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Post by Mike Thorson on Oct 22, 2012 12:52:26 GMT -5
Hi Cliff,
I went in and deleted all of the spam and banned the posters.
Are there any other problems with the board itself?
Mike
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Post by Mike Thorson on Jul 8, 2009 9:43:57 GMT -5
The software for this board changed unbeknown to me and it was blocking pending members for quite some time. Plus some members had other personal issues that needed attention. Hopefully there will be some more activity.
I will also say that there are MANY visits to this discussion board by non-members. I think there is a lot of interest in joining / posting but the requirement of using a real name scares many off. That is unfortunate but I think necessary. We have all seen the disgusting behavior and nastiness on most message boards which comes from the poster's anonymity.
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Post by Mike Thorson on Jul 8, 2009 9:36:56 GMT -5
Yes there are some good images there but be wary - on the old Black Hawk War website I posted some of those images and then received a call from the artist's lawyer to take them down.
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Post by Mike Thorson on Mar 27, 2002 15:35:20 GMT -5
Is the Bad Axe site administered by the U.S> Army Corps of Engineers or by a state egency??
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Post by Mike Thorson on May 1, 2002 10:17:49 GMT -5
Captain Fortunatus Berry
by
Bill Breihan
Reprinted by permission of the author.
This article appeared in Looking Backwards (Volume XVII, No. 2, Summer,1998 ), the quarterly publication of the Lafayette County Historical Society, Darlington, WI
A short item in the Spring issue entitled "Wisconsin's Oldest Born" caught my eye: Potite King was born in 1814 in Prairie du Chien and "served in Captain Fortunatus Berry's Company in 1832 at Gratiot's Grove." I know nothing about Mr. King but Fortunatus Berry is my 3-great grandfather's first cousin. I've been studying his life. I'll share some of what I've learned.
Fortunatus Berry was born in Cambridge, NY, May 20, 1792. Cambridge is on the East Side of the Hudson River in Washington County, bordering Vermont. His parents were Joseph Rogers Berry and Sarah Sherman. The Shermans settled in Massachusetts in the 1600s. Not as much is known of the Berrys at this point. Simeon Berry, Fortunatus' grandfather, was active in local politics in Cambridge during the Revolutionary War.
Little is known of Fortunatus' early years other that he married a women named Harriet, moved his family to central Illinois sometime before 1820 and took up farming. The first settler in Springfield, Ill. arrived in 1818. Fortunatus came shortly thereafter. In 1826 he was granted a government mining permit and moved to White Oak Springs, south of present day Shullsburg. His family grew to six children: two girls and four boys.
In 1829 Fortunatus built a tavern and inn at the foot of Berry Hill (now White Hill) just south of Gratiot's Grove. It became a popular hangout for miners and other settlers. As the hostilities leading to the Black Hawk War built up, Fortunatus participated in a meeting in the winter of 1831-32 to discuss building a fort. Three forts were constructed: Ft. Gratiot, Ft. Clark and one other. Fortunatus was appointed Captain of a Company of Infantry in the ensuing Blackhawk War.
After the war, he was elected County Supervisor for old Iowa County. He served for several years, making regular trips to Mineral Point. In the early 1830s he became Wisconsin's third postmaster, running a post office out of his tavern. The first stage coach line in Wisconsin was begun in 1836. The Chicago-Galena line made a regular stop at the Berry inn three miles south of Shullsburg (County Trunk W). Most of that inn still stands today.
Starting in 1834 other members of the Berry clan arrived in the Shullsburg area. They came from Onondaga county, NY. First came Fortunatus' first cousin Joseph R. Berry on December 17, 1834. Later, Joseph's wife and family and brothers Simeon and Isaac (my great-great-great grandfather) and sister Adaline. Also, a brother-in-law and spouse, Edward and Caroline Kneeland. Then three more Kneelands: Charles, Hector and Hiram. Some settled in White Oak Springs; others in Galena or Winslow (Ill.); some returned to NY. Fortunatus' home and inn were the first stop as each group arrived. Some stayed with the Berrys for months. Much of what I know of Captain Berry and his family comes from his cousin Joseph's correspondence. I have sixteen Gratiot's Grove letters from this period (1834-39.)
In 1836 the Wisconsin territorial legislature convened for the first time in Belmont. On December 18 Henry Dodge hosted a "Governor's Ball" in the capitol. Fortunatus and Harriet and Joseph and his wife Sarah attended. The Governor had appointed cousin Joseph a Justice of the Peace for Iowa County in July. Fortunatus and Joseph were both ardent Democrats and Dodge backers.
In 1842 Fortunatus built a new house in Gratiot's Grove and held a housewarming. A gunfight broke out and one of his neighbors, Samuel Southwick, was shot and killed by another guest, William Caffee. Caffee was tried for murder, convicted and hanged in front of a big crowd in Mineral Point.
Fortunatus Berry disappears from the historical record in 1847-48. According to the census, his twenty year-old twin sons, Henry and William, ran a tavern in Shullsburg in 1850. I believe Fortunatus died and his sons took over the business. One of his daughters married Charles Lamar of White Oak Springs, owner of the Lamar House and tavern, site of the 1854 cholera outbreak. The twins disappear by the time of the 1855 census (off to California?). The Berry Tavern had become the Lamar House.
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Post by Mike Thorson on May 1, 2002 10:44:37 GMT -5
Most of the lead that was smelted went to Galena, to be transported thence to St. Louis and New Orleans. Long caravans of ore wagons, some of them drawn by as many as eight yoke of oxen, wore deep ruts into the primitive road that went by way of Mineral Point and Belmont to this metropolis of the mines. About $80 a ton was obtained for the ore. About 1830, tariff agitation seems to have caused a great drop in prices. At this period the federal government exacted from the miners what was known as a lead rent. The miners addressed a memorial to the secretary of war, whose department had control of the collection of the mineral rents, complaining of excessive taxation. The claim was made by them in their memorial "that they have paid a greater amount of taxes than any equal number of citizens since the settlement of America!" The smelters were required to pay ten per cent of all lead manufactured and had to haul the rent lead a distance of fifty to sixty miles to the United States depot. It was not until 1846 that Congress abandoned the leasing system.
Doubtless the typical mining camp in Wisconsin when the lead excitement was in its heyday was Mineral Point. Its straggling lines of huts were ranged along a deep gorge, and at all hours the sound of revelry could be heard emanating from the saloons and gambling houses. Dancing and singing, with the accompaniment of rude music, and drinking and gambling furnished the entertainment for the wilder spirits. The town bore the appellation of the Little Shake-Rag, or Shake-Rag-Under-the-Hill. The origin of the peculiar name is explained by an early-day traveler in this wise:
"Females," says this account of sixty years ago, "in consequence of the dangers and privations of the primitive times, were as rare in the diggings as snakes upon the Emerald Isle. Consequently the bachelor miner from necessity performed the domestic duties of cook and washerwoman, and the preparation of meals was indicated by appending a rag to an upright pole, which, fluttering in the breeze, telegraphically conveyed the glad tidings to his hungered brethren upon the hill. Hence this circumstance at a very early date gave this provincial sobriquet of Shake-Rag, or Shake-Rag-Under-the-Hill."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- end.....
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Post by Mike Thorson on May 1, 2002 10:44:02 GMT -5
Some of the adventurers who came in the expectation of acquiring sudden wealth were doomed to disappointment. There were some who sought to avoid the rigors of the northern winter by coming in the spring and returning to their genial southern climate when snow began to fly. These tenderfeet were denominated "suckers" by the hardier miners, an appellation that was later transferred to the state of Illinois. Their superficial workings were called "sucker holes."
Despite muttered threats from the Indians, and other disheartening circumstances, population rapidly increased. Red Bird's disturbance caused a temporary exodus, but the frightened miners soon returned. How busily pick and shovel were plied may be gathered from the reports of lead manufactured. It was soon seen that negro labor could be well utilized, and some of the southerners brought slaves to do the work. The population rapidly increased. In 1825 it was estimated that there were two hundred persons; three years later fully ten thousand, one-twentieth being women and about one hundred free blacks. The lead product had increased in the same period from 439,473 pounds to 12,957,100 pounds.
Most of the miners followed the Indian plan of smelting in a attached a rope made of rawhide. Their tools were a hoe made for the Indian trade, an axe, and a crowbar made of an old gun barrel flattened at the breech, which they used for removing the rock. Their mode of blasting was rather tedious, to be sure; they got dry wood and kindled a fire along the rock as far as they wished to break it. After getting the rock hot they poured cold water upon it, which so cracked it that they could pry it up. At the old Buck Lead they removed many hundred tons of rock in that manner, and had raised many thousand pounds of mineral or lead ore."
During this period there came to Wisconsin some of the men who became most notable in its territorial history. Among them were Henry Dodge, afterwards governor, who brought with him from Missouri a number of negro slaves; Ebenezer Brigham, pioneer of Blue Mounds; Henry Gratiot and Col. William S. Hamilton. The latter was a son of Alexander Hamilton, who was killed by Aaron Burr, in a duel.
Some of the miners realized what in those days were considered great fortunes. One man sank a shaft near Hazel Green on the site of an old Indian digging. "At four and a half feet he found block mineral extending over all the bottom of his hole," in the language of Dr. Meeker's narrative. "He went to work and cut out steps on the side of the hole, to be ready for the next day's operation. Accordingly, the next day he commenced operations. The result of his day's work was seventeen thousand pounds of mineral upon the bank at night." After raising about a hundred thousand pounds, the diggings was abandoned. Another prospector took possession and secured more than a hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
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Post by Mike Thorson on May 1, 2002 10:43:14 GMT -5
LIFE IN THE DIGGINGS
By HENRY E. LEGLER
The Sentinel Company, Milwaukee, Wis., 1898,
Chapter VI, pages 165-168.
With the keen scent of birds of prey, gamblers and other adventurers flocked to the lead diggings of southwestern Wisconsin during the great mining excitement that occurred in the early '20's. As was the case later in California, gambling dens and grog shops were constructed in the midst of the cabins of the miners, and the fruit of the prospector's thrift often went into the coffers of the card shark. During the years when the lead mines were being developed, the aggregation of cabins that dotted the region were the typical frontier camps of a mineral country, with their swagger and utter disregard of any law but their own--prototypes of the later gulch towns of the far West. Their names were characteristic, too, and some of them yet retain a place on the map of Wisconsin. Among them were Hardscrabble Diggings, Buncome, Snake Hollow, Shake-the-Rag-Under-the-Hill, Rattle Snake Diggings, Big Patch, and other places with more euphonious, if less descriptive, names.
It was about 1822 that the so-called discovery of the lead diggings in southwestern Wisconsin occurred. For nearly two centuries the existence of the ore in that region had been known to white men, but the Indians were unwilling to let them penetrate to the mines. This was especially the case when the pushing Americans began to travel from the southern states to the upper Mississippi in quest of fortune. Before this, Frenchmen had been given permission to work the mines to some extent, for the Indian was ever wont to fraternize with the representatives of this volatile race, but Americans were rigidly excluded. The introduction of firearms among the Indians had taught them the value of the lead as an article of barter. It was stated in a letter written to the secretary of war in 1810 by Nicholas Boilvin, agent at Prairie du Chien, that the quantity of lead exchanged by Indians for goods during the season was about 400,000 pounds.
Doubtless none but Frenchmen had been at the mines previous to the war of 1812, but in 1816 a St. Louis trader named John Shaw succeeded in penetrating to the mines of the Fever river district by passing himself as a Frenchman. He was one of the traders who made periodical trips to Prairie du Chien, propelling the boats by means of poles and sails. It required from two weeks to a month to make the trip up the river, while the return journey occupied from a week to ten days. The boats carried miscellaneous supplies to Prairie du Chien, and their return cargo consisted principally of lead.
Shaw saw about twenty smelting places, the mineral being smelted in the crudest way imaginable. This was Shaw's description of the process: "A hole or cavity was dug in the face of a piece of sloping ground, about two feet in depth and as much in width at the top; this hole was made in the shape of a mill-hopper, which was about eight or nine inches square; other narrow stones were laid across grate-wise; a channel or eye was dug from the sloping side of the ground inwards to the bottom of the hopper. This channel was about a foot in width and in height, and was filled with dry wood and brush. The hopper being filled with the mineral, and the wood ignited, the molten lead fell through the stones at the bottom of the hopper; and this was discharged through the eye, over the earth, in bowl-shaped masses calIed plats, each of which weighed about seventy pounds."
Glowing notices of the richness of the lead mines of the upper Mississippi appeared in St. Louis newspapers in 1822, and started a migration thitherward. In order to overawe the Indians, who would not let white men enter the district, the government dispatched detachments of troops from Prairie du Chien and the Rock Island forts. Finding that resistance would be futile, the Indians quietly submitted to the invasion of their mineral territory. Thus began, a few miles south of the present border of the state, what at one time was the leading industry of Wisconsin, as the fur trade had been up to that period. The newcomers were mainly from the southern states and territories, and thus the first seeds of American origin in Wisconsin were the planting of men from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri. They came by boat and in caravans on horseback. Soon the prospector's shovel was upturning the sod on the hillsides of southwestern Wisconsin, the Indian occupants in sullen resentment biding their time for mischief. Galena became the center of the mining region.
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Post by Mike Thorson on Feb 14, 2005 10:08:14 GMT -5
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Post by Mike Thorson on Jan 15, 2005 10:35:49 GMT -5
Hi Patrick - and welcome to the forum. We look forward to future discussions.
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Post by Mike Thorson on Dec 20, 2004 10:16:51 GMT -5
Word on the street is that you will sign the first 50 books..........? Cool!
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Post by Mike Thorson on Jul 17, 2004 8:08:13 GMT -5
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Post by Mike Thorson on Jul 17, 2004 8:07:56 GMT -5
Here are some drawings I did for the Wisconsin Heights Battlefield
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Post by Mike Thorson on Jul 8, 2004 8:44:29 GMT -5
BUMP
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Post by Mike Thorson on Jul 8, 2004 8:45:52 GMT -5
bump ;D
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