A RIVER PORT
For it is clear that it was water and not lead that the pioneers of Muscoda sought. Surveyors and prospectors had found no hopeful signs of mineral north of townships 6-1 W and 7-1 E. A few years later (1839) Dr. David Dale Owen, the geologist, made his famous survey of the lead region and excluded from it everything north of the heads of Blue River in townships 6 and 7-1 E. When the lands in township 8-1 W were offered for sale in November, 1834, it was precisely the river front lots and subdivisions which were taken first. Parrish entered fractional lots 2 and 3 of section 1; Frederick Bronson the northeast fraction of the southeast quarter of section 1; Isaac Bronson the south half of the southeast fractional quarter; Garrit V. Denniston the southeast half of the fractional southwest quarter; and Denniston and Charles Bracken fraction No. 4 of fractional section 1. Other water front tracts in section 2 were bought by Denniston at this time; between 1836 and 1841 other tracts in the same sections were bought by others. All of these lands were obviously deemed favorable locations for a prospective town dependent on river transportation.
The way in which the village was begun, by the erection of a smelting furnace, is rather startling, in view of the absence of lead in the region adjacent. The motives which induced Colonel William S. Hamilton of Wiota to build a furnace at English Prairie can only be conjectured.
Colonel Hamilton was the son of the great Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury. As a lad of seventeen in 1814 he entered West Point but resigned in 1817 to accept a commission as deputy surveyor-general under Col. William Rector, surveyor-general for Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. From that time young Hamilton was almost continuously in the West, though he made one trip east, on horseback, to see his mother. He was in Wisconsin as early as 1825 and in 1827 began his career as a lead miner and smelter in what is now Lafayette County at Wiota or Hamilton’s Diggings. He took part in the Indian troubles of 1827, and also in the Black Hawk War.
It is not known with certainty when Hamilton established his furnace at English Prairie. Tradition says it was in the year 1835. If the furnace was operating then, it is strange that so careful an observer as Featherstonhaugh, who dropped down the Wisconsin in August, 1835 and stopped at English Prairie to draw a sketch of its landscape, should have failed to note that fact.[79] We are probably justified in asserting that the furnace was not there at that time. But we know it was there in 1837, for Captain Frederick Marryat, a famous English writer who descended the river in that year, saw “a small settlement called the English prairie” where there was a “smelting-house and a steam saw-mill.”[80] I incline to think the year 1836 was the date of its beginning. In 1835 Hamilton was a candidate for member of the Council from the western part of Michigan Territory. His canvass was conducted in the lead mining region and his advertisement appeared in the Galena papers. He was elected to and became president of the so-called “Rump” Council which met at Green Bay January 1, 1836 and sat for two weeks. During that session the town of Cassville, on the Mississippi, was designated as the territorial capital, Hamilton making the principal argument in favor of the movement. Much interest was manifested in internal improvements designed to develop a through line of transportation via the Wisconsin and Fox rivers.[81] The territory of Wisconsin was just being organized by Congressional action and great expectations were being awakened in consequence.
The miners and smelters had theretofore sold their lead through the commission merchants of Galena, by whom it was sent to St. Louis. But as new mines were opened farther and farther north, the cost of transportation to Galena—by means of the “sucker teams”[82]—steadily increased. Moreover, in the year 1836-37 the price of lead declined so alarmingly that little of it was made and the smelters had nearly all ceased to operate. Yet, it was felt that prices would rise again promptly in response to the demand for lead. In the same period, due no doubt partly to the hardships of the miners and smelters, there was widespread and loud dissatisfaction with the treatment accorded the lead owners by the Galena middlemen. Efforts were made to establish some other lead shipping port as a rival to Galena, which helps to explain the rise of both Cassville and Potosi.
The inference from these facts is that Hamilton probably thought he saw in a smelter located at the steamboat landing at English Prairie a possibility of immediate profit, even though margins were very narrow, and a chance to build up a flourishing business. He could buy the cheapest ore—that which was produced near the northern edge of the lead region, Centerville, Wingville, and Highland. The haul from those places would be short and all down grade and if the mineral were taken direct from the mines there would be no rehandling until the bars of pure lead were ready to be dumped from the furnace floor into the hold of the steamer. The teams employed to bring down the raw mineral could carry freight back the fifteen or twenty miles to the mines much more cheaply than it could be transported from Galena or Cassville three or four times as far. Finally, abundant supplies of wood were at hand to feed the furnace, and French rivermen were a source from which to recruit labor.
To an enterprising, speculative, acquisitive character like Hamilton, who had no family to tie him to a particular spot, such arguments would appeal strongly, and there is no inherent reason why the venture should not have succeeded. Hamilton operated the furnace, either personally or by proxy, at least till 1838 and possibly longer, selling it finally to Thomas Jefferson Parrish, whose principal mining and smelting business was located at the head of Blue River, afterwards Montfort.
The fact that Parrish owned the ground at the steamboat landing and that in 1837 he was postmaster at English Prairie (then called Savannah) suggests that he may have been a partner in the business from the first and perhaps local manager of the furnace. At all events, Hamilton continued his business at Wiota and very soon cut loose entirely from the English Prairie venture.[83] That place, under the name of Savannah or English Prairie, was a calling place for river steamers as early as 1838 and is scheduled as forty-one miles from the mouth of the Wisconsin.[84] It was said that the only boat which regularly plied on the river in that year was the Science, piloted by Captain Clark, who made his first voyage in June, 1838.[85] But there were doubtless visits from steamers running to Fort Winnebago (Portage) during that and earlier years.
In one of the Milwaukee papers for 1841 is a statement that “four sucker teams” had brought in lead from Thomas Parrish’s furnace “near Muscoday in Grant County.” This reference has been taken as proof that the Muscoda furnace was still in operation. I think it refers not to the Muscoda furnace but to one of several furnaces Parrish was conducting in the lead region near the heads of Blue River. The phrase “near Muscoday” used as far from the lead region as Milwaukee may very well mean some place fifteen or twenty miles from the Wisconsin; and the word “near” instead of “at” certainly excludes Muscoda itself. Setting this evidence aside, there is no proof that the Muscoda furnace was operated as late as 1841. Nor, on the other hand, is there proof of its earlier discontinuance. We simply do not know how long it was kept alive or how large a business it developed at the “Landing.”