Histories: Trempealeau Co. Historical Accounts:
"History of Trempealeau County Wisconsin, 1917":
Chapter 10:
Early Trempealeau
-As transcribed from pages 164 - 166
I
left the State of New York in the spring of 1851 for the West,
traveling by rail, by stage, and on foot, and by steamboat, arriving at
Montoville, now Trempealeau, Wisconsin, on May 6, 1851. At this
place I found James Reed. He lived in a log cabin. His
business was buying furs from the Indians for the Prairie du Chien Fur
Company. While here for a short time I went out each day in
different directions exploring the country, going on one trip north to
the Trempealeau River near where the village of Blair now stands,
finding the country everywhere swarming with wild deer and game of all
kinds, and many large or small camps of Indians. The soil
appeared to be of good quality, - some prairie, some burr oak openings,
some rolling, and high bluffs and deep valleys, with plenty of good
pure water, springs, creeks and rivers. After being out several
days I returned to Mr. Reed's and then procured an axe of Mr. Reed and
went northeast into the burr oak openings, and I selected a claim of
160 acres of land and cut logs and rolled up the body of a cabin, and
marked out my claim, cutting name and date on the logs of the cabin,
then returned to Mr. Reed's, after having made the first claim known to
me in Trempealeau County. I then took the boat up the Mississippi
River to look for work, arriving at the mouth of Chippewa River and
going up that river to the falls I obtained work for one year at good
wages. During the year I wrote many letters to my father and
friends in the East, describing the country about Montoville and urging
them to come and settle there, and at the end of the year, the last of
May, 1852, I returned to Montoville to look after my claim, and finding
there a most wonderful change, new buildings along the river, and here
and there out on the prairie. Mr. Reed was still there in
business. I went out to see my claim and found one, William cram,
had bought the land on the south and adjoining my claim, and was
building a log house. I then did a little work on my claim, and
then to keep my promise to work for the company another year I went
back to Chippewa Falls, where I worked one year and seven months.
Then in January, 1854, I returned to Montoville, then finding that a
more wonderful change had taken place. Hotels, stores, shops and
other business places, churches, school houses and farms scattered here
and there in all directions, and going out to my claim I found that my
father, with all of his family, had bought out William Cram, the place
adjoining my claim, and that a man had jumped my claim and had made
some improvements, for which he would not give up except upon the
payment of fifty dollars, which I paid and took possession. Later
I sold it to Charles Pickering.
In the spring of 1854 Alexander McGilvray settled on Black River and
ran a ferry boat across the river, instead of fording as before.
The place then became known as McGilvray's Ferry. In the summer I
bought property there and built a store, blacksmith shop, and also
opened a farm, and early in 1855 our settlers found the need for a
school and rented the front room of my house for one year and employed
Cecelia Segar to teach the first school at McGilvray's Ferry. A
new school house was built for the second term, and Fanny A. Olds was
employed as teacher, and here in this school house at the first term
was organized the first debating school in the county. Our people
all became so deeply interested that they came from far and near and
took part in the debates, and established a weekly newspaper called the
"Singinezia," to be edited by the members and read at each
meeting. These schools were kept up for a number of years,
discussing many great and important questions to the lasting benefit of
all that took part in them. Mr. McGilvray, the grand old
Scotchman, being the first settler here, named the place Caledonia,
after his native place in Scotland. Soon after Trempealeau County
was organized and the county seat was established at Galesville, a
beautiful young town on the banks of Beaver creek. Our early
settlers were a very intelligent, industrious and progressive
people. Thus school houses, churches, villages, hotels, stores,
grist mills, saw mills, and all kinds of public improvements was the
order of the day from the beginning of our early settlement.
Always manifesting the highest degree of intelligent progression, thus
changing a land that was once the home of the Indian and wild beasts of
the forest to a land that now stands upon the highest pinnacle of
American civilization. Thus we mention but a small part of the
events of our pioneer days from 1851 to 1861.
From 1861 to the spring of 1864 I kept my place at McGilvray's Ferry,
and in the month of May, 1864, Benjamin Oliver and I went north to look
for land to homestead. We found a few settlers in Trempealeau
valley near the mouth of Pigeon Creek. The settlement was called
Whitehall. From there we went up Pigeon Creek about six
miles. There we found Hely Fitch, his mother and sister, who told
us that they had settled there the year before, and that Mr. Fitch
froze to death in the winter of the deep snow; that the old man had to
go up into the cooley about three miles to cut and stack hay to winter
his oxen on, and that the snow got so deep that he could not driver the
oxen there after hay, and to keep them alive he would go on his
snowshoes everyday and bring a bundle of hay on his back. The
weather turned very cold and he went for a bundle and came back about
half way and feel with his hay, where they found him next day froze
solid. Though the snow being so deep they could not walk through
it and had to shovel and break a path to get to him, but they got him
home late that night. Thus that cooley was named Fitch's
Cooley. After hearing their heartrending story, we went on up the
creek about four miles into a cooley southeast of Pigeon Falls, where
Mr. Oliver selected his homestead. We then went north over the
bluffs about one mile. There I selected my homestead. This
Fitch family were the only settlers up in Pigeon valley in Trempealeau
County. Mr. Oliver and myself moved onto our land in August,
1864, and George H. Olds and James Phillips moved in one month
later. Then in the spring Wm. Olds and L. B. Man and H. Smith, P.
Peterson, L. Larson, Phineas Wright, C. H. Hines, Andrew Peterson and
Mr. Richardson, and some others, moved in during the summer of 1865.
In the fall of 1864 and early winter 1865, Mr. Oliver, Mr. Phillip, G.
H. Olds and myself bought and hauled lumber from Merrilan and built a
school house, and employed Mary Nott to teach the first term of school
in Pigeon Valley, beginning with twelve scholars, but having some more
at the close of the term. The second term was taught by Jane A.
Olds, and the third by Marilda Lyons. In these early days our
people organized debating schools, where some of the most profound
questions affecting the weal and woe of our people were discussed, and
to this day we can see and realize the benefits from the food for
thought that was brought out in those old debating schools, and I am
happy to know that some of those lights that shone so brightly in those
early days have not all gone out yet in 1912, and I hope that other and
brighter lights will continue to shine until the end of time.
Among the many early settlers of Pigeon Valley was one, Mr. Fuller, who
settled in a cooley northwest of Pigeon Falls about one mile, where he
had built a small farm house, and during a heavy thunder storm had laid
down with his wife upon a bed that stood with its head near a south
window. Mr. Fuller lay on the bed, his head in line with the
window, his wife lying back of him, when a bolt of lightning passed
through the window, striking him on top of the head and passing the
length of his body and from his feet to the floor and out through the
side of the house and to the ground, thus killing him instantly, while
his wife was unharmed except a slight shock. Thus this cooley was
called Fuller's Cooley. A year or two after his body was taken up
from his farm and was found to be petrified, and required five or six
persons to take it out of the grave.
(J. D. Olds in letters to Hon. H. A. Anderson, Feb. 14 to Feb. 17, 1912)