HISTORY OF THE CHIPPEWA VALLEY - CHAPTER 44 - Our Prominent
Men


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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 44 - Our Prominent Men

In the preceding pages reference has been made to most,
perhaps all, of the subjects of these sketches, nearly all
of whom are still living and prominent actors in some
department of life in this valley, and further notice of
some of them may seem unnecessary or as involving
repetition, but as the object in view is to exhibit the
qualities that command success as well as to pay a just
tribute to the deserving, the reader will pardon the
iteration.

HIRAM S. ALLEN

Is undoubtedly the oldest settler and perhaps the only man
now living in this valley who came here at the early period
in which the subject of this notice came. He was born in
Chelsea, Orange County, Vermont in the year 1806, receive
such an education as the common schools at that State
afforded, and was reared in the business of lumbering, but
soon conceived the idea that the one-horse establishment of
the ancient State were inadequate to the realization of his
hopes and aspirations, and in 1833 resolved to try his
fortunes in the far West; came first to Illinois, and they
year following up the Chippewa, and on the Red Cedar the
year following bought the first mill ever erected in this
valley of Street and Lockwood, and laid the foundation of a
flourishing business and an active business life. He was
identified with every public enterprise under taken in this
valley during the early years of hardship and trial -
building steamboats to navigate the shallow, ever changing
current of the Chippewa, opening roads to the Mississippi
and establishing a stage line over the same, and as early as
1856 was mainly instrumental in fitting out a surveying
party to locate a road to connect Chippewa Falls with
Steven's Point. It was run by William J. Young, now of
California and ten miles of this route immediately opened
for travel. He has always had boundless faith in the future
of Chippewa Falls, and to him more than any other one man is
due the credit of building the railway last summer that now
connects that place with the West Wisconsin Railway.

In politics, he was a Whig until the organization of the
Republican Party, since which he has uniformly acted with
the party; has repeatedly been urged to accept positions of
trust and honor to which he could easily have been elected,
but has constantly refused all political preferment.

In religion, though educated a Presbyterian, he is and
always has been very liberal.

LUKE INMAN

Contemporary with the earliest settlers was the humble
individual, whose name is here given.  He represents a
class, only a few of whom remain. Luke is American by birth,
and was for many years a soldier in the regular army of the
United States; was in Florida during all the long years of
the Seminole War; was with General Atkins and Colonel
Zachary Taylor in the Black Hawk War, and repeats with much
gusto the orders of the corpulent Colonel, at the Battle of
Bad Ax, as he found himself unhorsed in a soft marsh and
sinking up to his waist in the mud: "Bear me up, boys, bear
me up; there, that'll do; now give 'em hell; don't let 'em
cross the river; kill 'em, damn 'em, kill 'em.!" Luke tells
some curious stories about himself and other soldiers while
stationed at Prairie du Chien. Whiskey being strictly
forbidden by the officers, he and others had very frequent
occasion to get permission to wash their blankets at the
river bank, near which was a saloon, and a Mackinaw blanket,
when thoroughly saturated would absorb at least two gallons
of the regular 'red eye,' and the whole mess would be unfit
for duty the whole day; and for a long time the utmost
vigilance of the officers was unable to detect the manner in
which the liquor was obtained. Amongst others, Luke was sent
up the Red Cedar for lumber, and having served his time out
has made his home at some one of the mills here ever since,
now more than forty years; and has always worked by the
mouth, a faithful, trustworthy, unassuming man, always
contented, and through all the many hard sieges to which he
has been subjected as a soldier, boatman, raftsman, or mill
man, he was never known to complain. Many laughable
anecdotes are told by Luke and by others at his expense. In
his younger days he had been awakened at the participated in
the religious rival, and amongst other exercises had learned
to sing many tunes appropriate to such occasions. During the
first religious services held in this valley, Luke make
himself useful by joining the choir, but on one occasion, at
a funeral service, he found himself almost alone but
volunteered to raise the tune, which not being appropriate
to the words. He broke down; again and again as he made the
attempt, but finally gave up with "H__l I used to sing that
tune, but d___d if I can get it now." Luke is a living
monument to human endurance, having been lost in the Eau
Galle woods in 1837 for seven days at one time without food.

DANELIE DUCH, M.D.

Was the first regular bred physician that settled on the
Chippewa and represents a class, though not numerous, to be
found amongst the pioneers of a new country? An Italian by
birth but educated at Cambridge, England, and receiving a
diploma from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons,
London, and the best medical schools on the convenient of
Europe, he soon obtained a position in the British Army in
India, congenial and lucrative, rose high in his profession,
accumulated a handsome fortune, and allied himself by
marriage with an excellent family. What, the reader will
ask, could have driven such a man to this out-of-the-way
corner? Alas, what are birth and fortune, talent, education,
and advancement, when the wine-cup has obtained the mastery!
An insatiable thirst for strong drink soon unfitted him for
the duties of his profession, for society and enjoyment of
home, and on the death of his wife, which occurred soon
after the birth of a daughter, he became a wanderer - his
property and child cared for by legal provisions - and died
among strangers; as a fool dieth, died this courteous,
genial, refined, and talented man, remembered only for his
follies and lost opportunities.

Considering it natural advantages, Eau Claire has afforded
better opportunities for enterprising men of limited means
to establish themselves in business, than almost any other
locality. At other point the most eligible situations become
early absorbed by individuals or organizations who supposed
their interests would best be subserved by excluding others;
while the first settlers of Eau Claire held out all
inducements in their power to all who had the boldness to
invest their means and energies in any undertaking that
would enhance the interests of the place; which, more
perhaps, than natural position, has induced a large number
of active, intelligent business men to locate there, and
hence, quite a number of these sketches will recount the
early struggles of what may appear a larger proportion of
its prominent citizens.

DANIEL SHAW

To no single individual, perhaps, is the city of Eau Claire
indebted for the development of its resources and the
establishment of its most important industries that to him
who is the subject of this sketch. He was born in 1813, in
the town of Industry, in Franklin County, Maine. He chose
the business of lumbering for a vocation, and located first
in Allegheny County, New York, where he was quite successful
but wishing to enlarge his sphere of operations, he came to
this State and reconnoitered the Chippewa pine district in
1855, and the year following, having, in company with Mr.
Clark, father of Dewitt C., purchased a large amount of pine
land on the Chippewa River and its tributaries, came with
his family.

His location at the outlet of Half Moon Lake was induced by
the assurance that logs, when once in there, would be
perfectly secure; the booming and assorting works he was
less confident of, and the disasters attending the
operations of the first and second years were not altogether
unexpected, but the terrible collapse in business affairs
throughout the West and the almost total prostration of the
lumber trade immediately after he commenced operation, was
an unlooked for calamity, and although he worked with
untiring energy, and took upon himself the hardships that
few business men would endure - always superintending the
drive in person, and on one occasion carrying one hundred
pounds of flour forty miles in a day on his back to feed his
men, success seemed for a long time beyond his reach and the
struggle against adversity unequal; but finally succeeded in
establishing their business on a firm basis, when in 1867
the mill was consumed by fire, which once more brought
discouragement and almost despondency; but the capital was
now more abundant, and by taking Mr. Newell and Mr. Ferguson
into the firm, a much larger and more perfect establishment
was erected, and in 1874 the concern was incorporated with
the title of Daniel Shaw Lumber Company.

Few men have been happier in their domestic relations than
Mr. Shaw, though bereaved of a very promising son in 1863.
The two surviving sons are model young men in filial regards
for their parents and their attention to business, the
result of sound moral and religious training at home.

Mr. Shaw worships at the Congregational Church, though more
liberal and advanced in his religious view than the tenets
of that organization. And in politics, he is a steadfast
Republican, but has always refused political preferment and
seductive influence of office.

SIMON RANDALL

A lumber country, especially in it incipient settlement,
offers very few situations for any one to get a living
without work; there are few, if any, easy positions;
whatever one gets he must work for; and those who come
without means, only their hands to help themselves with,
must of course work for some one who has got a start. Simon
was of this class, who, with his brother George, came up the
Chippewa in June 1840.

Simon was born in the town of Baldwin (now Sebago),
Cumberland County, Maine in 1817. The strongest, healthiest,
and most robust of a hardy family, he prided himself more on
his physical ability than upon his intellectual
acquirements. Other members of the family were proud to be
at the head of the class at the Centre schoolhouse, he cared
not who was at the head or foot, nor whether his lesson was
learned or neglected. His stay in Muscatine County, Iowa, to
which place he and George emigrated in 1838, was too short
to deplete his energies with fever and ague, and on their
passage up the Mississippi, the boat having landed at
Wabasha, to put off a large amount of pork, and being short
of help on deck, the two brothers offered their services,
and instead of rolling the barrels over the deck and gang-
plank, they seized them by the chimes and carried them
ashore and up the bank with as much ease as the deckhands
carried a keg of nails. These displays of strength sometimes
excited the envy of his fellows, but his good nature and
free and easy way made him a great favorite, but his good
nature and free and easy way made him a great favorite
amongst the boy, and few could tell a story with a better
zest or more telling effect on the crowd.

It was natural that a young man of such a temperament should
fall readily into the ways of his associates, and the
lessons the boys first learned on the river wore not
calculated to improve their morals or raise their
aspirations for something better; the example and influence
of some of the business men then on the river being very
pernicious.

In any industrial pursuit or department of business, to rise
from the condition of a common laborer to the management and
successful prosecution of business for one's self, requires
pluck, energy, economy, and persistent endeavor; but the
lumber business of that early day, when stumpage and titles
to land were unknown, through replete with hardships,
required less capital than at present, and the two brothers,
after more than a year's struggle, took out their first
raft, which was sold in Muscatine - lumber and pine logs
being almost the only commodity that would sell for cash in
that market at that time.

Availing themselves of credit, which was freely offered,
they extended their operations, and in 1864 formed a
partnership with Allen & Branham elsewhere referred to in
this work, and after its dissolution became the principal
factor in building the first mill in Eau Claire, only to see
it carried away by the flood the next day after it started,
together with piers, booms, and ten thousand logs. Credit
had been used to the utmost accomplish, this, and heavy
liabilities remained - a clog and burden upon all succeeding
operations. But over all these difficulties pluck and
perseverance finally triumphed, and a fair competence, if
nothing occurs to prevent, seems likely to relieve the
anxieties of the downhill of life.

NELSON C. CHAPMAN & JOSEPH G. THORP

It very frequently happens, especially in new countries,
that enterprises are commenced by parties who find
themselves inefficient or wanting in business capacity to
conduct them when more fully developed. Of all the varied
business pursuits in which men engage in this country,
perhaps none requires more ability and active energy to
conduct it successfully than the manufacture of lumber; and
the original settlers and operators on the Eau Claire began
to realize very soon their inability to fully develop the
resources of the situation, and to invite men of capital to
visit their promise, with a view to sell.

Unable to command the means to purchase the interest of Gage
& Reed, Adin Randall, who came to Eau Clair in the summer of
1855, obtained a bond for the transfer of the property at a
fixed price and applied himself to find a purchaser, and, by
chance or fate, came in contact with and made the
acquaintance of the gentlemen above named, then operating in
real estate at Clinton, Iowa, which led to their investment
here and identified them at once with the growth and
development of Eau Claire and its surroundings and made
their names conspicuous throughout the northwest.

Nelson C. Chapman was born in Durham, Green County, New York
in 1811. The death of his father occurring when he was quite
young, his education was limited to such as the common
school of that period could bestow, and at the age of
sixteen he went into the store of Benjamin Chapman, in
Norwich, Chenango County, where industry and fidelity won
him the confidence of his uncle, and he was taken into the
business as partner at the age of twenty.

Here he remained, the house doing a successful business
until 1846, when he removed to Oxford and became a partner
with J.G. Thorp, under the firm name of Chapman and Thorp,
continuing in business with the latter until the time of his
death in 1873, which occurred in St. Louis, to which place
he remove in 1857, conducting the business of the firm with
signal ability in that city, where he was regarded as a
prominent citizen and thorough businessman, being chosen
president of a leading railroad operation, and elected to
many important positions under the city and State
governments.

Joseph G. Thorp was born in Butternuts, Otsego County, New
York, in 1812, was bereaved of both parents at the age of
fourteen, and for three succeeding years continued to work
on a farm, receiving such common school education as he
could acquire in the winter season.

In 1829, he obtained a situation, on trial, in the store of
Ira Wilcox, a thorough merchant of Oxford, Chenango County,
New York, where he remained until his majority and three
years after as clerk at a good salary, when, in 1836, he was
given a partnership under the name of J. Wilcox and Company,
which continued ten years, when Mr. Wilcox sold his interest
to N.C. Chapman, and thus was formed the firm of Chapman and
Thorp, their business being carried on in the same place,
Oxford, until 1857, when it removed to Eau Claire,
Wisconsin. Thus we see that Mr. Thorp was twenty-seven years
in the same store and place having risen from a boy on trial
to a partnership in a prosperous business, and the credit of
the firm was now fully established. Mr. Thorp married Miss
Chapman, sister of his late partner, who late partner, who
was allied by marriage to Mr. Gilbert, since so well known
in this State.

Sufficient capital had been accumulated in 1855 to make
investments in real estate at Clinton, Iowa, without
affecting the business of the house in Oxford, but their
transactions here soon called for all their means, having
closed an engagement with Gage & Reed for their property, at
forty-two thousand dollars in May 1856, and soon after
bought the entire property of Carson, Eaton & Downs of Eau
Claire.

Quite an amusing incident grew out of the contract with Gage
& Reed, the payments being made in installments - gold being
plenty and commanding no premium when the bargain was made,
no stipulation had been made to satisfy the claims in
anything else - but before the last fell due, money in any
shape, but especially good, had disappeared utterly
throughout the West, and few people hereabouts, Gage & Reed
among them, believed it possible for so much gold, nine
thousand dollars, to be obtained in the United States, and
the payees having signified their determination to receive
nothing else, looked confidently forward to foreclosure, but
when the day came were astonished to find the whole sum
ready, principal and interest, in American gold. But those
were days that tried men's souls, and however successful as
merchants this firm had been, they could not but realize
that as lumbermen they lacked the experience necessary to
command success; however, they were fairly in for it and
most go on, as heavily liabilities had been incurred, and
not the value of credit and a good name was to be fully
tested, which, with pluck and untiring perseverance, carried
them successfully through the crisis while thousands became
bankrupt. In ten years all these difficulties had
disappeared and large accessions been made to their real
estate, when, by act of incorporation, the Eau Claire Lumber
Company was organized with a paid-up-capital of one hundred
and sixty thousand dollars, now worth ten times that amount,
the head of which is Joseph G. Thorp.

Mr. Thorp has filled many positions of trust with honor to
himself and advantage to the public; was several years a
member of the County Board, and shares credit of ferreting
out delinquencies in the management of its funds, and of
raising the credit of the county which for a long time was
fifty percent, below par; had been twice elected State
Senator, and was a delegate to the convention in
Philadelphia that nominated Grand and Wilson in 1872. Having
traveled extensively in Europe, he has now returned to
business and enjoyment of private life.

In answers to my inquiries, he says; "My experience from
boyhood up leads to this opinion as regards my success. When
a boy I was lazy, and if I had had anything in expectancy to
rely upon might have made a worthless fellow. Necessity
showed me only one way to be anybody, and that was to
establish a good character. Trusting in God, I have
succeeded. My motto has been, and my advice to all young men
is always honest, every plucky, and your word better than
your bond."

In politics Mr. Thorp was formerly a Clay Whig and since a
steadfast Republican, and in religion a sound Presbyterian.

HONORABLE HIRAM PEASE GRAHAM

Modest and unassuming, without parade or ostentation, this
individual has raised himself to positions of trust and
honor, and acquired distinction among men by positive merit.
He was born in Windham, Green County, New York, on March 29,
1820; received a common school education; learned the trade
and for several years followed the occupation of millwright.
The first steam mill erected by Chapman and Thorp was built
under his supervision. Mr. Graham has held various offices,
was for five years general inspector of lumber for the
Chippewa district, was elected the first mayor of Eau Claire
in 1872, and State Senator for the Thirteenth District in
1873, but he is one of the men that office has sought, and
being a Democrat has on more than one occasion been the only
hope of his party in the district or city - his own
popularity electing him against overwhelming Republican
majorities. Though by no means opposed to the war measures
of the Government during the rebellion, it was a matter of
surprise and regret to many of his friends that a man of
such influence and high moral worth should adhere so
tenaciously to a party whose prestige and success could only
in the very nature of things afford comfort and inspire hope
in the enemy's camp, and thereby serve to protract the war.
Conservative in all things, it must have been a great
sacrifice of party fealty to find that he could no longer be
true the Government and yet follow the dictum of his party
leaders, but throughout the war there was not the remotest
suspicion o his want of loyalty to the country, and as an
individual he preformed with alacrity his duty to the
Government. A life-long Democrat, accustomed to regard the
policy and principles of the party as next to infallible, it
was a far severer test of his patriotism than if his
sympathies had always been with the party now wilding the
Government. Mr. Graham was against the reactionary measures
of those who favored the Ryan Address. In this respect he
represents a class, and I have chosen him as one of its most
prominent representatives.