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.
1833
Beloit
Rock County
- Summer 1833 The United States began the surveys of this part of Rock county; the portion of the town of Janesville west of the river was surveyed first.
- July 9, 1833 Survey contracts of M. T. Williams, dated July 9, 1833, were made for survey work in the county (township lines and subdivisions).
- 1833 All of the portion lying southwest of Sugar river (Avon area) was surveyed by the general government during the year 1833.
- Summer 1833 Town lines were run by surveyors Mullett and Brink in the third quarter of 1833.
The region
- August 1, 1833 Black Hawk was formally placed under the guardianship of the legal Sac chief Keokuk at Fort Armstrong.
- June 1, 1833 The time provided for the Indians to give possession of the ceded Winnebago lands arrived; no band of Winnebagoes was allowed to reside, plant, fish or hunt on the ceded grounds after this date, and the Indians were to have thirty days of soldier's rations.
- 1833 The "last teachings" were uttered in 1833, at the dispersion of the Black Hawk array.
- Winter 1833 All land southwest of Sugar River was surveyed by the General Government during the first quarter of 1833.
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.
- September 26, 1833 A treaty was made at Chicago between the United States and the Chippewas, Ottawas and Pottawattamies, by which those nations ceded their lands along the western shore of Lake Michigan and between that lake and the Winnebago cession.
- 1833 By the end of 1833, a large amount of the public land had been surveyed.
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