"In the winter of 1843-4 there was considerable excitement in the village of Southport, Wisconsin (now Kenosha City), on the subject of Association. The subject was taken up with much feeling and interest at the village lyceum and in various public meetings. Among the advocates of Association were a few persons who determined in the spring of 1844 to make a practical experiment. For that purpose a constitution was drawn up, and a voluntary Association formed, which styled itself 'The Wisconsin Phalanx.' As the movement began to ripen into action, the friends fell off, and the circle narrowed down from about seventy to twenty persons. This little band was composed mostly of men with small means, sturdy constitutions, below the middle age, and full of energy; men who had been poor, and had learned early to buffet with the antagonisms of civilization; not highly cultivated in the social and intellectual faculties, but more so in the moral and industrial. "They raised about $1,000 in money, which they sent to the land-office at Green Bay, and entered a tract of land selected by their committee, in a congressional township in the north-west corner of Fond du Lac County, a township six miles square, without a single inhabitant, and with no settlement within twenty miles, except a few scattered families about Green Lake. "With teams, stock, tents, and implements of husbandry and mechanism, they repaired to this spot in the latter part of May 1844, a distance of about one hundred and twenty-five miles from their homes, and commenced building and breaking up land, etc. They did not erect a log house, but split out of the tough burr and white oak of the 'openings,' shingles, clapboards, floors, frames and all the materials of a house, and soon prepared a shelter. Their families were then moved on. Late in the fall a saw-mill was built, and every thing prepared as well as could be for the winter. Their dwellings would have been unendurable at other times and under other circumstances; but at this time zeal, energy, excitement and hope kept them from complaining. Their land, which was subsequently increased to 1,800 acres, mostly at $1.25 per acre, consisted of 'openings,' prairie and timber, well watered, and with several small water-powers on the tract; a fertile soil, with as healthy a climate as could be found in the Western States.