 Most of them arrived as a result of the completion of the Erie Canal and the end of the Black Hawk War.They got to what is now Adams County by sailing up the Wisconsin River from the Mississippi River on small barges which they constructed themselves out of materials obtained from the surrounding woodlands.When they arrived in what is now Adams County there was nothing but dense virgin forest, the "Yankee" New Englanders laid out farms, constructed roads, erected government buildings and established post routes.