March 10, 1850, letter, and married. He returned to York State and married Mary A. Conine and brought her back to his cabin in Dellona that same fall. The letters following June, 1850, to 1854, have been omitted.2 The series closes with a letter written to Silas by his mother, Susan Ostrander Seymour, who before her marriage lived near the Hud- son River, and at this writing was " an old lady of 56." This typical mother's letter, as you might well suppose, is filled with kindly advice for her children. She hopes " to go to Wisconsin by the time the Milwaukee and La Cross Railroad is completed." Covington, Monday Apr 17, 1854 Dear Silas, I have read your letter to Charles, dated April 2 with the same satisfaction I always read letters coming from my children. The rea- sons why I have not written you before are these: first, I almost never write any—(a poor reason I know) second, I knew Mr. Morgan had written occasionally and I thought Julia and Emeline had, but E. has been at home so little since last summer I did not know she was so negligent too and Elijah can't write much—has been studying to learn the past winter—made little or no progress in writing. We are having quite a snowstorm—6 or 8 inches deep and it continues snowing Your father's health is a good deal better—he is improving the sleighing today by going to mill. Jared has gone to Warsaw and carried a load of men for evidence in the suit between Charles and Burroughs. Harlow's wife died last Friday night of consumption and was buried yesterday— We are much obliged to you for the rosin-weed gum and bark. I think they were both beneficial to your father's health. He is now taking Rennett's Bitters again—is improving all the time. He is so much better than he was last summer I think if he don't overdo nor take another hard cold he may get his health again. Jared has taken the corn ground to plant on the East lot and Pa and the boys mean

2 In the years between the last letter of 1850 and the one below, three of Silas' sisters were married. Naomi was married in December, 1850, to Charles Morgan, postmaster at La Grange, New York. Six months after the 1854 letter was written, they moved to Madison, Wisconsin. Elizabeth, who came to Wisconsin with Silas, was married in April, 1851, to Reuben Harris. When this letter was written, they lived on a farm near Silas* place in Dellona. Clarrisa, married in November, 1853, to Henry Bayston, lived at this time seven miles from Dellona at Delton, Wisconsin. 1949} SEYMOUR LETTERS 469

to summer fallow the rest. He sold two oxen last fall to Brooks and got the mortgage discharged. The other two old ones make a better team (since Jared broke them) than they had before. We had fodder enough to keep them so far and some hay yet and he has gone to get corn ground for feed so I hope they won't suffer. Jared has lived at home this winter past. It was a good thing for us. He and Elijah have got up wood enough to last till next winter I think—tho' I must not give all the praise to them for Pa and Enoch helped a little. I suppose we have wheat enough at the mill to supply us this year. The rest of the wheat is in Aunt Miller's barn and wood-shed, chamber. Tuesday, 18—Very pleasant, the snow is melting fast. I am very glad to hear you have a span of horses or colts. You can go to mill in less time and I guess Mary and little Ellen will have a ride now and then. I hope I shall be ready or rich enough, to go to Wisconsin by the time the Milwaukee and La Cross Railroad is completed. I have tried to make Pa think we better take a jaunt out there next summer. It might be a benefit to him and a great pleasure to me. I know it would be. (that is, if I lived to get there)3 but Mary must have the rest of my letter. Wednesday— Dear Mary, Your few lines to Naomi gave my pen a sudden start. I wrote to Clarissa some time ago [at Delton] in March not knowing where she was then It was directed to Dellona. I wonder if she has received it I often think of you in your retired home and hope you have the necessary comforts of life. I am pleased that Mr. Harris bought so near you. Guess you & Elizabeth " go over " (as Neddy says) [Neddy is Naomi's child] and see each other as often as you can—talk about " old homes"—keep up courage—and don't work too hard as to destroy your health—take good care of your children—and hope for the best—keep your husband as good-natured as possible. I know something of the feelings of young married women who as far from the home of their childhood and former associations.4

3 She did not experience this " great pleasure." Her death occurred the same year, November, 1854. 4 These are poignant words from a pioneer woman finding some relief, perhaps, in writing about her feelings. It is said that " Mary," the wife of Silas, to whom she 470 DOCUMENTS [June

But those feelings and affections we have for our families are still stronger than any others and if we have trusted that the Lord is gracious, and cast our cares upon him, we go on our way rejoicing, and happy are we— Do you have any religious meetings near there? I must tell you a little about the neighbors here. Mrs. Wellman is as well as usual I believe—has two grandchildren with her Aunt Miller and Julia were well Sunday evening. I was there and Julia said I must not burn this scrawly letter that I had then commenced and you may let the girls [Clarissa and Elizabeth} read it. Mr. Pelton's girls are at Lima Seminary. Amelia Rudgers went to Wyoming [New York] Academy to school last winter. Em had to take up with a district school and work for her board—glad to go to school so. Elizabeth must not be jealous now for she shall have my next letter. Your affectionately SUSAN SEYMOUR Dear Brother Silas, Ma wants me to write a few lines in her letter as she thinks she will have a job to fill it up. How does the tax matter stand on my land? I sold the land most a year ago but didn't give a deed until a few days ago; but I suppose that Morgan expects to pay the taxes from the time he bought it. There was nothing said about the taxes at all. I am going to put in 6 Acres of corn on Pa's land on shares and thresh in the fall. I own the whole of a good machine. I am going to run it on my own hook next fall. Last fall it threshed 17,000 bushels of grain—mostly all wheat.—Shouldn't wonder if I come to the West when I get $500 to lay out in land. JARED SEYMOUR Write soon. How does Valparaiso Wheat do out there? Write in yours. Thursday—20—I write by snatches you see, while Enoch is paring the potatoes for dinner. I want to ask how Ellen is. I understand she is a feeble child. Give her a kiss from Grandma I want to see her and Frank [Harris] very much, not excepting the rest of you. addresses these words, experienced great loneliness in Wisconsin. When homesickness for York State overwhelmed her, she would go off into the woods—not wishing Silas to hear her—and cry to her heart's content. 1949] SEYMOUR LETTERS 471

My sheet is nearly full. Naomi has helped me very much. You don't know how it is for an old woman 56 years of age that hasn't written much in upwards of 30 years, to get up a letter, but the job is done, and I hope Uncle Sam will carry it safely S.S. Friday—Dear Sister Mary, You will probably be perfectly dumfounded when you read these lines from me. I would try and write a little in Mother's letter Oh, Mary, I would so like to come and visit you when Charles comes but I suppose it will be impossible. I could not leave my children you know and so I shall have to be content untill we move West, and then I hope to; see you all. I am very sorry Charles could not have come in the winter so that we could have moved to Wisconsin this spring, but he could not, and you will probably not see him now until the last of May. I hope he will like the country near you. It will be so much pleasanter for all of us. Now, Mary, I want you to write me a great long letter and tell me just what I must expect when I get West. I think I shall like it first rate and now I would like to know whether in so large a place as Baraboo there are any churches or not? Silas does not write. Emeline expects to teach school this summer, but is not certain of one yet. I shall be alone this summer I suppose. Asineth Crouch was buried yesterday—died of consumption Her mother takes her death very hard. I suppose you hear from home often. Father was there last week—all well. Your father thought that Silas had better let rail road stock alone? Give my love to Lib and tell her that her Frank cannot begin with my Frank in spunk or crossness but [N]Eddy is as good as Frank is cross. O! what a task! NAOMI MORGAN 5 Silas did not follow his father-in-law's advice. He lost $900. A railroad finally came to Kilbourn, eleven miles from his farm in Dellona.

[CONCLUSION] Communication To the Editor of the Wisconsin Magazine of History: The review of Jean Delanglez, S.J.'s, Life and Voyages of Louis Jolliet, 1645-1700 which appeared in the December, 1948, issue of Wisconsin Magazine of History, page 227 to 229, over the signature of Joseph Carlton Short, manifests such lack of knowledge concerning the Jesuit rule, that one is lead to wonder why the reviewer ventured to make any statements at all concerning the religious life of the Jesuit missionary, Father Marquette. For example the reviewer says: " Father Hamy, himself a Jesuit, knew that before taking final vows, a Jesuit makes a long retreat [italics mine], and he tells us that Marquette spent a month at the Sault before taking on July 2, 1671, his final vows as a spiritual coadjutor and formed lay brother [italics mine], being ineligible for the priesthood because of his lack of theological training in France." 1 As a matter of fact Hamy does not precisely say this. What he does say is "... it is probable that in place of his third year of probation, Father Marquette [italics mine] had to make the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius at Sault Ste. Marie for at least a month before pronouncing his final vows there." Nothing is said about the missionary's ineligibility for the priesthood; and he says nothing about Marquette's " taking final vows as a spiritual coadjutor and formed lay brother." 2 On the contrary, he speaks of him as " Father," the ordinary title of a priest. It is a fact that Marquette did take the vows of a spiritual coadjutor at the Sault. The reviewer refers to volume 18 of Mid-America, and as that volume contains the copy of Marquette's vows in his own handwriting, there is probably where he got this information.3 But there is nothing in that source to suggest that a Jesuit spiritual coadjutor and a lay. brother are synonomous. In reality the formula of the vows of a spiritual coadjutor in the Jesuit order is different from that of a lay brother who is called officially a temporal coadjutor; and according to the Jesuit Constitution only priests may take the vows of spiritual coadjutors.^ Hence, ignorance of Jesuit rule is the only excuse for a

1 Wisconsin Magazine of History, 32:228 (December, 1948). Short refers to Hamy, An Mississipi, 274-76. 2 Short in Wisconsin Magazine of History, December, 1948. 3 Mid-America, 18:23. 4 The different formulas may be found in Institutum Societatis Jesu, Florentine, 1893, Vol. 2, pt. 5, chap. 4, paragraphs 1, 2, and 3C, pp. 90-91. The fact that a priest alone is eligible for the vows of spiritual coadjutor may be found in the same volume, " Primum ac Generate Examen," chap. 6, paragraph 1, p. 19. Ignatius of Loyola wrote this part of the rule, himself. 472 HAMILTON LETTER 473 statement which confuses a spiritual coadjutor with a lay brother. The unqualified pronouncement of the reviewer that " before taking final vows a Jesuit makes a long retreat " is another mistake. The Jesuit " long retreat" is the term applied to a period of thirty days devoted entirely to spiritual meditation which all Jesuits make shortly after entrance into the novitiate; and which priests repeat after ordina- tion, during one of the twelve months known as the " third year of probation." A year in which they devote themselves to preparation for preaching and the ministry.5 This " probation " is normally completed several years before the priest takes his final vows. Before taking these an eight day retreat is the most required and quite frequently three days of preparation are considered sufficient.6 There is still another mistake in the reviewer's sentence about Mar- quette's vows. It will be remembered that what Hamy really says about them is " it is probable that in place of his third year of probation [italics mine], Father Marquette had to make the spiritual exercises ... for at least a month before pronouncing his final vows " Now, since Jesuit lay brothers never make a thirty day retreat except in their novitiate, and since Marquette had completed his novitiate in France, and made this second long retreat " in place of his third year of probation," which " probation" is only made by ordained Jesuits, then this second thirty day retreat proves he was not only eligible for priesthood, but was already a priest. The part of the review which attempts to belittle the heroic character of Father Marquette is best passed over in silence. An unpreju- diced judgment of a man who laid down his life in an effort to bring Christ's salvation to the savages of the American wilderness will not be affected by carping criticism. R. N. HAMILTON, S.J., Director, Department of History, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

5 Epitome Institute Societatis Jesu, Romae, 1924, No. 22, paragraph 7, subdivision 10, p. 18. 6 Institutum Societatis Jesu, Vol. 2, " Primum ac Generate Examen," chap. 4, paragraph 41. p. 15. Book Notes

No Peddlers Allowed. By ALFRED R. SCHUMANN. Foreword by Fred L. Holmes. (C. C. Nelson Publishing Company, Appleton, Wis- consin, 1948. Pp.325. $3.00). The late Glenn Frank once said that it was folly to spend money to take a census of the people of Wisconsin. All that needs be done, he counseled, is to hold an election with Sol Levitan running for some office, count the votes, and find the population of Wisconsin. There was a time in the phenomenal political career of Sol Levitan when his margins of victory in the elections gave a great deal of sub- stance to Dr. Frank's jocular remark. As one reads through Alfred Schumann's biography of the beloved Sol and the whole life story of this remarkable man unfolds, one gains, for the first time, a real appreciation of the astounding life of achievement he could claim. Those of us who knew and worked with this wise, witty, little man came to accept him as just another one of the men who took their places beside Old Bob La Follette for the right to establish the Pro- gressive movement in the State. Mr. Schumann gives us a deeper appreciation of what a great man it was who came into Wisconsin with all his worldly possessions in packsack on his back and stayed to win a place in the hearts of its people that was second only to the place occupied by Old Bob. His handicaps were many. He had to overcome a strange tongue; he had to work his way carefully through the iron curtain of prejudice against his people and into the hearts of those who later elected him State treasurer six times. Mr. Schumann writes an absorbing and inti- mate story of the long struggle, recalling much of the exciting history of those turbulent days when Sol was one of the prominent figures among the shock troops of the Progressive movement. Mr. Schumann's book is a valuable contribution to the historical records of the State. But it is even more valuable to the cause of tolerance and understanding in the world today. The record of service Sol Levitan gave to the State was made possible only because the people of the State were able to overcome the fears and superstition which lie at the roots of racial and religious discrimination. The reader will glory not so much in the achievements of Uncle Sol, but in the triumph of American ideals which his life story represents. 474 BOOK NOTES 475

It is an American triumph to read of this immigrant Jew who dared, in the La Follette presidential campaign of 1924, to say this in a speech to a group of Wall Streeters: " I am president of the Commercial Na- tional Bank of Madison, Wisconsin, and I feel at home among you gentlemen of Wall Street. The trouble with you people here in Wall Street is that you don't know what is going on in the rest of the world. About eleven o'clock you come to the gambling marts, and you gamble until one o'clock. Then you eat dinner and you have a round of golf. At night you swipe your best friend's wife and go to a night club to have a good time. When you do have a day to spare, you run off to Reno and get rid of your own wife—and you think La Follette will ruin the country! " One can't help but wonder, in reading Mr. Schumann's book, whether if today, in the more intensified struggle for security than that which marked the days of Sol's rise to fame, the intolerance of our people hasn't been sharpened to the point where it is no longer possible for a Sol Levitan to become a great leader. If it has, our world will suffer. If Mr. Schumann's book were read widely enough, we might learn the lesson we need to know. Madison WILLIAM T. EVJUE

Education and Reform at New Harmony: Correspondence of William Maclure and Marie Duclos Fretageot, 1820-1833. Edited by ARTHUR E. BESTOR, Jr. (Indiana Historical Society Publications, Vol. 15, no. 3, Indianapolis, 1948. Pp. 285-417. $1.00). This monograph is built around the correspondence of two figures who were prominent in the establishment and operation of Robert Owen's New Harmony experiment. While the bulk of the correspondence is from manuscripts in The Workingmen's Institute of New Harmony, Professor Bestor has also used many other sources. By skillful introductions and supplementary material, Professor Bestor has succeeded in making the correspondence read like a connected story. This monograph is invaluable for students of American social history, particularly those interested in early radical literature. Of especial interest is the light thrown on the humanitarian impulses of the age. Here we see William Maclure, who made a fortune in commerce, devoting that fortune to science and educational reform. Here we see too how the labor theory of value was early used to call for social reform. Thus Maclure wrote in 1825: " Labour in some shape or other 476 BOOK NOTES [June is the cause of all production; of course all the revenue of every society- is created by those that work. The annual production of Great Britain is estimated at £54 sterling for every man, woman and child; but only £11 sterling per annum, falls to the share of those who produce it, viz. about 1/5: the other 4/5 go for tithes, taxes, masters, etc. etc. Such an order of things is neither reasonable nor just, and to rectify it as far as possible by laying the axe to the root of the evil, taking away the temptation to avarice, cheating and crime, is the object of the new [Owen's] system. It proposes to remedy the evil, by enabling the industrious producer to retain a far greater proportion of the produce of his labour; and removing the necessity of his working more than a few hours in the day, to obtain every necessary comfort, leaving the rest of his time for moral improvement and recreation. " The reviewer can help to identify the author of one anonymous item used in the monograph. The pamphlet An Essay on Common Wealths, published in New York in 1822 by the Society for Promoting Com- munities was written by Cornelius Camden Blatchley, the Quaker physician; the same " C. C. Blatchley, physician," who was a candidate of the New York Working Men's Party for the State Assembly in 1829. Blatchley has been almost wholly ignored by writers on radical and reform movements. Yet he promises to be of greater significance than many better-known figures. Professor Bestor's monograph is an important addition to the rather limited amount of scholarly work done in the field of early radical literature. Columbia University JOSEPH DORFMAN

A Century of Wisconsin Agriculture (Bulletin No. 290, Agricultural Statistics). Prepared by The Wisconsin Crop Reporting Service, WALTER H. EBLING, CLARENCE D. CAPAROON, EMERY C. WIL- cox, CECIL W. ESTES, Agricultural Statisticians. (Madison, Wis- consin, 1948. Pp. i, 119. When needed by adults, available upon request from the State Department of Agriculture, Capitol, Madison). This extremely useful publication neatly puts statistics on Wisconsin agriculture into a historical pattern. The arrival of the Centennial no doubt influenced Mr. Ebling and his associates to attempt to review the subject historically, but this is no new departure for his office. The dynamic approach has been a part of the thinking of the Crop Reporting 1949] BOOK NOTES 477

Service, a fact which will be readily apparent to anyone who uses this booklet. Their regard for historical process avoids the difficulty presented by studies which reduce society to a series of static pictures, a temptation to those who must depend on periodic census surveys. There is therefore something here for every sort of historian. The topics treated include population, land utilization, crops, livestock, farm life, and the emergence of dairying. The casual reader will find that the unavoidable arrangement of the materials into topical segments has set up some difficulties in following the historical process which makes Wisconsin farming so fascinating a story, but a close student of the subject will feel well satisfied at the skill with which the essential figures are marshaled. The thought which led from wheat to dairying, and through the many other adaptations involved in the farmers' adjustment to a commercial society, is implied in the whole treatment, and no one need be misled. The excellent statistical tables of farm production summarize what is known on this subject. An effort was made to complete the data from the beginning. This was of course impossible in the case of a number of items because of the absence of reliable surveys in the earlier period, but the most important are included, and these are broken down into county figures. The whole is an important contribution to Wisconsin agricultural history, and suggests the importance to historians of collaborating with the Crop Reporting Service as well as watching for their invaluable publications. State Historical Society of Wisconsin W. H. GLOVER Daughters of Charity in Milwaukee, 1846-1946. By PETER LEO JOHN- SON. (St. Mary's Hospital, Milwaukee, 1946. Pp. 235. Illus. $2.50). Father Johnson, already noted as a Roman Catholic historian (cf. his Stuffed Saddlebags: the Life of Martin Kundig, Priest [1942] and Centennial Essays for the Milwaukee Archdiocese [1943], as well as his many contributions to learned journals), has written a thorough and painstaking review of the great contribution to public welfare which the Sisters of Charity have made during the century of their successful endeavor in Milwaukee. When John Martin Henni, the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Mil- waukee, came to the city in 1843, he found many problems confronting him in the newly established see, among them that of providing ade- 478 BOOK NOTES [June quate education for Catholic youth. After months of study and casting about for ways and means of improving and promoting the parish schools, he made an appeal (January 1, 1845) to the Mother Superior of the Sisters of Charity (Mother Seton's Daughters) at Emmitsburg, Maryland, an order primarily concerned at that time with teaching. (Father Johnson reviews very briefly its interesting history and its final merging with the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in 1851.) The Venerable Mother Mary Xavier could not see her way clear to sending any Sisters to the western city until the summer of 1846. After a tedious journey of twelve-days duration, by stage, by rail and by boat, under the escort of Father Kundig, Bishop Henni's vicar-general, three Sisters arrived in Milwaukee on August 20. For nearly sixty years they and their successors taught in the parochial and cathedral schools, wisely developing and expanding and extending them in line with the growth of the State and national educational systems. It was not until 1905 that the Sisters relinquished their teaching. But perhaps even more important to the welfare of Milwaukee as a whole was the Sisters' contribution to the care of the sick. Milwaukee has always been a port, and even with quarantine, was subject to periodic epidemics of highly contagious diseases such as smallpox and Asiatic cholera, the germs of which were frequently brought to the city by ships' crews and passengers. Bishop Henni, in his letter to Mother Mary Xavier mentioned also the need for a hospital which could provide better care than that given in the pesthouse and the federal quarantine barracks, and he expressed the hope that it would soon be realized. In 1848, four more Sisters were sent out from the mother house and St. John's Infirmary was opened. For years it was the only hospital in the city, and there the Sisters rendered valuable service to the citizens of Milwaukee, regardless of their color, creed, or race. From this small beginning has developed the great St. Mary's Hospital and its Nursing School. The third need which the good Bishop mentioned in his letter to Mother Mary Xavier in January 1845 was that of a home for the constantly increasing numbers of orphaned children, especially those of immigrant parents who frequently had no relatives on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. But the establishment of St. Rose's Orphanage came about in a much more casual manner than the creation of the parochial schools and the hospitals did. Bishop Henni was in Europe in 1848, 1949] BOOK NOTES 479

and Father McLaughlin, rector of St. Peter's Cathedral, was busy ad- ministering to both his regular congregation and to the immigrants in quarantine in the federal barracks on Jones Island. There, in May 1848, an Irish couple died, leaving their four-year old daughter to the care of Father McLaughlin, who promised them to provide for her. The good priest took her at once to Sister Simeon, one of the original three Sisters of Charity. The Sisters took the child into their own quarters, and thus began the care of orphan children, although it was not until 1850 that St. Rose's was opened and additional Sisters were obtained. More than a quarter of a century later, in 1877, an outgrowth of both the hospital and the orphanage came into being—St. Vincent's Infant Asylum, where tiny babies without homes could be cared for, treated, and reared. St. Vincent's, like St. Mary's and St. Rose's, has grown and expanded in its seven decades of history, until now it not only takes care of infants but of expectant mothers as well. This, in brief, is the outline of Father Johnson's book. He tells the story in detail, carefully sifting the facts from a wealth of legends which have grown up around some of the beginnings. He has placed his footnotes at the end, just before the index. University of Wisconsin GILBERT H. DOANE

Sketches of Iowa and Wisconsin. By JOHN PLUMBE, Jr. Introduction by WILLIAM J. PETERSEN. (The State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City, 1948. Pp. xvii, 103. $4.00). This is an excellent reprint of an old and rare volume. William J. Petersen, superintendent of the Iowa Historical Society, has written an introduction giving the important biographical and bibliographical data about the author and the book. Collectors will of course be much interested in this preprint because the original is quite rare (only nineteen libraries in the United States have copies) and because this is a careful reproduction of the " first good-sized volume on Iowa... to be struck off on a press west of the Mississippi." Students of the history of the westward movement and of the Midwest will welcome it for making easily available these sketches of the Iowa Territory as it appeared to the men who saw it in the 1830's. Throughout the volume Plumbe, who is described by Petersen as a railroad man, photographer, land speculator, and publicist, quoted often extensively from contemporary newspaper descriptions of the territory. He also used substantial excerpts from Lieutenant Albert M. 480 BOOK NOTES [June

Lea's Notes on Wisconsin Territory and a long report made by a Canadian delegation that visited Iowa Territory in 1838. As one would expect, the various witnesses summoned by Plumbe testified to the fertility of the soil (up to a hundred bushels of corn to an acre near Rock Island, wrote Albert M. Lea), the mildness of the climate, the beauty of the landscape, and the great promise of future wealth and ease which lay in store for the wise and industrious settler. Land specu- lators were discouraged from coming. As in so many of the early promotional books, the sturdy farmers, the honest businessmen, and the skillful craftsmen were specifically urged to come to the new territory. Ministers, lawyers, and doctors were less welcome. " A few Preachers of the Gospel would also be accepted," wrote James M. Morgan, " not that there is to my knowledge a very wide field for them to labor in, for that would seem to argue that we are a hopeless set of reprobates, which I am far from believing; on the contrary, I would rather obtrude the opinion, honestly entertained, that morality and religion are widely spread, constantly practiced, and generally observed among our citizens; our real condition is rather this: we are a flock without a shepherd; it is therefore believed, that a few more ministers would add to the appearance at least, if not the merit of things. As for Lawyers, we have already a large supply, and a very interesting variety, too. We are bountifully supplied with Physicians, even to excess." After presenting numerous flattering pictures of the new territory, Plumbe himself concluded that words were inadequate to reveal the " real charms and peculiar attributes " of the Iowa country. " It is beyond the power of language to do her justice—say nothing of sur- passing the truth. Iowa, then, is like a beauteous and fascinating female, whose transcendant attractions must be seen, to be appreciated." University of Wisconsin VERNON CARSTENSEN

Midwest Heritage. By JOHN DRURY. (A. A. Wyn, Inc., New York, 1948. Pp. 176 with 300 engravings. $5.00). If you are ready to take a sightseeing tour through the historic Midwest, here is John Drury at hand to guide you on your way. Mr. Drury you will doubtless recognize as an old acquaintance, the author of Historic Midwest Houses, published a year ago. You may want to embark for your trip at St. Louis on one of the gorgeous white packet boats just leaving for St. Paul. Or if you're a venturesome 1949] BOOK NOTES 481 type and don't mind being jolted and bruised and mud bespattered, perhaps you'll climb aboard a stagecoach at Zanesville, Ohio, and make your way westward along the National Road. Should you be so fortunate as to be standing on the north bank of the Ohio on a certain autumn day in 1816, you may see Tom Lincoln's family arrive in the Midwest, and accompany Tom's son Abe until he bids his tearful neighbors farewell at the Springfield, Illinois, station forty-five years later. Whatever trip you take, you're sure to have a good time and incidentally learn a lot about your country's historic sites. Old engravings—about 300 of them—culled from dozens of contemporary travel books, magazines, histories, advertising displays, and the like, form the basis of this attractive volume. Put together without any serious attempt to be comprehensive, they portray many objects and activities familiar to our grandparents: spinning, churning, labor saving devices, husking bees, camp meetings, vehicles, typical village personages, and historic persons and buildings galore. These views are arranged in sequences and accompanied by the author's running comments and explanations. In this pictorial representation of the Midwest heritage, Wisconsin receives less attention than her sister states to the south. The Missis- sippi tour touches on some of her picturesque old river towns, and a survey of lake cities includes mention of Milwaukee's breweries and cream brick. Wisconsin does come to the forefront, however, in the chapter on " Old French Towns," wherein are pictures of settlements along the Fox-Wisconsin route, of Pierre Paquette and his ox-team at the portage, and the Lost Dauphin. An entire page of lumber scenes, unlabeled, might very well be of Wisconsin origin. The last anecdote in the volume, too, has a Wisconsin connection, although no mention is made of the fact. It is the story of President Hayes's visit in 1878 to a hundred thousand acre wheat farm in the Red River Valley. The farm was the property of W. F. Dalrymple, who became a heavy speculator in railroad lands near Bayfield, on Lake Superior. It is too bad to have to point out deficiencies in this entertaining book, but deficiencies it has. The engravings are clearly reproduced and well arranged on the pages, but the leaves of the book do not turn well, nor do they lie flat when the volume is opened. The book would have far greater usefulness as a reference volume if the pictures carried some indication as to date and source. And finally, although this is fundamentally a book of pictures, the index to the volume 482 BOOK NOTES [June does not include references to the 300 pictures but deals only with the text accompanying them. State Historical Society of Wisconsin ALICE E. SMITH

No Greater Service. The History of the Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Monroe, Michigan 1845-1945. By SISTER M. ROSALITA, I.H.M. (Detroit, 1948. Pp. xx, 863, $15). Achievement of a Century. The Motherhouse and Missions of the Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Monroe, Michigan 1845-1945. Edited by SISTER M. ROSA- LITA, I.H.M. (Marygrove College, Detroit, 1948. Pp. xiii, 299. $15). A New Assisi. The First Hundred Years of the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1849-1949. By SISTER MARY EUNICE HANOUSEK, O.S.F. (Bruce Publishing Company, Mil- waukee, 1948. Pp. xiv, 231. $5.00).

Biographies of institutions like the accounts of the individuals who found and rule them are difficult subjects for the careful historian. But the brave writers, such as the authors of these volumes, who undertake the recording of such accounts render an inestimable service to the institutions themselves, to future generations, and especially to those of the present generation who want to know how such organizations as the Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi, came into being. These three volumes are of unequal interest because the subject matter and the type of narrative differs in each case. Sister Rosalita's history of her Congregation is a masterpiece of thorough research and careful writing. There were many different strands of narrative—some intensely interesting and some important but dull—which had to be woven into her story. She has prefaced her account with a brief survey of Catholic education in the region of Detroit prior to 1845, about which she has written elsewhere. Into that scene came two remarkable religious persons, Sister Theresa Maxis and Father Louis Gillet, who are easily the outstanding personalities of a narrative which touches the lives of thousands of active people. The tragic sequences which separated each of these from their beloved foundation read like chapters from Willa Gather's religious 1949] BOOK NOTES 483 novels and illustrate beautifully the problems involved in the establishment of a new religious community on the frontier. But while these two religious overshadow the other personalities of the volume, they do not lessen the interesting history of those who have followed them and have built up a large religious congregation which operates so many flourishing institutions. Especially interesting to educators is the careful study, mentioned by Cardinal Mooney in his introduction, of the theories of education of Bishop Dupanloup which constitute the essential lines of the educational theory of the Sisters. The second volume of this set gives in a brief chronological and statistical form the accomplishments of the institutions founded and operated by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The story of the first hundred years of the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi near Milwaukee has those same elements of a pioneer religious foundation plus a share of the immigrant saga. The story begins among a religious group in Ettenbeuren, Bavaria, who decided in the fateful year of 1848 to escape the wars and disturbance of Europe and found a Franciscan haven in America. Under the guidance of their pastor, Father Francis Anthony Keppeler, and his assistant, Father Mathias Steiger, these Tertiary Brothers and Sisters of St. Francis came to Wisconsin and, at the suggestion of the Bishop John Martin Henni, laid the foundation of what was to become St. Francis Seminary and the community of the Sisters of St. Francis. There are many re- semblances between the account of this American community and that of the early days of the Mediaeval Franciscans. There were to be serious problems culminating in three major reorganizations before the community took its present form and began to prosper in its many activities. The narrative is simply told and affords an unusual insight into the problems of an immigrant religious foundation. University of Notre Dame (The Rev.) THOMAS T. MCAVOY, C.S.C.

Kaskaskia under the French Regime. By NATALIA MAREE BELTING. Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, Vol. XXIX, no. 3. (Uni- versity of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1948. Pp.140. $2.50). To most Americans the word " Kaskaskia " has appealed because of its alliterative quality and has had some slight connotation in connection with the exploits of George Rogers Clark. Some have read a well- 484 BOOK NOTES [June known novel depicting life in Vincennes. Beyond this bowing acquaintance few have more than the vaguest notion of any of the interesting French villages in the heart of mid-America. Yet they were an integral part of the French colonies in North America, existed for the better part of a century, and have meant much to the history not only of Illinois, but also of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Louisiana, and other states. After reading this new study of Kaskaskia's sixty years of existence, Mr. Average American should feel much better acquainted with our French heritage in the Middle West.. Chapter 2 tells of the beginnings of the hamlet, that is, of the mission at Kaskaskia, 1703-1718; chapter 3 discusses the village; chapter 4 describes the life in the village; and the final chapters deal with " Making a Living" and " Social Life and Customs." As these 77 pages are based on original manuscripts for the most part, they afford an authoritative account of this romantic spot. The rest of the book is made up of an appendix of census and other original data, and a bibliography. " Kaskaskia began as a settlement of traders, priests and Indians," writes Miss Belting. It became a typical French community, with a church, a fort, commerce, and an agricultural foundation. Its archives are still numerous and preserved in reasonable proportions, to enable a scholar to make sound deductions. Of special value are the marriage contracts, which supply significant genealogical and social data. The author has done her work carefully and devotedly. Besides threading a tortuous way through genealogical material, church records, and governmental statistics, she takes time to note the lighter side of Kaskaskia's life: the dances, the quaint Gui Annee of New Year's celebrations, church blessing ceremonies, religious processions, carnivals, St. Nicholas' visits to children, and even such typically Gallic means of celebration as pain beni, crepes, and brandy. A wider knowledge of the French regime in other parts of North America would have enabled the author to perceive a broader influence for Kaskaskia's culture and inhabitants than she has described. Thus she gives quite a little about one interesting family—that of Michael Accault or Aco—but fails to mention that this was the leader of Father Hennepin's exploring party on the Upper Mississippi in 1680. From such names of other Kaskaskians as Bourdon, Rainville, and Turpin, I suspect that several other well-known historical characters are involved. A member of the Turpin family of Minnesota wintered 1949] BOOK NOTES 485 at Fort L'Huillier on the present Minnesota River in 1700 and explored that river to its source. A later Turpin settled in St. Paul just as it was being founded. His descendants still reside there and have family papers reaching back to St. Genevieve, to which so many Kaskaskians migrated at the time of the Conquest. It would be odd indeed if there were not an even closer tie between Kaskaskia and Prairie du Chien, by way of which so many voyageurs reached St. Paul. Descen- dants of the Rainvilles, or Renvilles, still live in Minnesota and adjoin- ing states. Families with the surname Groseilliers still reside in Minne- sota, among whom is a tradition that Medard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers, ended his career in the Illinois country. It is distinctly possible that the author ought to learn more about Kaskaskia as the hive from which voyageurs swarmed to trade for furs in distant parts and eventually settle there. Minnesota Historical Society GRACE LEE NUTE

Why Wisconsin. By FRANCIS FAVILL BOWMAN. 101 Ely Place, Madi- son, Wisconsin. (1948. Pp. 210, vi. $3.00). In this volume Mr. Bowman presents a brief survey of the economic history of Wisconsin from preglacial days to the building of submarines for World War II. The book is divided into three introductory sections and two parts. The introductory sections, entitled " Today," " Prelude in Ice," and " Interlude," survey the effects of the Great Ice Age and chronicle the important discoveries, explorations, trading and retreat of the French, and the westward movement of the English. Entitled "In Which the Land Is Transformed," the first part consisting of ten chapters reviews the history of lead mining, wheat farming, flour milling, lumbering, the building of the early railroads, and the early cattle industry in Wisconsin. The final part, " In Which Industry Is Built," comprising eight chapters, treats of the brewing industry, meat packing, canning, iron and steel shipbuilding, and dairy manufactures. With less than one-third of the land cultiv- able and wholly lacking in such fundamental industrial materials as coal, petroleum, salt, sulphur, and the refined base metals, the State, through the ingenuity and efforts of her people of many nationalities and through its strategic location at the headwaters of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi waterways, has ranked for many years sixth in agriculture and tenth in industrial production. 486 BOOK NOTES [June

The book possesses a narrative quality which should appeal to the general reader but it is not sufficiently complete for the specialist. The material is organized in topical fashion. At the end of each chapter there is a short bibliography. There are no footnotes. Occasionally there are too many names and dates and frequently too few. Episode follows episode regardless of relationship or interpretation. Chapters V and VI which deal with lumbering are to this reviewer the best in the book. Superficial research and careless writing are discernible. There are several misspelled words (pp. 22, 25, 53, 56, 132). Not a few errors of fact mar the work. Byron Kilbourn won a land grant from Congress to aid the Milwaukee and Rock River Canal Company in 1838, not in 1830 (p. 54). The canal company was incorporated in 1838. The name of the Milwaukee and Waukesha Railroad Company was changed to the Milwaukee and Mississippi in 1850, not in 1848 (p. 54). Construction of the railroad began in 1850, not in 1849 (p. 54). The land grant scandal of 1856 involved Kilbourn's La Crosse and Milwaukee railroad project, not the Milwaukee and Mississippi (p. 55). The latter company opposed the grant. Through its acquisition of control of the Western Union Railroad Company in 1869, the Milwaukee and St. Paul obtained direct communication with Savanna, not Dunlekh (East Dubuque), Illinois (p. 57). The Milwaukee railroad has never had a line to East Dubuque. The "Morell Act" should read Morrill Act (p. 80). Despite such short- comings, however, the book is notably informing and deserves to be widely read. Much basic research remains to be done in the history of individual industries before a comprehensive industrial history of Wisconsin can be written. Marquette University HERBERT W. RICE

Milwaukee, the History of a City. By BAYRD STILL. (State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, 1948. Pp. xvi, 638. $6.00). In 1948 Wisconsin celebrated one hundred years of statehood. This volume dealing with the fascinating story of the rise of Milwaukee is a worthy contribution to the centenary. The history of any city is intricate and diversified, and the history of Milwaukee is no exception for in it are reflected all the forces and factors which make modern America. In undertaking his task, Dr. Still, like all historians dealing with the urban scene, was forced, therefore, to examine the varied sources of the culture he wished to 1949] BOOK NOTES 487 describe. He had to range from individual endeavors to social undertakings, from politics to religion, from economics to government. This, on the whole, he has done with wisdom and thoroughness. The book is divided into four parts: "The Village," "The Ex- panding City: 1846-1870," "The Emerging Metropolis: 1870-1910," and " The Mature Metropolis: 1910-1940." In each section are discussed population elements, the town economy, the role of politics and government, and the refinements of living as they developed. Within these chronological boundaries Milwaukee passes from trading post and frontier town to thirteenth largest city of present-day America. Like her sister cities of the Middle West, Milwaukee's chief source of well-being in the days of her youth was in trade. From trading post and frontier settlement to commercial town and then to industrial center the city followed much the same pattern as did other cities such as St. Louis and Chicago. Her economic fortune, too, rested upon the grains brought from the surrounding countryside, some of which shortly was exported in the form of flour; upon iron foundries built as early as the 1840's; by the traffic in pork and beef; and by the trade in lumber. Of all the economic undertakings which have " made Milwaukee famous," brewing is the best known. To this enduringly successful enterprise the German members of the community made special contributions. As early as 1850, 64 percent of the population came from across the Atlantic and was chiefly German. Later Poles, Bohemians, Italians, Greeks, and Hungarians could be counted among the foreign born. In the early days, New Englanders and New Yorkers wielded political and economic leadership, but eventually their hold was weakened by the pressure of these newcomers from Europe. From 1870 to 1910 the city experienced a five-fold increase in population at a time when Wisconsin was doubling its number. By 1910 the Europeanism of Milwaukee was " diluted," although the German influence was, and still is, in many ways an important and ever present force. In spite of the northerly movement of Negroes after World War I, Milwaukee in 1940 had fewer non-whites than twenty-two of the twenty-five largest cities of the country. An intense rivalry between Milwaukee and Chicago persisted until late in the nineteenth century when the former gave up a useless 488 BOOK NOTES [June struggle to become the core city of the Middle West. Nearness to " the Windy City," however, made possible, and perhaps inevitable, economic alliances and cultural exchanges in such things as lectures, concerts, and theaters. Migrants from Chicago included important labor leaders such as Paul Grottkau, and the influence of late nineteenth century labor in politics was not unlike that in Chicago. Dr. Still has described in great detail the evolution of the city about which he has written. At times, the main lines are so inter- woven with the less important that the reader fails to capture the dynamics of the urban movement as typified by this Wisconsin city. The book, however, represents careful and extensive research in many sources. An appendix and a bibliographical note add to its value, which, in a very real sense, is considerable not only to those interested in urban history but to students of American history in general. The University of Chicago BESSIE LOUISE PIERCE

The Farmer in the Second World War. By WALTER W. WILCOX. (Iowa State College Press, Ames, Iowa, 1947. Pp. xii, 410. $4.00). Dr. Wilcox tells us in his preface that this is a " record of the more significant information relating to farmers and agriculture during the second World War," apparently intending to forestall any critics who might say that the product of his pen is not History. This was a wise precaution, for excellent as the volume is as a record of events, and I doubt not that future historians will rely heavily upon it, it is not History in the full meaning of that term. When he adds, " records and interpretations of government actions and farmers' response to these programs form a large part of the record," he is, like a true son of the West, guilty of understatement. That is the heart if not the whole of the book. It is a play by play account of the measures by which the government tried to direct and control agricultural production in the national interest and of what happened as a result of those efforts. To summarize, the author first describes the agricultural plant and system of the United States on the eve of the War, with particular emphasis upon the governmental agencies and policies which had been developed up to that time. The emphasis in the 1930's, however, had been upon conservation and the prevention of surpluses. This had produced an agricultural plant better prepared to stand the shocks of war but had not provided a backlog of experience in ways and means of producing more, especially more of those particular items needed most. This problem was greatly accentuated by the number of different 1949] BOOK NOTES 489 departments and boards operating in the field, dividing responsibility and authority if not actually working at cross purposes. What was done—the authorities created, the goals set up, the problems that were faced, the measures adopted and applied, the results achieved—is then chronicled, item by item, commodity by commodity. Huge successes are noted in overall production, along with near catastrophic mistakes which resulted in such events as the glut of the hog market in the winter of 1943-44, the potato surplus which began in 1943, and the 1946 food shortage which ranks as the " greatest famine in the civilized world's history." The record is fortified at every step with statistical tables and clarifying graphs. The job is so thoroughly done that it would seem the author has admirably achieved his purpose of setting buoys to mark the economic shoals to be avoided by future administrators who must guide and control our agriculture in peace or in war. The charting of the political and sociological dangers has been left to other hands. In its approach this chronicle of events is marked by the unimpas- sioned impersonality of a textbook in the theory of economics. The farmer, honored in the title, has no more flesh and blood than a digit in a statistic. The government is the OPA, the USD A, the WFA, etc., never a group of political personages swayed by personal motives and pushed around by opposing pressure groups. Errors in planning or in judgment are made amply apparent by the clear recording of the events, but if the blame for those errors is placed at all it is done with so light a hand that the culprits would find it difficult indeed to take any um- brage. These are excellent qualities in a textbook and should add greatly to its usefulness. Furthermore, such a textbook will be needed, for, as the author opines, governmental control of agriculture appears likely to be with us for many years to come. State Historical Society of Wisconsin BENTON H. WlLCOX

Peter Norbeck: Prairie Statesman. By GILBERT C. FlTE. (The Univer- sity of Missouri Studies, Vol. XXII, no. 2, Columbia, 1948. Pp. 217. $2.50). After a short, unhappy career as a farmer Peter Norbeck, who was born in Dakota Territory in 1870, turned to well-drilling. Because he realized that whatever was good for the farmers of South Dakota was good for the well-driller, he followed them into the Progressive movement. In this movement his political advancement was rapid and " Old 490 BOOK NOTES [June

Pete," as the farmers called him, was elected to the State senate in 1908. Norbeck supported Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin in 1911 for the Republican presidential nomination but by February 1912 he had turned to Theodore Roosevelt whom he believed had the better chance of election. Three terms in the State senate and one term as lieutenant governor made Norbeck the most likely candidate of the Progressive Republi- cans for the gubernatorial race of 1916. During this period he not only had learned the necessary political techniques but he also had laid the foundation of a powerful political organization. This last was possible because Norbeck's well-drilling operations took him into almost every community in the State, because he was a pioneer of Scandinavian descent and, finally, because he remained " just plain Pete" to the farmers of South Dakota. By this time Norbeck's political, social, and economic philosophy was well developed. He believed that the government should help to alleviate economic distress in the United States, especially agrarian distress. All this insured Norbeck's election in a state predominantly Progressive. The program of his administration was the progressive platform with a state rural credit system as its leading plank. The governor's political position was seriously chal- lenged during 1917 by the Non-Partisan League of North Dakota. He weathered the storm, however, by pointing to his record and by supporting a program of government ownership and operation of such facilities which the state could not regulate in the interest of the farmers. At the end of his second term as governor, Norbeck was promoted to the United States Senate. Here he followed a policy of " moderate progressivism." The agricultural distress of 1921 which put his business affairs in stringent circumstances soon forced him to move toward the left. The Senator now maintained that the government must be em- powered to keep " a price level that would insure the farmers a fair reward for their labor." Norbeck joined the Farm Bloc and supported its demand for the enactment of the McNary-Haugen Bill. When Coolidge vetoed this bill in 1927, Norbeck invited the President to visit the Black Hills to see the distress of the farmers. Unfortunately for the Senator's strategy the conservative Republicans of the Northwest got to Coolidge first and convinced him that his veto was popular there. Norbeck supported Lowden of Illinois for the Republican nomination in 1928 because he felt that Herbert Hoover's rugged individual- 1949] BOOK NOTES 491 ism would not permit any real governmental aid for the farmer. He had no faith in the efficacy of the Agricultural Marketing Act against which he voted. As the farmers' distress deepened following the crash of 1929, Norbeck turned from the McNary-Haugen policy to a domestic allotment plan for farmer relief. This plan failed to get the support of the Republican Party but it was, nevertheless, significant because it became the basis of the New Deal agricultural relief program. Norbeck's political intransigence brought the conservative Republi- cans out against him in 1932 and, although Franklin D. Roosevelt carried South Dakota by a comfortable majority, the Senator was re- elected for the second time. Back in the Senate, Norbeck opposed the speed of the New Deal's attack upon the depression. In time, however, he began to feel that President Roosevelt was turning out better than he had hoped and, therefore, he supported the major measures of the New Deal except the N.RA. which, due to its monopolistic tendencies, Norbeck believed was against the interests of the farmer. The Senator finally went all the way when he came out for the reelection of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936. Lake Forest College RICHARD W. HANTKE

Town 25 North: A Short History of Alb an Township and Village of Rosholt, Portage County, Wisconsin. By MALCOLM ROSHOLT. (Published by the author at Rosholt, 1948. Pp. x, 283. $5.00). Here is a work for which a need has long existed. The rising devotion to local history has so far largely resulted in making plain how difficult it is to find a satisfactory analysis and an attractive literary form for such materials. To study a town, a county, a village, or a city means the abandonment of the convenient and dramatic story of national politics which has been developed by historians over a period of centuries as the literary backbone and the interpretive touchstone of history. Jn fact, the modern study of history has been conducted almost entirely during the age of nationalism, and has been almost absorbed by national spirit. The unsatisfactory character of much writing on local history has resulted from the failure of the nationalist interpretation of history to cover the rich and earthy data which such alert historians as Mr. Rosholt uncover literally in their own backyards. Town 25 North is authentic history. As such it will take an important place in the development of a social history that actually covers the life of a locality. One completes a reading of the book with a 492 BOOK NOTES [June sense of realization, of having re-thought the thoughts of those who gave direction to the development of this township. But it is not easy to say just why this is so. Mr. Rosholt's pace is easy; he doesn't hesitate to throw in stories and incidents of a homely nature; he comes to leisurely halts for the recitation of lists of names; and there is no trace of intellectual self-consciousness—no theories. The author's own conclusion helps to explain the riddle: " It is well that the children of these pioneers of Indian land remember their heritage Let them live up to this tradition and take pride in the settlement of Alban." What he has done is to establish one focal point of the American Dream. Here is the faith and the devotion that has made our country great. It doesn't seem to matter that no great creative contribution to our culture can be ascribed to the Town of Alban; had some great figure of leadership sprung up there, the people's loyalty to their ideals would still hold the center of the stage. The author has thus fully realized the possibilities of his material in the development of a great and significant theme, and any criticisms cannot reduce the value of his accomplishment. Farming is one phase of the Town's development—perhaps the only one—which could use- fully be treated further. That subject almost certainly contains material which would add force to Mr. Rosholt's story, and would contribute to the story of the agricultural occupation of the timbered north, a story which is the increasing concern of many people in the State at present. It is to be hoped that we can have this subject treated as an addendum to Town 25 North. Mr. Rosholt has continued the tradition of the older local histories by including lists of names of the people who participated in important community enterprises. If this seems to purists to be a rather direct appeal for local support, let me record here that I got great pleasure from discovering old acquaintances in some of those lists. If the inno- cent pleasures of recognition will help to support so noble an enterprise, so much the better. State Historical Society of Wisconsin W. H. GLOVER

Champlain. The Life of Fortitude. By MORRIS G. BISHOP. (A. A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1948. Pp. vii, 364. Illustrations and maps. $4.00). A quarter-century or so ago the elder statesmen of the American Historical Association were diligently beating their breasts over the 1949] BOOK NOTES 493

fact that despite the ever-growing flood of Doctors of Philosophy in history the American public was sublimely indifferent to the out- pourings of the university output of historians. The lamentation of the elder statesmen was not wholly fruitless. Either because of it or, more probably, coincident with it, many historical writers once more endeavored to infuse their narratives with a certain degree of literary quality, and correspondingly the American public began anew to read the output of the historians. Although Canadian writers have paid much attention to Champlain, there was room for the down-to-date study of the Father of Canada which Mr. Bishop has supplied. Now chairman of the Department of Romance Literature at Cornell University, he has a varied background, including military service in World War I, service with the Office of War Information in World War II, and practical work in advertising. As author, he has published books of poetry, biography, humor, and criticism, and has contributed articles to the New Yorker. Mr. Bishop's Champlain illustrates the current trend toward identi- fying historical writing with literature. The book contains no preface, almost no footnotes, and only a one-page statement of combined bibliography and acknowledgments. Yet it is clear that the author is no stranger to historical scholarship, and he has based his narrative, as all biographers of Champlain must, upon the standard source material and upon the interpretations of the better modern writers. With refreshing modesty he joins with Pascal in acknowledging his indebtedness to his predecessors: " Some authors, speaking of their works, say: 'My book, my commentary, my history, etc' They would do better to say: f Our book, our commentary, our history.'" The Champlain contains about everything most readers will ever care to know about the Founder of New France. It will be a worthy and entertaining addition to the bookshelf of anyone who cares to read about the American past. Not to conclude without finding at least one fault in the narratives the reviewer might wish that Mr. Bishop had utilized his constructive imagination a bit more conservatively. Use of the imagination is essential to all historical reconstruction, but there is a clear distinction between historical fiction and documented history. The invention of conversations or of scenes and actions for which no evidence exists is the perquisite of the fictionist rather than the sober historian. Nor 494 BOOK NOTES [June does the author's defense (p. 364) of his practice in this respect convince the reviewer. Detroit MILO M. QUAIFE

Summertime is vacation time when motor trips are in the planning. If you are unacquainted with the Mississippi Valley, Alvin M. Peter- son's Palisades and Coulees (77 pp.) is a helpful book in preparing for a jaunt up and down the Mississippi from Prairie du Chien to Red Wing. Not only does it contain exact information on the highways to follow for a given tour, but there are descriptions of the villages and cities, the parks, coulees, rivers, and lakes en route. Persons associated with the section such as Nicholas Perrot, Chief Black Hawk, Nathan Myrick, Hamlin Garland, and markers recalling historical events, birds and wildlife are all discussed in the book and make meandering through the coulees and over the highway stretches a pleasant experience. This portion of the Mississippi region has been compared with the Palisades of the Hudson and the Upper Rhine region according to the author. He speaks almost extravagantly of the scenery, but the illustrations are adequate proof. Address: Alvin M. Peterson, Onalaska. Price $1.50 (cloth), $1.00 (paper).

Only Gordon MacQuarrie, Milwaukee newspaperman, could have written Ole Evinrude and the Old Fellows (32 pp.)- Of how Andrew destroyed son Ole's boat which he was building out of scraps of lumber, and then discovered he was building a second one. Only sixteen, but " He sailed his boat instinctively. He had built it instinctively. It was a natural process. The Viking yeast was working Andrew Evinrude knew now that he had lost. He knew that Ole was not for the land The old Norse gods were moving in on Ole. They were elbowing Andrew out of their way. The Old Fellows who whisper in the rigging of tall ships took charge of Ole They said, ' There are bigger boats to sail Ole '" And these Old Fellows were always whispering. Of Ole they made a prosperous man. Read MacQuarrie, it's "his" story all right! Address: Evinrude Motors Company, 4143 North 27th Street, Milwaukee, 9. Copies gratis.

A delightful narrative, And There Was Light (16 pp.), has been written by Susan Davis in memory of her brother, Morton Eugene Davis. In her introduction she says: " It is the story of the evolution and 1949] BOOK NOTES 495 use of light on a cross-roads Belgian farm in the town of Green Bay, Brown County." In 1861 Prosper and Eugenie Servais began life on a little clearing, making progress step by step. When they left this earth, they were living in a fine stone house lighted with kerosene lamp. Then the farm went to Joseph and his wife Cedonie, and they in turn left it to their four children. It was a great day when the grandsons of the early settlers equipped their farm with electricity, even to wiring the hay mow. Said John Servais, almost in a whisper: "Now we'll have light for the chores tonight, and tomorrow the girls can do the washing easy! " (Copies are not available; may be read at the Historical Library.)

One Hundred Years of Deaconess Service (124 pp.), has been received from the author, the Rev. Herman L. Fritschel, Milwaukee. The story is of the first Deaconess Association of the Lutheran Church in America—of which there are ten. The first Institution of Protestant Deaconesses was organized in 1849, and this small volume covers the highlights of its 100-year history. The subject is developed chronologi- cally Part 1, Period of Pioneers, 1849-94; Part 2, Years of Expansion and Organization of the Lutheran Deaconess Motherhouse at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1894 to 1927; Part 3, In Church Affiliation, 1927 to 1948. Well illustrated, the book is an excellent addition to denominational church history in its broader aspect. Address: the Rev. Herman L. Fritschel, 6928 West Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, 13. Price $2.00.

A Gleam Across the Wave is the biography of Martin N. Knudsen, a lighthouse keeper on Lake Michigan (64 pp.)- This booklet tells of the life on some of the islands off the tip of Door County. It relates to the duties of the lighthouse keeper, to early shipping, and to some of the hardships experienced as keeper of several of the Lake Michigan lighthouses.

The boys and girls in Trempealeau County, with the help of their teachers and early settlers, have compiled the history of their school districts (121 pp.). The text was mimeographed in the office of Dorris L. Sander, Whitehall, county superintendent of schools. It is evident that both the teachers and pupils devoted long hours to compile this readable history, but it is a pleasant way to learn the 496 BOOK NOTES [June growth of one's community. Our good wishes to all who cooperated in the project.

La Crosse Labor Leader, A.F.L., Centennial Issue, 1948 (100 pp.) was edited by D. R. Wartinbee. Among the articles are " La Crosse: Our Home," by Everet Woehrmann; "A Special Labor Day Message," by William Green; " The ' Wisconsin Idea' in Workers' Education," by Ernest Schwartztrauber; and several discussions under the section, " Our Recreation Program."

The American Swedish Foundation Yearbook—1948 (125 pp.)> " A Pioneer Issue," is brimming over with entertaining sketches of persons and places in addition to official reports. Of especial interest to Wisconsin readers is " Gustaf Unonius and His Recollections," by Axel J. Uppvall. The " arm-chair traveler " who wishes to go beyond the borders of the State might find something stimulating in "Swedish Pioneers and the Discovery of Gold in Alaska," by Leland H. Carlson. Address: American Swedish Historical Museum, 19 Street and Pattison Avenue, Philadelphia, 45. Price $1.00.

So adequately illustrated is The Story of the Development of the Burlington Lines, 1849—1949 (64 pp.) that when the reader reaches the doublespread map, showing the territory it covers, he will be ready to dust off the luggage and streamline out to the Pacific. The story of progress was written by R. C. Overton, in which the rise from clerk to railroad president—Charles E. Perkins—is a part. Address: Bur- lington Lines, 547 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, 6. Copies gratis.

Seventy-Five Happy Years (31 pp.) refers to the Kellogg Citizens National Bank of Green Bay and its Diamond Jubilee. It was founded on January 1, 1874, and its background, services, and expansion are narrated in a lively account by Harold T. I. Shannon, in a neatly executed publication. Based on wide research, the history will be of interest both in and out of Green Bay. Of the bank's founder Shannon writes, " Rufus B. Kellogg has been called c the banker who never took a loss.'" The president's measure of a man was this, " the character of the individual is the greatest security—his reputation for keeping his promises come Hell or high water—and the evidence of having accumulated something substantial by his own effort, his own hands 1949] BOOK NOTES 497 or his own brains." Some eight pages contain information and pictures of the bank's present personnel. Address: Kellogg-Citizens Bank, Green Bay. Copies gratis.

The contents of the 1848-1948, A History of the Wisconsin Paper Industry (76 pp.) is divided into five sections: (1) history of paper manufacturing and converting in Wisconsin, (2) history of Wisconsin firms that supply the paper industry, (3) Wisconsin institutions whose programs serve the paper industry, (4) a statistical summary of today's Wisconsin paper industry, and (5) condensed directory of information about Wisconsin paper mills. The illustrations tell a tale of progress, especially those in which the great plants are shown in air- views; many of the executives whose foresight brought about the development of the paper industry in Wisconsin are also pictured. Address: Howard Publishing Company, 111 West Washington Street, Chicago, 2. Price $2.00.

The following church publications, marking the anniversary dates of the founding of the churches, have come to the attention of the Society: Berlin, Historical Souvenir Folder of Zion Evangelical United Brethren Church [1949] (8pp.). Green Bay, Fortieth Anniversary, 1908-1948, Evangelical Lutheran Grace Church (20 pp.).

Please mail us a postcard if you wish a copy of the index for Volume 31 of the WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY (Septem- ber 1947-June 1948)—now in preparation. No charge for copies. The Society and the State I. THE SOCIETY

NEW MEMBERS*

|URING the three months ending March 10, the continuing membership drive has brought the Society 7 life members (of which 3 changed over from annual membership), and 154 new annual members. In the same period, 19 members were lost by death (and 121 were dropped by request or for non-payment of dues and 4 members, previously dropped, were reinstated). The total membership for March 10 was 3,439. This total includes 144 exchanges, 43 local societies, and 3,252 members. The STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN is still the second largest historical society in the country. The new members are Harvey R. Abraham, Oshkosh; Allen Abrams, Rothschild; John R. Adams, Madison; Maurice C. Adams, Janesville; Merlin Ames, Hudson; Mrs. Edna S. Andacht, Pewaukee; Dr. R. G. Arveson, Frederic; R. D. Banks, Superior; John P. Barr, Reedsburg; James A. Beck, Milwaukee; Arthur Becker, Slinger; Leo E. Black, Wau- sau; Mrs. Mary Bleecker, Milwaukee; Mrs. Fred G. Bosshard, Racine; Lawrence H. Bowar, Cross Plains; Ruth Brady, Bancroft; Robert H. Brigham, Madison; Mrs. Hazel Brittan, Beloit; Gordon A. Bubolz, Appleton; Arthur Buch, Cedarburg; Thomas Burns, Madison; Catherine K. Campbell, Madison; Dayton Canaday, Litchfield, Illinois; Mary J. Carrigan, Milwaukee; Mrs. George Cerny, West Bend; Samuel S. Cohen, Milwaukee; Cohodas Brothers Company,* Green Bay; Harold E. Da- mon, Wausau; Harry E. Dankoler, Sturgeon Bay; Charles L. Davlin, Washington, D.C.; Dayton Public Library, Dayton, Ohio; Walter Dick, Waukesha; Mrs. E. G. Doudna, Madison; Mrs. Arthur M. Drake, Mil- ton; Edwin J. Duszynski, Milwaukee; Russell J. Dymond, Madison; Hermann Eisner, Cross Plains; William Elliott, Waukesha; Mrs. Gretchen Erdmann, Milwaukee; Fond du Lac Association of Commerce, Fond du Lac; Cad. A. Foster, Oconomowoc; Katherine French, Glen- wood, Iowa; Michael L. Gehl, West Bend; Mrs. C. H. Gephart, DeLand, Florida; Mrs. George E. Gilday, Racine; Girls* Trade and Technical School, Milwaukee; H. S. Greene, Milwaukee; Kenneth Greenquist, Racine; James Hain, Edgerton; William Harnack, Milwaukee; Vir- ginia B. Hartridge, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Mrs. E. J. Harvey, Deer- field; Paul E. Hassett, Menomonie; Marie A. Hirsch, Oshkosh; Paul E. Holden, Superior; Mrs. George R. Holdhusen, Madison; Rosemary Hopkins, Madison; F. Hurlbut Company,* Green Bay; D. A. Ivins, Jr.,

* An asterisk after a person's name indicates joint membership with a local society and the STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 498 THE SOCIETY 499

Milwaukee; Elizabeth E. Ivins, Milwaukee; Mrs. R. H. Jackson, Madison; Elsa L. Jaeck, Milwaukee; Frank M. Johnson, Madison; Mrs. H. Stanley Johnson, Madison; Joint University Libraries, Nashville, Tennessee; William F. Kachel, Milwaukee; Jessie Kendall, Merrill; Camilla C. Kirkpatrick, Richland Center; Lenore Krause, Madison; Carl G. Krue- ger, Asheville, North Carolina; Lillian Krueger, Madison; W. F. Kur- fess, Milwaukee; J. K. Kyle, Madison; Mrs. Louella Lacey, South Wayne; Melvin R. Laird, Marshfield; Edwin Larkin, Eau Claire; Orrin H. Larrabee, Chippewa Falls; Alfred A. Laun, Kiel (Life); John I. Laun, Kiel (Life); Mrs. Glenn O. Laurgaard, Sacramento, California; Mrs. Frederick Leach, Madison; William H. Leidersdorf, Milwaukee; W. J. Leonard, Pewaukee; Ivan Light, St. Louis, Missouri; Omer L. Loop, Superior; J. A. B. Lovett, Milwaukee; Frank Mclntyre, Schofield; Charles Mathys,* Green Bay; Dorothy Merriman,# Beloit; Mrs. Ineva R. Meyer, Madison (Life); Minnie Meyer, Sauk City (Life); Rolf Meyer, Sauk City; Henry A. Nelson, Racine; Harold R. Noer, Madison; Arthur C. Ochsner, Baraboo; Byron C. Ostby, Superior; Ambrose Owen, Neenah; Arthur L. Padrutt, Chippewa Falls; Mrs. Benson H. Paul, Madison; Raymond A. Peabody, Milltown; Mrs. Louis L. Peeke, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York; Mrs. H. L. Pendleton, Wyalusing; Mrs. H. G. Perschbacher, West Bend; Arthur W. Petschel, Milwaukee; Alice E. Phillips, Madison; Herbert Poetzsch, Milwaukee; Dr. L. C. Pomainville, Wisconsin Rapids; P. A. Pratt, Milwaukee; John L. Pritchard, Eau Claire; Captain J. A. Prudell, Wood; E. C. Pynn, Mil- waukee; Holger B. Rasmusen, Spooner; C. Reiss Coal Company,*1 Sheboygan; Carl B. Rix, Milwaukee; Hugh I. Robinson, Lake Geneva; John D. Rogers, Milwaukee; Mrs. John D. Rogers, Milwaukee; Mrs. Nellie Rood, Chicago, Illinois; George Roseman, Beloit; Malcolm Rosholt, Rosholt; Mary Sheridan Rubin, Madison; William D. Ryan, Madison; Mrs. William B. Sarles, Madison; Harry W. Schilling, Ona- laska; Mrs. Anthony J. Scholter, Milwaukee; James C. Severance, Madison; J. Stanley Shanks, Merrimac; Nean Shanks, Merrimac; Father Joseph C. Short, Maplewood; Clayton B. Sime, Ettrick; Irene Smith, West Allis; South Division High School, Milwaukee; Jack A. Staats, Milwaukee; Julius P. Stangel, Kewaunee; Olga M. Steig, Arlington, Virginia; Bernice Steiner, Lomira; James R. Stone, Baraboo; Stevens S. Stotzer, Milwaukee; Joseph Stransky, Shorewood; Paul Strong, Waukesha; Margaret Suttie, Ettrick; Marie Swallow, Stevens Point; Mrs. A. G. Teckemeyer, Geneva, Illinois; Lloyd Thompson, Rothschild; Robert A. Tillman, Milwaukee; Beth Toepfer, Madison; Underwood School, Wauwatosa; Dorothy Walker, Portage; Mrs. C. C. Wall,* Green Bay; Mrs. Clarissa M. Wamser, Milwaukee; John Weaver, Wausau; Kenneth Weiss, West Bend; Glenda Wendt, Pine River; Ber- nice C, Werner, Chicago, Illinois; Lloyd Whydetski, Menomonie; Mrs. Ella B. Wilson, Madison; Paper Converting Machine Company,* Green Bay; Mrs. Max Van Hecke, Merrill; Mrs. Bertha Ziegenhagen, Pine River. 500 THE SOCIETY AND THE STATE [June

Mabel L. Klebenow, Wilfred Parker, and Mrs. Mary T. Ryan, who had been annual members, have become life members of the STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY. NECROLOGY The following members of the Society have died recently: Knute Anderson, Eau Claire, October 22, 1948; Aaron M. Bray ton, Whittier, California, January 20, 1949; Dr. John K. Chorlog, Madison, December 14, 1948; Edward C. Dodge, Lake Mills, January 17, 1949; Mrs. Gretchen Erdmann, Milwaukee, December 31, 1948; Einer R. Fischer, Racine, February 16, 1948; Erwin W. Fisher, Mondovi, Feb- ruary 16, 1948; Albert H. Griffith, Oshkosh, October 16, 1948; Senator Edward F. Hilker, Racine, March 4, 1949; Mrs. G. A. Kuechenmeister, West Bend, January 27, 1949; Henry Noll, Madison, December 18, 1948; Jerome R. North, Green Bay, January 4, 1948; S. Gwyn Scanlan, Madison, February 12, 1949; J. M. Schilder, Sheboygan, July 1, 1948; Mrs. Amy H. Smith, Madison, February 11, 1949; Ernest T. Straubel, Green Bay, February 28, 1948; John Wills Taylor, Waukesha, Janu- ary 14, 1949; (two members' deaths from earlier years were reported to the Society recently).

JUNIOR HISTORIANS CHAPTERS In this quarter, December 11, 1948, through March 10, 1949, 159 chapters have been formed in 52 counties, with a membership of 2,580. There have been 1,210 additional memberships received in chapters already reported. The total membership since September 10, 1948, is 13,531 in 685 chapters in 67 counties. The list of new chapters formed in the last quarter follows: Adams County—Grade School, Grades 7-8 (Friendship), 23; State Graded School, Grades 7-8 (Grand Marsh), 18. Ashland County—Bay View School (La Pointe), 12. Barron County—Public School, Grade 4 (Chetek), 28. Bay field County—State Graded School (Iron River), 28. Brown County—East High School, Grades 11-12 (Green Bay), 24; Neighborhood Historians—home (Green Bay), 15; Lincoln School, Grade 5 (Green Bay), 23; Norwood School (Green Bay), 31. Buffalo County—State Graded School, Grades 5-6-7-8 (Nelson), 20. Burnett County—Roosevelt Consolidated School, Grades 5-6-7, Route 1 (Barronett), 5. Calumet County—Henry Clay School, Route 1 (Menasha), 5. Clark County—Clark School, Grades 7-8, Route 2 (Withee), 8. Columbia County—Prairie School (Cambria), 10; Nelson School (Columbus), 10; West Columbus School, Grades 4-5-6 (Columbus), 5; Oak Hill School (Portage), 8; Pershing School (Poynette), 8; Stearns School, Route 3 (Wisconsin Dells), 7. 1949] THE SOCIETY 501

Crawford County—Public School (Prairie du Chien), 37. Dane County—Bowers School (Belleville), 7; St. Martin School, Route 1 (Cross Plains), 4; St. Michael School (Dane), 4; St. Raphael's School (Madison), 22; West Junior High School (Madison), 11; Graded School, Grade 8 (Middleton), 13; Britts Valley School, Route 2 (Mt. Horeb), 10; Lukken School (Mt. Horeb), 5; Wisconsin School for Girls (Oregon), 38; Sacred Hearts School (Sun Prairie), 10; St. Joseph's School, Route 2 (Sun Prairie), 26. Door County—Lincoln Graded School (Forestville), 15. Douglas County—Graded School, Grade 5 (Brule), 15; State Graded School (LakeNebagamon), 13. Dunn County—Clover Valley School, Route 2 (Wheeler), 12; State Graded School (Wheeler), 20. Eau Claire County—Elbow School, Route 1 (Eau Claire), 10; Oak Grove School, Route 3 (Eleva), 11. Fond du Lac County—Village School (Eldorado), 8; St. Mary's Springs Academy (Fond du Lac), 95. Grant County—Hazelton School (Bagley), 6; Homer School (Bos- cobel), 14; Elwell School (Cassville), 8; Georgetown School (Cuba City), 10; Sand Ridge School, Route 3 (Dubuque, Iowa), 6; Milltown School (Hazel Green), 6; Boice Creek School (Lancaster), 8; Five Points School (Lancaster), 8. Green County—East Dayton School (Belleville), 13. Iowa County—Adamsville School (Barneveld), 16; Mount Hope School (Dodgeville), 4; Public School, Grade 7 (Dodgeville), 31; Dry Bone School, Route 2 (Highland), 4; New Providence School (Livingston), 4; Broad View School, Route 2 (Mineral Point), 8; Strawberry School (Muscoda), 4; Ruggles School, Route 1 (Ridge- way)^. Jackson County—Kenyon School, Route 1 (Black River Falls), 3; York School (Hixton), 13. Juneau County—Darrow School, Route 2 (Mauston), 11. Kenosha County—St. George School (Kenosha), 36. Kewaunee County—Footbridge School (Kewaunee), 15; Krok School, Route 2 (Kewaunee), 17. La Crosse County—State Graded School (Rockland), 20; Lower Big Creek 4-H Club (West Salem), 10. Lafayette County—Seymour Central School (Shullsburg), 21. Langlade County—Public School (Antigo), 18; Public School, Grade 5 (Antigo), 24. Lincoln County—County Normal School (Merrill), 21; County Normal School (Merrill), 10. Manitowoc County—Pleasant Hill School, Route 1 (Cleveland), 12; Rockwood School, Route 5 (Manitowoc), 12; Tip Top 4-H Club (Reedsville),4. Mcwinette County—County Normal School (Marinette), 19. Matrquette County—High School (Endeavor), 20; State Graded 502 THE SOCIETY AND THE STATE [June

School (Packwaukee), 18; Sheldon School, Route 1 (Westfield), 10; State Graded School (Westfield), 26. Milwaukee County—A. E. Burdick School (Milwaukee), 32; Maple Tree School (Milwaukee), 34; St. Anne School (Milwaukee), 12; Saint Gall's School (Milwaukee), 18; St. John de Nepomuc School (Milwaukee), 46; St. Thomas Aquinas School (Milwaukee), 4; Vic- tory School, Grades 5-6 (Milwaukee), 22; Public School, Grade 8 (Shorewood), 76; Wilson School (Wauwatosa), 25; St. Rita School (WestAllis), 12. Monroe County—Angelo School, Route 4 (Sparta), 11. Oconto County—Pershing School, Route 4 (Lena), 19; Valley View School, Route 1 (Mountain), 6; Breed Central School (Suring), 7; Peshtigo Brook School, Route 2 (Suring), 14. Oneida County—Graded School (Lake Tomahawk), 4. Outagamie County—Cedar Grove School, Grades 5-7-8, Route 1 (Appleton), 6; Park School, Grade 7 (Kaukauna), 26; St. Joseph School (Oneida), 21. Pierce County—Public School (Elmwood), 15; Gertrude School (River Falls), 5. Polk County—Public School (Clear Lake), 12; West Sweden School (Frederic), 10; North Star School, Route 1 (Luck), 16. Portage County—Public School, Grades 7-8 (Almond), 38. Price County—Grade School, Grade 8 (Prentice), 20. Rock County—Brother Dutton School (Beloit), 56; Ivan School, Route 3 (Beloit), 29; Roosevelt School, Grade 5 (Janesville), 32; Roosevelt School, Grade 6 (Janesville), 8. St. Croix County—Public School, Grades 7-8 (Glenwood City), 19; Roddis School, Route 2 (Glenwood City), 11; Midway School, Route 2 (Hudson), 6; State Graded School (Star Prairie), 12. Sauk County—Glenville State Graded School, Route 2 (Baraboo), 7; Park View School, Route 4 (Baraboo), 10; Skillet Creek School, Route 4 (Baraboo), 3; Oak View School, Route 1 (Loganville), 3; Denzer School (North Freedom), 11; State Graded School (North Freedom), 23; Sauk Prairie School (Prairie du Sac), 9; Knobs School (Spring Green), 7; Upper Wilson Creek School (Spring Green), 9- Sawyer County—State Graded School, Grade 8 (Exeland), 5; Wind- fall School (Exeland), 19; Blair School, Route 3 (Hayward), 16; Boylan School (Hayward), 13; Jordan School, Route 2 (Hayward), 19; Kinnamon School, Route 2 (Hayward), 14; Munger School, Route 3 (Hayward), 8; O'Brien Hill School, Route 1 (Hayward), 12; River- view School, Route 4 (Hayward), 10; Twin Lake School, Route 1 (Hayward), 10; Wheeler School, Grades 5-8, Route 1 (Hayward), 15; State Graded School, Grades 3-4 (Stone Lake), 19; State Graded School, Grades 5-8 (Stone Lake), 23. Shawano County—Graded School, Grades 6-7-8 (Bowler), 32; Public School (Neopit), 10. 1949] THE SOCIETY 503

Sheboygan County—Girl Scouts, Troop 1 (Kohler), 28; Girl Scouts, Troop 2 (Kohler), 36; Girl Scouts, Troop 3 (Kohler), 29; St. John's Lutheran School, Route 1 (Random Lake), 15; Haven Grade School, Grades 5-6-7-8, Route 1 (Sheboygan), 24; Lincoln State Graded School, Grades 5-8, Route 1 (Sheboygan), 22; County Normal School (Sheboygan Falls), 19. Taylor County—Public School, Grade 8 (Gilman), 24. Washburn County—Public School (Sarona), 16; Public School, Grade 7 (Shell Lake), 22. Washington County—Holy Trinity School (Kewaskum), 43. Waukesha County—State Graded School (Dousman), 34; St. Ther- esa's School (Eagle), 8; State Graded School (Eagle), 20; Lakeside School, Route 3 (Hartland), 10; Wisconsin School for Boys (Wauke- sha), 26. Waushara County—Fish School (Coloma), 10; Rathermal School, Route 2 (Hancock), 13; Public School (Plainfield), 30; Oakdale School (Wild Rose), 7. Winnebago County—Lakeside School, Route 1 (Oshkosh), 15.

MANUSCRIPT ACCESSIONS To supplement the Society's collections of manuscripts on the history of the West in the eighteenth century, two reels of microfilm of records from the Public Archives of Canada have been obtained. Reproduced are manuscripts in the Claus Papers, Monckton Papers, and Records of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs at Albany. The selections include documents and correspondence relating to colonial affairs, military preparations on the frontiers, Indian trade, and missions. Among the writers represented are Sir William Johnson, Alexander McKee, Arent Schuyler De Peyster, Arthur St. Clair, and Joseph Brant. The film also contains transcripts of other records, among which are letters written by Duquesne, French governor of Canada, and others written by the elder George Croghan, renowned Indian trader. An interesting and unusual dental history of Marathon County has been presented to the Society by Mrs. August Lemke through Dr. J. H. Kolter of Wausau. Mrs. Lemke's husband was one of the charter members of the Marathon County Dental Society founded in 1908, and as its historian, he compiled the biographical and historical sketches which comprise the typewritten pages of the volume. A gift from Francis S. Lamb of Oshkosh is the book of Minutes of the Lake City Guard, Co. C, Fourth Battalion of the Wisconsin National Guard, covering a period from August, 1879 until the disbandment of the unit in 1884. In July, 1881, this company of men from Madison was among the militia summoned by Governor William E. Smith to Eau Claire to preserve order during a strike of workers demanding a 504 THE SOCIETY AND THE STATE [June ten-hour day in the lumber mills. Violence was avoided, the troops departed quietly, and the episode was thereafter referred to as the " Sawdust War." Accompanying the records of the company is an account of the Eau Claire service written later by Charles F. Lamb, who as a member of the Lake City Guard was a participant. Financial hardships and legal pitfalls which caught an early settler in Wisconsin are considered in a letter from Levi Jackson, living near Watertown, to his brother, John, in Albany, New York. The latter had come to Wisconsin for a brief period in 1846, had returned to New York because of his economic straits, but decided to make another— and eventually successful—venture as a farmer in the new State in 1848, the probable year in which the Society's recently acquired letter was written by his brother. Purchasing and shipping conditions in the Wisconsin wheat market are among the subjects discussed by Josiah P. Dana, merchant in South- port (Kenosha) in a letter dated January 1, 1849, addressed to his uncle, Dudley Dana, of Syracuse, New York. Despite his admission that he was carrying on " a fair business," Josiah confessed that he was among the Wisconsin citizens who had been stricken by " the Calafornia fever." Although he had made no decision to leave Wisconsin, it appeared to him that " Wisconsin and other new and rival Western States will... lose their present attractions & the El Dorado of the west will not be reached untill we pass the rocky Mountains." Of interest for the history of Wisconsin churches is a biographical sketch of Nathan Wood, Baptist minister who came to this State from New York in 1846. He assisted in founding the town of Wyocena, and was the organizer of churches there and in Otsego and Rio. This paper has been written and presented to the Society by one of his granddaughters, Mrs. Frank A. Florine of Cuba City. From Ina Curtis of Waukegan has come a second diary of Pri- vate Charles S. Curtis, which continues the record of his Civil War service in Co. K, Third Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, from January 1 to August 4, 1862. Five days after the last entry, the writer was killed at Cedar Mountain, Virginia. This additional volume and a typewritten transcript accompanying it will be added to the Isaac L. Curtis Papers. Glimpses of social life in Madison during the winter of 1879-80 are found in two letters written by J. B. Thornton, Jr. to his father in Oak Hill, Maine. Young Thornton, who was attending school in Madison, was probably the nephew of C. C. G. Thornton, owner of flour mills in the city during the 1870's and 1880's. Studies did not wholly occupy the writer's time, for he recorded his attendance at church services, his whist games with Judge Romanzo Bunn, his 1949] THE SOCIETY 505 acquaintanceship with members of the Fairchild family and with Ole Bull and his wife, and his admiration for several of the fine residences overlooking Lake Mendota.

An account of the early settlement in Milwaukee in the spring of 1835 by members of the Horatio J. Cleveland family was written by E. H. Cleveland of Trempealeau. His father, Charles, by persuading an Indian boy in a canoe to take him ashore ahead of the rest of the party, enjoyed afterwards the claim of being " the first white boy in Milwaukee." This biographical material was a gift to the Society from Bert A. Gipple of Galesville through Don Trenary of Milwaukee.

By purchase the manuscript section has acquired two letters, dated in 1848 and 1849, and written by G. W., Lydia, and Ann Palmer, early settlers of Magnolia in Rock County. To their family in New Hampshire, the Palmers described farm conditions in their locality. They encouraged their relatives to come west, and to buy land, from which a quick profit might be realized by reselling it, particularly as some owners v/ere anxious to sell cheaply in order to hurry to Cali- fornia to search for gold.

The Society has acquired a group of ten small diaries, those for 1867, 1873-76 of Bell Rundlett, who became Mrs. M. N. Bliss in 1873, those of her husband covering the years 1870-73, and one kept briefly by their daughter, Ida, in 1888. The Rundlett and Bliss families resided at various times in Janesville, Madison, and Baraboo. Mr. Bliss mainly recorded his daily runs as a railroad engineer, Mrs. Bliss her household and town activities, and Ida her school events and pleasures. Family expense accounts are also found in several of the volumes.

Other manuscript accessions include: a letter from James D. Butler to Scribner's, March 29, 1902, concerning the origin of Shakespeare's vocabulary, to be added to the Butler Papers, presented by Edwin H. Frost, Yonkers, New York; a commission in the militia to Joseph Dickson signed by Henry Dodge on August 25, 1846, presented by Mr. Dickson's granddaughter, Mrs. Fanny E. Preston of Cuba City; a letter from G. S. Albee to Emma Gardner, September 3, 1879, tell- ing the cost of board and room at the State Normal School at Oshkosh, presented by Hannah Gardner of Milwaukee; a letter from Henry E. Henrickson of Exeland to James S. Watrous, August 22, 1937, concerning the rivalry of crews of lumbermen on the Flambeau River in the 1880's, presented by Mr. Watrous of Madison; a typewritten centennial history of Leola Township and Rathermal School District in Waushara County, written and presented by Mrs. Den Clark of Stevens Point, formerly a resident and teacher in Leola; a typewritten carbon 506 THE SOCIETY AND THE STATE [June copy of Hans Gaebler's " Story of the Five Coffins," relating an episode in the conflict over Watertown railroad bond indebtedness during the latter nineteenth century, presented by Mrs. Zida Ivey of Fort Atkinson. MUSEUM ACCESSIONS The following is a list of the Museum's accessions for the period from December 10, 1948, to March 10, 1949: A woman's curling iron, ca., 1910, from Mrs. Frank B. Jenks, Madison. Twelve nineteenth century costume items from Mrs. F. H. McKinney, Birmingham, Michigan. A wooden water pump, ca., 1874, removed from an old house on the University campus, from Albert F. Gallistel, University of Wisconsin. A pair of metal ice skates purchased at Rome, New York, for $1.75 in 1894, from E. Gilman Jones, Madison. Six knives, used by the donor for peeling potatoes to earn his education at the University of Wisconsin, from C. W. Aeppler, Oconomowoc. Two political campaign buttons from the Misses Conway, Milwaukee. Three pieces of Pauline (Edgerton) pottery, a jar, a flower bowl, and a candle holder, from F. C. Middleton, Madison. A Dutch made, copper and brass tobacco box probably dating back to the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, found in the copper country of northern Michigan in the 1850's, from Agnes Bury, Duluth, Minnesota. A shawl, ca., 1849, and a child's apron, ca., 1850, from Mrs. Paul Meier, Rudolph. II. THE STATE The State has been enriched by gifts from the French people which arrived on the Gratitude (Merci) Train at Madison, February 13, amid "welcome" fanfare: parade, luncheon, and an acceptance ceremony. Arrangements were planned by Director Lord, chairman of the special committee to welcome the Wisconsin car, and his coworkers. The dark green boxcar, conspicuously decorated with the shields of the provinces of France, was displayed to the public for several weeks at the south entrance to the Capitol. The contents were inventoried, labeled, and put on display in twenty-four display cases by the Society's museum staff. Thousands, visiting the exhibition in the rotunda of the Capitol, have shown their goodwill toward the way in which the French are expressing their admiration and thanks to America. There are remembrances of great variety: beautifully woven textiles, children's art work, embroideries and laces of the finest, exquisite china and glassware, intricately carved wooden pieces, portraits and native scenery in oils, soldiers' uniforms and equipment—among them a faded French military cap—wearing apparel beautifully hand-stitched, engraved and beribboned medals, an extensive doll collection showing native costume, books in paper cover and rich bindings, and brief notes which took the place of gifts. 1949] THE STATE 507

Old and young, rich and poor, townsman and farmer, individuals and organizations from all provinces of France have sent their " thank you " to each State in the Union for aid in liberation and rehabilitation. The Wisconsin treasures are being exhibited in the communities re- questing them and eventually will be distributed according to official instructions. They will always be warmly cherished.

LOCAL HISTORICAL SOCIETIES AND MUSEUMS " The Influence of the Pennsylvania Dutch on Territorial Wisconsin " was the subject of a paper read by Walter Dundore, Beloit, at the Feb- ruary 24 meeting of the BELOIT HISTORICAL SOCIETY. His book on this subject is being issued by the Pennsylvania Folklore Society. He stated that the Pennsylvania Germans emigrated to Wisconsin individu- ally, as pairs, and as family groups, but seldom as organized groups. The most noted Pennsylvania German to come to early Wisconsin was Jesse W. Shull, a fur trader, for whom Shullsburg was named. Later he became well known as a lead mine promoter.

Carl Zahn, assistant vice-president of the Bank of Sturgeon Bay, was elected to take the place of C. H. Herlache, as treasurer of the DOOR COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. The latter resigned because of press of other work.

The DOUGLAS COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S Museum, Superior, is especially attractive since it has moved the display case out of the front window and substituted glass shelves. Glassware of choice variety is lovely with the sunlight sparkling on vaseline, tiffany, cranberry, amber, and amethyst pieces. The materials are changed frequently, and those who wish some of their precious heirlooms exhibited are invited to bring them to the museum.

Fifty members of the FOND DU LAC COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY met on March 14 and voted to incorporate. Gerald Holzman presided, and A. E. Hatch acted as secretary. " Historical Sites in the County " was the subject of an illustrated talk by W. A. Titus. A seven-member committee will draw up the by-laws, and officers will be elected after incorporation. The annual membership fee will be $1.00.

Dr. W. H. Glover, field representative of the State Society, spoke to more than 100 members and friends of the KENOSHA COUNTY HIS- TORICAL SOCIETY on February 1—annual meeting night. The audience learned of the vast amount of valuable material in the Society's possession, which because of crowded conditions cannot be made available to the researcher or to the visitors at the museum. A series of slides gave concrete illustration of the crowded conditions. An addition to the Society's library was the solution pointed out by the speaker. 508 THE SOCIETY AND THE STATE [June

Curator Norbert W. Roeder, Kenosha, has sent an announcement to the Society which indicates that the Kenosha Historical and Art Museum now has a new and shorter name: KENOSHA PUBLIC MUSEUM.

Albert Kracht, the new president of the LAKE MlLLS-AZTALAN SOCIETY, has taken the place of Mrs. Peter White, resigned, who served as president for eight years. Plans for a hobby show, H. L. Hohenstein, chairman, were discussed at the late February meeting.

At the annual meeting, January 25, J. G. Johnson was elected president, for the fifteenth consecutive year, of the MANITOWOC COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. Junias Pleuss, Manitowoc, was selected to fill the office of vice-president, vacated by the death of the Rev. Thomas D. Windiate. Elsa L. Dramm was presented with a life membership in the organization for her faithful service as secretary-treasurer, from which she resigned in 1948. Rescued from the scrap heap and nicely polished, the " A. D. Jones " fire steamer was returned to the city by Alfred Muchin in a fitting ceremony at the north side fire station in late winter. The old steamer was purchased back in 1878 and will be exhibited at the museum in the Rahr Civic Center as a reminder of the days when the Manitowoc volunteer firemen handled the horse-drawn steamers and hose-carts.

Curator H. R. Holand, Ephraim, spoke of the Kensington runestone at a joint meeting of the MILTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY and the ROCK COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY on January 27, at the Janesville High School. This stone was discovered in 1898 by a Kensington, Minnesota, farmer, which since has brought about a controversy as to whether the Northwest was visited by a party of Norsemen in 1362. Mr. Holand has made an extensive investigation of the discovery, has written articles and books on the subject, and believes it to be an authentic relic.

The January Historical Messenger, issued by the MILWAUKEE COUN- TY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, contains the information that the Society has inherited the principal contents and rich furnishings of the old Wells homestead, "a veritable treasure house," valued at $3,828.60. It was bequeathed by the late Daniel (Neil) Norris, grandson of the early-day financier and Milwaukee promoter, Daniel Wells. " Peter Engelmann, Pioneer in Education " was the subject of an address by Frank S. Spigener, Head Master of University School, at the society's March 30 meeting.

Director Lord spoke at the annual meeting of the OUTAGAMIE COUNTY PIONEER AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY on February 22 at Apple- ton. There was a forenoon meeting, a dinner attended by more than 100 guests, and a formal afternoon meeting, when the audience listened 1949] THE STATE 509 to Dr. Lord's description of the inadequate facilities for the proper handling of the State's historical records. Much of the material is housed in dead storage, out of reach of researchers, because there is no place to file it properly and make it available, he said. The answer is an addition to the present Historical Library Building, which is on the legislative agenda.

All is well with the WATERTOWN HISTORICAL SOCIETY according to the financial report at its annual meeting held on January 31. The society now owns the Octagon House and approximately $2,600 in cash and bonds. The major project this year will be the installation of a room duplicating Wisconsin's first Kindergarten, established at Watertown by Mrs. Carl Schurz in 1856.

WAUKESHA COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY and the Wisconsin Cen- tennial Museum Tours Committee held a joint meeting on February 10. Slides and pictures of winter sports at Potawatomi Park, Door County, were shown by Walter Bubbert. The museum tours, organized for the State's Centennial, will be continued this year.

In late February the WHITEWATER HISTORICAL SOCIETY met at the city library when Mrs. Corinth Hull spoke on " Historic Sites of Wis- consin," briefly mentioning historic sites of various cities as well as those in rural areas. She read from Mrs. Anna Adams Dickie's article on the Scotch-Irish who settled in Lima township, Rock County (see Wisconsin Magazine of History, March, 1948, pp. 291-304), forebears of some of the Whitewater residents. The list of museum accessions received by the society is impressive. CENTENNIALS The prize of centennial documents Baraboo-way was examined by the Baraboo News-Republic staff during the winter. Andrew Raschein brought in an almanac printed in German bearing the ancient date of 1795, which means it had been around for 154 years, still well preserved. For the Middle West this is really " old." It came to Andrew from his father, whc* in turn had received it from his father. Marriage fees have always been somewhat of a variable quantity. Back in 1849, in the Cambridge vicinity, Dane County, the good preacher often received 25 or 50 cents, and he would slip the coin in turn into the bride's hand. Preacher William Cargen kept a record book in those days, and once noted that he " was given two quarts of beans " as payment. The Darlington Republican-Journal, January 27, prints a little history of Paper School District No. 5, of which Mrs. Adean Smith is the teacher. The school was unplastered when first put to use—in the 510 THE SOCIETY AND THE STATE [June

1840's—and the pioneer women did not like the untidy appearance of the walls, so they had a " papering bee " and covered the walls with newspapers. It was then known as the " Papered School," but later was changed to " Paper," the name it still carries. The area in which it is located was called " Kaintuck Grove" for the early settlers who migrated from Kentucky. The Lee farm, one mile west of Deerfield, which originally was the Sjur Reque place, owned through four generations by the same family, was sold to LeRoy Kelly last February. Reque, great grandfather of the recent owners, purchased the land in 1848, at one time owning as much as 540 acres. Nels A. Lee, a son-in-law, was the next owner, and his son Severt bought it after his father's death. It was sold by his children. The Menasha Wooden Ware corporation was founded in 1849 with an investment of $1,000, and was incorporated in 1876. Its hundredth birthday was observed with a dinner at North Shore Golf Club on January 20, when eighty-seven employees who had been with the company for more than twenty-five years were inducted into the " 49-er Club "—the year of the company's founding. Toastmaster was President Mowry Smith who presented each club member with a $100 bond. Observances to recall church founding dates have been numerous in recent months. Cambridge Presbyterians are having an eventful year observing their Centennial. Under the leadership of the Rev. Carl F. Bruhn, a notable service and day of reminiscences occurred on March 6; others in the series are still anticipated. St. Nicholas Parish at Dacada, Ozaukee County, celebrated the hundredth anniversary of its founding on October 10. The Most Rev. Archbishop Moses E. Kiley participated in the special services, assisted by other church dignitaries. From its beginnings, in a log church, there was a resident pastor. The membership of 127 families is under the leadership of Father Joseph J. Rose. During February a series of special services and social meetings were held by the First Methodist Church members of Neenah. Bishop H. Clifford Northcott, Madison, was guest speaker on Sunday morning, February 20, recalling a century of progress of this parish; The First Presbyterian Church of Racine celebrated its 110 years of existence on February 13. Its worship long ago took place in a church constructed for $700, when the city numbered about 1,000 inhabitants. The pastor is the Rev. Francis P. Ihrman. The Rev. Dwight M. Bahr, Waukesha, delivered an anniversary address to his congregation on January 23, in which he spoke of events 1949} THE STATE 511 which had happened during the 110 years of the First Baptist Church history. After homes became inadequate, the meetings were conducted in the log schoolhouse, which was a popular place since the " inhabitants of the entire county gathered there for funerals, a few lectures, and general meetings of all kinds."

OTHER HISTORICAL NOTES The Spring Valley Sun, January 20, published some interesting " ghost-town " history. Wildwood—an intriguing name—" died no lingering death." It was created by a busy lumbering camp, in 1877, according to Otis Olson, one of the few who still remembers its three- story-wood factory and its once half-mile residence section containing 120 houses. Two decades after its appearance it faded away with its virgin timber. A large brick house six miles from Spring Valley marks the spot where many years ago stood the thriving sawmill town of Wildwood.

The Shawano County Journal, Harold A. Meyer editor, began its ninetieth year of publication in February. Over a long period the paper was printed on a Washington handpress which has given way to modern equipment. Since its organization in 1859, it has carried the same name on its masthead. Besides publishing the newspaper, Mr. Meyer successfully operates a commercial printing plant.

The " Pink Convent," a landmark at the Salvatorian College in St. Nazianz, was razed in late winter; its extreme age—almost 100 years— allowed little salvage material. It was one of the first brick structures built by the Salvatorian Fathers who arrived from Germany in 1854. It later was covered with pink stucco from which it derived its popular name. Years ago the Oschwald Sisters, Third Order of St. Francis, produced hats for men and women, artificial flowers, shoes, rugs, sheets, articles of lace, and other fancy work at the convent. They raised their own flax, did their spinning, and owned a large loom for weaving. Manitowoc and other near-by communities absorbed all their products. Long a familiar sight, it will be greatly missed by the St. Nazianz community.

Dr. Thomas G. Torpy of Minocqua has been in active practice for fifty-four years, and at eighty-one is caring for third and fourth generation descendants of his first patients. While he never sends out a bill, the physician says he has been paid " in full a hundredfold." Paid in cords of wood unloaded in his back yard, the creel of brook trout, the side of beef or pork, the Christmas cheer and above all, the love and respect of the people. He was a friend of the Indians, the lumberjacks, and the struggling homesteaders; in recent years the millionaires who 512 THE SOCIETY AND THE STATE vacation in the Minocqua lake region are numbered among his summer patients. In late February the Joseph Dessert Public Library completed a half- century of service to the residents of Mosinee. When the library was opened, 465 books were put into circulation, and 519 borrowers were listed during the first month. Nineteen librarians have served during the fifty-year period. Mrs. Lanta Landfried, who took charge in 1931, is the present incumbent. III. OF WIDER INTEREST A citation for forty years of distinguished service to Wausau was presented to Mr. D. C. Everest, president and general manager of the Marathon Corporation, by the Wausau Chamber of Commerce at its annual dinner meeting on March 1. Attorney R. E. Puchner who related Mr. Everest's leadership in the papermaking industry said of him, " He sold his personality—his genius. He gave it away." His foresight and invaluable industrial leadership over a forty-year period were emphasized at the evening's session. In acknowledging the citation Mr. Everest expressed the belief that "loyal friendships, well established, the ability to work without its being burdensome, and an optimistic outlook on life is about all the business of living on earth amounts to anyway." The STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN finds in Mr. Everest a valued coworker and friend. His foresight has established the David Clark Everest Prize in Wisconsin Economic History. An award of $1,000 annually, over a ten-year period, is to be made by the Society to the author of the best book-length manuscript in the field of Wiscon- sin economic history. Competitors for the initial award should deposit their manuscripts with the Society before October 1, 1949. The National Swedish Centennial Association, of which Stig Wiren, Kenosha, was a vice president, promoted the observance of Swedish settlement in the Midwestern states in 1948. Its Centennial work completed, it has now become a historical society. The Pioneer Cen- tennial Newsletter, March, 1949, inaugurated a membership drive, anticipating a membership roll of 5,000 by July 1. The society's first publication project is under way: Professor O. F. Ander, Augustana College, is preparing a comprehensive bibliography covering both published and other material on the Swedish element in this country. Our best wishes go out to this organization which we know will make an enviable place for itself in stimulating the preservation of Swedish history. Mr. Wiren is an officer of the new Society. MILWAUKEE THE HISTORY OF A CITY by Bayrd Still

"The proof of the pudding ..." "... Probably the ablest, and certainly the most comprehensive one- volume history yet to appear on any American city. Perhaps the book's most noteworthy accomplishment lies in its treatment of the various ethnic contributions to Milwaukee's development. . . . reads easily and throws much light on the nature of urban Society in America."—BLAKE MCKELVEY, City Historian, Rochester, New York. "... The most comprehensive coverage of the year by year development of our city that has ever been written. No phase of that evolution has been omitted. . . . Still has made a great contribution in writing so fascinating, impartial and factual recital of the birth pains and fruition of the inception and development of democracy at work in an American City."—DAMEL W. HOAN, Milwaukee. "... Certain to attract widespread attention. To the people who live or have lived in that city, it will bring the keen pleasure that always comes with understanding the past of one's present. To scholars and to intelligent people throughout the country, it is a record in terms of one city of the process that has made and that is making the civilization in which we live. . . ."—W. STULL HOLT, University of Washington, Seattle. " The major virtue, . . . lies in his recording of how, in one century, a large metropolitan city had come into existence and had achieved the instruments for a corporate life through the efforts and participation of a great number of people drawn from many places and cultures, people increasingly moulded and stabilized by the environ- ment created by that city of their own making. . . . Milwaukee means far more to me from having read his book. . . ."•—JOHN M. GAUS, Harvard University, Cambridge.

638 pages, 37 illustrations, 10 maps. $6.00 (postage 15 cents extra) One-third discount to a Life Member for his personal copy Obtainable from THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN 816 State Street, Madison 6, Wisconsin