History: Hixon-Withee Danish Settlers (1893)

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----Sources: Thorp Courier (Thorp, Clark Co., Wis.) 4/20/1893

A Clark County Colony

(Medford Star and News)

A party of Danish capitalists has purchased 30,000 acres of land belonging to the Spaulding Estate, located near Withee, in Clark County, and will colonized a large number of Danes thereon. The settlers are to be taken from American cities, and not brought across the ocean. Many of them will come from Chicago and all, or nearly all, are more or less Americanized already.

The scheme is to divide the tract up into forty-acre farms, putting a family on each forty acres. More land will be purchased if it can be secured at reasonable figures. Churches, schools, houses and other engines of civilization will be built, and an earnest effort made to better the condition of the colonists who are weary of the city life they have been leading.

Among the settlers will be Rev. A.S. Neilson (probably Nielsen), late pastor of Trinity Danish Lutheran Church in Chicago. Mr. Neilson came to America more than twenty years ago, and for almost two decades he has been president of the Danish Lutheran synod, resigning that office at the last meeting of the synod. He is regarded as a spiritual father of more than ordinary power and saintliness by all Danish Lutheran in this country, and will be the guide and counselor of the new Clark County colony. These people are sober, industrious, and progressive, and the country where they settle will soon blossom into prosperity.