A Standard History of Sauk County, Harry Ellsworth Cole, General Supervising Editor, The Lewis Publishing Co. Chicago and New York 1918 [pgs. 524-543]

Villages That Went Wrong

 

The Town of Delton, as a subject of history, is chiefly noted for "what might have been" in the way of commerce, manufactures and cities. Newport is only a memory and the Village of Delton is so shrunken from its former dimensions as a manufacturing and business town as to be almost a thing of the past. The rise and fall of Newport has been traced in the railroad chapter, and therefore the writer will not repeat a consecutive story of its hopes and their collapse. [Editor's note: look for Delton's story in it's own section on the main page]

INDUSTRIAL COLLAPSE OF DELTON

The accounts of Delton's collapse are hardly less sad, as illustrative of the mutability of human plans and institutions, however solidly they seem to be buttressed by their projectors. The record of that village stretches from the building of the first dam and sawmill on Dell Creek by Fox & Topping in 1850 to the going out of the Sarrington and the Timme dams before the flood of June, 1917. Not only were the owners of the flour mills badly crippled by the catastrophe, but numerous hotel keepers and cottage owners suffered; for the beautiful Mirror Lake region had been transformed from the bustling activity of the factory to the strenuous exertions of pleasure seeking and recreation.

MADE WAGONS, STOVES AND FARM IMPLEMENTS

What Delton once was is told by one who once lived in its noise, stress and excitement. The legend runs in this wise, as recorded in the Baraboo Republic in 1913:

'Manufactured in Delton, Wisconsin. This is a legend which was once almost a household word throughout central Wisconsin. If you should happen to come across it today you would surely wonder what it means. Time was, fifty years or more ago, when it was regarded as a guarantee of quality. It was then to be found inscribed on good farm wagons, two-seated buggies, great two-wheeled ox carts, fanning mills, cast iron plows, elevated oven cook stoves, cast. iron heating stoves, heavy stoves for hop drying, hop presses, hop pole sharpeners, sorghum grinding mills, cauldron kettles, stove hardware, etc.

While rummaging among the stowaways on an old Sauk County farm one day last summer I came across the above phrase spread across the hearth of an old, discarded elevated oven stove and it appealed to me, like a call from the long ago, to record, 'lest we forget,' the fact that our little village here on Dell Creek was not always the sleepy little crossroads burg which it appears to be today. The desire to tell some of these old-time activities of Delton is my excuse for this letter to the 'Republic.'

"Early in the '50s Thompson & Holmes were extensively (for that period) engaged in the manufacture of wagons, buggies and carts in Delton. The product of their factory found a ready sale among the early settlers of Sauk county and of the counties north of Sauk. They manufactured good, honest articles and of a class which seemed to outlast the same kind of goods we get today. But as the country grew older, and the iron horse began to bring this country into closer touch with the outside world, handmade goods had to give way before the inroads of machine made. Holmes moved his portion of the wagon works to Rushford, Minnesota, and there built a larger factory, and after a few years again moved to Winona, Minnesota, where the Rushford Wagon, once the Thompson and Holmes wagon, of Delton, is now manufactured by the Rushford Wagon Works, a corporation of national reputation. Their wagons are on sale from Canada to Texas, all over the south and west. What is left of the old shop is Dow Delton's one blacksmith shop with one forge, one small wagon repair shop, one bench and one and sometimes two, men as the whole working force.

In the '50s the business of manufacturing grain cleaning machines, or fanning mills, was carried on in Delton. Sidney Ayres invented an improvement in this kind of machinery, making what was called a vibrator machine. As wheat growing was then the main business of all this portion of the state, where farms were opened, the wagons selling the Delton Fanning Mills canvassed the surrounding counties and sales were quite extensive. The writer has in early days driven as far away as Wonewoc, Spring Green, Sauk, and in fact over the country for flfty miles around, selling Delton Fanning Mills. But time went, the cinch bug came, wheat growing became unprofitable, and the fanning mill factory faded way.

Along the northern border of the village, through the deep evergreen bordered ravine, runs Spring brook. In the middle '50s Clement & Adams built a dam across this brook at a point about midway between where the iron bridge now spans the ravine and where the new fill for the state and county macadam road has been thrown across it. The dam was built of logs and the ravine at the site of the dam was narrow enough for the logs used for the cross-ties to reach clear across from bank to bank. This dam was about twenty-two feet high, making a head of water something like twenty-four feet. Below the dam they installed an old-fashioned wooden water wheel, just such a wheel as you have seen in the engravings of 'The Old Mill.' On the south bank of the ravine they built a machine shop and higher up, on the bank, a foundry. The Delton Foundry & Machine Shop was installed. The writer well remembers the evening when the first heat of melted iron was drawn off the melting furnace, or cupola. It was a red-letter night for Delton. Nearly all the inhabitants were down there to see the beginning of what all thought was to grow into a great industry for the village. Among the products of the new foundry was a cook stove, the first in Sauk county and the first, I think, north of Milwaukee in Wisconsin. From the first the business was a success. Wagon plates, sleigh shoes, heating and cook stoves, sorghum grinding mills, castings for farming mill machinery, foot lathes, iron turning lathes, finally water wheels, and, when the hop boom struck Sauk County, hop stoves, pole sharpeners, prods for setting hop poles, and many other things were manufactured at the Delton Foundry. They even manufactured a six-pounder cannon, mounted it like an army field piece and with it we used to celebrate the victories of the Civil war and awaken the echoes on the morning of the national birthday.

HOP BOOM AND TWO FOUNDRIES COLLAPSE

Along in the early '60s another foundry and machine shop was added to the industries of Delton. This was located at the old gristmill. It is now the Sarrington mill. The hop boom ended in 1869. With it died both of the Delton foundry enterprises. The most of the machinery from the first foundry was moved to Rushford, Minnesota.. The other foundry continued to be run in a perfunctory manner for a few years but was finally shut down. A few years ago a high water on the Spring brook took out the foundry dam and at this time there is hardly a vestige of the old building left. Time has erased nearly every trace of the second foundry. A few stones of the walls of the moulding room can still be seen, marking the site, and one of the old buildings is used for a store shed at the Sarrington mill.

Now an old resident has almost to hold up his right hand and take oath to any statement made to a stranger that Delton was ever a manufacturing village and one of considerable note."

VICTORIA WISCONSIN PECK HAWLEY (LATELY INTERVIEWED)

In the chapter on Baraboo the participation of Victoria Wisconsin Peck in the founding of the place and the opening of the valley to family settlement is told at some length. The sequel to the narrative is found in the subdued Village of Delton; for there the lady, now venerable and ready to be born into another state, resides, and was visited by O. D. Brandenburg, editor of the Madison Democrat, in August, 1917. The result of this interview is reproduced:

"The first white child born in Madison now lives in a humble little one-story frame house, like a thin summer cottage, on a sand knoll, some few hundred feet from beautiful Mirror lake, in the village of Delton, a dozen miles north of Baraboo. Justice R. D. Marshall of the supreme court has a mammoth farm a mile or so away. She is Victoria Wisconsin Peck Hawley. Her first husband was Nelson W. Wheeler, a lawyer. She has been married to S. A. Hawley eighteen years.

Mrs. Hawley was born about 200 feet distant from the East Madison depot of the Milwaukee railway, on September 14, 1837, five months after her parents came, therefore will be eighty years of age next month. She is in good health physically, but it was difficult to get from her, when I saw her last Sunday, a coherent story of any nature. Conducted to the little screened-in front porch by her husband from the one room which the house contains, she hesitated to emerge and actually drew away out of sight, not timidly, but rather defiantly. Her husband finally persuaded her to come out. For perhaps three minutes she sat opposite me talking- by no means intelligently- then rose and abruptly disappeared, her husband coming to take her place; but in a minute more she popped into the doorway again, thumping the floor forcefully with her cane.

I had asked her something pertaining to her childhood.

"The records were all in a trunk,' she broke forth. 'When we were galavanting round, Hawley and me, we lost the trunk. I took the key to Ruggles (a Baraboo attorney) and told him to get the trunk, but it had gone to Omaha and so all maw's books and papers were lost," and she whirled and walked swiftly back from the door.

'We didn't lose any books,' said Mr. Hawley calmly. 'We have them in the bottom of a trunk in there now,' and he inclined his head toward the room, but he had scarcely finished when his wife again appeared and repeated the same statement; and this she did many times
during the hour that I was there.

I asked her when her mother died.

'I swan, I forget?' Then she burst out again. 'I shall be glad when it is all over and I am gone too. Maw and I once went down to the Madison state fair and an old Irishwoman came out of a house and said: "I was the first white child born in Madison," and maw said "You were, were you?" ha-ha,' and Mrs. Hawley turned and again disappeared.

Soon she came to the door. 'Hawley there,' she said 'is a late settler. He don't know anything,' and she vanished, and again reappeared. 'Abe Wood had a daughter Maggie born in Madison and they claimed that she was the first white child born there, but she wasn't. Abe Wood's wife was a squaw, a Winnebago Indian. I was the first white child born there and I wasn't very white either. Abe Wood was an awful fighter but good hearted. He would give away anything he had, but when he got drunk he was awful. My maw was born in Vermont and paw in New York. Everybody comes round here picking up things. Even some schoolgirls were here and they got it that maw was a squaw, but
she wasn't. The papers have had a lot of stuff about us, but all the reporters know is what they are told by those who know nothing.' Mrs. Hawley is in error about her father's birthplace. It was at Shoreham, Vermont, the date 1804, but be was taken to New York in childhood.

Mr. Hawley, who is twenty years younger than his wife, amiably explained that Wood's daughter was named Maggie and that she was born at Squaw Point on the eastern shore of Lake Monona and that she was indeed the daughter of a Winnebago woman. She was married twice, the flrst time to Charles A. Perry, whom she divorced, and then to a man named Gardner of Nebraska. and there she died a very few years ago.

Maggie's mother was married twice also, the first time to a Frenchman and they had a daughter Sarah. According to Mr. Hawley, Wood became ashamed of his Indian wife and her daughter Sarah, a French Indian halfbreed, and took them north to the Indian reservation, however leaving Maggie at Baraboo to be educated like white girls are. He was very sensitive in defending Maggie and in early days at Baraboo had violent quarrels with his neighbors over what he regarded as social slights to his daughter. Wood long years ago fell backward from a wagon and broke his neck.

The Hawleys visited Maggie some years ago and Maggie later visited them.

The interview, however, was not without at least one significant feature. Mrs. Poseline Peck, the first white woman in Madison and the mother of Mrs. Hawley, in a paper which she wrote more than fifty years ago, stating that her husband, Eben Peck, deserted her in 1844 and that she never directly heard from him afterward. Mr. Hawley said, however, that many years ago Peck wrote to his wife from California and wanted to come back, but that she would not have him. He had run away, she said, and left her to bring up the two children and now he could stay away.

'He wrote at least three letters.' added Hawley. 'He was in the honey business in California and wanted to sell honey to his son Victor, who was then running the eating house at the West Madison depot in Madison. The children would not allow him to come back either.'

This is new information about Eben Peck. It had been reported that he was killed by Indians on the plains, but Mrs. Peck in her reminiscences of 1860 said that 'the last reliable information, but once, that I got from him was by a letter received from him by a citizen of Madison, some six or seven years after he left, stating that he had a wife and five or six children in Texas.'

The Hawleys resided in Baraboo many years. They have lived at Delton for one year.

'Are you here permanently?' I asked.

'No,' said Mr. Hawley, 'we won't remain here this winter,' but he did not appear to know where they would go.

He is a cement contractor. Mrs. Hawley is a little woman, short of stature, and very slender. 'She has weighed 110 pounds,' said Mr. Hawley, 'but now she weighs only 97.' But she didn't have the appearance of weighing even 90. Her figure is straight and she was gowned in a simple blue wrapper, buttoned from neck to floor behind with a safety pin occasionally where buttons used to be.

She is quite deaf and very nervous. Her hair is gray and sparse, her eyes blue, almost gray.

'She reads without glasses, and eats well,' said Mr. Hawley, 'more than you or I, and sleeps three-quarters of the time.'

'Mrs. Hawley broke her ankle some seven years ago. I gave her a diamond ring,' said Mr. Hawley, 'and she had a habit of tying it up in a handkerchief, getting on top of a stepladder and putting it through a trapdoor into the attic. One day while she was doing this the stepladder doubled up and she fell, fracturing her ankle. We never found the diamond. The rats must have carried it off and the handkerchief too.'

I called at this humble abode hoping to obtain an interview late in life from the first white child born in Madison, but I had come too late'.

Mrs. Roseline Peek, the mother, rode a pony into Madison, from Blue Mounds, arriving April 15, 1837, five months lacking one day before Victoria was born. She was the first white woman here. The family moved to Baraboo in 1840. A son, Victor, was four years old when the Pecks reached Madison. He died here February 29, 1916, and Mrs. Peek at Baraboo October 20, 1899. She was born February 24, 1808, at Middleton, Vermont.

OLD NEWPORT

By Mrs. Mary Markham Jenkins

"To one who has never experienced it, the conditions of pioneer life must be as difficult to imagine, as for one who has never known the necessity of saving, to understand what poverty means; and I think in both cases something valuable has been lost out of life for each.

In the early '50s- in 1851- we came to Newport. There was no railroad west of Milwaukee. Coming from Delavan in October, we used our own fine team and thoroughly enjoyed the journey. In the summer previous, father had been taken in- in more senses than one- by a local promoter who had as rose-colored visions of what Newport was to be as any boom town in these days; and he left the lovely Town of Delavan for an imaginary city on the Wisconsin River. Father then rented Doctor Jones' house, now on Broadway, and was to have possession in October. When we arrived Doctor Jones and his wife were calmly eating their supper, with no appearance of ever vacating their house, but they let us into the upright part of it. There was no door for the front doorway, but a blanket did as well for that, as for all the other doorways inside. If portieres had only been thought of then, we would not have minded the blankets so much. However, we soon had an outside door. Houses were so scarce that every familyy had to take boarders or let another family live with them. We lived there till our house was built, which is now the one where Henry Van Alstine lives. At first our parlor was upstairs on account of the unfinished state of the lower part, and we had a stove in it, with the pipe out of one of the windows. When the wind would change, my brother would carry the stove across the room and put the pipe out the other window. Don't think we felt the least unpleasant concern on any such account. Everyone lived in some unusual way and "hope sprang eternal" in every breast.

There was not a sidewalk in town, and in the main street the sand was so deep that we always had to empty our shoes when we came home after going down town. There were many young men in Newport, attracted by the promise of a big, town- speculators and professional men- -bright and promising; and the sand in your shoes was forgotten when you stopped to chat in the street. Everyone was social and cheerful. Parties were generally held in the old hotel now standing. Everone danced that knew how. There were no class lines; everyone that was respectable was welcome. But that does not mean that intelligence was not recognized, and that there was not an inner circle quite as ready for the best things as now. We had a reading club- Van Steenwick, then consul for the Netherlands, a bachelor, whose house was the one Mr. Coon lives in now, was the chairman. We took the best foreign magazines, and the best of our country.

There were no church buildings at first, but services were held in private houses and hotels, and King's Ilall. People used to go to churchj in those days. The ministers were equal to those of today, and the Presbyterian minister, Mr. Mitchell, quite superior to most. He and his bride began their housekeeping in the barn that Mr. Bennett pullcd down not long ago. It stood beyond the brick house that is on the road to Delton. He did not approve of donation parties, so there was never but one for him, when he made it very plain that he was not pleased. He was a very arbitrary man, and as long as he preached here- which was in Kilbourn as well as in Newport- the congregation, according to his command, stood during pravers and sat while thev sang, There was a Baptist minister not quite equal to the place he held, and there were always funny things happening. One Methodist minister used to spread a handkerchief on the floor before he kneeled to pray. and as he wore white trousers and the floors were often dirty, he was not to be blamed for it. The choirs sang for all the difrerent denominations, as the different ministers would not fill their special pulpits every Sunday, but had to preach in other places The music was as good as now. There were many excellent singers there then, and serenades were a pleasant way of showing regard for friends.

At the first bit of sleighing, everything that could be forced into use was made to do service for a sleighing, and I do not remember whether it was a crockery crate or a dry goods box that I had my first ride in, accompanied by a fine young man of the mercantile persuasion. There used to be general sleighrides, often out to the Halfway house on Webster's Prairie. Then in the summer- picnics to the Dells, and sometimes dancing on the bridge. I remember a large party of young people were asked out in the country to eat honey and hot biscuits; after getting ready to go home the gentlemen were asked to pay for the supper. I will not say where it was, as the descendants still live in this region. There was more real enjoyment socially then than now; because every one was, so to speak, on an equality and no one trying to outdo others in any direction.

Fancy a time when the fashion of your clothes did not cause you any extra thought or trouble! Not that any were indifferent to the way they were made, but provided the material was good and the style becoming, a dress could be worn till it was worn out; in fact, I do not recall any decided article of dress that you could say was fashionable but little fancy silk aprons; and following that, a change in sleeves came about, and from that time on the bondage has grown heavier year by year, until women are now in a slavery that affects soul and body and no emancipator in sight!

One of the early diversions was a celebration when the railroad was finished through Newport Town and a station built on this side of the river near Lynch's. One enthusiastic woman made a cake station in imitation of the one just built and where the celebration was held; but cake and station have long been gone and forgotten.

Pleasant teas, which were suppers, were common, and the good things to eat were as choice as now, but not served in courses. When you sat down to the table you knew what you were to have and so knew what you could safely leave out, if you didn't like it. The society of fifty years ago was not so different from these days as one might think. The seminary at Newport opened and conducted by a graduate of the Mary Lyon Seminary, and with a corps of most excellent teachers, shows what was thought necessary for the people there. Scholars came from away- among whom was sweet Mary McClay, who was brought and entered there by her aunt, Julia Dent, of the Grant family of Dents.

You may ask what became of that seminary? The principal was Mrs. Cooley, whose husband, the Reverend Cooley, was pastor of the Congregational Church in Newport. The church was not pleased with the Reverend Cooley, and he was notified of the fact. His feeling's were so deeply injured that he split up the pulpit so no one else could use it. It was a striking piece of furniture, entirely covered with red plush, and was a dead loss for use, but a good thing to get rid of. As the husband was out of a place, the school had to be closed. The large square building near Kerfoot's was built for the seminary, but afterwards used for the common school and finally moved away. The Congregational Church uses one of the large upper rooms for church services, and the bell on the building belonged to the church and was bought by private subscription, and it now hangs in the Methodist Church in Kilbourn."

NEWPORT TRANSFERRED TO KILBOURN

The removal of Newport to Kilbourn took almost all of the desirable people, and was so complete that the lives of the two towns cannot be separated. To the circle when moved was added the charming family of Mr. Holly- intelligent, cultivated and social, they were always ready to move in anything desirable, and the picnics they were always stirring up are still a pleasant memory to me, at least. Newport and Kilbourn were surely favored in the quality of most of the early settlers.

The breaking out of the Civil war, and its long continuance, changed the tenor of many lives so that the ordinary things of life took on new shapes, and there was a new atmosphere from that time on. But the streets and houses of Newport are as plain to my inward vision as those of Kilbourn today, and the ghosts of vanished days and people are all about me when I wish to call them forth.

STORY OF NEWPORT

In the latter part of the year 1832, John Metcalf, who in later years owned the upper, or Lyons, sawmill on the Baraboo River, and Daniel Whitney, the first white owner of the site of the present City of Portage, obtained the right to cut lumber and make shingles on the land belonging to the Menominie Indians. These lands were located on both banks of the upper Wisconsin river. Late in the fall of that year they started for the upper river. They took with them a two man power sawmill. It was a whip or pit saw. It was to be operated as follows: A pit some seven feet deep was dug and across this pit the log which was to be cut into boards or planks was laid. One man being stationed in the pit and the other on the log, the saw was drawn alternately up and down and by this means the log was sawed into boards or planks of the thickness desired by the operators.

These men, during the winter of 1832-33 thus manufactured lumber and in the spring of 1833 they built from it the first lumber raft on the upper river. With this raft they made the pioneer run down the river, through the Dells, and to the site of the present City of Portage.

Thus was begun a lumber traffic on the Wisconsin River which in the eighteen or twenty years following grew to a great volume, a traffic which in the years from 1849 to 1856 required the construction of from 2,000 to 3,000 rafts annually and gave employment to 4,000 or 5,000 rivermen during the spring and summer rafting season.

It was with a view to securing a portion of the supply trade of this army of river men that a village and a store were established at the point where Dell Creek joins the Wisconsin River, on the northern boundary of Sauk County. For a distance of eight miles or more above the mouth of Dell Creek the river runs between high rock walls which narrow for a portion of the way to a width of less than seventy-five feet. Through this gorge, when the water was high enough to permit the running of rafts, the river boiled and whirled in a swift, angry current. This gorge forms what is called the Dells of the Wisconsin River and was the most dangerous and difficult stretch of water for the raftsmen to encounter in all the long trip from the mills to the market.

 

THE OLD-TIME LUMBER RAFTS

The Wisconsin River raft of t