We appreciate your difficulty in determining the time of the advent of Abraham Wood on your river, because of the conflict in the authorities. So far as we can determine, the account in the _Wisconsin Historical Atlas_ seems to be the most authoritative. The sketches in this volume were carefully written, and were obtained from survivors then alive. According to that statement the first man who attempted settlement at the Baraboo Rapids in 1837 was Archibald Barker, who then lived at Portage. He was driven off by the Indians. Meanwhile the treaty at Washington had been negotiated, and there seemed more hope that a settlement might be made. In the spring or early summer of 1839 a man named James Alban discovered Devil’s Lake, and he went back to Portage and told Eben Peck, first settler at Madison. Peck had just sold out at the latter place to Robert Ream, and he and Alban set out up the Baraboo and marked out a site at the Rapids, including the water power. As Peck was going back (after a stay of some weeks), apparently he met Wallace Rowan and Abraham Wood, whom he had known well at Madison, coming up from Portage. They staked out their claim at Lyons, where Wood spent the winter. In the meanwhile James Van Slyke came up from Walworth County in the fall of 1839 and determined to jump Peck’s claim. Van Slyke had had his claim at Lake Geneva jumped by other parties, and was in a bitter and retaliatory frame of mind. After staking out his claim to the rapids of the Baraboo he went back to Walworth and interested James Maxwell in a plan for a mill and persuaded him to furnish the irons and equipment. Van Slyke went up in the spring of 1840 and built a dam which was carried out by the freshet of June. Meanwhile, Peck had brought his claim before the court at Madison and obtained judgment against Van Slyke. The latter had already abandoned the enterprise. Van Slyke sold his irons to Wood and Rowan, who during the summer started a sawmill at the upper rapids. There seems to be every evidence that the source of this account was the Peck family, who were in a position to know the facts. If this account is true, we suppose Wood might be called the first settler, since he remained in the vicinity during the winter of 1839-40; but no doubt he lived as the Indians did, if not with them, since his wife was a squaw. He was thus not much more of a first settler than Barker, Alban, Rowan, Peck, or Van Slyke.