History: Forest Ville, 1913

Poster: Janet Schwarze

Surnames: Blair, Phillips, Dubay, Walton

----Source: 1913 History of Marathon County, Wisconsin

----Forest Ville, 1913 History

FOREST VILLE

Few people in Marathon county ever knew of that village; it was an example of the fever of real-estate speculation of the early days of Wisconsin. It covered the north of the southwest 1/4 and south 1/2 of the southwest 1/4 and southwest 1/4 of the southeast 1/4 of section 23, township 26 north of range 8 east, and a fraction of lots 5, 6 and 7 of section 28 in the same town and range. It was platted by one W. G. Blair, John Phillips, John Dubay, and William Walton in June, 1857. Never a lot appears to have been sold, and the whole village was wiped out by tax sales. It is near the present village of Knowlton, and the owners no doubt had visions of high prices for city lots when they plotted it. The plot was acknowledged in Chicago, Illinois, from which fact the inference is drawn that Chicago parties had an interest in the land, but the name of J. B. Dubey disclosed an inhabitant of the neighborhood, it being the same J. B. Dubay (an Indian trader, and owner of a little mill on the Eau Claire river).