Collected and posted by RITA
This site is exclusively for the FREE access of individual researchers.
* No profit may be made by any person, business or organization through publication, reproduction, presentation or links to this site.
Mountain Memories
Pages 4 - 5
Back
to the Oconto County Home Page
This picture of the THOmas McAllen family WM tswnprior to 1906 whan Boitlng on tha Oconto River Near to their homestead. Courtesy of Via. James murray, Joyce banta 1 is a great aranddaughbar to Thomas and Alice. A Settlement in Need ot a NanaIn the 1870's tha only highway cooing Into this jrea. van a narrow road that ran parallel to the Oconto River, a roadway used to service the logging industry operating In the pine forests of northern Oconto County. In 1877 a man named Thomas McAllen arrived from tha state of New Hampshire, and with his family settled on the North Branch ot the Oconto river in vhat was to become known as the Mountain area. His wife Alice, and children William, John, Henry, and Elizabeth, were the first family to settle hers vhera daughter Alice and son Charles would fce born. Mi™ being the first white child to be torn In these native lands of the Indiana. Settlers vho aoon followed the roadway North Branch Road were tha families of Fred Bartz james hinesBy 1886, then A.C. Frost arrived in tills area, there were quite a number of residents along with the pen wording in the lumbering camps built throughout this area. He built a hotel and named it 'The First stopping Place' on the land he had purchased along the North Branch Road.In 1878 Mr. Frost had established a Post Office for the residents in the Maple Valley area with a mail route through the Hickory, Kelly BrooK, spruce, Lena, and Hayes area. Before coming to America, Mr. Frost had carried the Royal Mail in his native country of Denmark. He then applied for Postal Service to this northern area and was so detarmlned to get a local mailing center that he paid $250 out of his own pocket in order to finance a nail route Into this cooinunity.On November 21, in the year 1889, Mr. A.C. Frost was granted his application, becoming tha ficst Postmaster of the town he registered with Postal Headquarters in Washington D.c. as Mountain, Oconto County, Wisconsin. Before that year this settlement was probably called Mountain by tha local community, but was unknown to tho rest of the world. Suddenly, with the recognition of the United Status Governmanl, It b-cama Mountain to one and all.The name, according to local legend, is attributed to Fred Bartz. Poaelbly He. Bartz came from a more level area, so to him the granite outcropplngs of rock found throughout these cut-over lands seemed Pwch lllce mountains.An interesting article written by Ruby Kingston-Nass in her preface to the book she wrote entitled 'wild-flowers of Wisconsin', gives us more Insight into the naming of this settlement, for she wrote;'Since my grandfather was the first settler here, many thought the town should be namsd (or him, McAllen, but he wanted it named after an Indian friend vho had been so good to them during their first: years here in Wisconsin. . .exactly hov to 'spelL' that Indian's