HISTORY OF THE CHIPPEWA VALLEY - CHAPTER 19


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Faithful Record of all Important Events, Incidents, and
Circumstances that have Transpired in the Valley of the
Chippewa from its Earliest Settlement by White People,
Indian Treaties, Organization of the Territory and State;
Also of the Counties Embracing the Valley, Senatorial,
Assembly and Congressional Districts, and a Brief
Biographical Sketch of the Most Prominent Persons in the
Settlement of the Valley. BY Thomas E. Randall 1875.  Free
Press Print.  Eau Claire, Wisconsin

CHAPTER 19

The act for the organizing Eau Claire County provide that an
election for county officers should be held on the last
Tuesday in December, 1856, and that the town board of the
town of Eau Claire should constitute the county board until
the next election. C.M. Seley, Chairman; E.W. Robbins and
M.A. Page, Supervisors. Adin Randall was chosen Treasurer,
C.F. Babcock, Clerk of the Board; C.H. Howard, Register of
Deeds. Political conditions had but little to do with the
selection of candidates, although in most instances two
candidates were found for most offices. Mr. Olin was elected
Clerk of the Court without opposition; but the contest
between R.F. Wilson and Charlie Howard, for Register of
Deeds, was quite exciting.

The most important accession to the settlement of Eau
Claire, this year, 1856, was undoubtedly Daniel Shaw; having
bought extensive tracts of pineland on the Chippewa River
and its effluents, his next move was to make it available,
by manufacturing the pine into lumber. The selection of a
suitable point at which to erect mills and establish the
seat of his business required the most careful consideration
and mature judgment.

As the choice of any site on the main river involved
complications in regard to navigation, boomage, the storage
of logs, etc.; strong inducements were held out by the Falls
Company, just then erecting a new and expensive dam, and
making other costly improvements, to invest at that point,
but the evidence of previous losses by devastating freshets,
was too apparent at that point to afford any encouragement
to the capitalist or manufacturer. He pronounced the lower
Dalles then as now the only point on the river where a
reservoir of safe and sufficient capacity to store all the
logs on the stream could ever be established, but the
impediments to overcome were to great.

Half Moon Lake afforded a perfectly safe place for a certain
amount of logs, if there was any possible way to get them
there; to excavate o race or channel from the river to the
lake and establish a sheer boom at a suitable point above,
to direct the logs through, seemed a practical operation but
too great an undertaking for his means, single-handed, but
by associating his with the means of other desirous of
establishing a like business, he hoped to succeed. Ingram &
Kelly, Smith & Ball, Adin Randall, and some other parties to
this association; a charter for a boom was obtained from the
legislature, and the work of building and opening the canal,
and getting logs up the river to stock the mill, were
pressed forward with hopeful energy.

But if Mr. Shaw or any of his associates could have just had
a glimpse of the future that was before them, their hard
struggles against fearful floods, destructive fires, the
hopeless and crushing effects of the utter prostration of
all business interests throughout the West for several
succeeding years , and the near approach to bankruptcy to
which some perhaps all - of those firms must come before the
dawn of the brighter day should inspire hope, it is very
probable that they would have shrunk from the undertaking,
and that the 'West Side' would to this day have continued to
be a region of scrub oaks and wilderness waste.

For, good reader, you who own lots and fine homes on that
side, and you merchants who, by the labor and industry of
others, are getting rich, and you lawyers who, by darkening
counsel, involve your neighbors in legal difficulties that
you may profit by their silly whims, and you well-to-do
mechanics and laboring men, many - most of whom sit under
'your own vine and fig-tree,' what would it all be worth if
it were not for those mills and booms that have cost so much
energy and struggle?

Schools, Religion, Society

Corresponding to enterprise and indomitable energy in
business affairs displayed by the early settlers of Eau
Claire, was their zeal in the cause of education and the
advancement of religion, and it is safe to say that a larger
percent of cultured minds and well-educated people were
found amongst the early settlers of this country than
usually falls to the lots of new Western settlements.

The first schoolhouse erected in the county was on the
Sparta Road three miles from Eau Claire, in what was known
as the Olin and Bebee neighborhood, in the fall of 1857, but
during the succeeding winter a house was erected and a
school opened in the village of Eau Claire, in what is now
the Second Ward; the building is now known as the
Universalist Church.

The M.E. Church, ever mindful of the education and religious
interests in remote districts, assisted by local enterprise
and some eastern educational fund, commenced, in 1857, the
erection in West Eau Claire of a school building known as
the Methodist Institute, which was for several years
conducted with much ability, and in the feeble condition of
the early district schools, was of great benefit to many
young persons desirous of advancing themselves in studies
not taught in the then existing district schools, but since
the establishment of graded schools on both sides of the
river, being free to all and conducted with such marked
ability, the Institute has languished and bids fair to
become entirely useless.

During the summer of 1856, Mr. J.F. Stone erected a sawmill
and grist mill on Bridge Creek, at a point where the village
of Augusta now stands, and the year following Sanford Bills
and others laid out the village of that name.

The valley of Bridge Creek exhibits some remarkable
topographical features. The course of the steream is
southeast to northwest, and from its source to its
confluence with the Eau Claire River describes the boundary
between two sections of country differing in a marked degree
from each other in soil and character. Along its southwest
bank for almost its entire length, extends a fine, rich
prairie, broken here and ther by gentle elevations, but
uniformly fertile, the soil being everywhere a rich clay
loam, comng clear down to, and even into, the bends of the
creek; but just across the rippling stream, and lo, how
changed the soil and its productions; very little timber
grew naturally on the former side - only luxuriant grass -
while on the latter, a towering pine forest stood proudly
out to view, stretching along for miles in bold contrast to
the flowering plain on the opposite side. Here was marked in
bold relief the line between that vast prairie and nearly
timberless region extending a thousand miles to the Black
Hills of Colorado, and the great timbered region stretching
unbroken away to the Great Lakes, and here today in the
trade and traffic of the town of Augusta, we see the meeting
of two great industries, equally dependent on the building
up of each other - the forest and the field kissing each
other across this gentle stream, and crowning with plenty
and comfort the labors of the farmer, the lumberman and the
merchant. And here, in this romantic spot, has grown up the
beautiful village of Augusta; it proud temple of learning
presided over by the talented young educator, Thomas
Williams; the numerous churches, its comfortable dwellings,
its sumptuous hotels, and lying in the peaceful plenty,
where, many years less back than this narration dates, the
wild deer and wolf had their covert, and the red man of the
forest had undisrupted sway. But like all other Western
towns and villages, they way to wealth and comfort has been
through intense hardships, toil, and the most untiring
perseverance, as a perusal of the following terse and
expressive extract from the Augusta number of Mrs. French's
American Sketch Book pages 63-67, under the head
"Nationality of the Valley," will inform us "The first
settlers were New York and New England people, with and
occasional foreigner, who at that early date had to migrate
over new and almost unsettled country, on long journeys in
covered wagons, stopping, when night overtook them, by some
spring by the mountain side, or some babbling brook that
would afford water for themselves and their cattle and
horses, being weeks, and even months, on the journey. They
were, with few exceptions, very poor, bringing with them
barely enough to feed and clothe themselves until the first
cabin could be built and the first crop gathered in.
Industry and economy have repaid most of those old pioneers
with beautiful homes, and surrounded them with nearly all
the luxuries and comforts of the East. They were possessed
with the determination that others had thus procured homes
before them, and what others could do, they could and would
do also; and they did do, as this narrative will show before
completed."

"One example might illustrate the many hardships that were
endured by the first to open up this beautiful country. One
whose name I will not mention came from Maine to seek a home
in the then far west, and upon striking this country, made
himself a claim in the shape of a pre-emption, and commenced
improvements with nothing but his hands with which to labor.
Every furrow broken had to be worked for, he giving hand
labor to some neighbor that would exchange with him. After
the land was broken it became necessary to build a fence,
and nails had to be gotten without team or wagon. Well, what
did he do but start on foot to what is now the commercial
center of Eau Claire County, purchased a keg of nails, and
carried them home a distance of eighteen miles 00 making the
thirty-six miles of travel in the same day. Who is there
coming now a days that is able to do this? Very few.  I
desire to follow this circumstance a little farther, to show
what has to be done; another trail came.  A hundred and
sixty acres of land had to be paid for at a certain time,
could this be done? Only one way there was, and that was
this; "My old father," thought he,  "is in the East, and he
can, by scraping together the earnings of a lifetime, help
me out, and I will take care that he has a home in his old
age." The message was sent back to his early home, and
shortly after the much needed money was received the land
was paid for, taking, perhaps, all the old State of Mainer
had accumulated through his entire life, thereby securing a
home for both father and son. We will pass a few years and
take another look at his western farm and family today. By
calling at a splendid white house, surrounded by fruit
trees, not nine miles from Augusta, you will find the same
father and son, and the son's wife and family, enjoying the
health, wealth, and all the luxuries to be found in the
West. He has all the wealth necessary to make him happy, and
is carrying out the pledge to the gray-headed father, to the
perfect satisfaction of all concerned."

"This above is only an illustration of the trials and
achievements of those who came in early times. All had their
trials and hardships: none escaped."

"In later years, Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Scotland,
and nearly all nationalities have contributed to help
increase the population and improvements of our valley and
country, these people being in the county a majority, and
through our valley about half the population at the present
time."