- HON. JOSEPH GOODRICH, Milton. Hon. Joseph GOODRICH, the founder
of the village of
- Milton and of Milton College, was born in the town of Hancock,
Berkshire Co., Mass., May 12, 1800. His father, Uriah GOODRICH,
was a lineal descendant of John GOODRICH, who emigrated from
Gloucester, England, and settled in Wethersfield, Conn. The mother
of Joseph GOODRICH was Mary CARPENTER, descended from English
ancestors. Through both parents he was connected with a large
circle of relations in the New England States and in New York.
At the age of 12 years, he went to live with his maternal uncle,
Deacon Sylvester CARPENTER, at Stephentown, Renssalaer Co., N.Y.;
here he was trained in the avocation of husbandry and received
a limited education. During a six years' residence with his uncle,
he developed a vigorous physical constitution, an active, self-reliant
and enterprising character, and industrious, honest and religious
habits. At 16 years of age, he experienced a hopeful change of
heart, and united with the denomination of Christians called
Seventh Day Baptists, in the faith of which he remained until
his death. He manifested those other traits of practical sense,
a sprightly and hopeful nature, great courage and indomitable
will, which, in after life, made him a trusted leader.
- At the age of 19 years, he launched out in support of himself,
and, with a small pack on his back,
- which contained his scanty wardrobe, a new pair of boots
and an ax, he went on foot to the then Western wilderness at
Alfred, Allegany Co., N.Y., where he arrived with but 50 cents
in cash. He made a selection of wild timber-land, felled the
forest trees, clearing away and burning the brush, breaking the
fallow ground and bringing a farm under cultivation for a future
home. December 22, 1821, he married, in Petersburg, Renssalaer
Co., N.Y., Miss Nancy MAXSON, daughter of Luke and Lydia MAXSON,
a woman of sound practical ability, of sterling Christian character,
of great industry and economy, who proved a helpmeet in the fullest
sense of the word; they immediately settled in their humble home
in Alfred. In the autumn of 1823, in company with his father,
he erected a saw-mill on the Vandermark Creek, in which he made
the lumber and secured the means for the erection of a comfortable
house, which he completed in 1827. Town meetings, elections and
religious meetings were held at his house. He subsequently kept
a small store and a hotel, manufactured potash, and purchased
lumber and rafted it down the Susquehanna River to market. He
had some military inclinations, and was honored by his fellow-citizens
with the position of Major in the militia.
- In the summer of 1833, with the view of making a home somewhere
in the prairie country, of which
- he had heard glowing accounts, he made a tour of observation
to the West, accompanied by Henry D. CRANDALL and James PIERCE.
They came up around the Lakes, were in Cleveland July 4, and
landed in Milwaukee, then a small village, July 11; they proceeded
on foot, with packs on their backs, GOODRICH carrying a spade
to test the soil - instead of an ax to fell trees. The weather
was extremely hot and the journey a weary one, and, as for food
and stopping places, they were sometimes difficult to obtain.
July 16, 1838, they came upon a beautiful little prairie, since
called Prairie du Lac (the Prairie of the Lake). The quiet beauty
of the spot and its rich, alluvial soil, charmed them, and determined
their choice to locate there. Contrary to the practice of the
early settlers, in building in or near the timber, he located
out upon the open prairie, selecting the spot with rare foresight.
He drew on the map straight lines from Chicago to Madison, and
between the points on Rock River, where Janesville and Fort Atkinson
are located, and, at the place where these lines crossed each
other on the prairie, he erected a house 16x20 feet square, the
first framed structure in this section, there being none in Janesville.
This was the beginning of Milton; the building is still standing
and kept in a good state of preservation; the timbers are of
hewed oak, covered with oak clapboards; the roof was of oak shingles
and the floors were oak; the frame was filled in with unburnt
brick made of prairie mud, and the chimney was made of the same
material, which stood eighteen years' service. The public roads,
when laid out, intersected near his house, and subsequently a
railroad junction was located there. One other necessity for
his prairie home he determined to provide - it was a well of
water; in making it he met with new and unlooked-for difficulties,
as, after going down about sixteen feet in the usual Easter manner,
he found the gravel subsoil suddenly caving in, on first one
side and then the other, in such rapid succession as to make
it lively work for him to keep on top, which clearly indicated
the necessity of some device to curb it and hold it back; he
resorted to the timber (there was no second-growth then), and
got out four corner-posts of oak, and, fastening them together
with girths of oak, he made a frame about eight feet square,
which he lowered down into the well, then put down boards (and
boards were scarce), on the outside of the girths; then, making
another frame, in like manner, about six feet square, he succeeded
in getting it down below the first another length of boards,
but it did not reach water! A council was held, and Dan BUTTS
was heard of as knowing something how to curb a well; he was
sent for, and large oak trees were cut and split or rived up
into thin pieces (something like boards), about four feet long;
these pieces BUTTS notched at the corners, much the same as modern
curbing, and then, removing the gravel, fitted them in, one by
one, until they finally reached water, at the distance of fifty
feet; they drew the sand all out with tin-pails and bedcords,
hand-over-hand! But GOODRICH thought a well was not a well until
it was stoned up, and stoned this well must be, and, getting
oxen, they drew small hard-heads from the bluff, and farmer CHICKERING,
who had settled near a running stream that used to cross the
east end of the prairie, was employed to stone it up, James PIERCE
and a Mr. WILSON letting the stone down to him with the aforesaid
bedcords, by hand! Thus they stoned it up, and, having finished
it, pronounced it good. Having thus provided a house and a well,
Joseph GOODRICH started East, September 16th, to settle up his
business and remove his family, leaving James PIERCE in charge
of the prairie home. Henry B. CRANDALL, having returned earlier,
came on with his family in the fall of 1838, and lived with PIERCE
during the winter of 1838-39. During the winter, the water in
the well got low, and, in stoning it up, they had taken out and
saved the lumber around the frames, which well nigh caused a
calamity. PIERCE went down, stepping from stone to stone, to
learn the cause of the want of water, and found the water had
settled or lowered; he also saw they could not lower their stoned-up
well; so, cleaning it out a little, which CRANDALL drew up with
the tin-pail and bedcord, he started back, climbing from stone
to stone with his fingers and toes, when, near the center and
where the stones had seemingly pressed in so as but barely to
admit the passage of his body, he found a spot where the stones
were loose and ready to fall! He was obliged to hold them in
place, and, carefully looking the thing over, had CRANDALL lower
the tin-pail and draw them up, leaving an open place and nothing
to hinder the gravel from running in; then, with slow cat-like
caution and skill, he crept up, from stone to stone, and reached
the surface in safety, where he found CRANDALL as white as death
with fear for his safety. No living man of to-day would dare
duplicate the deed!
- He started with his family and hired help, twelve persons
in all, and household goods, with four
- teams, one being a single horse, on the 30th of January,
1838, to make the journey by land; after his goods were all loaded
in wagons for a start the following morning, there fell, during
the night, about two feet of snow, which necessitated his procuring
sleighs and placing the wagons on them, and, during the first
day's journey, the vehicle which contained his family tipped
over, and his wife's collar-bone was broken, and the consequent
pain and discomfort which this devoted woman experienced in this
long journey can hardly be realized by those acquainted only
with the modern mode of easy travel. They came with sleighs to
Sandusky, Ohio, and then, with wagons, through snow and mud,
and storms and floods, through the great Maumee Swamp, with its
thirty-one taverns in thirty miles - breaking through the ice
on the Calumet, twelve miles east of Chicago, drowning one horse
and wetting the most valuable load of goods - enduring all sorts
of difficulties and privations, during a journey of thirty-four
days, they at last arrived at their little home on the bleak
prairie, March 4, 1839. On the Sabbath Day following their arrival,
through the influence of his wife, they, with the family of Henry
B. CRANDALL, met at his humble home for religious worship, and
organized regular weekly meetings, to be held alternately at
his house and at Mr. CRANDALL's. They formed a Bible-class, in
which all took a part, had a sermon read from a book of sermons,
each Sabbath, by Mr. GOODRICH, songs of devotion and religious
conference, which resulted in much good and the hopeful conviction
of eight persons, who were baptized and became charter members
of the Seventh-Day Baptist Church, which was organized in 1840.
Mr. GOODRICH attracted from the East many prominent men and women,
who were characterized by industry, enterprise, intelligence
and piety, through whom a strong religious and temperance sentiment
was established. Every genuine reform had his most hearty support.
He began to lay the foundation for a village, throwing open some
twenty-three acres for a public square, giving the use of lands
for a church, for schools, for the cemetery, the railroad, etc.;
he gave building-lots to mechanics and assisted them in the erection
of houses and shops, and he kept an open house of welcome to
early settlers. The first public school was taught in his house,
and he kept the first hotel, the first store and the first post-office,
in Milton; he erected the first frame barn; he erected an Academy,
in 1844, and maintained it at his own expense for ten years,
out of which Milton College has grown, and to which his donations
were constant and munificent; he gave the bell to the College,
and, with his sister, Miss Polly GOODRICH, the bell to the Church.
He received many marks of esteem and confidence, was elected
to many local offices of trust and responsibility; was a Director
of the first railroad and was elected to the State Legislature
by the unanimous vote of his district, in 1855.
- October 30, 1857, he lost his faithful and devoted wife;
her death was unexpected and instant,
- from heart disease, and was a great loss, not only to him
and his family, but to the Church and to the entire community;
they had two children, a son and a daughter - the former Ezra
GOODRICH, who still resides in Milton, and Jane G., the wife
of the Hon. Jeremiah DAVIS, of Davis Junction, Ill., a lady of
great moral worth and superior social qualities. Mr. GOODRICH
married again, Feb. 24, 1859, Mrs. Susan H. ROGERS, widow of
the Rev. L. T. ROGERS, a native of Rhode Island; she proved a
valuable aid to him, being a woman of large experience, of intelligence
and of Christian worth. He died, October 9, 1867, after but three
days illness, of congestion of the brain; his funeral was attended
by a large concourse of people; many old pioneers came from great
distances and followed his body to its final resting-place, with
the most profound sorrow, the universal refrain being: "How
greatly he will be missed." In personal appearance he was
of large frame, with heavy head, grayish eyes, broad shoulders
and a rugged constitution; his step was very elastic, and all
the actions of his body were quick and vigorous. He was endowed
with a remarkable vein of humor, and his narratives of personal
adventures, his ready and witty repartee and his own hearty laughter
made his company the most genial and entertaining; to this he
added a warm and generous heart, which attracted to him hosts
of friends. He executed all his plans with great promptness and
uncommon energy, and hence he seldom failed in his enterprises;
he was positive and fixed in his views; he was a decided anti
slavery man, and his home a safe refuge for the fugitive slave;
in politics, he was a Whig and subsequently a Republican; he
was a man of great hospitality; thousands have "cut their
notch at his table." His large soul welcomed every new truth,
every discovery in science, every practical invention, as something
added to the general stock of wisdom and usefulness. His apt
sayings would pass from mouth to mouth, and be quoted in sermons
and public addresses. He lived emphatically in the present, using
all his powers and the means at his command to promote what he
considered the right. He was a man of the sternest integrity
and of the most hearty devotion. The fruits of his labors survive
him in the morality of the place, in the reformatory and progressive
tendencies of the people, in the business enterprises which he
carried to completion, in the churches which he organized and
fostered, and in the college which he founded, which was the
hope and the pride of his life. His remains, with his wife's,
are buried in the Milton Cemetery, where his son has erected
a marble monument to their memory, surrounding the lot with curbing
and covered it with green sods, where they rest in peace.
-
- Taken from "The History of Rock County, Wis."
(c)1879; pp. 817-818, 821.
-
- Courtesy of Carol
|