Obit: Cawley, Samuel #2 (1811 - 1900)

Contact: stan@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: CAWLEY

----Sources: NEILLSVILLE TIMES (Neillsville, Clark County, Wis.) 24 May 1900

Cawley, Samuel #2 (6 NOV 1811 - 20 MAY 1900)

Samuel Cawley died Sunday morning at 3 o’clock, aged 88 years, 6 months and 14 days. He died at the county farm, and was buried in the cemetery here. Cawley Creek was named after him, and there is a place north of here called the Cawley marsh. He was the father of Frank Cawley, who was constable of the then village of Neillsville in the 1870‘s and whose widow resides in Pine Valley, just south of the city limits.

Deceased lived at the poor farm from choice, having declined a home with a well to do daughter residing out west for the reason that he had, by many years of living alone in the woods here, acquired habits that he would not or could not give up, and he preferred the poor farm to home comforts of a better and more refined character.

Mr. Cawley came her in 1857, not long after the O’Neill’s, James and Henry, and Mr. Ferguson, settled here. He owned the Reddan and Reber farms, and much other land, which Len Stafford later acquired. Many interesting chapters could be written of the early days in which he was a prominent figure, hewing homes out of the forest - literally, as Mr. Cawley was a builder, and got out the timbers in the Reddan farm house, the Cawley house - Ole C. Hanson’s - and hewed the big timbers in the Ross Eddy barn from white oak logs. He was almost the last one of that early band who saw Neillsville and Clark County come into existence.