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Twp. 25 North,
Range1 West
The history of the Township begins
in the late 1840s when the land in Clark County was
surveyed into townships. The establishment of
the Principal Meridian between what is now York and
Fremont was the first surveying done in the county and
was done in 1846. In 1847, the Towns of York (Town
25), Loyal (Town 26), Weston, Eaton, and Warner were
divided and surveyed. Section lines were run much
later.
A crew of surveyors and helpers with ox teams cut a
path through the trees and brush and established township
markers. The surveying into sections was done
later about the 1870s into the 1880s. After John
Kintzele arrived in 1883, he surveyed much of York and
Fremont and the Village of Granton. This was into
sections and quarter sections and the streets of Granton.
Most of the northern part of York was the property of
the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers Improvement Company given
in 1853 and filed in Clark County in 1857. These
lands were mortgaged to build the canal of Portage for
$500,000 to Isaac Seymour and William J. Averill, financiers
of New York City. On the death of the partners,
Abraham Clark was the sole surviving heir. The
area involved was 21 sections and parts of 10 others.
Foreclosures on the land took place in 1864, but were
not recorded until 1918. These were filed in several
counties, Outagamie, Fond du Lac and Clark --- over
5,000 acres in this area. The land titles were
finally cleared by an act of the State Legislature in
1918.
Part of the area was sold to the Green Bay and Mississippi
Canal Company in 1866. The pine lumber on it was
sold to the Davis and Starr Lumber Company. Before
this, Romadka Manufacturing Company, in 1883 and later,
purchased some of it as well as other loggers and smaller
operators.
The name for the newly organized Township 25 was to
become "York," probably because so many of the early
settlers were natives of New York State. These
included the Davises, Downers, Lees, Holmes and others.
Source: The Centennial History of the York Center
United Methodist Church (1880 - 1980) and the Town of
York (1857 - 1980), page 53.
Wilcox Logging Camp
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