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.
1838
The property
- 1838 The reminiscence's narrator took his first lessons raking and binding wheat in Caleb Blodgett's wheat field near Beloit during the harvest of 1838.
- December 30, 1838 The First Congregational Church of Beloit was organized at a meeting in the Blodgett house.
- Winter 1838 Little was heard of the Thebault family at the foot of Lake Koshkonong until towards spring, and the absence of the head of the Thebault family was noted.
Beloit
- Spring 1838 S. G. Colley came to Beloit and made a claim of 320 acres in Sec. 21, Range 13, building a little frame house in which eleven lived the first winter.
- 1838 Field & Lusk put up a large store on the corner of State and Race streets in Beloit, generally regarded as the first actual store in the village.
- 1838 The Lawrence family all came out and settled in Beloit; another brother, Clark, purchased land on Turtle Creek.
- Fall 1838 Public meetings were held at the Beloit House to choose a better name than Turtle or New Albany, and a committee of three chose the name Beloit.
Rock County
- 1838 Ezra and Matilda (Taft) came to Rock County and settled on Section 2.
- July 15, 1838 James P. Pierce came to Wisconsin and settled in Rock County, his first purchase being eighty acres from the Government on Section 3 of Harmony.
- November 16, 1838 Henry B. and Lucinda Crandall came to Rock County and located on Section 28 [in Milton], claiming 240 acres (a related passage gives 320 acres in all).
- 1838 Silas and Cynthia (Cowan) Hurd settled in Rock County.
The region
- November 26, 1838 R. P. Crane, acting for the Beloit settlers, entered at the Milwaukee land office under his pre-emption claim Lots 6 and 7 in Section 35, Town 1, Range 12 east (78.57 acres), then deeded the lots back to the original owners.
- August 13, 1838 A meeting was held at the house of Ansel Dickinson on Rock Prairie to organize a Congregational church; one passage dates it August 13, another August 16.
- 1838 B. Allyne located on Section 35, in 1837 or 1838 (the passages give both readings).
- July 16, 1838 A touring party came upon a little prairie since called Prairie du Lac, and determined to locate there.
Nation and world
- June 18, 1838 Congress approved a land grant (the odd-numbered sections on a belt ten miles wide from Lake Michigan to Rock River, 139,190 acres) to aid construction of the Milwaukee–Rock River canal.
- June 16, 1838 A treaty with the Winnebagoes, concluded at Washington City, was proclaimed, by which the Winnebago Nation ceded all their land east of the Mississippi River.
- September 4, 1838 Churchill sold his claim on the prairie to Joseph Goodrich for $125 in goods out of Goodrich's store.
- June 22, 1838 An act of Congress was approved amending the 1830 pre-emption act, designed to prevent speculation in village lots.
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