



Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Carol Brown and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)










  VOL. I               1917-1918

  THE
  WISCONSIN MAGAZINE
  OF HISTORY

  [Illustration: Printer’s Logo]

  PUBLICATIONS OF THE
  STATE HISTORICAL
  SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN.
  Edited by MILO M.
  QUAIFE, Superintendent




  CONTENTS OF VOLUME I


LEADING ARTICLES:                                                PAGE

  MILO M. QUAIFE--Increase Allen Lapham, First Scholar of
    Wisconsin                                                       3
  JOHN L. BRACKLIN--A Forest Fire in Northern Wisconsin            16
  LOUISE P. KELLOGG--Bankers’ Aid in 1861-62                       25
  CARL RUSSELL FISH--The Frontier a World Problem                 121
  GEORGE MANIERRE--Early Recollections of Lake Geneva             142
  OLE. K. NATTESTAD and RASMUS B. ANDERSON--Description of a
    Journey to North America                                      149
  CORDELIA A. P. HARVEY--A Wisconsin Woman’s Picture of
    President Lincoln                                             233
  SIPKO F. REDERUS--The Dutch Settlements of Sheboygan County     256
  LUCIUS G. FISHER--Pioneer Recollections of Beloit and Southern
    Wisconsin                                                     266
  CHARLES A. INGRAHAM--Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth: First Hero of
    the Civil War                                                 349
  CHARLES GIESSING--Where Is the German Fatherland?               375
  LOUISE P. KELLOGG--The Paul Revere Print of the Boston
    Massacre                                                      377


DOCUMENTS:

  The Dairy of Harvey Reid: Kept at Madison in the Spring
    of 1861                                                        35
  The Chicago Treaty of 1833: Charges Preferred Against
    George B. Porter: Letter from George B. Porter to President
    Andrew Jackson                                                287
  Some Letters of Paul O. Husting Concerning the Present
    Crisis                                                        388


HISTORICAL FRAGMENTS:

  Wisconsin’s First Versifiers; Memorandum on the Spelling of
    “Jolliet”; The First Edition of the Zenger Trial, 1736;
    A Novel Transportation Device                                  64
  The Disputed Michigan-Wisconsin Boundary; An Early Wisconsin
    Play                                                          304
  The Beginnings of Milwaukee; The Senatorial Election of 1869;
    “Koshkonong” and “Man Eater”; The Alien Suffrage
    Provision in the Constitution of Wisconsin                    417


EDITORIAL:

  Introducing Ourselves; Our State Flag; The Society and the
    Legislature; Nelson Dewey Park and the First Wisconsin
    Capitol; Perrot State Park and John A. Latsch; Forest
    Fires, Generally and in Particular; Consolation for the
    Present Crisis                                                 75
  History Repeats Itself; Our Military Record; What of the
    Future; An Appreciation and a Suggestion; Cannon Fodder       187
  The Professor and the Finger Bowl; The Printing of Historical
    Publications; Is War Becoming More Horrible; Some
    Leaves from the Past; The Development of Humanitarianism;
    Other Agencies; Some Facts and Figures; Bravery
    Then and Now; Schrecklichkeit                                 309
  Increase A. Lapham and the German Air Raids; Save the
    Relics; The Newspapers; Removing the Papacy to Chicago        426


THE QUESTION BOX:

  The Oldest Church in Wisconsin; The First Mills in the Fox
    River Valley; Colonel Ellsworth’s Madison Career; The
    Story of “Glory of the Morning”; The Odanah Indian Reservation;
    First Exploration of Eastern Wisconsin; A Community
    Changes Its Name; How the Apostle Islands Were
    Named; The Services of the Menominee in the Black
    Hawk War                                                       87
  Daniel Webster’s Wisconsin Investments; Names Proposed
    for a New Town; Origin of the Word “Winnequah”; The
    Discovery of Lake Superior; The Potawatomi During the
    Revolution; Father Allouez Among the Kickapoo; The
    Indian Tribes of Iowa                                         193
  The First Settler of Baraboo; The Chippewa River During the
    French and British Régimes; The Career of Colonel G. W.
    Manypenny; Treaty Hall and Old La Pointe                      319


COMMUNICATIONS:

  Old Copperheads and New; A Presbyterian Objects                 202
  More Light on the Originator of “Winnequah”; A History of
    Our State Flag                                                327
  “Camouflage” and “Eatless Days” Two Hundred Years Ago;
    Daniel Webster’s Wisconsin Investments                        432


SURVEY OF HISTORICAL ACTIVITIES:

  The Society and the State                        101, 206, 330, 435
  Some Publications                                111, 221, 340, 445
  Some Wisconsin Public Documents                            210, 337
  The Wider Field                                                 449




[Frontispiece: INCREASE A. LAPHAM]




  VOL. I, NO. 1               SEPTEMBER, 1917

  WISCONSIN MAGAZINE
  OF HISTORY

  [Illustration: Printer’s Logo]

  PUBLICATIONS OF THE
  STATE HISTORICAL
  SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN.
  Edited by MILO M.
  QUAIFE, Superintendent




  CONTENTS


                                                                 PAGE

  INCREASE ALLEN LAPHAM, FIRST SCHOLAR OF WISCONSIN
                                            _Milo M. Quaife_        3

  A FOREST FIRE IN NORTHERN WISCONSIN     _John L. Bracklin_       16

  BANKERS’ AID IN 1861-62                _Louise P. Kellogg_       25

  DOCUMENTS:
    The Diary of Harvey Reid: Kept at Madison in the
    Spring of 1861                                                 35

  HISTORICAL FRAGMENTS:
    Wisconsin’s First Versifiers; Memorandum on the
    Spelling of “Jolliet”; The First Edition of the
    Zenger Trial, 1736; A Novel Transportation Device              64

  EDITORIALS:
    Introducing Ourselves; Our State Flag; The
    Society and the Legislature; Nelson Dewey Park
    and the First Wisconsin Capitol; Perrot State Park
    and John A. Latsch; Forest Fires, Generally and in
    Particular; Consolation for the Present Crisis                 75

  QUESTION BOX:
    The Oldest Church in Wisconsin; The First Mills in
    the Fox River Valley; Colonel Ellsworth’s Madison
    Career; The Story of “Glory of the Morning”; The
    Odanah Indian Reservation; First Exploration of
    Eastern Wisconsin; A Community Changes Its
    Name; How the Apostle Islands Were Named; The
    Services of the Menominee in the Black Hawk War                87

  SURVEY OF HISTORICAL ACTIVITIES:
    The Society and the State; Some Publications                  101




Copyright, 1917, by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin




INCREASE ALLEN LAPHAM, FIRST SCHOLAR OF WISCONSIN

BY MILO M. QUAIFE


The most characteristic and comprehensive theme in all American
history is that of the westward movement. From the time of the first
feeble landings at Quebec, at Plymouth, and at Jamestown, the history
of our country has been characterized by a steady westward surge of
the population, reaching out eagerly for new lands to conquer, and in
the process carrying the banner of civilization ever westward and
establishing successive new communities and states. The present
generation of students of American history has not been unmindful of
the importance and interest which attaches to this westward movement,
and has not failed to accord it, in the main, all due recognition.
With the doings and deserts of our pioneer farm, canal, railroad, and
city builders, our hewers of wood and drawers of water, in a word,
historians have long made us familiar. Unfortunately, however, too
little attention has been given, and too little recognition accorded,
the equally important service of those among our western pioneers who
laid the foundations of our spiritual and intellectual civilization.
That man may not live by bread alone was stated long ago on excellent
authority. The hewing down of the forests and breaking of the
prairies, the building of houses, highways, and cities were all
essential steps in the process of transforming the wilderness into an
abode of enlightened civilization. Equally essential was the
establishment of institutions of learning and religion, and the
development of a taste for literature and art. The blossoming of these
finer fruits of civilization inevitably tended to sweeten and refine
the society of the pioneers, which otherwise, engrossed in a stern
physical struggle with the wilderness, must have become hard and gross
in character.

Fortunate indeed is the pioneer community which numbers among its
settlers intellectual and spiritual leaders fired with enthusiasm and
endowed with ability. Fortunate it was for Wisconsin when in the very
year of her birth as a territory, Increase Allen Lapham cast his lot
for the remainder of his life with her. The service rendered by the
intellectual aristocracy of pioneer Massachusetts and the other New
England colonies has long been accorded ample recognition. The valiant
labors of Increase Lapham in the service of the state of his adoption
have largely gone unheeded and unrewarded to the present moment. Yet
it is safe to predict that when the future historian shall come to
scan the record of the first half century of Wisconsin’s history as a
territory and state, he will affirm that no man brought greater honor
to her or performed more valuable services in her behalf than did the
modest scholar, Increase Allen Lapham.

The frontier has ever been proud of its self-made men, esteeming
chiefly, not who a man might be but rather what he was able to do.
Lapham was a true frontiersman in this respect at least, that he was a
wholly self-made scholar. He was born in March, 1811, at Palmyra, New
York, “two miles west of the Macedon locks on the Erie Canal.” His
father, Seneca Lapham, was an engineering contractor, the pursuit of
whose profession necessitated frequent family removals. Thus, in 1818
the family was located at Pottsville, Pennsylvania, where the father
was employed on the Schuylkill Canal; two years later he was back on
the Erie Canal and the family was residing for a second time at Galen,
New York; the next few years witnessed further removals to Rochester
and Lockport in New York, and to several points in Ohio.

The boy, Increase Lapham, was evidently a precocious youth. At
thirteen years of age he “found frequent sale” for his drawings of the
plan of the locks his father had assisted in constructing at Lockport.
About this time he gained employment, first at cutting stone for the
locks and then as rodman on the canal. While engaged in stonecutting,
he wrote in later years, “I found my first fossils and began my
collection. The beautiful specimens I found in the deep rock cut at
this place gave me my first ideas of mineralogy and initiated a habit
of observation which has continued through all my life. I found
amusement and pastime in the study of nature, leading to long walks in
the country, and as I found no others of similar tastes these rambles
were usually without companions.”

When fifteen years of age the youth followed his father to Ohio where
he worked for a short time on the Miami Canal, removing at the close
of the year, 1826, to undertake similar employment at Louisville. At
this time, apparently, he first attracted the attention of members of
the world of scholarship, for we find the renowned scientist,
Professor Silliman of Yale, writing to thank him “for the liberal
spirit which you manifest in encouraging a work designed to promote
the public good”--the work in question being the _American Journal of
Science_, of which Silliman was the founder and editor. Within a few
months the boy made his first contribution to scholarship by sending
to Silliman, for publication in the _American Journal of Science_, a
comprehensive description of the canal around the Ohio Rapids.

At this time he was only sixteen, and his opportunities for schooling
had been exceedingly scant. Yet his habits of observation and his
powers of reasoning and of expressing himself in clear and convincing
English might well be coveted by the average college undergraduate of
today. A convenient illustration of these powers is afforded by
Lapham’s journal entry for October 24. 1827:

     A smoky day. Mr. Henry, the engineer [of the canal], is of
     the opinion that the smoke occasioning our Indian summer, as
     the smoky weather is called, does not originate in the
     burning prairies in the West, or in other extensive fires;
     but that it is from the decay of vegetation. (If it is
     possible for vegetables to be converted into smoke without
     combustion this will appear very probable!!!!)

     He relates an instance of a very smoky day at New Madrid
     being followed by an earthquake; this he supposed to be the
     smoke that had arisen through the ground. I told him that I
     supposed it was owing to a peculiar state of the atmosphere
     which was unfavorable to the decomposition of smoke; to this
     he made no reply.

The years of Lapham’s youth and early manhood from 1827-36 must be
passed in rapid review. Two years in all were spent on canal work at
Louisville; over three more followed at Portsmouth, Ohio; in April,
1833, the Ohio State Board of Canal Commissioners installed the young
engineer (now twenty-two years of age) as its secretary at an annual
salary of $400. Thereafter for three years his headquarters were in
the state capitol at Columbus, his work being that of secretary of the
canal commission. Meanwhile the elder Lapham, advised and financially
assisted by his sons, Darius and Increase, had abandoned the calling
of canal contractor and settled upon a farm near Mount Tabor. This
became the permanent family home, and here Seneca Lapham acquired a
well-deserved repute among his fellows both for his sobriety of
character and for his progressive ideas and practices with respect to
farming operations. In the years under review Increase Lapham
continued to pursue with enthusiasm his scientific studies and
investigations, the range of his interests and observations widening
with every passing year. Relations of acquaintance and friendship were
established with a large number of scientific investigators, all of
them, doubtless, much older than was Lapham himself. The study of
botany and zoölogy, and investigations with respect to more scientific
methods of farming were begun. In a communication on “Agriculture in
Ohio,” contributed to the _Genesee Farmer_ in 1833, the modern
doctrine with respect to rotation of crops and scientific renovation
of the soil through the use of fertilizers was laid down. A third of a
century later, but still over a third of a century in advance of the
recent movement for the conservation of the natural resources of the
country, Lapham followed up this general line of thought by writing
and publishing as a Wisconsin legislative document a comprehensive
argument in favor of the conservation of the state’s forest resources.
Happy had it been for both state and nation if heed had been given in
time to the vital problem to which he thus early called attention.

To a practical application of the Jacksonian theory of spoils politics
was due the migration of Lapham from the capital of Ohio to the
new-born town of Milwaukee in the spring of 1836. In later years he
humorously explained that he was “reformed” out of office and
employment in Ohio; at the time, there is reason to believe, the blow
was not considered in a humorous light. Early in his canal career
Lapham had worked under Byron Kilbourn, who now had thrown in his
fortunes with the rising young village of Milwaukee. As a leading
promoter of the coming metropolis Kilbourn had extensive business
projects in view, among them that of procuring the construction of the
Milwaukee and Rock River Canal, which would, it was fondly believed,
go far toward realizing for the nascent city her dreams of
metropolitan greatness. There was much demand for men possessed of
engineering ability, and Kilbourn, who had conceived a friendship for
Lapham which was to prove lifelong, now brought him to Wisconsin on a
salary of $1,000 a year. Thus Wisconsin became his permanent home, for
he left Milwaukee only to remove in old age to a farm near Oconomowoc.

At the mouth of the Milwaukee River Lapham found, on his arrival on
July 3, 1836, fifty houses where a few months before had been but two
or three. In coming from the older settled portion of Ohio to
Milwaukee he had entered a new world. Chicago was still in the height
of its first mad speculative boom and conditions at Milwaukee differed
only in detail from those which prevailed at Chicago. Indeed, on
reaching Detroit on his westward journey, Lapham wrote to his brother:
“I am now, and have been since I arrived at Sandusky, in what might
very properly be called the world of speculators: everybody you meet
is engaged in some speculation; everything you hear has some
speculation at the bottom. The hotel where I am now writing has
suspended on the walls of the barroom plats of new towns; I have added
the ninth.” No wonder the impecunious young man, engulfed in such an
atmosphere, proceeded, immediately upon his arrival at Milwaukee, to
purchase three town lots for $5,000, payable “one-half in one one-half
in two years.” How did he expect to provide the money to meet this
obligation? He did not expect to provide it; he “bought them for the
purpose of selling them again at a higher price.”

Lapham, however, was never designed for a business man, and he never