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.
1837
The property
- Winter 1837 Tebo/Thibault, the former and earliest proprietor of Beloit, was murdered, by his son Francis and his mother (one of his wives), after a family quarrel over whether to remain and cultivate the land or follow the Indians west of the Mississippi.
- 1837 Caleb Blodgett erected a house of boards, the product of Goodhue's mill — the beginning of the Rock River house.
- Spring 1837 Water was let into the mill race of the Blodgett–Goodhue saw mill.
- 1837 Blodgett purchased the Meeker claim and soon built a saw mill; the first importation was a distillery.
Beloit
- August 1837 The Crosby family came to Rock County, among the first white settlers of Beloit.
- 1837 Other settlers not connected with the New England company appeared in Beloit, among them Walter Warner, Benjamin Cheney, David Noggle, William Jack, Charles M. Messer (surveyor), and Bradford Colley with his widowed sister.
- January 1837 Caleb Blodgett persuaded a family—the Chauncey Tuttles with four sons—to come from Meacham's Grove to Beloit.
- March 1837 Caleb Blodgett set up the first sawmill in Beloit.
Rock County
- April 22, 1837 George H. Williston settled in Harmony Township, Rock County, on Section 17.
- March 1837 Henry G. Spencer removed to Wisconsin, one of the first settlers of Rock County.
- December 7, 1837 By act No. 12, the seat of justice of Rock county was established on the fraction of land on the east side of Rock River, part of the northwest quarter of section 36, town 3 north, range 12 east.
- 1837 The subject of P316's parents settled in Rock County on a tract of land the father improved.
The region
- April 1837 The first settlements were made on the west side of Jefferson Prairie.
- November 11, 1837 Major Charles Johnson and Cyrus Eames started for Burlington, Iowa, to obtain a charter for a seminary, paddling down Rock River in a dug-out with smoked suckers and cornbread for provisions.
- 1837 B. Allyne located on Section 35 — in 1837 or 1838 (both readings reported).
- Spring 1837 Lucius Burnham made a claim on Section 36 (La Prairie).
Nation and world
- February 25, 1837 Mr. Payne sold Newburgh to William B. Lamb for $20,000.
- March 29, 1837 Sales of parts of the village of Newburgh began; between March 29 and August 5, 1837, parts of the village were sold to the amount of $95,200.
- August 5, 1837 The Newburgh sales recorded in the passage ran through this date (see March 29).
- Fall 1837 Maj. Charles Johnson and Cyrus Ames were selected to visit the seat of government to procure a charter incorporating a seminary.
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