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.
1846
Beloit
- 1846 The first Catholic services recorded in Rock County were held in Beloit by Rev. Father McKernan, who celebrated mass in the house of Captain Powers.
- 1846 Settlers came to Beloit in 1846: a Connecticut-born settler (40 acres in Sec. 7), a Herkimer Co. N. Y. settler (120 acres in Sec. 21), William Shaw of Ireland (farm outside the city), and a teacher seeking occupation.
- 1846 The Chamberlin family moved to Beloit, to a farm a few miles west of Beloit.
- February 24, 1846 The territorial legislature passed an act incorporating the village of Beloit.
Rock County
- July 8, 1846 A Vermont-born settler came to Rock County and bought ninety-five acres on Sec. 1.
- March 13, 1846 Gullek Olsen bought the S.E. ¼ [of a section, Rock County land].
- Spring 1846 A Rhode Island-born carpenter came to Wisconsin and located in Rock County, buying 160 acres of government land.
- 1846 John J. Van Kirk came to Rock County and located in Harmony Township.
The region
- February 2, 1846 A charter was granted to Beloit College by the Territorial Legislature.
- 1846 Some 1,250 Winnebagoes came back from Iowa and settled along the Fox and Wisconsin, Kickapoo and Lemonweir valleys.
- Spring 1846 A settler located at La Prairie, Sec. 11, purchasing a 160-acre farm from the Government.
- January 31, 1846 "An act in relation to the formation of a state government in Wisconsin" was approved; it authorized a census and the election of delegates to a constitutional convention (the 1879 history describes the same act's provisions without a date).
Nation and world
- January 14, 1846 Morgan L. Martin, territorial delegate, introduced in the House of Representatives a bill to enable Wisconsin to adopt a constitution and form a state government.
- August 6, 1846 The congressional enabling act for Wisconsin statehood became law.
- August 8, 1846 Congress approved an act granting land to aid the improvement of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers and to connect them by canal.
- 1846 A town (not named in the passage) that had been part of Union was organized into a separate town by legislative act.
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