The explorers arrived back at Milwaukee, which then had only two white families.

The evidence

• “The next white man's visit occurred July 19, 1835, when William Holmes, Jr., and John Inman, prospectors who had lost their ponies, walked south across the prairie to the moutli of Turtle creek and found here a solitary wilderness. They left the same day, and by July 23 had returned to Milwaukee, which had then only two white families. In the same month of July, 1835, soon after their departure, Joseph Thibault fprouounced Tebo) came here, and his log cabin was our first building. At this cabin, as they passed through the place on March 9, 1836, in a lumber wagon, on their way to the present site of Janesville, early in the evening, the family of Judge William Holmes, including two women and two girls, stopped a few minutes to warm up.”

  1908-brown-rock-county/06-history-of-beloit.md, Vol. 1, PDF p. 145 / book p. 130

  Brown, William Fiske, editor. Rock County, Wisconsin: A New History of Its Cities, Villages, Towns, Citizens and Varied Interests, from the Earliest Times, Up to Date. Chicago: C. F. Cooper & Co., 1908. 2 vols. archive.org/details/rockcountywiscon01brow, archive.org/details/rockcountywiscon02brow.

  Grade A: Found on a page of one of our sources