“My father came to Oak Grove, Dodge County, with his family and took up land from the government in the fall of 1842, which is seventy-two years this last fall,” said Mr. Owen. “I have lived on that same land continuously ever since, and am the last survivor of the family of nine persons. However, this was not their first place of settlement in Wisconsin. They came to Waukesha in the fall of 1836, from Ogdensburg, N. Y., and were on a boat from the time they left Ogdensburg, until they landed in Milwaukee, seven weeks and four days. They could have walked the distance in less time than that.
“My father took up land from the government in Waukesha, then called Prairieville, and there, in the spring of 1837, I was born. In 1842 our family moved to Dodge County, and again took up land from the government, the patents for which are signed by President James K. Polk. There was no homestead law in those days. Land had to be bought from the government at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre.
“When we came here, this part of the country was wilderness, inhabited by wild animals and Indians, but it settled up fast, and as soon as people began to raise more than they wanted for their own use, the next thing was to get to market. We were sixty-five miles from Milwaukee, where all surplus farm products had to be hauled, and most invariably by an ox team, which was a long, tedious journey. If a man took in a load of produce to market and was fortunate enough to get a load of merchandise or immigrants or something of the kind to bring back, he would come out about even financially. But if he failed to get the load back, he would come home owing hotel bills along the road.”
Man Who Dumped Brewery is Dead.
Reverend Abraham de Kack, one-time prosperous brewer, who emptied the contents of his brewing plant into Grand River and later became a Methodist minister, is dead in Ionia, Mich., of pneumonia.
De Kack, more generally known as “De Quack,” and familiarly to his immediate circle of acquaintances as “Quackie,” which appellation is by no means lacking in the respect that it would seemingly fail to convey, was once a brewer in Holland, and later a celery grower, and finally a preacher of the gospel.
It was many years ago that De Kack brewed beer—it was considered good beer, too—but when he saw the harm that alcohol does, even in small amounts, he at once went to his little brewery, discharged the help, opened up the spigots of the beer vats, and, at the loss of a small fortune to himself, drained all the beer into the sewers. Then he became a minister.
It was a habit of De Kack’s to pay his hired help daily as far as possible, for he took seriously the biblical saying: “Owe no man.” Martin Dows, of Grand Rapids, one of De Kack’s employees, received his pay every night for twenty-nine years.
Old Nag Dies After Race.
After serving his master, Peter l’Heureux, of Marlboro, Mass., for the most of his twenty-six years of life, Mr. l’Heureux’s faithful family horse, either out of shame because he was beaten or because he felt bad about putting his owner out of pocket, turned around and died after he had just lost the second straight out of three heats in a race against the equine owned by Joseph Chaput on the Lakeside Avenue Straightaway.