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Marinette
County Agriculture Has a Long History
Agriculture was practiced
in what was to become Marinette County long before the first white man,
Jean Nicolet, came up the river in 1618. Tradition has it that the
Menominee Indians brought wild rice plants with them when they settled
here, and the name "Menominee" means "wild rice
eaters."
Indian gardens gave an
abundant yield of vegetables; beans, squash, pumpkin, melons, and of
course maize were grown. Three varieties of corn -- popcorn, squaw corn
(several different color kernels on each ear), and a long-ear white
kernel, were prepared in many different ways, and dried for consumption
during the long winters. In the marshes grew arrowhead plant, and
excellent substitute for potatoes. The Indians cultivated butternut,
hazelnut, and beechnut trees, and used these nuts and acorns for food.
They harvested cranberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries,
huckleberries, shad (June) berries, grapes, plums, and crab apples. In
the spring, they tapped the maple trees, and usually obtained enough
sugar to last through the year.
Agriculture, as we think of
it today, began in the county with John Kittson, the fourth white man to
locate on the Menominee River. He arrived on August 23, 1830, as the
representative of the American Fur Company. Kittson was the son of a
British Army officer who had immigrated to Canada and settled near
Montreal. He was able to assist the Menominee with the communications to
the United States government, and was affectionately known by them as
"The Writer." He is described as extremely intelligent, with
the temperament and strength to adapt well to pioneer life.
Kittson soon began
operating a farm on the Menominee River, just above the trading post of
Stanislaus Chappu, the first known white settler in this area. Here
Kittson taught the Menominee improved ways of farming, and ran a very
hospitable house and table. He established an Indian cemetery on part of
his farm, and his friend, Chappu is buried there.
Kittson's second, and
larger, farm was located at the Ox-bow of the Menominee River, at the
Wausaukee flats area, opposite the mouth of the Wausaukee River. He also
operated a trading post here to serve the Indian settlement. He built a
large, two-story log house, and a huge two-story log barn which
contained accommodations for horses at one end and cows at the other,
with a threshing floor in the center; a haymow on the second floor
covered the entire area. About a quarter of a mile downriver from his
farm house, Kittson built a pelt storage house, octagonal in shape, also
two-story log-hewed, over a large basement, the walls of which were
lined with logs. The roof was covered with blue clay from the river. The
hot summer sun dried the clay, and it became impregnable to water and
the heat of the sun. The pelts were stored in the basement and first
floor; the second floor was filled with ice in the late winter and early
spring, to preserve the pelts in good condition until they could be
taken down to the American Fur Company office at Green Bay, after the
ice melted on the Menominee River.
As agent for the American
Fur Company, Kittson established several satellite trading posts, the
largest of which were at White Rapids and on the Pike River.
In the 1860s, with the
decline of the fur trade, Kittson returned to live at the smaller farm
at Chappee Rapids, where he died early in 1872. His death is attributed
to exhaustion and exposure while fighting the Peshtigo Fire of October
8, 1871. In 1881, his wife, Margaret, and son, Robert, sold the Ox-Bow
farm to Albert Beach. This farm is now owned by Peter Webber.
A Brief History of
Marinette County, published in 1881, states that "agriculture
in the county has not yet assumed importance, although when improved,
the land is good. The lumber business is far too productive, and gives
employment to all who desire work, and any earnest tilling of the land
is some years off; some place it at ten, some at twenty."
Nevertheless, there were
many good sized farms in the county at that time. As early as 1850,
there were 47 farmers between the Menominee and Peshtigo Rivers. Here,
579 acres of cultivated land were producing oats, potatoes, hay, and
maple syrup. In rural Peshtigo, Richard Chapman, Samuel Curtin, George
Laisure, Edwin Plumb, James Powers, and W.T. Seymour each farmed 80
acres. James Shauer's farm was 57 acres, and Phillip Glass, who was
also Constable and Overseer ov Highways, farmed 55 acres. John
Place (Chappu's son-in-law) worked as a sawyer, but also farmed 46
acres. Abraham Place owned 800 acres, of which he homesteaded 420. Levi
Hale was a well-known farmer and stockman, and Edward Perkins farmed and
raised horses. A. Newton purchased 147 acres in 1856; he was later
Justice of the Peace. Nelson Olson, his neighbor, farmed 40 acres in the
Peshtigo area, and 120 on Mud Creek. Richard Raleigh's farm was 100
acres, and Harry Troutwine's 160 acres. Of the 355 acres which Thomas
Payne purchased in 1881, 50 were in farmland. Phillip Fetterly, a
Canadian who had settled in the Peshtigo area in 1861, farmed 240 acres,
and was the first to send apples to the markets of the east and south
bearing the label "Peshtigo Township, Marinette County,
Wisconsin."
In Porterfield, John Ramsey
farmed 80 acres, and in Pound, David Henry's farm was the same size.
Robert Hurd had a sizable acreage under cultivation in Silver Cliff. In
what was to become the Town of Grover, Edgar Annis established a 200
acre farm in 1860. Here also, O.F. Peck owned 320 and 160 acre farms.
Levi Leslie's farm was 240 acres, Harvey England's 160 acres, and
William McFarland and Swen Olson each farmed 120 acres.
The Skidmore-Riley Land
Company brought hundreds of prospective farmers into the county with the
sale of cutover lands. This land varied in its ability to produce crops,
and the lighter soils played out after two or three years of potato
growing. As early as 1888, the Marinette County Board of Supervisors
resolved that "the sum of one thousand dollars be appropriated to
the Marinette County Agricultural Society." Thus the county began
studies of optimum use of the land, and crop rotation and reforestation
gradually restored much of the productive capacity.
By the end of 1977,
Marinette County had become one of the prominent agricultural counties
of Wisconsin. Dairies, small fruits, vegetables, potatoes, and other
agricultural products were worth more than any manufactured products
from the county, even at the height of the lumbering industry.
Latest figures available
show Marinette County with 1,020 farms, with an average size farm of
194.1 acres.
(Marinette County
Centennial 1879-1979, p. 7)
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