3156 S Riverside Dr · Beloit, Wisconsin
Once upon a house — and every word of it on the record.
One piece of land beside the Rock River: the Ho-Chunk village of Standing Post, the trader Joseph Thibault, the Blodgetts who founded Beloit, William S. Yost's farm and cobblestone house, the Yost Park resort, and the Riverside Motel built around it. Every event below links to the page of the source that records it.
The land through time
…–1835
The first people
The Ho-Chunk village of Standing Post beside the Rock River.
"Indian Manufactures": a canoe, tools and garments of the upper Great Lakes nations, engraved for Schoolcraft's journal of 1821. Not specific to the Ho-Chunk. Source
Schoolcraft, Henry R. Narrative Journal of Travels through the Northwestern Regions of the United States, Extending from Detroit through the Great Chain of American Lakes, to the Sources of the Mississippi River, Performed as a Member of the Expedition under Governor Cass, in the Year 1820. Albany: E. & E. Hosford, 1821. Library of Congress copy via the Internet Archive, archive.org/details/narrativejournal01scho.1634–1836
Contact and the fur trade
French, British and American traders; Joseph Thibault.
Sault de Ste. Marie, engraved for Schoolcraft's account of the 1820 Cass expedition through the fur-trade country. Source
Schoolcraft, Henry R. Narrative Journal of Travels through the Northwestern Regions of the United States, Extending from Detroit through the Great Chain of American Lakes, to the Sources of the Mississippi River, Performed as a Member of the Expedition under Governor Cass, in the Year 1820. Albany: E. & E. Hosford, 1821. Library of Congress copy via the Internet Archive, archive.org/details/narrativejournal01scho.1836–1843
The Blodgetts
Caleb Blodgett buys Thibault's claim; Selvey K. Blodgett farms the land.
"A Map of Beloit": the early village beside the Rock River, reproduced in Brown's Rock County, Wisconsin (1908). 1843–1897
The Yost farm
William S. Yost settles, farms and builds the cobblestone house.
"Wm. S. Yost" on the 1858 map of Beloit Township, Sections 11 and 12. 1898–1930
Yost Park
The riverside resort: picnics, dances and the interurban.
"Yost Park" lettered by the river on the 1904 plat, beside John A. Yost's Park Stock Farm.
The 1820s
The property
Beloit
The region
- Summer 1823 Summer 1823 — Squatters began taking possession of the rich land occupied by the Sacs toward the mouth of Rock river.
- 1825 The Winnebagoes' territorial claim was extensive, its southeast boundary stretching from the source of Rock river to within forty miles of its mouth, where they had a village.
- 1820 The Winnebagoes had five villages on Winnebago lake and fourteen on Rock river.
- July 29, 1829 A treaty was made at Prairie du Chien with the Chippewas, Ottawas and Pottawattamies.
Nation and world
- 1822 The Sacs and Foxes concluded a treaty with the United States by which they relinquished their right to have the United States establish a trading house or factory, and were paid one thousand dollars in merchandise.
- May 2, 1824 Congress granted quarter sections of land to counties for seats of justice / county buildings; the two passages give different approval dates.
- March 1823 March 3, 1823 — An act of congress was approved authorizing the electors of the Territory of Michigan to choose eighteen by ballot at the next election of the delegate for that territory.
- January 29, 1827 An act of congress was approved authorizing the electors of the territory to elect the members of the legislative council, without submitting names to the president for appointment.
The 1830s
The property
- 1835 William Yost came to Wisconsin and purchased a tract of land in sections 11 and 12, Beloit township.
- 1835 Caleb Blodgett made his first visit to the Beloit site, found the Frenchman Thiebeau there, and quieted his claim for $250; one passage dates the purchase to 1835 and '6, and Blodgett is described as temporarily located with his family in a log cabin at Meacham's in 1835.
- July 1835 Joseph Thibault came to the Beloit site and built the first building there, a log cabin.
- 1834 Thiebault's cabin at the Turtle village was noted in the plat of the Government survey of the township.
Beloit
- 1835 The first step toward settlement of the town of Beloit was made; the first settlement in that township was made within what is now the corporate limits of Beloit City, and John Inman, the Holmes family and others settled there.
- June 30, 1832 General Atkinson's army, including Private Abraham Lincoln, entered Rock county, marched through the deserted Turtle village (now Beloit), and encamped — the first recorded visit of white men to this locality.
- July 19, 1835 John Inman and William Holmes visited the present site of Beloit, finding no human habitation there.
- November 18, 1833 Survey contracts (including George W. Harrison's surveys of subdivisions) were dated November 18, 1833.
Rock County
- December 1835 Latter part of December 1835 — Samuel St. John and family (including the first white woman settler in Rock County) arrived after the Inman-Holmes party had made the first settlement.
- 1835 D. Butts broke the first sod in Rock County, in Fulton Township.
- 1835 Virgil Pope settled in Rock County.
- Summer 1832 The summer of 1832 saw the gathering of Indian "hordes," painted and plumed and at war with the whites, within the limits of the territory afterward included in Rock County, during June and July.
The region
- Spring 1830 Black Hawk and his band, returning from an unsuccessful winter's hunt, found their town demolished and the site ploughed up; the passage states that during the preceding winter, squatters after seven years of illegal occupancy had preempted several quarter sections at the mouth of the Rock covering the village site and the Sac corn fields.
- July 1, 1832 The army continued its march up the river and saw an Indian spy on the high ground on the west side of Rock river.
- 1830 Farmer's "Map of the Territories of Michigan and Ouisconsin" was published; it gave the river draining the four lakes as the "Goosh-ke-hawn," noted Lake Koshkonong ("the lake we live on"), and marked a Winnebago village at the mouth of that river.
- 1830 A party of Menomonees and Sioux murdered some of the British band of Sacs; the passage states that in 1831 Black Hawk's war party retaliated by killing twenty-seven Menomonees near Fort Crawford.
Nation and world
- April 1833 Black Hawk, along with the prophet and Neapope, was taken to Washington, D. C., and kept as a prisoner in Fortress Monroe.
- June 4, 1833 Black Hawk and his fellow prisoners were discharged from Fortress Monroe.
- June 26, 1834 Congress approved an act creating additional land districts, establishing the Wisconsin and Green Bay land districts in the Territory of Michigan.
- June 28, 1834 Congress attached the country west of the Mississippi river and north of the State of Missouri to the Territory of Michigan for temporary judicial purposes.
Faces from the record
Engraved portraits from the county histories of 1879 and 1908. A different dozen each day.
Research in progress
2,413
documented events
41 years so far, 1820–1860
27
on the property itself
614 more in Beloit
9,847
people identified
across the sources
9
sources transcribed
1,456,854 words · 198 clippings