Pioneers of the Pinery

PIONE S A PINERY MalcolmRosholt ROSHOLT HOUSE . One River Drive Rosholt, Wis. 54473 Phone: 677-4722 Copyright ® 1979 by Malcolm Rosholt Library of Congress No.: 79-49277 Printed by Palmer Publications, Inc. Amherst, WI 54406 ~') "'~"'''. lif O~l ,',. f.~< ABOUT THE AUTHOR Malcolm Rosholt lives in Rosholt, Wisconsin, a village named for his grandfather. He received his bachelor of arts degree from St. Olaf College in 1931 and sailed for China where he spent the next six years as a reporter and editor of an English·language newspaper published in Shanghai. He covered the Japanese bombing of the city in 1932 and again in 1937. In 1938 he returned to the United States where he lectured on his war experiences to schools and service clubs. In 1933 he returned briefly to the United States to marry Margaret Njaa of Northwood, NO. They have one daughter, Mei·fei (Mrs. David Elrick), who was born in Shanghai. Rosholt studied the Chinese language and as a result of his background, he received a commission in World War II from the Army Air Corps. After training, he returned to China in 1943 and spent the next two years as a liaison officer under Claire L. Chennault, commander of the Flying Tigers. Since' leaving the armed service, he has become deeply involved in state and local history. FOREWORD Not many counties are fortunate enough to have someone who combines the interest and the ability to record their history in readable, accurate fashion. Portage County is one of the lucky ones. It has Malcolm Rosholt, who wrote Our County, Our Story, an invaluable reference which relates the history of this county from the days of the Indians to the time of its publication, 1959. No flash in the pan, he has continued to produce books and articles on state and local history. The Stevens Point Daily Journal, of which I am city editor, has carried many of these articles. In fact this entire book is a reprint of Malcolm Rosholt stories that have appeared in the Journal. While they center around Portage County, they cannot help but be of interest to people in neighboring counties. You cannot, for example, write about George Stevens, for whom Stevens Point is named, without bringing in Wausau and Marathon County. Nor can Cutting Marsh's story be told without crossing into other counties, especially Waupaca County. Pioneers of the Pinery does not pretend to be a comprehensive history, but rather a series of stories about· real people, their triumphs, their tragedies, their foibles and their perseverance. As a warts-and-all historian, Malcolm Rosholt does not attempt to pretty up times past, but instead seeks to portray events as they happened and people as they were. And that's history. George Rogers 5 AUTHOR-PUBLISHER'S PREFACE Since I wrote Our County, Our Story, a modern history of Portage County published in 1959 under the sponsorship of the Portage County Board of Supervisors, new facts and legends about the county have come to light. The present volume, Pioneers of the Pinery, is, in a sense, a continuation of the first book, but it also covers a wider area of interest and dips into Marathon, Wood, Adams, Waupaca, Waushara, Green Lake and Winnebago counties. Some of the incidents touched on in the first book have provided the basis for a deeper study in the second, such as the Courtwright lynching, the Hathaway survey of the Wisconsin River valley, and the story of George Stevens' bold venture into the Pinery north to "Big Bull Falls." In ·addition to the several story chapters, I have added a portion of a diary kept by· the pioneer pastor and circuit rider, Cutting Moody Marsh, which also appeared in the Stevens Point Daily Journal. This diary may be one of the most remarkable documents held by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. It is a source of pleasure.for me to bring this portion of the diary to the attention of Wisconsin readers, and it is also a source of pleasure for me to honor this intrepid man of God who rode so tall through the towering timber. A number of people contributed documents, pictures or informati~n to the present volume, namely,· Ge<>rge Crowell, Menasha, Dr. Arthur Fish, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Joe Formella, Stevens Point, Ray Isherwood, Plover, Anthony Kiedrowski, Wisconsin Rapids, Clayton McLarky, Whiting, Malcolm McLean, Ashland, Jim Pierson, .Stevens Point, Philip Poullette, Wautoma, Edith Rothman, Stevens Point, Paul Schultz, Waupaca, Ray Specht, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Bayard Wenworth, Stevens Point, the late Ben Redfield of Whiting and the late Welton Johnson of Amherst. Finally, I want to pay tribute to Pat Manske, staff artist at Palmer Publications, Inc., Amherst, for the cover which she designed for this book. Malcolm Rosholt 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Foreword by George Rogers. .............. .. 5 Author-Publisher's Preface ................ .. 6 IA Point of Beginning. .................... .. 9 II The Hathaway Survey. ................... .. 23 III The Saga of George Stevens. ............... .. 40 IV The Pinery Road 75 V The Battle of Smoky Hill ................. .. 84 VI DuBay's Wives 92 VII A Double Lynching 100 VIII The Diarist 138 IX A Pioneer's Daughter 148 XA Country Store at Polonia 160 XI "Obituary Poetry" 167 XII The Country School Teacher 176 XIII The Peregrinations of Cutting Marsh 191 Chapter I A POINT OF BEGINNING In Wisconsin the point of beginning for the white man lies in Green Bay. There were early missionaries like Father Menard on the upper Wisconsin River, and traders like Michael Cadotte on Madeline Island, but these men did not found new settlements or cities. It was at '''La Baye" that the white man came to stay and build his home. French explorers to Green Bay were followed by missionaries, fur traders and immigrants from lower Canada. They in turn were followed by Americans ·from the Atlantic coast states, and from .New York state which became involved with Wisconsin over the problem of what to do with the so-called "New York Indians"-the Brothertowns, the Oneidas, the Stockbridges-who were removed to Green Bay in the 1820s to avoid being annihilated. by the white man in the Hudson River Valley. There is much information in our history books about the origin of Green Bay, Milwaukee, Prairie du Chien and Portage, once _called Fort Winnebago. But there the progression -stops. What about central Wisconsin, more specifically the upper Wisconsin River Valley which is referred to in old French texts as "Haut du Wisconsin"? Within the past year or so, new documents have been found which direct our attention to the upper Wisconsin, documents that help to establish points of beginning hitherto 9 unknown, and from which new insights may be gaine~ into the settlement of Wisconsin. The man who appears to have started the movement of settlement into central Wisconsin on the upper Wisconsin River was Amable Grignon II (pronounced Greanow), born in Green Bay in 1796, the youngest son of Pierre Grignon Sr. and grandson of Charles de Langlade, often called the "father of Wisconsin." Amable II had seven brothers and a sister in addition to several half brothers and sisters. The Grignon clan, about this time, rose to become the most prominent French family in the Fox River valley. Since most of the men married Menominee women, their· influence among the Menominees became great, and they took advantage of their marital status to promote their own interests. But Amable II was not one to stay home and live off the Indians. He probably attended French school in Montreal, but could converse in English as well as French. After school, he found employment with the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada and traveled widely. to various company fur trading posts, even as far north as Great Slave Lake. In 1823, Amable left the Hudson's Bay Company to go into business for himself as a fur trader. He later joined a fur trading firm in Green Bay and, as early as 1827, at least, he had established a trading post on the Wisconsin River below the mouth of the Yellow River, or about 15 kilometers southeast of the modern city of Necedah in Juneau County. It would be difficult to find' any artifacts of the trading post today because the site is probably covered by the backwater of the Petenwell Flowage. Daniel Whitney followed in the footsteps of Amable Grignon and more than any other American helped pave the way to settlement of the upper Wisconsin River Valley. A young man when he came to Green Bay in 1819, he began his rise to riches by opening a store at Green Bay. The word "store" is used in some historical accounts, but it probably was a trading post, for no one could keep a store without trading with the Indians at this time, .and the Indian trade was almost entirely by barter, that is, a mink pelt for a red silk handkerchief, etc. 10 But Whitney was a restless man, ever on the lookout for the main chance. Leaving his "store" to others to run, he explored the western part of Wisconsin in what was then Michigan Territory, and on one of these trips he learned, either through Amable Grignon or the Indians, about a fine stand of white pine growing along the banks of the Yellow River. He left no account of his travels, but one who remembered him was Ebenezer Childs, who in 1857 wrote an account of his own experiences on the Wisconsin frontier, and later had it published in the Wisconsin Historical Collections (hereafter as Collections), Volume 4, page 153.

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