The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Volume 1, 1917-1918Various
History
The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Volume 1, 1917-1918
Various
Wisconsin -- History -- Periodicals
there but bought on speculation.
On Tuesday, the seventeenth, I embarked in our canoe with Mr. Goodhue
and son George, Mr. Frink, and Mr. Eames for Rockford, leaving Mr.
Blood there. We remained at Rockford over night at the log hotel of
Mr. Miller. There were several families there. Mr. Goodhue’s son
Charles met us there with his team and took us to Belvedere where he
had a little store and where half a dozen families had settled. It was
called Squaw Prairie and a Mr. Doty kept a hotel or tavern. We left
our canoe to the citizens of Rockford. After a night’s rest at
Belvidere, Frink, Eames, and I started on foot for Chicago, stopping
the first night at Spencer’s Grove. The next day I was quite sick and
reached Tyler & Raustead’s house, four miles west of Elgin, about six
P. M., and was so sick that I felt that I could go no farther and
proposed to stay over night, but they would not keep me, fearing that
I should be too sick to leave in the morning. They reluctantly gave me
a cup of tea and I moved on, being virtually dragged by the arms the
four miles by Messrs. Frink and Doolittle.
Here let me correct a mistake in dates and facts. Cyrus Eames was not
at Beloit at this time, and it was not Eames who left Beloit in the
boat with us, but John Doolittle, who returned to Canada with Mr.
Goodhue at this time. We reached Elgin after dark, where I learned
that I had an aunt and her husband and three children living four
miles above Elgin on Fox River, and in the morning I parted with
Frink, who started for Ottawa, and I hired Mr. Kimball, the landlord,
to take me in a wagon to my Aunt Tyler’s, I being yet a sick man.
Elgin had about ten families. I found my aunt and husband with three
sons on a farm of 400 acres which George Tyler had squatted upon in
1835 and before the government survey. Aunt Tyler was the youngest
sister of my mother, and married Noah Tyler of Claremont, New
Hampshire, about 1803 and by him had eight children, four sons and
four daughters. The family became Catholics and the four daughters
became abbesses or superiors. The oldest son, George, went in early
life to Georgia and emigrated from the South to this state and sent
for his father, mother, and two brothers, who came to him. He married
here at the age of fifty and is now a resident of Texas. The second
son, William, died Catholic bishop of Rhode Island and Connecticut, in
1854, I think. The third son died at Dundee and the youngest is living
at Elgin and has a large family of nine children. His name is Calvin.
He was educated for the Catholic priesthood. One daughter, Sallie, is
living in Detroit at the head of a Catholic nunnery.
[Illustration: LUCIUS GEORGE FISHER
From a daguerreotype in the possession of the Fisher family]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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