----Source: 1891 History of Clark & Jackson Co., Wis.
 

ED CREED, writing in the Marathon County Register, issue of April 10 and 17, 1914, says: "In 1871 F. H. Darling and I started out from Amherst to explore this country, without blankets and with an old shotgun and about forty cents worth of crackers and cheese. That was our bill of fare for six or eight days. The first day we got as far as Steven's Point. I remarked to Mr. Darling, I think we had better go to the land office and get some plats of this territory about here. So we got plats of Towns 26, 27, 28 and 29, Range 2 East. In looking over the plats I noticed that there was plenty of land in Towns 28 and 29 vacant and subject to homestead entry, but scarcely any in Towns 26 and 27, except a few fractions on the west side of the towns. I asked Mr. Eaton, the register, how this was. He said he could tell me that very quick that he had been register of the land office a number of years before that in 1855 and 1856 there was a great rush for land in northern Wisconsin, and that Towns 28 and 29 were not on the market then, they had not been surveyed, and that Towns 26 and 27 had nearly all been bought by speculators. The Cornell company had made their selections, and that the Fox River Improvement Company had taken the best around Marshfield. Mr. Eaton told us that an eastern company had sent to him a bundle of land warrants to locate for them anywhere where there was any government land. So he located them here in Town 27, as he thought that that
would be out of the way of everybody. The railroad was not thought of then. This is the reason why Colby and the vicinity got the start of Unity in population.

"Well, Mr. Darling and I started out from the Point up the line to look for a location. We wandered around until we came to where the little Eau Pleine crossed the railroad line. Here were some vacant fractions. We looked them over and liked the location. There was the creek, a good place for a dam and pond. I thought there would be something doing here some day, so I took the south fraction and Darling the next two. Then we went over in Town 28 and located Oliver Yerks on 160 acres across the road from where LaMont mill used to be then a mile north we secured 160 acres for Bill Wicker, and a few other pieces for others, and then went back home. This was the time that Chicago and Peshtigo were burning up, and the fires were running in the woods here some. We had to dog around a bit to get away from the smoke.

"In January next, Bill Wicker and I came up with a yoke of cattle and built my log house. We camped down by the creek there was a stack of hay some one had put up that came in handy for our oxen, besides a bed for ourselves. We intended to build one. for Wicker also, but the snow was so deep we concluded to wait till spring. It took us six or eight days to build mine then we went back home. I made a number of trips that winter, hauling up lumber and supplies to live, and on the first of April I moved there bag and baggage, with three horses and three cows. The next day Fitzgerald came along. He had the contract to do the grading from Spencer to Colby, and asked me to board a crew of his men. As he would furnish the supplies we concluded to take the men, and so I built an addition to my cabin for a dining-room. In a few days the crew came and went to work, so we had plenty of company and lots of work. After awhile my feed for the horses and cows got low, so I turned them out to browse they would come up nights to get their feed. One night they failed to come home, all except a pony mare, my wife called her. I hunted for them off and on for a week but could not find them. One of the horses I never found the other the Indians found for me near Marshfield. The cows I found next winter at Grand Rapids. We had quite a job to keep track of our two boys, Charley, four years, and Will, two years. They would stray off in the woods picking flowers. One day I thought we had lost them sure. We called to them. but could hear no sound. After hunting some time I found them in a hollow stump of a tree where they had crawled and couldn't get out. We were afraid they would run onto a porcupine, as they were quite thick about here then they used to come around the house nights and gnaw the pork barrels to get salt. I frequently had to get up in the night and slaughter two or three. One morning my wife and the hired girl got up to get breakfast for the crew. They opened the dining-room door and found one old "porky" on the dining table among the dishes. I was called on to dispatch him. There was trouble in the camp that morning, every dish had to be washed. I told the women folks to just wipe them off a little, for that old "porky" was cleaner than some of her boarders but no, every dish had to be washed, so breakfast was a little late that morning.

"I kept on boarding the railroad men that summer and winter. The next spring Fitzgerald began to get discouraged he was losing money. He was an old railroad builder, too, who had built roads on the Union Pacific and g6t rich at it, but when he got up here among these pines it was a different proposition. He got two men by the name of Alexander and Seymour to take his job off his hands, but they did not last. By this time the road was graded and the iron laid as far up as Flink's Corners, half a: mile south of here. The train-an engine, box car and caboose used to come up from the Point every morning and go back in the afternoon. There was a short siding there where they would run in and unload what they brought up. Then there was dissatisfaction among the men that were doing the grading could not get their pay, so the men struck and would not let the work go on. They even felled a big pine tree across the track that morning. The train came up as usual and switched in on their little siding. The strikers thought they would capture the train and hold it there, but they missed their calculations. The conductor was a big six-foot man and just ended two or three of the hoboes' heels upward and motioned to his engineer to go ahead. He got his train out and went back to the Point. After that they didn't come up any further than Spencer for some time.

"Previous to that my wife went down to Plover on a visit. When she started to come home she had not heard of the strike, and when she got to Spencer there she was, six miles from home and no way to get there except by Foot Walker's line. But as luck would have it, a man came along with an ox team and wagon and gave her a ride home. He was going to Colby. A few days after this the men got their pay and the work went on. "By this time Spaulding came on and commenced to build his sawmill, and there got to be quite a settlement here. Now we must have a town organization, so I was commissioned to go to Wausau with a petition for a new town. I started off on horseback through the woods one morning. When I got to the Big Eau Pleine River, about a mile south of Cherokee, where they used to ford the stream, the river was banks full, as there had been a heavy rain a day or two before. I was up against it now, but I had crossed worse places than that before, so I got my little mare down to the water's edge and headed her for the other shore. She had not gone many steps before she had to swim, but she was game she breasted the breakers and got across. I got my legs pretty wet up as far as they went, but the weather was warm and they soon dried off. "I got to Wausau the next day. I did not accomplish anything then, as Colby was ahead of me, and a town set off-Townships 26, 27, 28 and 29 they called it the town of Hull.

That did not satisfy us, but it had to go that year. I went again the next spring and petitioned then for four townships-26 and 27, Ranges 2 and 3. The board was in session. When the petition was read John Week from the town of Bergen, and Kronenwetter from Mosinee, jumped up and said they didn't propose to have their towns cut up in that shape we had one town already and that was enough for our little mushroom settlements. At the same time their towns ran from the Wisconsin River clear across the county--as the Frenchman says, it was forty miles wide and six miles long. A nice little strip to collect taxes from, but it didn't stay that way very long. The Northwestern was building from Wausau to Marshfield, villages were springing up and they all wanted a town, so now Mr. Bergen and Mr. Kronenwetter had to be satisfied with their little towns like the rest of us. "Well, we had a town and a railroad, but no wagon road, only trails cut through the woods. I used to feel sorry for old Doe Stewart. He was the only doctor there was this side of Steven's Point. Many times I have seen him traveling through the woods walking on a pole to get over the water-holes, going four or five miles to see a sick person . Sometimes he would get his pay, sometimes not but if they had a couple of pipefuls of smoking tobacco, he was willing to wait until they could get it for him.

"We had to go to work making corduroy roads, but they were better than no roads at all, and there were miles of that kind of road made in Clark County, but they cost three times as much as a good turnpike should cost. Then we didn't know how to make a turnpike, any more than Fitzgerald knew how to build a railroad through those pine woods. We had no dynamiter don't think it was made then. The first turnpike that was made was from Flink's Corner south a mile and a half, that was let for 3 per rod. We had a sawdust road through the village after the sawmill was built. Joe Greenwood has built miles of turnpike for a dollar a rod, and sometimes less but Uncle Joe had a way of getting rid of the stumps quicker than some of us. If they weren't too large he cut them off close to the ground, then covered them up with dirt that was the easiest way to get rid of stumps, and it would work-sometimes.

"Either Cook or Salter was always the head of the town board. At the spring election it would be Cook against Salter, the next year Salter vs. Cook, year after year but I think the deacon had a little the leverage, as he would furnish the most lager and bologna, and that cut quite a figure at spring election. Well, no matter, they were both good men for the job and our taxes were not near as high then as now by about 300 per cent." Writing Feb. 4, 1896, Mr. Creed said:

"I moved here in the winter of 1871 from Amherst, Wis. There were no houses along the line then north of Spencer, to my knowledge. The railroad was only completed then as far as Waupaca, but the Phillips Colby Construction Company had cut a 'tote' road along the line to about where Lamont's mill now is. A sub-contractor named Fitzgerald, had taken a job to grade ten miles from Spencer, then called Section 40, to Colby, called Section 50, and began work in the spring. 1 boarded a crew of his men and also kept travelers over night, sometimes as many as three in the bed and one at the foot. Some had money and some had not. Provisions became scarce toward summer, it being next to impossible to get anything here on account of the wet spring, which had made the mud in the tote road over knee-deep to a horse.

"Fitzgerald's headquarters was then four miles north of here, about where Booth Salter's mill stands now, and it took me all day to go there and back and bring four or five hundred pounds of supplies. People who complain of the roads now ought to have seen what we called roads in those days. Just before the beginning of the winter of 1872-73 Fitzgerald gave up his job and the Phillips Colby Construction Company had to finish it themselves. About the same time Ira S. Graves and N. J. White built a sawmill on Dill Creek, a little south of where Booth Salter's mill now stands. There were four or five settlers west of here who had located a year or two before, coming here from near Neillsville. In the fall of 1873 D. L. Spaulding built a sawmill here and that winter put in a stock of logs. This station of the railroad was then called Brighton and Spencer was called Waltham.

"When a post office was asked for at this place the name of Brighton was sent in to the post office department as the name selected for the new office, but as there was already an office of that name in the state, we tried again and sent in the name Maple Grove, only to be informed that there was also an office of that name already in the state. Some now wanted that name and some another, and before we could come to an agreement the department took the matter into their own hands and gave the new office the name of Unity. The officials at Washington evidently were a "unit" on that name, if the citizens of this place were not, and I was named as the first postmaster. There was some kicking because I was a Democrat, and in order to bring about peace in our little family of pioneers, I refused to accept the office and John Sterling was appointed. He had just started a general store in a little log building that stood about where the Odd Fellow hall now stands and ran it about a year, when he sold out to S. A. Cook.

"Our town was organized in 1875, and thereby hangs a tale, also.

In the fall of 1872 the county board was petitioned to create two new towns-the towns of Hull and Brighton. 'Hull's' petition was granted, but for some reason or other ours was pigeon-holed, and not acted upon, and we were left a part of the town of Menominee, which was then six miles wide and forty miles long, a nice small town. At that time there was a nice bunch of money coming from the 'drainage fund' to the several towns and, I think, in 1873, the town of Hull received $2,000 from this fund with which to build roads. The next year our Wausau friends got their heads together and in the fall of 1874 attached Townships 26, 27 and 29 of Range 2 East, to the town of Hull, as there were getting to be too many towns in the western part of the county, and it was dividing the drainage fund too much, and Wausau must have the lion's share. In 1875 our second petition was granted and Townships 26 and 27, Range 2 East, were set off as the town of Brighton. We elected J. H. Cook first chairman Frank Whipple, clerk S. A. Cook, treasurer, and myself as assessor. Two years later the town was divided and the town of Spencer formed of Township 26, Ranges I and 2. We had great expectations then, but many of us have been sorely disappointed.

"Speaking of hard times now, I want to say that I do not consider that we are 'in it' with the winter of 1877-78, when I hauled pine logs that would go four to the thousand, three and a half miles to the Eau Pleine River and banked them and sold them to McMillan Brothers for $3.50 per M. We got ten and twelve pounds of sugar for a dollar and other supplies in proportion. Mr. A. Lamont bought 100 tons of timothy hay that winter for $5 per ton."

First Unity Pioneer