Not Long Ago 1879 - 1979 The Langlade County Centennial Story

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cash socked away because he purchased and hauled his cut wood from Shawano to build a finished building, a real coup in those days. Mrs. Larzelere began the first school in a log cabin on her property. The pupils were the children of the first famili es, \Valdo Yates and two of her own. The line of development is ironic.

Babcock it had an entry, "Swill for pigs: $50." Johnson paid the bill, but. things b egan disappearing from Babcock's supply tent and some people suspected Johnson was taking his turn. The "old militaire" gave the upper Wolf a shot of boom times. Settlers and loggers arrived in the same surge- the first of two waves of settlers to colonize the north. They had the river to reach the Fox Valley and a road t o supply the settlers and logging operations along the river and its tributaries. Who needed a railroad? Two woodsmen fudged that question when they traveled east to Dobbston, known as Markton today, from Wausau across the Antigo flats in 1874. The pair told of fine stands of basswood, elm, ash, cherry , butternut and pine they h ad seen, but one added, "It would take a whole year to get 1 ,000 feet of the product t o market." The Wolf River loggers' reaction isn't recorded, but they probably nodded sagely while surveying their pine and the river it floated. REST ST OPS

More stopping places were popping up along t he route to take care o f the arriving cruisers, settlers and loggers. Charles Larzelere arrived from New York early in the 70s, boasting two fine draft horses, which he drove about the state to survey its potential. Larzelere drove the road for much or all of its length and set d own a piece at Lac Vieux Desert before deciding, on passing where Highway 64 and 55 junction by the river, that it was as fine a place as any to locate. Larzelere settled there in 1872, the same year John Yates did, and both had stopping places close by, with Yates opening a grocery store and some people arguing that Larzelere did too. Amasa Smith opened a place at Lily in 1876 and in 1877 Fred Dodge opened cabins at Hollister, then called Nine Mile Creek. Like any shrewd merchant 50

1848 OCONTO COUNTY MAP

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The taverns opened to serve the creature comforts of customers who settled down and then built the first schools and churches. But the taverns were first. In 1873 the Langlade men built a frame school, the first of four constructed in the community over the years, and hired Miss Addie Wescott from Shawano as teacher. Her pupils were Elton and Carrie Larzelere, Levi and Etta Fanow and Waldo Yates. The Farrows had arrived with their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Farrow, the same year. The Military Road was never the finest route to travel. It was a 25 foot right of way, with cleared stumps to allow wagon traffic and corduroy roads (log bases) through low lands. It was passable in good weather, slippery and all but impassable at t imes in winter and rough work when wet and mushy. Still the Wolf River Valley had a 10 year headstart on Antigo, which was still a glint in Deleglise's eye at that point. But Lily was a reality to Squire A. Taylor.

logging in 1947-49, Taylor got the land from the Military Road contractors, for whom he had done some of the Military Road work. "The land given by the government for the construction of the Milita1y Road was juggled around until, in the early 70s, it fell into the hands of. ..Taylor," Whitehouse wrote, "(Taylor) was reputed to be quite wealthy and then of Chicago. He suffered a heavy loss in the great Chicago fire that occurred in 1871. Soon after that he pulled stakes ... and came north and devoted the rest of his days in disposing of his land and timber." Several other accounts mention Taylor as being active in the area in logging and selling land. In any event Taylor convinced a lot of settlers to move into the region. He advertised in eastern and urban newspapers and periodicals, extolling the beauty, climate and economic and farm prospects of the area. The ads drew an influx of settlers in the 70s and 80s many of whom purchased land from Taylor and worked in the logging camps. If those same ads were printed today they'd probably provoke an investigation for corrupt practices, but it's probable that most, if not all, of the landowners of the time really believed in the utility of their woods. It was time that proved that a lot of the land north of the Tension Zone wasn't suitable for farming because of its poor soil and short growing season. Of course tin1e needed the tools to establish this fact- and the willing settlers supplied that means with their frustrated labor over much of the north. ln time Deleglise got into land speculation as did W.W. Hutchinson, the two being partners for a time. The pair put out a booklet that described a visit by a fictional visitor to early Antigo. The community and its tall pines and surrounding farms is painted as little short of an immaculate Camelot where

FATHER OF LANGLADE COUNTY It's not clear how, but Taylor came into a lot of la nd in the area and he evidentally got a good deal of it from the builders of the road, who had no use for the land and sold it off when they completed the route to get their money out of the project. Taylor was living along the iiver early in the 70s and had reportedly financed the eounty's first sawmill, built by Tom Dobbs at Dobbston where Taylor had an early land office. When Taylor moved on to Lily, Dobbs moved with him and opened a mill there. Taylor became known as the father of Langlade County because he pushed hard to create the county . He died February 22, 1902 at the old Springbrook House in Antigo, having spanned the century . According to James L. Whitehouse, who wrote a history of the Wolf River

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competent woodman showed us as a result of careful estimates on ten forties, more than three million feet of valuable timber of size and quality suitable for saw logs," the publication continued. "These estimates did not include a considerable amount of timber valuable for cordwood, pulpwood, ties and posts." The cover of the magazine was an ad by Hu tchinson inviting investors, farmers, mcrchanics and manufacturers to consider Antigo's future. The settlers who arrived in Antigo after the railroad had it a good bit easier than the arrivals who jolted, jarred and jammed over the first rough roads. But there was no railroad on the Wolf so the river had to be prepared for the drives. Some early settlers worked on the crews that did the clearing of the debris of centuries. They had to drag huge logs out of channels, clear rocks from the path of the log runs and, if possible, move six and eight foot boulders with dynamite. The lumbermen did such work on rivers across the north because they needed as neat a run as possible to float

"never is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day," as the old song put it. The trickle of settlers was becoming a rush as Civil War veterans and immigrants swelled the tide. Most headed westward, but the ones who found their way moving north along Lake Michigan, and then deeper into the pines, had rewards to reap. LOGGING THE LAND

Ordinarily farmers hate to settle timbered land because of the time and cost of clearing it, but as t he writer of an extensive article on Antigo pointed out in The Industrial West's, December, 1889, issue, the Antigo farmers were having t heir cake and eating it too. "It is no uncommon thing for the farmers to cut an average of 10,000 feet of merchantable saw logs of various hardwoods per acre, for which there is a ready market at from $3 to $6 per thousand feet," said the article, published in Milwaukee, "which not only gives him pay for stumpage, but will also net him $3.50 to $5 a day for himself and team." ''A few miles from Antigo a

First Cabin at Antigo

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the lumber and pay the owner for the land, but you couldn't pay an absent owner, and the caveat is just another instance of how the urgent drive for pine opened up the river valley.

tl1Pir logs. It was common to form "improvement companies" to clean up lhe rivers. That old fox, Philetus Sawyer and other lumbermen formed the Keshena Improvement Co. even as the Military Road was being pushed northward. Sawyer got a charter for the company from the Department of Interior and the state to build the dams and clear the rivers. The company had its way here because Sawyer got permission in the charter to take any lumber he needed lo build the many dams on the tivcr from adjacent lands regardless of who owned it. Of course, he had to scale

LA ND SPECULATION The speculative binge touched off by the pine barons and men such as 'l'aylor and others resulted in some harsh realities that have come down to our time in ways t hat few people understand, Jess care about. And yet it's central to our understanding of what happened here a century ago.

"w11 ereasThe Legislature has further enacted that the supervisors of Langlade County shall locate the county seat and has divided Shawano and Langlade counties in such a manner as to cluster a majority of these county seat makers around the place where the conspiring monopolists expect to reap the harvest of their fraud out of the advanced price of the lots and land, wholly regardless of the wishes and convenience of the people of the two large counties and contrary to the letter and spirit of Article I V of the amendments of the constitution as well as to the equity, fairness, reason and common sense. Wh ereas-The six towns detached from Langlade County are inhabited by intelligent, free and independent American citizens who cannot be driven lo the polls like a herd of voting cattle and are therefore annoying to the crafty schemers who, with the aid of the Legislature, sought to attach them to a county from which they are separated by the Indian Reserve eighteen miles wide and as they are not contiguous to any part of Shawano County, they cannot be legally attacked to any from

thereof{ and must lay dormant without law, taxes or suffrages unless they voluntarily submit to an organization or until the act disinfranchising them is repealed by a legislation not under the heel of the monopolist. That a committee of three be appointed by the chairman. . . whose duty it shall be, first, to advise with and assist the district attorney in all legal measures adopted to prevent the breaking up or dismemberment of Shawano and Langlade counties; second. to employ such assistant counsel with the advice of the district attorney as may appear necessary; third, to publish or cause to be published anything deemed advisable fo r the information of the public; fou rth, to watch closely the principal investigators of the conspiracy against the county, especially those who live in the county they seek to destroy, to see to it that they take no more than their 30 pieces of silver, and when the proper lime comes show them the way to the potters field . .. " Portion of a resolution adopted b y the Shawano County Board June 8 , 1879

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First of all, land speculation was almost a way of life in pioneering America. The free enterprise system has always best rewarded those who knew how to use it, and those who knew best usually did the best. Contrary to romantic myth the land was not purchased dear from hostile tribes and shaped into neatly packaged homesteads by the honest toil of freeholders. At least in Wisconsin the Indians were not generally hostile and gave up almost too flacidly an eternal heritage. Free land, cried historians, but it was never free. There was usually a middleman, the speculator. Under acts passed by Congress, there were two ways to get land in frontier areas. Pre-emption involved a settler first occupying the land and then making application for its title. Within six months after filing he could buy the land for $1.25 an acre and get a clear title. Under the Homestead Act passed in the 60s a settler filed for the land with the government, occupied it and improved it-thus receiving clear title. The earliest settlers tended to pre-empt, partially because the pre-emption law was in effect earlier but also possibly because it was easy to squat on land in unsettled areas. 'T'he nP.w frontier attracted such ear ly arrivals who were really free to settle where they l iked: Most took t he best land available-along a road, river or at sites with good soil. T his set the lines of development, and as new settlers arrived the older ones usually got clear title to avoid being challenged. The second wave of settlers usually got Homestead Righ L to their land, which gave them absolute ownership. Those early farms occupied first by pre-emptors, and later by homesteaders, were often the best farms and have come down to us as well-do-do properties. Inasmuch as the settlers arrived with the railroads !.hey almost always took land long the rails and because thP

railroads got every other section where they built, the supply didn't begin to meet the demand for real ly top quality parcels. The settlers wouldn't locate on outlying good land because it was too far from the line and had no good roads. So they often ended up buying good land from the railroads. The government tried to deal with the problem of land falling to speculation, but Congress never really met the issue head on and so when public sales were held the people who had ready cash would buy up the best land. Because of this many settlers scouting for some of that "free" land in northern Wisconsin would often iun into surveyed, staked land. RAI L ROADS AND LU MBERMEN IN CONTROL Th is was because the timber companies came into the county and their cruisers found the good land far from the rail lines, which they were clever enough to buy, figuring that it would soon become valuable. Sometimes they hired various loggers to take up homesteads on the property they wanted so that the company could then pick it up at a very low price when the title was perfected. So the lumber companies came into a lot of land that didn't get into private hands until it was cut and put up for sale. T hus most of the best land outlying the ra ilroads was often not available for settlement . The result was that a small settlement would rise in the mud and be separated from the nearest other rude cluster by an imposing forest through which people had to hike a dark trail. There were a lot of hard feelings about this in the early days of the county because as the best land along the railroads was taken up the settlers would push outward into a veritable well. Given that situation, other factors that worked lo the settlers' harm in the peculiar way this country transferred its

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Above, oxen and boy; below, pioneer farm of the area.

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development in eastern and western Langlade County was illustrated brilliantly by Robert Wilson Leslie, who wrote a paper called ·'The Placing of Langlade County Lands Upon the Market" for a bachelor of arts thesis in 1916. Leslie shows that only a handful of owners held most of the land in what was then Township 33 North, Range 14 East, part of the Town of Elton-now Wolf River. Righ t of way owned by the railroads totaled 9,320 acres; by Menasha Woodenware Co., a large firm of the time, 5,560 acres; by M.J. Wallrich (Shawano Abstract Co.) 2,040; and Wall Spaulding Lumber Co. 1,440 acres. The Torrey Cedar Co. owned 880 acres; Northern Land Co., 800 acres; Miner Brothers, 6-10 acres; Holt Lumber Co., 600; Wolf River Power Co., 400; and Shawano Land Co., 400. Two owners are listed of 120 acre tracts totaling 240 acres. Six owners are

holdings to the people are even murkier. When the lands owned by the Federal government were given to the state, certain requirements were made for clisposition of the land to fill the need of public education, universities, railroads and military roads. All of the land patented to Wisconsin in Langlade County was for swamp land grants in two classes, I and II, railroad and Military Road grants and educational land grants. Now swamp land was simply a formal category that actually included a {,rt·eat deal of fine timber and good land. Langlade County's swamp land totalc~d 81,480 acres in Class II, but this amounted to some of the best land in the coun ly. Class I sold at $2.50 an acre and Class II for $1.25 an acre. When the land was offered for sale the big lumber firms knew which was best and picked it up in sales. The state was left with poor, blowdown and swampy lands, some of which are our preserved state forests or wetlands today. A lot of the education land , which totaled some 57 ,320 acres, also got into the big landowners' hands the same way with the state getting little of the revenue it deserved from the sales. As noted previously the railroads and Military Road builders got a total of 173,840 acres in the county. This totaled 312,640 acres, more than half of the county's 560,000 acres. (Because land and lumber companies got most of the land sold by the Military Road buyers the result of such transfers was that the eastern part of Langlade County, much more than the west, was taken up by large landholders. The holdings undoubtedly throttled settlement along the Wolf.) In this way about 90 per cent of the land chartered lo the slate by the federal government ended up in the hands of land, lumber and railroad companies. The state and nation couldn't have done a better job of keeping the land out of small settlers' hands if it had tried. The diffe rence between the

' ' Petition lo Gov. Jeremiah Rush from the Langlade County Board: We . . . do hereby most respectfully petition his honor. . . that he offer a reward (according to law in such cases provided) for the arrest of Charles Polar who murdered Henry Still on the 12th day of Jun e, 1883, in the Town of Gagen . . .and who is at large and supposed to be in the woods in Shawano County. The county has already spent considerable money to effect the arrest of said Polar. Ile has before, and since the murder of Henry Still threatened to talle the lives of others in that section of the stale, and he is a desperate character and should be captured as soon as possible and intervention of your authority is most earnestly requested." (PostscriptPolar died of old age in 1914)

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Fortunately filmed with a fine sense of composition, light a nd de pth, t h is picture of a school either at Langlade or Markton showc; the schoo l marm, Miss Hattie Cole, and a room of well-scrubbed faces. The pupils are (in no order) Harvey Alft, Ellen Dicky, Eugene Bell, Donald Dicky, Willie Alft, Grace Pointer, Lester Dicky, Teddy Dicky, Eunice Bell and Della Pointer. listed of 80 acre tracts totaling 480 aeres and five ow ners of 40 acre tracts totaling 200 aeres. The grand total? 23,040 acres. The situation was far better in Township 32, Range 10 East of Peek where the Union Lime Co. had 3,960 acres and the George Baldwin estaLe had som