Fifty Years In The Northwest: With An Introduction And Appendix Containing Reminiscences, Incidents And NotesFolsom, William H. C. (William Henry Carman)
History
Fifty Years In The Northwest: With An Introduction And Appendix Containing Reminiscences, Incidents And Notes
Folsom, William H. C. (William Henry Carman)
Minnesota -- History; Wisconsin -- History
REV. A. BURTON PEABODY was born May 22, 1823, in Andover, Windsor
county, Vermont. He was the youngest of four minor children, and was
left fatherless at eight years of age, and motherless at fifteen. He
obtained a good English education in the common schools, and at
Chester and Black River academies. The winter terms he spent in
teaching. In 1844 he came to Janesville, Wisconsin, where he spent two
years, partly on a farm and partly in a law office, as a student and
clerk. In 1847 he went to Iowa county, and taught school through the
winter at Mineral Point. The next year he went to Clarence, Green
county, Wisconsin, where he spent four years in teaching. In 1852 he
entered the Nashotah Theological Seminary, where he completed the
course, and was ordained deacon in the Protestant Episcopal church,
June 3, 1855, by the Rev. Bishop Kemper, and took temporary charge of
Grace church, Sheboygan. He was married to Charity Esther Kittel,
Sept. 22, 1855, at Clarence, by the Rev. Wm. Ruger. In November of the
same year he removed to Mississippi, spending the winter at Jackson.
In February he went to Middleton, Mississippi, to take charge of a
mission work, including several appointments. He came, the June
following, to Polk county, Wisconsin, and spent the summer at Wagon
Landing, on Apple river, where his wife's friends had made a
settlement, but in the winter returned to his mission work in the
South, and there remained until 1857. Owing to the troubled political
condition of the South, he did not deem it advisable to remove his
family thither, and so returned to Wagon Landing and obtained mission
work, visiting at intervals Foster's Mills, now New Richmond,
Huntington, Cedar Valley, and St. Croix Falls. The intervening country
was, much of it, an unbroken wilderness, and he was obliged to make
his journeys not infrequently on foot, to cross the swollen streams
and dare all the perils of the winter storm. In 1859 Mr. Peabody
accepted a call to the rectorship of St. Paul's church, Plymouth,
Sheboygan county, but in 1862 returned to the valley of the St. Croix,
and settled on a farm, undertaking meanwhile ministerial work at
Prescott and other points, in a line extending as far north as St.
Croix Falls. Three years later Prescott and River Falls were made
independent, another man taking charge. In 1879 Mr. Peabody undertook
additional work on the North Wisconsin railroad, including a large
number of places, to be visited monthly. In 1882 his railroad work was
limited to Clayton, Cumberland and Hayward. He still has charge, as
rector, of Star Prairie and Wagon Landing. Few men have led more
laborious lives or been more useful in their calling. He has witnessed
the erection of eight churches on the field in which he labored,
though concerned directly in the building of only four. Mr. Peabody's
family consists of seven sons and seven daughters. One of the latter
died in infancy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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