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

THE NAME WAUPACA
Most of the local historians, especially the earlier ones who had some knowledge of the Mienominee tongue, have a rather settled conviction that
 the name Waupaca is derived from the Indian words "waubuck Seba,"' meaning "pale water." A step further brings one to a free translation.
"clear water," or "crystal water." All of which seem very plausible. But a number of years ago some Doubting Thomas wrote to John V.
Satterlee, the Indian interpreter at the Menominee Reservation in Shawano County, for his opinion. Mr. Satterlee believes that the complete
Menominee word, or phrase, from which Waupaca has been extracted is Wau-pa-ka-ho-nah-wock, meaning "Our Brave Young Hero."

THE VERMONTERS' "CAMP" FORMED
In June, 1849, when the little Vermont colony started from Sheboygan County for the Menominee Indian lands of interior Wisconsin, there
were only about half a dozen settlers in what is now Waupaca County-Alpheus Hicks, 'at Fremont; Henry Tourtelotte and Amos Dodge at
Weyauwega; J. G. Nordman, near New London; and perhaps two or three others, in the southeastern part of the county. It is chiefly through
the contributions made by E. C. Sessions to the historical lore of the region that the details of that backwoods excursion, which resulted in the
founding of Waupaca settlement, have come down to us. At the time named, Mr. Sessions, Joseph and William Hibbard, Martin Burnham and
Mr. Pratt, a brother-in-law of Joseph Hibbard, all five Vermonters. started out from Plymouth, fifteen miles west of Sheboygan, on foot,
headed for the Indian lands for which the United States Government had treated in October, 1848. Trudging westward, with their blankets and
other packs, they followed the Fond du Lac road, thence walked northerly through the forest on the east side of Lake Winnebago, where they
stopped the first night at the Stockbridge Indian settlement.

The next sunset found them a little east of the present site of the City of Menasha. Thence they traveled north through the heavy timber
land up to Mukwa, where they crossed the Wolf River, and thence, keeping the east side of White Lake in the Town of Royalton came to the
present site of the Village of Weyauwega. There the party found two men, holding down a claim on which was a mill site. Here they camped
for the night and next morning, accompanied by Henry Tourtelotte, one of the men holding the mill site who had heard from the Indians of the
wonderful falls up the river, but had never seen them, started out for the land of promise. At a point up the river where J. W. Chandler and
S. Dow afterward settled, Tourtelotte turned back, while the original party pushed on to find the Falls. At the old James Thomas farm they
were overtaken by a severe thunder storm, which continued all the afternoon.

Finding the anticipation of the wealth and beauty of Wisconsin far more pleasurable than the realization, Mr. Pratt announced that he was
going back where some start at settlement had been made, while Martin Burnham, who had just attained his majority, was getting his first
experience in pioneering. Not finding in the granite ledge at Waupaca Falls the promise of immediate riches such as were depicted in the glowing
accounts of California, he assisted the others in surveying and staking out three eighties on which the Hibbards and Mr. Sessions later made
their homes, and then retraced his steps through the unbroken forest, soon joined a caravan in Missouri and pressed on overland for the gold
fields of California. Upon his return from the coast he located in Illinois, and three years ago was still a resident of that state.

The Hibbards had left their families in Vermont. In August a comfortable house with shake roof had been completed by a settler by the
name of Cooper, and Mrs. Cooper had arrived, being the first white woman to grace what is now the City of Waupaca, though quite a settlement
had been made half way between the present sites of Weyauwega and Waupaca Falls by the Chandlers, Dows, Vaughns and others.
Mrs. Paine, of this city, a daughter of John Wilkes Chandler, long since deceased (on the authority of "Waupaca," a booklet issued by the
Monday Night Club), "remembers well the first house built by her father. It was only fourteen feet by twelve, and here the Hibbards and
others stopped over night when the families of these early settlers at the Falls came to share and develop the claims which the heads of the families
had selected on their first visit earlier in June. In that small cabin twenty-one people were lodged on one of these occasions when the traveler
was given the best in the house, if it was prepared from the first flour the scanty larder had seen for days.

"These early pioneers came with the firm determination to stay, as evidenced by the fact that J. W. Chandler and his brothers, Augustus H.
and S. S. Chandler, Sr., were accompanied by their parents to the almost trackless wilderness. At Gill's Landing a man was found who had a
single ox and a drag or stone boat, and the Chandlers secured this conveyance, and upon it Grandma Chandler rode from the Landing to the
Chandler farm in the town of Waupaca and to the southeast of the present city. Mrs. Paine also remembers this incident (1913), as she does
the coming of the women and children of the first settlers at the Falls, four miles farther up the river.

THE SPENCER SETTLEMENT AND PARFREYVILLE
"'The coming of Alonzo and John Vaughn was also marked by interesting incidents. John Vau'ghn, father of Mrs. C. A. Stinchfield and
grandfather of Dr. H. L. Cormican, brought the first wagon into the settlement, while Alonzo Vaughn was the first settler to erect a frame
house on the Indian lands. In that settlement the first school district was formed, while the settlement near Spencer's Lake and south of the
city was the place of the first town meeting. It was held at the Thomas Spencer residence, where also were conducted preaching services on
Sunday and social events during the week. It was Thomas Spencer, father of Mrs. Chesley and Ira Spencer, of Waupaca, who owned a mill
site which he offered to a Mr. Parfrey on condition that he would erect a mill and grind a bushel of grain before anyone could erect and grind
in a mill at Waupaca. Mr. Parfrey took a small quantity of his first meal to church at the Spencer place and at the close of the sermon, holding
aloft the meal, shouted, 'Here is some of my grinding!' He had complied with the conditions, and Mr. Spencer gave him the site on
which was located the Parfrey mill at Parfreyville.

RIVALRY BETWEEN RURAL AND WAUPACA
"The friendly rivalry of these first settlers is further evidenced by the fact that the first postoffice was in the house of L. Dayton, father of
Mrs. Hayward of this city, William Dayton of Chicago, and the late Mrs. Hudnell of Rural. It was for L. Dayton that the town of Dayton
was named, and it was at Rural (in the northern rim of that township) that such an effort was made to outstrip Waupaca that the publishers
of the Waupaca Spirit, which was established in 1853, moved their press and published their paper for one year at Rural."

THE SECOND WAUPACA INSTALMENT
The second instalment of pioneers to settle at Waupaca were Capt. David Scott, Freeman Dana Dewey, Judge S. F. Ware, William B.
Cooper and John M. Vaughn (already mentioned).

David Scott had been a wealthy mill owner and merchant of Attica, New York, but fire had swept away most of his possessions and with a
small remnant of his fortune, at late middle age, he had come West to start anew. He first settled on a farm near Waupaca (in 1849), but
afterward moved into town and engaged in the drug business. He died in 1864, after having suffered a stroke of paralysis. Captain Scott was
able and popular. He was the first chairman of the county board and otherwise prominent in county affairs. He was also the first postmaster
of Waupaca.

William B. Cooper, the first lawyer to locate, also built the first house, and he tried his first case before Justice Samuel F. Ware.
S. F. Ware came to Waupaca Falls from Pennsylvania in 1849, but did not locate permanently, with his wife and five children, until the
spring of 1850. He engaged in farming and dealing in lands, was the first justice of the peace in Waupaca County and held various town
offices before commencing his service as county judge in 1855. He served most acceptably for a period of six years. In 1860 Judge Ware
moved to a farm two miles north of Waupaca, and died as the result of an accident, in December, 1868. His son, John M. Ware, acquired the
homestead at the death of the father from the other heirs and added to it by the purchase of an adjoining farm of 120 acres from the Boughton
estate and he not only conducted this 240 acre farm but for many years was engaged in the shipping of live stock to distant markets on his own
account and also in company with William M. Dayton under the firm name of Ware & Dayton. He was also engaged in the sale of agricultural
implements and farm machinery in the City of Waupaca. He was long prominent in township and county affairs and served continuous
for a number of years as chairman of the county board and labored for many years with others, among whom might be mentioned the late
Myron Reed and R. N. Roberts in an endeavor to induce the county toerect an asylum for the care of its own chronic insane but it was not|
until the year 1898 that a substantial and complete building was erected.

In the year 1884 he became one of the proprietors of the Waupaca Post, but disposed of his interest to other parties in 1908 and the Post
was subsequently purchased by Daniel F. Burnham and merged with the Waupaca Republican under the name of The Waupaca Republican-Post.
Mr. Ware was nominated a number of times for. county office but being a democrat in politics was always defeated as the county was for 
many years the banner republican county of the state. Although retired from active business, his interest in political and economic questions is
greater than ever, and his enthusiasm and knowledge grow with the advancing years.

John M. Vaughn was born in New York April 27, 1818, and at the age of thirteen moved with his parents to Erie County, that state. He
was married in May, 1841, and in August, 1849, the young couple set out for the wilderness of central Wisconsin. The first man to travel the
route from Berlin to Waupaca was John Vaughn. Mr. Vaughn was remarkably competent both as a farmer and a merchant and, with the
exception of a year spent in Iowa and Nebraska, he made Waupaca County his home continuously from 1849 until his death August 31,
1885. He was the first sheriff of the county, was for many years chairman of the township board, and a very prominent Baptist. From 1871
to 1884 he was associated with the Flint Spice and Tobacco Manufacturing Company of Milwaukee.

DEWEY ON "EARLY DAYS IN WAUPACA"
Freeman Dana Dewey, or, as he was more commonly called, Dana Dewey, arrived in the fall of 1849 and, although he never attained public
prominence, he had a faculty of recording county happenings and of being well posted on both the past and present. As he says in his little

"Early History of Waupaca": "Upon my arrival at Waupaca, in 1849, I began recording the important events as they transpired in a
book kept for that purpose. In 1855 some unknown person entered the house where I was stopping, broke open my trunk and made way with
my book. Since that time I have rewritten it, and have kept it fresh in memory by oft repeating it." This theft of notes jotted down at the
time of the occurrence of the recorded events is much to be regretted, as not a few inaccuracies have thereby-crept into Mr. Dewey's printed
pages, caused doubtless by a too implicit trust upon his memory which, although quite remarkable was not infallible. He was a kind of Boswell
to Waupaca' County and, like Johnson's biographer, contributed much interesting material to the literature of his subject, although it was not
always reliable.

On the whole, Dewey's chapter on the "Old-Timers" of Waupaca, written about 1886, is the best and most complete which has reached us,
and it is therefore quoted: "The three forties on which the best part of Waupaca stands, including what is now known as' Bartlett's addition,
were claimed by E. C. Sessions on the 15th day of June, 1849. William Mumbrue made the preliminary survey between the 12th and the 20th of 
August of the same year.

"The nearest grist mill was at Ripon, and the marshes between Waupaca and that place were so miry that they could not be crossed by
a team until frozen. I came to Waupaca in October, 1849, stopping at E. C. Sessions' house at the head of Main Street. About that time
Mrs. Sessions informed her husband that they were about out of flour and something must be done immediately, so I took a coffee mill and went
to work. After grinding three hoppers full I gave it up as a bad job and tried to grind corn, but with no better success. Sessions and myself
then went up on the hill back of the Danes' Home, cut a white oak tree about two feet through, cut out a block two feet long, squared each end,
bored a hole in the center, and with a pair of compasses, made a circle, and chiseled and burned a hole large enough to hold about a peck of
grain. Then we made a hickory pestle about three feet long and five inches through it; and with the aid of a coffee mill for grinding buck-wheat
and this mortar and pestle for grinding grain, managed to get along until the 25th of December, when a team went below and brought
back some flour ground in a regular mill.

"There was no postoffice in Waupaca in those days; the nearest being Oshkosh. John Vaughn used to go down and get our letters, inquiring
for Tomorrow River Mills, Waupaca Falls, Green Bush and Walla Walla mail. A Captain Jack, ran a sail boat from Oshkosh up the Wolf River
to Gill's Landing that fall, and his boat finally froze up in Partridge Lake. He used to carry the letters for five cents each way, charging two
cents for newspapers. The letters for Tomorrow River Mills were left with Henry Telalot (Tourtelotte), at Weyauwega; Green Bush letters
were left with Simon C. Dow, between Waupaca and Weyauwega. E. C. Sessions did the duty of postmaster at Waupaca. Henry Telalot (Tourtelotte)
was the first settler at Weyauwega, coming there about May 15th, 1849, and marrying a squaw. He married so' as to get the position of
Indian trader, but he managed to incur the enmity of the Indians, and the chief notified him that if he didn't make himself scarce he would
have his scalp, and he left the next spring taking his wife with him.

"Fremont mail was left with a man named Mahew, who was either the first or second-settler in Fremont. On the 25th of December, 1849,
E. C. Sessions, W. B. Hibbard and myself started for Strong's Landing for provisions. We had to cut a road through, and only went a. little 
southeast of where Pine River now stands, the first day. That night we made a windbreak of our wagon-box, cut some boughs, ate sparingly of
the few provisions we had and slept fairly comfortable until morning, when we ate the balance of our provisions, the share of each in bread
and meat being about as large as a man's three fingers.

"We expected to get plenty to eat at Auroraville and thought we would get there by noon, but we got there at night. A man named
Daniels had a sort of logging shanty and when asked for a supper said all the provisions he had were on the table and the table was cleared.
He expected provisions that night, but they didn't come and so we went without. We staid out of doors and walked all night to keep warm,
after having cut brush, filled up a creek and poured on water to freeze and form a bridge over which we could get our oxen in the morning.
It froze hard enough during the night to hold them and in the morning we started for Strong's Landing. After crossing the creek, Cooper saw
a shanty and made a break for it to get something for breakfast. Nobody was there, but he found. a little bread and pork frozen solid; taking an
axe he cut this into pieces and distributed it among five men. There was about three pounds of pork and a half loaf of bread. We ate it and were
mighty glad to get it, although it was a pretty cold dose for our stomachs.

We then hurried on as fast as we could towards Strong's Landing. When we got there all wanted some whiskey. I wanted warm water instead,
but a doctor there took a tumbler, filled it about half full of hot water and then filled it up with something else, brandy I suppose. I swallowed
it and asked no questions. It was mighty hot and it was brandy. It was the first and last liquor I ever drank. At any rate I found in about half
a minute that it had a good deal of power in it for twisting my legs.

A Mr. Strong kept a tavern at Strong's Landing and also a grocery stock. Sessions concluded to buy flour of him, instead of going to Ripon,
and purchased three sacks for which he paid $1.25 per hundred. In Ripon it would have cost him seventy cents per hundred. I will give the
prices on a few other articles he purchased so my readers can compare them with present prices. He paid $1 for 18 pounds of brown sugar,
$1 for 16 pounds of loaf sugar, $1 for 5 pounds of good tea, $3 for a good pair of boots, 4 to 5 cents per yard for calico, 10 cents per yard for 
gingham, and a good suit of clothes which will now cost $15, he purchased for $10, potatoes were purchased for 38 cents per bushel, pork
12 cents per pound. Strong's Landing was changed to Berlin in '50.

SOME' OF WAUPACA'S FIRST SETTLERS
"In this connection I will note: Some of the first settlers were E. C. Sessions, J. and William Hibbard. They arrived on the 15th of June,
'49; W. G. Cooper, in August, '49, and Captain Scott and A. M. Gard, in September, '49. E. C. Sessions claimed the three original forties of
the village plat of Waupaca, and the forty in the Third Ward on which M. R. Baldwin now lives (about 1886). Joe Hibbard claimed 160 acres
in the southern part of the city. W. Hibbard claimed 80 acres on which the Baptist and Methodist churches now stand; also 80 acres joining
it on the east. Cooper claimed 160 acres on which the old fair ground stood. Scott claimed what is now the Winfield Scott place. Gard settled
in Farmington. I claimed the Charles Wright place.

"O. E. Dreutzer had a government contract to carry the mail from Plover to Green Bay, by way of Waupaca in the spring of 1850. He first
came to Waupaca about the first of March that year, looking for a place to locate. He liked the looks of the place and bought the square on which
Beadleston Brothers, Masonic and Pinkerton's block, now stands, of E. C. Sessions. 

"About this time Silas Miller came to Waupaca hunting a good location for a saw mill, and made a bargain with Sessions for his entire
claims, paying him therefor eighty acres of land in Alto near Ripon, six head of cattle and six thousand feet of lumber as soon as it should be 
sawed. Sessions and myself went to Alto to sell the land and bring the cattle home. A sale of the land was made, but the cattle were sold before
we reached Ripon. Sessions then came home, went up on the prairie northwest of Waupaca and 'claimed' the Gibbons farm which gave the
name Sessions' Prairie to that rich body of land.

"Miller came on and built his mill and sawed one Norway log and part of another on the 10th day of September, 1850. W. C. Lord and
another man came on in March, 1851, and bought the mill site of Miller on which the Star Mill now stands (1886). Dr. Brainard built a saw
mill on his place in 1853.

WAUPACA GIVEN A NAME
"In February, 1851, we applied to the postmaster general to have a postoffice located here. He wrote Sessions that he would have to have
a name. Sessions forwarded the name 'Waupaca.' The postmaster general answered and said he had given the office located at 'The Falls'
that name, but that To-morrow River (Weyauwega) had applied for the same name to be given that office, and he had written them to send him
another. A few days later we learned that office had been given the name 'Weyauwega.' So if the Weyauwega men had been a little sooner
they would have had the name of Waupaca, even if they didn't get the county seat. The name of the postoffice at Walla Walla was about this
time changed to Lind. Greenbush died out.

"David Scott (father of Winfield Scott of this city) was the first postmaster of Waupaca; George W. Taggart of Lind, and Giles Doty, of
Weyauwega. The latter by some unknown means was succeeded by Benjamin Birdsell who held the office a long time.

A SHARP CONTRACT
"I will now go back to Waupaca. When Lord purchased his mill site of Miller he contracted to build a grist mill thirty by forty feet, two
stories high, and bought the privilege of drawing water enough from the pond to keep three run of stones going all seasons of the year. And the
power still has the same right, or did, until Baldwin & Bailey combined the two.

"In the spring of 1851, after the purchase of the power for Lord's grist mill as related before, the scheme of building a grist mill fell
through for a short time, as the man who came up with Mr. Lord to go into the mill business with him backed out. Lord, however, got Wilson
Holt to join with him in the enterprise and the mill was built that summer, the first grist being ground on the 19th of November. We were all
elated over the building of the mill, for flour was a mighty uncertain commodity in Waupaca in those days. When the mill was completed
there was about one hundred people in Waupaca. Land was plenty and cheap but money scarce, so when we heard that there was a bill before 
congress giving 160 acres of land to each actual settler, we all felt considerably elated, as we were on the ground and ready to take up the land.

The bill never passed, and we bought what land we got of the government at ten shillings per acre. Everything looked favorable in the spring
of 1852 for a village to be built on the site where Waupaca now stands, and buildings began to go up. N. P. Judson built a house on the corner
where Richard Lea's house now stands. 0. E. Dreutzer built on Beadleston's corner. Jake Dieter built the house back of Lytle's, known as the
'old Dreutzer place,' now occupied by Mrs. Shumway. Henry Dieter built a board shanty on the barrel factory lot, back of Hansen's wagon
shop. Black and Johnson built the Rosche and Baldwin houses. I put up a one story house on the place now owned by Mrs. Charles; Wright.
There was a row of buildings then up on the bank of the river where Bailey's harness shop now stands. Vanduzee's old hotel stood on the
corner where Hansen's tin shop now stands, and was known to the traveling public as the 'Exchange Tavern,' and a lively old place it was, too.
Main street south of Beadleston's corner was only a wagon track through the woods, and the bushes and trees on the ground where Coolidge's bank,
Lea's store and the other buildings in that block stand, were so thick that it was hard for a man to push through them.

WAUPACA BID IN BY DEWEY
"I went down to Menasha in the fall of 1852 to enter my land, and tried to enter two forties, but the south forty that I wanted, that I after-wards
got, the receiver told me was out of the market, so I did not enter any but filed an application for the two. In the course of two or three
weeks afterwards the receiver began to sell the land in Waupaca county, beginning with the town of Larrabee. Dreutzer went down to Menasha
and made a bargain with a man named Fitzgerald, to bid off the land on which the village stood, agreeing to see him through to a clear title, if he
would make his title to Beadleston's corner good, but Spaulding, the receiver, wrote David Scott to send a man down to look after the settlers
interests, as Waupaca would be in the market in about a week. Scott called a meeting of the settlers and I was chosen to go down and take the
minutes of the land taken up by actual settlers and look after their interests, and bid off the three original forties and the one on Section 20,
lying directly north, for the parties who were already on the land. These forties were platted as a village and could not be entered as ordinary
farm land, but had to be bid off.

"I went to Menasha as instructed, and happened to be in the land office when the village of Waupaca was put on the market, the three
original forties and the forty on section 20, which I afterwards bought, being put up in a lump. Fitzgerald was there, ready to bid. He had
heard somebody was down to bid against him, and sized me up when I came in. He probably thought he would scare me for he offered $2,500
for the land the first bid. I raised it to $3,000. It was then his turn to be surprised. He bid over me and we kept at it until the land was struck
off to me for $4,650. I settled my hotel bill, and started for home. (By the way, the men who sent me down, raised about all the money they
could scrape together to pay my bill, and when I came to settle I was a dollar short and had to borrow it.) When I got to the postoffice Judge
Ware asked me how I came out, and when the crowd came around I told them. There was a high old time in Waupaca that afternoon, and Dreutzer
kept indoors for over two weeks. The climate outside wouldn't have agreed with him just then. Through the efforts of Wilson Holt, congress
passed an act that winter authorizing Judge Wheeler, of Winnebago county, to come to Waupaca and sell the parcels of land to actual
settlers for government price. This Wheeler did in February, 1853, and I purchased the two forties north of Charles Wright's, comprising the
Charles Wright farm, and also the parcel of land described as lot 18 in section 19, on which I had built.

BUYERS OF VILLAGE LOTS RUN OUT OF MONEY
"E. L. Browne accompanied Judge Wheeler to Waupaca, and acted as his clerk when selling the land. The two made a rough plat of the
village, and this was recorded. When they had sold all the lots that had then been settled upon for $1.25 per acre, the Judge put up the court
house square and called for bids. As every man in town nearly, had made a purchase that day and put up all the money he had, there were
no bidders, as there was no more money in town. As he couldn't sell it, he gave it to the village or town for a public park. He was asked if the
town had a patent for the piece of land, and the Judge answered that he was authorized by congress to transfer the land and whatever he did
would stand. The square could have been bought for $2.50. On the 23d of February, 1853, I received my deed at Judge Wheeler's hands and he
left that day for home. The sales were made at the old Gothic Hall, now(1886) owned by Mrs. Dr. Brown."