From Waupaca County Histories, Waupaca County Edited by John M. Ware 1917
Transcribed and submitted to the Waupaca County Website 
by Paula Vaughan January 2002

St. Lawrence is one of the central townships of the county, and though it was first settled, in 1852, by Erick and G. Hermiansen and M. A. Oleson,
the section attracted little notice until such men as C. S. Ogden and H. Collier became residents and the Village of Ogdensburg came to life.
That was in 1854.

OGDENSBURG LAID OUT
In the year named George W. Taggart, the county surveyor, laid out the village for C. S. Ogden, its proprietor. Mr. Ogden built a sawmill
and opened a store. He also invited Rev. E. W. Green from Waupaca to hold services at his residence, and preach the first sermon at Ogdensburg,
in 1854, and in other ways did what he could to bring his town into notice and make it agreeable to those who were living there.

THE VILLAGE AT ITS BEST
For five or six years Ogdensburg seemed destined to grow into a place of considerable importance. A prospector in Waupaca County thus
speaks of it in 1856, then in its third year: "Ogdensburg is fifteen miles west of New London, eight miles from Waupaca, and seven miles west of
Meiklejohn's on the South branch of the Little Wolf. C. S. Ogden, from whom it derives its name, has made improvements here which are an
honor to the place. Ogdensburg offers good inducements to farmers and is bound to be an important town. It is surrounded on all sides by a
rich farming country, as an evidence of which I was presented by J. C. Williams, occupying a fine prairie farm a short distance from the site of 
the town, with several ears of corn averaging a yield of over fifty bushels to the acre, and much of it standing in the field, before harvesting, twelve
or fourteen feet high. The same gentleman also raised 400 bushels of potatoes to the acre. " As has been noted in other pages, while the county
seat fight was at its height between Mukwa, Weyauwega and Waupaca, Ogdensburg held the balance of power and was therefore an important
factor in county affairs.

DECLINE OF OGDENSBURG
Mr. Ogden built a grist mill in the village during 1859, but after it had made a little flour it was entirely destroyed by fire. In the following
year he wias elected county judge, having served one term as district attorney. His judicial duties, coupled with the destruction of the most
valuable of his property, decided Judge Ogden to abandon his village and move to Waupaca. This he did in 1866, and Ogdensburg went into a
general decline.

The village was somewhat revived by getting into connection with the Wisconsin Central Railroad in the late '70s. It is still, however, a rural
hamlet of a few stores, a creamery, feed mill, small bank, Baptist and Lutheran churches, and a graded school of sixty or seventy pupils.