Some twenty-five years ago there was a place in Wisconsin called North Greenfield. Evidently the name has been changed for the reason that letters addressed to individuals at that place are returned, with the information that there is no such place in the state.
What is the present name of the locality formerly known as North Greenfield?
Seymour Morris,
Chicago, Illinois.
The post office, situated in Milwaukee County, and known as North Greenfield, changed its name about 1903, when it became West Allis.
HOW THE APOSTLE ISLANDS WERE NAMED
If such record exists, I should like to obtain from it a statement of how the individual islands of the Apostle group received their names, and how the group came to be named Apostle Islands.
H. E. Hale,
Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The collective name of Apostle Islands for the group off the coast of Chequamegon Bay is nearly two centuries old. The first map on which it appears is that of Bellin in 1744. This was founded on the information given by Father Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, a noted Jesuit missionary, who in 1721 visited the western country as an agent for the French government. Charlevoix did not go into Lake Superior in person, but at Sault Ste. Marie and Mackinac he made extensive inquiries of competent observers, and noted down the information given him by traders and officers from that region. Thus he, no doubt, learned that the islands were known to the French who frequented that place as “The Twelve Apostles,” and as such they appear on the map of Bellin that was issued in Charlevoix’s book published in Paris in 1744.
The first English traveler to note these islands was Jonathan Carver, who coasted the shore of Lake Superior in 1767 and on the map published in his volume of Travels (London, 1778) repeats the name “Twelve Apostle Is.”
The first American travelers in that region were those who accompanied Lewis Cass, who in 1820 made an official voyage along the southern shore of Lake Superior. One of the members of this party was James D. Doty, who was afterwards territorial governor of Wisconsin. In Doty’s journal, published in Wisconsin Historical Collections, XIII, 201, he says: “The Islands, called by Charlevoix 'the 12 Apostles,’ extend about 20 miles from point Chegoiamegon.” Another member of the same party was Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who later became Indian agent at Sault Ste. Marie, and married a half-breed Indian girl descended from the Chequamegon chiefs. Schoolcraft proposed to change the name of the Twelve Apostle Islands to Federation Islands. He assigned to the several islands the names of states of the Union, giving that of Virginia to Madelaine, the largest of the group. Schoolcraft’s proposal was not followed, but the