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Oconto County, Wisconsin
Mountain Memories
Pages 22 - 23
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The Early Settlers By tha year 1888 there wera probably 50 to 90 settiars and their families livirvg within the borders of bite Town of Armstrong. ftbout fifty of these families lived within seven miles of the town of Mountain, A settlement of fflmiluss to join our earliest spfctlGC, Thomas McAllen, cjrGW up along the banks of tho Oconto River1s north branch. O. P. Hurning, John Benoit, O. Wakefield, William Green, and Ed Banta settled these sections of land hy the 1090s. Ed narriod Elizabeth McAllcn on Fe^rua^ 3f 1893^ They were joined in matrimony by A. C. Frost Justice of the Pcaco, in Elizabeth McAllen there c-h the west shore of the river.Tills acetie depicts the cutpver l^nds that Mountain's early settlers cane into in the late iBOOs- Thispicture frcai Thomas McAllen homestead on the CKTontoThe sections of land south or the townsitSr on what was then, bhe main route of the Worth Branch Bead, were the families of Thomas Anderson, Carl Peterson, J. P. Jensen, V.E. Cole, James Hines, Jorgen Jensen and P.A.. Qlson. Further south of the hon^em oJ: the abova settlers was the settlement called Kingston Station. The Kingston School is stilt standing today where it once served to educate the chaldron of that area's Jrii-st settlers. Settling to the wast of this school on our present Highway 3?/&4r were blie families of Richard Kingston, John Hein, John Foley, Elias Palmer, Charles Duell, Fred Green, Spafford Way, ^nd Charles Wight hfost of the settlers owned AQ to L?0 ^cres o£ land which was either purchased from the lumber company or the Railway* Much uf the acreage was legged of£P leaving cutover lands, so to speak/ and the settlers further cleared tiie lands that were suitable edi: agricultural purposes.Cutting and burning the brush and small trees left behind by Lhe logging operations, dynamite was then to blast out the larger stumps oJ: w'nab once held the mighty white pine- Much of the hardwoods, bsing oC little value since it would not float down the iratexuays,. w?s simply burned in hucyo piles in osrdei: to continue clearing the l^nds- Many fcirrrers simply fanned around the pine stumps until they could at-tord to buy the dynamite needed to remove them*Most of the men worked in the logging camps in the •winter, turning to agriculture during the suirrrer nonths in order to provide for thei? families' livelihood in the cctning year* The average farm consisted of 2 to 5 cavs, a brood sow, 25 to 50 chickens, and a team of horses on 10 acres of cleaned land. The average family had 4 to 10 children, so crosL of what they raised was used for family consumption. Any exces? produce fron the farm was used to 'barter1 at the general store in trad* for the items their farm could not so provide*In this way the Mountain area was settled. By 1880 the Statler settlement had doveioped about seven miles west of Mountain. There Stephen Otha and Burns settled south of the Boulder Lake area, since they all shared trie same last name, 'Statler1 it became- The Statler School was located on land"