Transcribed by Stan.

Source: HUMBIRD ENTERPRISE (Humbird, Clark County, Wis.) 01/13/1906

Taken from address by Orin Wilson held in Neillsville July 4, 1876

At the request of this Centennial Committee, I write a short history of that part of Clark County, Wis. now comprising the town of Mentor.

In June 1856, the first settlers landed in the town of Mentor with our oxen, cows, pings and chickens, our covered wagons being our only shelter. There was not a vestige of a road, no mark of civilization, with the exception of government surveys. Our colony consisted of twelve families, coming from different parts of the world, five from England, two from Erin's Isle, one from Germany, three from the state of New York, and one from the state of Pennsylvania.

As the season was far advanced our first work was with our noble oxen to break some of the prairie soil and plant and sow such grain and vegetables as would ripen. While a husbandmen would break and harrow in the forenoon the wife and children, with their baskets filled with choice seed, would plant in the afternoon. But a few days elapsed ere we could look from our covered wagons on small fields of growing grain and garden vegetables.

The next business that called our attention was to build house and we built them in old time style, not as nowadays, with sawed and planed lumber and all covered with paint, with a tower on top and all such modern improvements. We built them of logs. They were all straight and sound and hewed down on the inside; they were covered with hollows and rounds, and our floors were made of good substantial plank split out with the ax. The last of June we moved into our log cabins; we were all happy and contented.

Wild berries were abundant. Strawberries were the first to ripen and were a luxury. Next came the blueberries. The hillsides were blue with them, yes they were slick, and thick too. Many a time have two of us filled a large washtub in an hour. We used to pickle them by the barrel and dry them by the bushel and preserved and can them. Well we might be called the whortleberry farmers.

Well do I remember our first 4^th of July. We were all speakers and all listeners. We talked over our nation and the great improvements it had made in eighty years, and then we had our picnic dinner! We ate sumptuously and went home feeling well.

The first summer was a busy one and soon passed away. We joined teams and broke a few acres each, built log stables, and put up some wild hay to winter our stock. Each had a small field of buckwheat, it was the staple product.

Winter came in earnest and hung right by until spring. The principal excitement that winter was hunting deer and elk. We killed a plenty for our meat, used their tallow for our lights and their hides for mittens and moccasins. The snow was so deep that we could not go afoot, so we hunted on snowshoes. But he long winter disappeared. The next summer a saw mill was built at the edge of our town by D. B. Travis. Our nearest grist mill was Wright's, and was the only grist mill in the country, and there we took our wheat and corns and Moses Ground it for us.

Our nearest post office was Black River Falls, a distance of twenty miles; also the nearest point to a store. That summer there was a post office established in Garden Valley on the Black River Falls and Eau Claire Stage line. Union and harmony prevailed in our neighborhood. When one went to the post office he brought the mail for us all. Likewise, when one would go to the store the rest would send by him for their dry good and groceries.

That summer we petitioned to our county father, James O'Neill to come and lay out a highway for us. In answer to our call he came, bringing with him one of the side board, S. C. Boardman, and the county surveyor, and laid out a road through the town. This road proved to be the best route from the upper Trempealeau valley to Augusta, and is toady the main thoroughfare. The next summer a road was laid out and made passable through the forest from Neillsville to our little settlement, a distance of sixteen miles. Previous to this we could reach the county seat only by way of Wright's Mill. (Apparently this was continued in the next week's newspaper, but I do not have a copy at this time)

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