Daniel Reed

Made available to The USGenWeb Archives by: Al Hartman Submitted: July 2003

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Submitter's Note: The obit of Emma Jane (Reed) Marsh is in the Faribault Archives. This account was written by her cousin Elisha Rice Reed. Her family came to WI in 1845 and that is where she was born. In the attached story, Freeman Reed is her father.

THE COMING OF THE JOSEPH REED FAMILY FROM OHIO TO WISCONSIN IN 1845 .

Or a tale of pioneer days in southern Wisconsin in the early forties. Written by Elisha R. Reed, (Son of Joseph Reed) and printed in the Evansville, "Wisconsin Review" under dates of May 28, and June 5th 1913.

In August 1845, a procession of five wagons, or Prairie Schooners, started from the town of Troy, Geauga County, Ohio, on a trip to what was then the Wild and Wooly West, or more definitely to southern Wisconsin. Of the team two were ox team and three were horse teams. The personnel of the procession was made up as follows; Joseph Reed, known as Uncle Joe Reed with one yoke and wagon, containing himself and wife and three children, viz.; Phebe, aged 17, Elisha aged 9 and Louisa aged no years. The load of the wagon consisted of one feather bed, a few quilts, one rocking chair and two ancient straight-backed, splint-bottomed chairs. James Snow, familiarly known as Uncle Jim Snow, with one span of horses and wagon containing himself and wife and six children, James Jr., Joseph, Sophia, Harrison, Mary and Luther and a very small amount of the house hold goods. Another horse team was owned and driven by Nathaniel Olds, familiarly known as Uncle Nat Olds. Uncle Nat Olds and Uncle Jim Snow were brothers -in-law hence the cognomen of Uncle. Uncle Nat Olds, lost his wife years before, and he had with him only one grown son, B.F. Olds and is known as Doc Olds. His Uncle Nat came to the rescue of Uncle Jim, and took some of his load. Simeon Reed, son of Joseph Reed, with his wife and baby boy George, made up the load of the other horse team. Simeon Reed's wife was a daughter of Uncle Jim Snow and those four families were virtually all one family, were all conveyed in the three wagons. The fifth team was another ox team owned and driven by Amos James a neighbor who cast his lot with us. He had a wife and four children. The cavalcade, caravan, menagerie or procession started early in August and was favored with fine weather, good roads and a prosperous journey. No accident or incident occurred to mar the pleasure of the trip that I can now recall to memory. Not a single case of sickness, breakdown or stuck-in-the-mud that I can recall. God's blessing certainly attended us all the way. We slept in the wagons, under the wagons, around haystacks, in haymows, or any old place we could lay our heads was Home Sweet Home to us. After leaving Cleveland our course lay along the lakeshore for a long distance, sometimes very close to the water's edge. There were no high banks that I remember but beautiful sandy beaches and in some places small stones worn smooth and true and were very beautiful. I gathered up a large number of them and put them in the water, and kept some of them for several years. The fine weather, the beautiful expanse of water and the smooth pebbly beaches were an enchantment to me from which I never have recovered and as to this day impressed with a great desire to again wander by that sea beat shore. "Where oft in headless infant sport I gathered shells in days before." Only there were no shells of any kind that I can remember. There was one incident and a very important incident that occurred while crossing the state of Indiana. We crossed the first and only railroad track that any of us had ever seen. It was such a curiosity to us that after having crossed the track and were at a safe distance away from it we halted the team and everyone, men, woman and children, all went back to investigate the wonderful thing, and wondered how in the world they could make the wheels stay on the narrow rails. I stood on the track between the rails and looked away at the converging rails and they seemed to come right together in the distance. I had never seen the like of that before. I stood and gaped in childish open-eyed wonder all unconscious that I was then and there getting my first lesson in perspective drawing that all parallel, receding lines terminate at point of sight. While we wondered, worried, waited and wished, a train came thundering past like a streak of greased lightening, so to speak. The look of wonder and amazement on every countenance, with eyes and mouth the widest up and down we would have made a picture to beat anything we ever put on canvas. We saw the monster fly past, saw the wheels whirling, but did not find out what prevented the wheels from running off the track, that remained a very mysterious mystery. The only rain I can remember was while passing through Chicago. Chicago was then in its infancy and had not as good roads as at present; in fact the road had not been worked at all. It was simply the clear mud of the low ground, and it was raining at the time. The mud was thin and bottomless, but we got through it without getting stuck. After crossing into Wisconsin, we came to a double log house and in front of it was a pole stuck in the ground and on top of the pole was a pair of elk's horns, and we learned that this was the Elkhorn Tavern. A village was after the war developed around the Tavern, and very naturally took the name of Elkhorn, from Elkhorn Tavern. We came to East Troy, and I will now have to leave the people sitting in their wagons until I go back to Ohio and come back again. We now have been five weeks on the road. I had a married sister living with her husband, E. Nelson Wetherall, and two children, in Orleans County, New York. They came to Ohio in the fall of 1844 stayed a few weeks and then with my sister Amanda, 18 years old, took shipping around the lakes of Milwaukee. They had relatives living in the vicinity of Mukwonago in Walworth County and there they hastened to settle. Now we have to go back to Ohio again. My father had a brother Samuel living near us in Ohio. He, with some others, came to Wisconsin in the spring of 1845; Uncle Sam settled in the western part of Rock County. That same spring, my father with two married sons, Freeman and Wiram, and a younger son Daniel aged 11 years, came to Wisconsin, around the lakes Freeman rented some land and went to farming in the town of Summit, Waukesha County. Wiram settled in East Troy. Daniel stayed with Freeman, my brother-in-law, Wetherall, was a stone mason and plasterer and was all ready carving out a fortune in Mukwonago and all was happy. Then my father left them and returned to Ohio and brought the rest of us as all ready related. Then the caravansary, which we have escorted all the way from Ohio reached East Troy and Mukwonago, the procession was at once broken up. Amos James and his family Summit in Waukesha County, Uncle Jim Snow had two brothers living in Lowell, Dodge County, and thither they hastened. Uncle Nat Olds and my brother Otis and wife going with him. My brother Simeon spent the winter, with the Wetheralls in Mukwonago, but following on to Rock County, in the spring. My father had followed his brother Samuel from Massachusetts to Orleans County, New York in 1813 and from Orleans County to Chautauqua County in 1826 and from Chautauqua County to Geauga County, Ohio. I must now follow him to Rock County, Wisconsin in 1845, Wisconsin was then a territory, so after a time he loaded the family into the wagon and started further west Freeman and Wiram following a year later. We cross the Rock River at Humes Bridge four miles above Janesville, and soon struck the old territorial stage road running from Janesville to Madison. Ten miles further on we came to a fork in the road at Bell Tavern; one fork running southwest to Madison, and the other nearly due west to Exeter a lead mining and smelting town on the Sugar River and was called the Sugar River Road. Roads were not numerous in those days and were designated by the name of the point of termination for instance there was the Madison Road, the Sugar River Road, the Mineral Point Road and the Galena Road. Going east all roads ran to Milwaukee. There were no roads running north and south, as there was little or no travel in those directions. The Madison Road was primarily, for the purpose of hauling lead from the lead regions to Milwaukee. These roads were simply broadened out Indian trails and meandered through the woods, over the hills and around the marshes without regard to points of the compass. The land had not been surveyed at that time and when it was surveyed and settled up the settlers found their farms cut in two by roads running where they did not want roads. Trouble followed by the settlers fencing up the roads. Congress finally established the roads where they are, and called them territorial roads, after that no man dared to fence them up or to interfere with them in any way. Now you now you will find them all over this western country running everywhere absolutely independent of section lines or towns, country or state boundary lines. A lead team consisted of from three to five yoke of oxen on one wagon. From three to six or eight wagons constituted a train. They always traveled in trains for company, for safety and for mutual assistance. The first men to start the enterprise of hauling lead were men from Illinois; the people of Illinois called them Suckers. Therefore the men who hauled lead were called Suckers as long as the enterprise lasted. At the time of which I write lead was the only product shipped from the territory; and these same Suckers brought all the merchandise from Milwaukee that was brought into the country. Loaded both ways, the Suckers made a pretty good thing out of it. My brother Wiram and my cousin Andrew Nash hauled lead for a few years. At the fork in the road aforesaid we kept to the left and followed a trail running to the southwest, a mile from there we left the trail and took to the woods at a point where the trail crossed what is now the town line between Union and Magnolia townships, although there was no Magnolia there them, and it was several years before the township of Magnolia was set off from the town of Union. I said we took to the woods but that is almost a misnomer for the woods consisted of burr oak openings, and they were very short and scrubby. Father had been there before he knew the way. One half mile due south from here we came to my Uncle Samuel Reed's domicile, a low double log house, shingled with prairie hay, and without a door, but there was a hole in which a door was afterwards hung. People living in large houses have no room to entertain friends, but those living in lowly huts have plenty of room and you are always welcome without money and without price. Uncle Sam had six in his family; father had seven for we had been reinforced by my sister Amanda and my brother Daniel, before leaving Mukwonago, making the unlucky thirteen. Yet we had plenty of room for all. Fortunately neither family had any considerable furniture to occupy space, and when we were all stretched out on the ground at night we occupied all the space here was in the cabin. Uncle Sam had entered a forty (40 acres of land) adjoining him on the west a vacant forth and father converted his oxen and wagon into $50.00 cash and started on foot and alone and entered the forty. Although he fell in with plenty of lead teams going and coming, yet those teams never took passengers, so he had to walk all the way. Those Suckers themselves never ride, all go a foot. Returning from Milwaukee he proceeded at once to cut logs for a house, although logs sixteen feet long were hard to find he would have built a larger house if he could have found longer logs. The logs were out and hauled and then came the snow, he scraped the snow off the ground and raised a house in the woods. There was no road to guide him in the location of the house, but there was a section line on which he hoped a road would some day run. As for neighbors they were very distant on the Sugar River Road were several neighbors, on the Monroe three miles away, on the east ten miles away west of us three quarters of a mile were three or four neighbors. Our P.O. was Mt. Union six miles away. Also a blacksmith shop and a couple of small stores. Evansville had not then been dreamed of. The house was raised and covered with shakes, shakes are split out of the best and straightest trees that can be found and are about six inches wide, three feet long and as thin as they can be split with safety. After shaking the house, came chinking or daubing, which is done by driving split pieces of wood into the spaces between the logs and daubing it with mud to keep out the wintry winds. All this being accomplished, we moved in on Christmas day 1845. But before we can even get something to eat in our new home, we must return again to Ohio for the last time on the saddest mission of all. It will readily be seen that with all the human freight to be transported in the wagons there was very little room for household goods. Nothing was brought in the wagons except what was needed to be used on the way. So before starting everything was boxed up and taken to Cleveland and shipped around the lakes to Milwaukee on a steamboat. But instead of shipping the goods on a steamboat as per contract, they were put on a schooner. The schooner was driven by a storm head first on a projecting sand-bar, thirty miles out from Cleveland, she was then washed by the high seas, filled with water and the stern sunk. She was afterwards raised and pumped out and towed back to Cleveland, by this time it was too late in the season to reship them as navigation was closed at the Straits of Mackinaw. The boxes were taken to the warehouse and opened and partly dried. They were then repacked but in repacking many things got in the wrong boxes, and in the spring they were reshipped and at last arrived at Milwaukee. Some of the people got their boxes but had to pay storage for the winter and for opening and drying, although they were not sufficiently dried to prevent their spoiling. Those who did get their boxes decided that the expense of freight, storage and drying and hauling from Milwaukee was more than the goods were worth. So father never went after his goods at all. Of course the transportation company was liable for heavy damages, but none of those people had any money with which to prosecute and had to pocket their grievances and go to work and earn something to eat. So this Christmas night found us in our new log house without a door, window or floor. One feather bed, one rocking chair and two split bottomed chairs, a basket of potatoes, some corn meal and a pail of water, that was spilled before we went to bed. Uncle Sam had some marsh hay we piled some of the hay in the corners and crouched down and went to sleep, after filling the stove with green burr oak wood. The original design of this sketch was to give an account of the trip to Wisconsin only, but the opening up of farms and the development of the new country and the desperate struggle with poverty might make another interesting chapter, but I see no good stopping place, for the arduous struggle to maintain an earthly existence continued on long as life lasted. The immigrants thus far mentioned were virtually only one family being connected by blood or matrimony, with the exception of the Amos James Family; they were with us but not of us. It is said that birds of a feather flock together, but Mr. James' family were of a different feather, they therefore went off and flocked by themselves, and were soon lost sight of. Of the main flock there were 36 souls, all now have sunk into oblivion except the writer and his sister Louisa. And we are living on borrowed time. Their descendents are numerous and are scattered to the four winds of heaven, all have struggled with poverty, more or less, none have risen to wealth or honor, and none have sunk to shame and dishonor. Some are in Milwaukee, and the rest are scattered all over the northwest, from Milwaukee to the Pacific Coast, and from southwest Missouri to the British possessions.