The land through time

Beloit

• January 13, 1830 E. Wilson was born; the passage notes he was later living in Turtle.

Rock County

• 1830 E. Allen came to Rock County.

The region

• Spring 1830 Black Hawk and his band, returning from an unsuccessful winter's hunt, found their town demolished and the site ploughed up; the passage states that during the preceding winter, squatters after seven years of illegal occupancy had preempted several quarter sections at the mouth of the Rock covering the village site and the Sac corn fields.
• 1830 Farmer's "Map of the Territories of Michigan and Ouisconsin" was published; it gave the river draining the four lakes as the "Goosh-ke-hawn," noted Lake Koshkonong ("the lake we live on"), and marked a Winnebago village at the mouth of that river.
• 1830 A party of Menomonees and Sioux murdered some of the British band of Sacs; the passage states that in 1831 Black Hawk's war party retaliated by killing twenty-seven Menomonees near Fort Crawford.
• 1830 The Sacs and Foxes ceded to the United States a strip of land twenty miles wide from the Mississippi to the Des Moines, on the north side of their territory.

Nation and world

• May 29, 1830 An act of Congress concerning pre-emption of public lands was approved on May 29, 1830. The two passages describe it differently: one dates it only to 1830 and calls it the "pre-emption law of 1830," intended for the benefit of actual settlers against non-resident purchasers; the other describes it as specially designed to prevent speculation in village lots and as prohibiting pre-emption of public lands for any purpose other than farming.

Beloit

• 1831 Death of the father of a future Magnolia Township landowner.

The region

• Spring 1831 Black Hawk recrossed the river with his women and children, three hundred warriors of his own tribe, and allies from the Potawattamies and Kickapoos, and established himself in his ancient hunting grounds. One passage dates the band's return "early in 1831," upon finding their village and fields in possession of the whites; another dates Black Hawk's return to the village in the spring of 1831, after another unsuccessful hunting season.
• 1831 A mill was built at Whitney's rapids, below Point Bass, in what was then Indian territory.
• Spring 1831 Black Hawk ordered the whites away, threw down their fences, unroofed their houses, cut up their grain, drove off and killed their cattle, and threatened the people with death if they did not leave; he ordered the settlers to leave the locality or be removed by force.
• 1831 Soon after the treaty, Black Hawk and his war party retaliated for murders committed by Menomonees and Sioux in 1830 by attacking and killing twenty-seven Menomonees near Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien; General Joseph Street, the United States Indian agent there, on complaint of the Menomonees, demanded the surrender of the Sac murderers for trial under existing treaty provisions.

Nation and world

• 1831 Lewis Cass was appointed secretary of war by President Jackson, ending his tenure as governor of Michigan Territory.
• April 19, 1831 Subscribers, among them John P. Houston, subscribed to build a meeting house in Bedford.

Beloit

• June 30, 1832 General Atkinson's army, including Private Abraham Lincoln, entered Rock county, marched through the deserted Turtle village (now Beloit), and encamped — the first recorded visit of white men to this locality.
• Summer 1832 Pierce Wallihan commenced business for himself and married Miss Lucy Flower (marriage year only).

Rock County

• Summer 1832 The summer of 1832 saw the gathering of Indian "hordes," painted and plumed and at war with the whites, within the limits of the territory afterward included in Rock County, during June and July.

The region

• July 1, 1832 The army continued its march up the river and saw an Indian spy on the high ground on the west side of Rock river.
• August 2, 1832 The war was closed at the battle of Bad Ax by General Atkinson, Dodge, Henry and Alexander.
• Spring 1832 Black Hawk prepared to re-assert his claims to the disputed territory; the 1856 history dates this to the spring, while the 1908 history gives the specific date of April 6.
• June 1832 The Hall girls were ransomed at Black Hawk's camp for $2,000, paid in horses, etc.

Beloit

• November 18, 1833 Survey contracts (including George W. Harrison's surveys of subdivisions) were dated November 18, 1833.
• 1833 A resident of Newark (Beloit P.O.) was born in Norway.

Rock County

• Summer 1833 The United States began the surveys of this part of Rock county; the portion of the town of Janesville west of the river was surveyed first.
• July 9, 1833 Survey contracts of M. T. Williams, dated July 9, 1833, were made for survey work in the county (township lines and subdivisions).
• 1833 All of the portion lying southwest of Sugar river (Avon area) was surveyed by the general government during the year 1833.
• Summer 1833 Town lines were run by surveyors Mullett and Brink in the third quarter of 1833.

The region

• August 1, 1833 Black Hawk was formally placed under the guardianship of the legal Sac chief Keokuk at Fort Armstrong.
• June 1, 1833 The time provided for the Indians to give possession of the ceded Winnebago lands arrived; no band of Winnebagoes was allowed to reside, plant, fish or hunt on the ceded grounds after this date, and the Indians were to have thirty days of soldier's rations.
• 1833 The "last teachings" were uttered in 1833, at the dispersion of the Black Hawk array.
• Winter 1833 All land southwest of Sugar River was surveyed by the General Government during the first quarter of 1833.

Nation and world

• April 1833 Black Hawk, along with the prophet and Neapope, was taken to Washington, D. C., and kept as a prisoner in Fortress Monroe.
• June 4, 1833 Black Hawk and his fellow prisoners were discharged from Fortress Monroe.
• September 26, 1833 A treaty was made at Chicago between the United States and the Chippewas, Ottawas and Pottawattamies, by which those nations ceded their lands along the western shore of Lake Michigan and between that lake and the Winnebago cession.
• 1833 By the end of 1833, a large amount of the public land had been surveyed.

The property

• 1834 Thiebault's cabin at the Turtle village was noted in the plat of the Government survey of the township.

Rock County

• Winter 1834 The residue of what became Rock County (the portion not southwest of Sugar River) was surveyed by the General Government in the first quarter of 1834.
• 1834 Government Surveyors noted eight mounds on the west shore of Lake Koshkonong.

The region

• 1834 Government Surveyors described the Winnebago village site of Tay-e-hee-dah as the "ruins of an old Indian village."
• 1834 By 1834, 4,591 Winnebagoes had settled north of the Wisconsin river, unwilling to cross the Mississippi to their new Iowa reservation.
• September 6, 1834 The legislative council of Michigan Territory created Milwaukee county out of the southern portion of Brown county; the village of Milwaukee was made the county seat.
• September 6, 1834 The legislative council of Michigan Territory divided the Iowa district into the counties of Des Moines and Dubuque.

Nation and world

• June 26, 1834 Congress approved an act creating additional land districts, establishing the Wisconsin and Green Bay land districts in the Territory of Michigan.
• June 28, 1834 Congress attached the country west of the Mississippi river and north of the State of Missouri to the Territory of Michigan for temporary judicial purposes.
• 1834 Congress greatly increased the limits of the Territory of Michigan for judicial purposes by adding a large extent of country west of the Mississippi.
• 1834 The pre-emption law was revived for two years, extending only to those who had made cultivation in 1833.