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.
1851
The property
Beloit
- March 10, 1851 The Beloit school board engaged Herman Belden (or Belding) to excavate the cellar for a new brick school house at nine cents per cubic yard.
- July 4, 1851 The school board contracted with Stephen Downer to lay up the walls of the new Beloit schoolhouse at $1.80 per yard.
- August 19, 1851 A loan of $1,500 at 10 per cent was obtained from Milton Harvey of Colebrook, N. H., for the Beloit school building.
- October 29, 1851 The late board of Union District No. 1 (Beloit) were complimented for having erected a school building with only half as much borrowed debt as authorized; the whole cost was $4,312.71.
Rock County
- January 6, 1851 The Rock County Agricultural Society (and Mechanics' Institute) was organized at a meeting of farmers and mechanics at the courthouse in Janesville.
- February 3, 1851 The second meeting of the Rock County Agricultural Society and Mechanics' Institute was held at the courthouse in Janesville.
- 1851 A man came to America in 1851, staying in New York until coming to Wisconsin in 1854; settled in Rock Co. in 1859.
- December 1851 A statement of Rock County assessed and equalized property values, tax rates, and delinquent county tax was published by order of the Board of Supervisors.
The region
- December 1851 The church (corner stone laid 1848) was occupied / first services were held in the building.
- January 8, 1851 The Oak Hill Cemetery Association was organized under an 1850 act of the Wisconsin legislature.
- January 8, 1851 The fourth session of the Wisconsin legislature commenced.
- March 1851 The Wisconsin State Agricultural Society was organized at a meeting in Madison on March 8, 1851.
Nation and world
- November 4, 1851 At the general election, Leonard J. Farwell was chosen governor; Timothy Burns, Charles D. Robinson, Edward H. Janssen, and Experience Estarbrook were also elected to state offices.
- June 18, 1851 Levi Hubbell, judge of the second circuit, was elected chief justice of the supreme court by the judges present, pursuant to statute, at the commencement of the next term.
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