The Merrill Daily Herald from Merrill, Wisconsin • Page 5

MERRILL'S GOLDEN JUBILEE AND Twenty Fifth Anniversary Edition of The Merrill Daily Herald October MERRILL, WISCONSIN Price 25c Per Copy FIFTY YEARS OF PROGRESS FROM "MILL TOWN TO MERRILL OF TODAY By Haiold E. Miner About 1843. less than a century ago. a group of prominent men found tbeu attention drawn toward the wild legion aiound the function of the Prairie and Wisconsin rivfcis. way up in the Cnip- pewa Indian tenitoiy.

One of the nnest stands of white nine in the world stood Hardly a log measured than three hunched board feet, and the stand was roughly twenty miles on a side. Two broad rivers floweu through the region ready to float the timber down to the mills at Galena, Illinois. Jt was Pete Kelley who first began to log the pineries, and he sent O. B. Smith and thirteen others up to do the work.

They were the first settlers of any permanence in the region around what is now Merrill, and they came in 1844, four years before the organization of Wisconsin as a state. They walked from Chicago to Wausau, because there were no railways north of Chicago the whole mid-west at that time. Their camp was at Trappe, and before they had finished with the white pine they were working around Schultz Spur. In the meantime, however, E. T.

Bosworth, the second permanent settler, had come here in 1845 and was logging with Mr. Smith. with Merrill in those primitive days of its first settlement are Boliiti, who liad a tzading pest on the west side of the Wisconsin river about one and a half miles below; a certain Stevens, who squatted at the mouth of the Prairie river but disappeared leaving no other record; and John Hogan. who took a squatters claim to a tiact in 1843 and abandoned it to Andrew Warren in 1846. Then began the trek to the pin- eries.

Headquarters were at Galena and at Sycamore. Illinois, and Berlin, Janesville, and Beloit, Wisconsin. From these centers supplies were taken to Stevens Point by wagon, then shipped up the river to the pineries; and in 1841 regular communication by steamboat ran between the Point and Little Bull Falls, now Mosinee. For a brief season the Wisconsin river presented a miniature picture of the glamorous river days on the Mississippi. John and Alexander Stewart came in the first big lumber operators and logged all over the district from 1852 to 1872.

Tr that year thev bought out MacTndoe's mill at Wausau, later tne B. wememann company, and in 1894 Alexander Stewart was elected to the first of three terms in Congress. In the meantime. Andrew Warren dragged some machinery up the river and began to build a sawmill or, the river-bank. He started to build in 1846 and finished in 1849.

After he had fallen ill. the work of putting the dam across the river at the foot of the present Mill street was car- on lv JL.evi Fvor.in«r. Bosworth, and "Smith. The 400-pounrf piece? of mechanical equipment came in by canoe; a wooden water- cf live cal: tirr. oers: and in 1851.

five years after WHY A JUBILEE EDITION? 1 i Jul ICditirr. 1 self-imposed task that has outgrown itself many times during- the course of the work. Hut as the size of the project developed, so did the magnitude of the idea Behind it. At first the Herald considered merely a four or eight page special section of the regular newspaper commemorating- the anniversary of the Herald. It would have contained a few special articles, mainly pertaining to the last twenty-five years of the city's growth.

Now, this edition represents the results of an endeavor to present so thorough a picture of Merrill's fifty years of progress that a high school student twenty-five years from now need go back no further than these pages to learn what lias gone before; to render a complete account of Merrill as it exists today for the benefit of readers of the next generation; and to offer a souvenir that people can keep as depicting all that is outstanding about Merrill, past and present. Some of the articles in this section will have a priceless historical value. The reminiscences of Fred Smith, one of the two first white boys born here, have been awaited by many people for some time, and they are a first-hand account of early Jenny that later writers will not find available. Only by referring to this Jubilee Edition they be able to learn ,.4, i It was in recognition i that the Herald decided un the souvenir value of the edition aziriC format -r It not merely a special issue of the Daily Herald, but a undated, and intended to be prehei ved lunger than an ordinary copy of the newspaper would conveniently last. It is printed i extra pains on a better quality of paper, stapled to keep it together, and issued in a size convenient for preservation.

Finished, this edition is the biggest job of printing ever done in Merrill. It required 6,000 pounds of paper and 100 pounds of ink. The accumulation of some of the material required literally months of preparation. Our aim in undertaking the work be fulfilled if the public will find the same sense of accomplishment in reading of the progress of Merrill during the past fifty years that came to the newspaper staff as they compared those early days with the present. It is by looking over the achievements of the city by years instead of by days that one arrives at a moving sep.se proorpss and growth.

The checks and disappointments of the detailed work of each day are forgotten the sum of what is done stands out. From Jenny, the river mill town, to Merrill, industrial and trading center and county seat, is a long way, but it wa traveled within fifty years, and in this edition we hope we have shown you how. fleet of lumber left here for Galena. O. E.

Smith continued to pioneer: with Benjamin Cooper, he set up lue Hist store here 1551; it was also the first frame building, and occupied the site of the present D. B. Reinhart building. In the same year Tom Grundy and nt A Pine River dells building a dam and another year burning a mill In that same eventful year 1854 just ten years after the first settlers hit the now rising settlement, the indefatigable O. B.

Smith openeu the first road into Men ill. coming up from Wausau; and Miss Etta Space took the job as mail rider between the two towns, covered the route in all weather on for the first postmastei, L'yrus Strove bridge. She later irtai lied M. H. McCord, who became successively, a prominent lumber- 7-i-nn and governor of "in the meantime Mr Smith.

Cpntinued to pioneer; his twins, Fred aria vvef tftc first white boys born in Lincoln county. Frank died in 1914 in Spokane. Washington; Fred now livs at ni Snnire street, The same O. B. Smith cut tne first road north of here in 1860.

The federal government had ap- proprifltpd lands for a military road from here to Octonagon, Michigan, via Pelican, Rhin eland cr, and Eagle River. Mi. Smith took the job from here to and a. Joe Fox continued ther' 1 on. Meanwhile the ntr.c-..' i aule Horicon lailway scheme had invaded Merrill and Lzzled, leaving half the community bauly in debt.

The project was to run tne i ftom Milwaukee via Horicon and Berlin ttr among otheis, i i his m- in the community to overshadow his business judgment an-i mortgaged ms mm nanu to the promoters; farmers living their land in the interest of the proposal and titles to these lands were affected for many years. The decade of the 1860's was au unusually happy one lor the pioneer people in Jenny. It features all the reminiscences of the time, of which three are in the possession of the Herald office and the Mernll puowc uorary. Oae liver at the same place where the old iron bridge stood at the foot of Park street, block below the present concrete bridge and viaduct on 51. It was a wooden s-tructure, bui it was far better than the ferry service that was the only means of crossing the river before that.

During the winter and spring of that year 1872 a terrible smallpox epidemic hit the village, not dis- Its ravages were so widespread that at one time there was an actual shortage of people to care for the sick and bury the dead. A pest house was hastily built on East Main street ami put in charge of William Averill; before long" however, every house was a hospital. There was no doctor in Jenny then, but during the winter Dr. D. B.

Wylie of Wausau camo up and vaccinated everyone who would permit it, even working far out into the lumber camps. Wausau was incorporated ill that year; the city of Tomahawk was undreamed of. Lincoln county was organized in 1874, however, with a population of 895--and that population was scattered throughout an area about four times the present size of the county, for several other counties were later whittled out of the original tract. Marathon county had been set ort from Portage county in 1850 and included alt that is now Lincoln county and much other territory. Verv shortly after 1850 the town ot Jenny in JVIarauion county was formed; it was this town that in 187-1 became Lincoln couuly with its huge area and scant popula- i 1 first township officers were W'Non, i a John Cooper, clerk 4 ain! Joe Snow, side supervisor.

The heaviest taxpayers were O. B. Smith, George Snow, AiKirew Warren, and A. C. Norway; at the mooting at which the town was organized these men opposed a $1,000 school-house levy and were over-ridden, although there were only two or three child- ion of school the territory.

Tho building was also used as a meeting house for community and religious After the town became a county, Taylor county split off a chunk of territory in the same year; Price county came in 1879; another county, which changed boundaries was named Langlade in 1880, was taken out iii Cncidr. county was formed in 1881. All of theui took territory from Lincoln county. At the lirst meeting of the county board for Lincoln county, held October 24, 187-1. "Section 12, Town 31, Range 6.

commonly known as the village of Jenny." WHS dcsjgnatod ns tne seat of L-wfrnment. In 1880 a couithousc block was piauuuuu for and on this a courthouse was erected the following year; a county jail was built north of this property in the fall of 1885. These first county buildings now house the Lincoln County sf'hool. In 1875 Dan Scott bey an running a daily stage from Wausau to Merrill; before that the stages had run three times a week. On July first of that year the first daily ian.il in the same year floated past the town on its way down the river.

Merrill at that tio.s" of whirh a copy is held a' i Tbr 1SSO marks a change 'to Hexajfl office A third i in the "character of the village of once is the reminiscences of FrcJ printed in the Jan. 20, 1921 of the Herald, giving tne detailed recollections of Mrs. Susan Russell, formerly the wife of Frank Whitf, a prominent citizen in the "-crind lottr-r written by M. J. Miller Armstrong, who, as Mary Jane Miller, was one of the earliest teachers in the village school at Jenny, to a "Miss Jordan," and printed in thr 1 3 80S.

Excerpts from this charming and picturesque letter are printed in the massive "History of Smith, published August 26, 1921, in the Daily Herald. The earliest recorded religious servicth in Jeuiiy were Methodist services held In 1870 In the village school house hy visiting pastors. In 1872 Prank White built the i a i slow-amoving mill Nation, hardly worthy to be called a town. After that it became a city rapidly. The the railroad in the spring of that year.

It was the Wisconsin Valley Railroad company, later made to the next page please).