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And four years later: “I am safe and sound as ever. We have had a long and tedious march. * * * There was not a shot exchanged with the enemy. The rebels are all at home. the towns are full of them. we mix all together the best of friends. it looks nice to see the gray uniform and blue uniform together. Well father after four long years of blood and terror the war is over. You can imagine the feelings of the soldiers on the subject.”
Rev. Matthew Dinsdale was born at Askrigg, Yorkshire, England, July 14, 1815, and received his education at a boy’s school in his native valley Wensleydale. This school was on a foundation existing from the time of Queen Elizabeth, and one of its first trustees was Ivor Dinsdale, an ancestor of Matthew. The latter came to the United States in 1844 on the packet St. George, 1200 tons, one of the finest transatlantic steamers of its time. After a three months’ journey he arrived at Kenosha (then Southport), Wisconsin, on the eighth of October, and was soon among friends who had preceded him and settled at English Prairie just across the Wisconsin line in McHenry County, Illinois. A month later Mr. Dinsdale was received into the quarterly conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, having brought credentials from the Wesleyan Conference in England. The next year he joined the Rock River Conference and was assigned to Potosi circuit in the lead-mining district of southwestern Wisconsin. The succeeding year Mr. Dinsdale was appointed to the Lake Winnebago circuit, then a mission district including preaching stations among the Brothertown Indians, at Oshkosh, and other new settlements along the lake shore. He virtually lived in the saddle, going from cabin to cabin, and gathering the settlers together for a Sunday service. Often he slept by the roadside or in the woods. His health was impaired by the severe strain of his circuit-riding days, and in 1849 he joined a group of friends who visited the gold regions of California. After over two years in this pioneer work, Mr. Dinsdale returned to England, and there in April, 1853 he married Mary Anne Mann, of York. Returning to America with his young English bride, he applied once more for admission to the Methodist Church, and in 1858 entered the West Wisconsin Conference. Thereafter for nineteen years he served in many pastorates in the southwestern part of the state. In 1872 and 1873 he was preacher in charge at Madison. Four years later he retired from the active ministry, and spent his declining years at Linden, Iowa County, where, on April 15, 1898, he passed away.
His only surviving daughter, Mrs. Magnus Swenson, of Madison, has recently presented to the Historical Society many of her father’s papers. Among them are three diaries of considerable historical value. The first describes the voyage from England to America, the early days in this country, the work and events of pioneer life, “hewing bees,” house-raisings, rail-splittings, hog-killings, and the like, interspersed with descriptions of the weather, the climate, and the land.
The second, or California diary, is perhaps the most interesting of the number. Leaving Linden, Wisconsin, November 3, 1849, the
traveler went via Milwaukee, Buffalo, and Albany to New York City whence he sailed December 1 for Panama. Thereafter we have a daily account until the landing, January 21, 1850, at the new city of San Francisco, which he thus characterizes: “San Francisco I think will become a great place. Its location is good convenient and pleasant and more still is healthy.” Thence the young minister sought the mining camps, digging during the week and preaching on Sunday. Here for example is a typical entry: “Sunday 19 Jany 1851. A Captn (Sea) told me how he came to be in the mines. Lost his vessel and came to San Francisco to purchase another. There he took the fever and came to dig: Has made but little, Spoke of the misery caused to familes by the gold discovery. His case that of thousands. Leave all to mine and then make nothing.” Mr. Dinsdale’s case was not of this character. The fifth of June, 1853, the assay of his gold at the Philadelphia mint amounted to $4,094.13.
The third journal was written when in service as agent of the Christian Commission in the spring of 1865 in the vicinity of Nashville. The writer visited the camps and hospitals, distributed papers and Bibles, read and prayed with the soldiers, and in some cases took their dying messages.
In addition to the diaries, the papers include many letters of historical interest. All those written home to England from the time the young emigrant arrived at New York until he left there five years later for California have fortunately been preserved. The writer had a good command of language and a gift for clear and lucid expression, and he portrays his first experiences in the New World with delightful vigor and freshness. He relates his first days in America, the prices of commodities and the modes and discomforts of traveling. He had an especial fondness for natural scenery, and his descriptions even of so hackneyed a subject as Niagara Falls, do not pall upon the reader. More important are the accounts he gives of conditions in our Territory during its formative years—at first in the southeast, then in the more settled southwestern portion he pictures the life of the frontier with truth and vigor. Most valuable of all, perhaps, is the description he gives of the Lake Winnebago region when the rapid ingress of new settlers was at its height, and the Indians were retreating before the American advance. Among the experiences he details were those of a visit to a Menominee Indian payment on the shores of Lake Poygan, where his clear observation of conditions among the retiring race are of peculiar value to the historian of the tribesmen. In the letters of advice which he
gave to relatives who intended to emigrate, nothing was forgotten, and their detailed narration presents a full picture of the difficulties and necessities of the early immigrants from Great Britain, and the courage required to undertake the long and oft-times dangerous voyage.