The John Solan Story
The following letter was discovered by an Irish American
Genealogist - Cathy Bandurski - who was an acquaintance of
Betty Solan, Kiltimagh, Co Mayo. Betty is distantly related
to John Solan, the author of the letter. This letter is
published with the kind permission of Betty.
Juneau, Wis. July 23rd, 1911
The subject and author of this sketch was born April 11th, 1842 in the County of Mayo, Ireland. The old home where three or four generations of the family were born and where many of them died was situated close by a beautiful lake named Ballinalough. The house was of stone and surrounded by a grove of very large trees, as I remember it. No doubt many happy days were spent there as happiness went in those days. My father had five brothers and eight sisters. Most of the sisters were the older members of the family except my father, who, I think, was second or third eldest. All of the girls married in Ireland except one who became the wife of Timothy Collins of the town of Clyman, Dodge City, Wisconsin. As it was the rule of Great Britain, the homestead fell to the eldest son who, of course, must pay the younger heirs certain sums as such arrangements are made. The family was no doubt prosperous and happy as things went in those days, until the Great Famine, through the rotting of the potato. This rotting commenced in the fall of 1845 and lasted for three years or more.
As the main support of the people was potatoes, they were reduced to awful misery. No one could describe the conditions of the people. Coupled with destitution a raging fever set in caused by starvation. The country was over run with beggars. To illustrate I often heard my father tell of my mother distributing meal to fourteen beggars while cooking a kettle for breakfast. That was the scene that fixed his determination to leave the country. That with being called on to attend two to four funerals a day, caused by fever and starvation. As characteristic of the American people, even in that early day, they showed their generosity towards the poor starving people of Ireland by sending shiploads of flour and corn meal and other things that saved the lives of thousands of the poor people.
But, as is the case with all charitable work, sometimes the most needy were not looked after and favouritism often crept in. Such is human nature, and always will be. It has been said, whether true or false, that the committees which received their supplies for distribution, favoured their friends and often sold them for their own interests. The old saying is a true one - that man to man is so unjust it is hard to tell what man to trust. In the Spring following the first failure of the potatoes, my father (as I heard it said) sowed ten acres of turnips with the approval of the agent for the landlord. He bought several loads of Guamo, a fertiliser imported from the Canary Islands, that grew immense crops for each application, but was not favoured by the landlord as a usual thing as it had the effect of reducing the fertility after a couple of applications. However, in this case, a general failure of the potato crop and the awful times at hand - the result at some future time was overlooked. The result was he had an immense crop. In fact it was a source of relief for the poor people of the neighbourhood. When he saw the prospect of a good crop he bought some of their stock and fattened them for market on the turnips. I was big enough to notice and I remember it distinctly - to see droves of people, some of them came as far as 4 and 5 miles with horses and asses with baskets strung on both sides, and fastened to what was known as a straddle, and carry away two or three hundred pounds each ... A pretty hard proposition to keep the wolf from the door, was it not?
The reader can imagine the stress of the times when my father had to keep watchmen around that field at night to keep the crop from being stolen and carried away. This 10 acre field must be about 12 acres of this country measure as the Irish acre is much larger than in this country.
Well to drop this narrative and proceed to narrate the destiny of my Father and family, he having given up the fight and set his mind and thought on the country beyond the sea, with great reluctance at leaving the old hearthstone for a new and foreign land, and after a good deal of persuasion to get my mother to consent to go, he gave up all his right and title to the old homestead to the younger brothers, Martin the oldest, and set to packing up the household goods after disposing of the other property as best he could. It will be remembered that the real estate belonged to the landlord and after living on and holding and improving the property for three or four generations, all a man could do was to walk out and leave all his work behind him. I must say before my Mother gave her final consent to go, another family, the man being a first cousin of my Father, also agreed to go with us. They were doing business in the town and his wife was a great favourite of my Mother and where they were going she was reconciled to go. So he called an auction and sold out all his goods. It was a fine day as I remember, sometime in the beginning of April 1847. The neighbours gathered at our house to bid our family goodbye and there was a good deal of lamentation at the parting. If I do say it - this family was the life of the neighbourhood, the boys nearly all being musicians. It was the head centre for neighbourhood festivities and now that the head was going, never to be seen again, they could appreciate their great loss coupled with the conditions of the times then.
Times have brought a wonderful change - now a family could go to the Fiji Islands and, except by a few near relations, their departure would not be noticed no matter how much they did for the community. But to return to the story of our departure, we moved to our friends' house in town to wait a few days for them to get ready. But at the last moment they changed their minds and would not go. My mother took this disappointment greatly to heart. In fact, she never got over it. Well my Uncles carted our stuff to Galway where my Father had engaged shipping and in a day or so was aboard a merchant ship that carried a cargo of flour for the starving Irish people. My Mother was so disheartened, principally by the disappointment of the other folks not coming, that she was not very well during the passage, otherwise the passage was uneventful. The passage from Galway to New York was made in 5 weeks and 3 days. A young man, a cousin of mine, Peter Prendergast, came with us and also a young man who worked for my Father. He left us at New York and went to work for a dairy man in New Jersey. Never heard from him since. Peter Prendergast came with us to Wisconsin and is now dead. Our family consisted of three boys, Martin the eldest, I came next and Patrick the youngest. An accident happened to my youngest brother, Pat, before landing. The passengers were lowered from the ship to a small boat - as I supposed at that time a large vessel could not get near the docks. While taking Pat down his head struck something and in a couple of days he was dead. That was the beginning of the end. This so overcame my Mother that she was about prostrated. After burying the little fellow, we shipped by boat to Albany and from there by canal to Buffalo. This trip from Albany to Buffalo took 8 days. While on the trip on the canal my Mother was taken with a raging fever and, after being 5 days in hospital in Buffalo, she died. My Father was left with two little fellows alone in a strange country far from friends and relatives except Peter Prendergast who was with us. When leaving Ireland he had decided to go to Chicago and settle somewhere in Illinois, but about this time there was a boom for Wisconsin and, after a rest of a couple of weeks and when he could get his bearings after the sad calamity that had befallen him, we took passage to Milwaukee. Sometime around the first of June the trip from Buffalo was made taking four days. Where to go from Milwaukee or what to do next was the conundrum.
While walking the streets of Milwaukee one day he happened to meet a fellow Irishman by the name of Patrick Fitzgerald who was after buying 80 acres of Government land in the town of Shields, Dodge County, and had pre-empted another 80. I suppose Fitzgerald was in need of some money and sold his claim for 50 dollars. Father went immediately to the land office and paid $1.25 an acre and got a patent deed. He bought without seeing or knowing what he was getting, but it happened to be all right and as good as the 80 Fitzgerald had. Having bought land near Watertown, the next move was to go out there. After a couple of days stay in Milwaukee, we went by tram to Watertown. (This farm was afterwards increased to 130 acres). I well remember the day after we arrived at Watertown, Father and Pete went out to look at the purchase. It was the beginning of the lonely time that was in store for us. They went early in the morning, of course on foot, and were gone until sometime late in the evening. When they did not return when we expected them, we began to cry and worried a good deal. Although we went through a good deal and could hardly understand why our Mother left us, still when Father was present or not a long time away, we would not be uneasy. I think the day following, John Dunne, who was to be our neighbour, came to town with an ox team of 2 yoke and brought us out to his place. I forget about the trip through the woods, perhaps I was asleep most of the time. After a day or so, we were put to live in an old log house or shanty that was on the place when Dunn bought it - this must be a sorrowful abode - while old Dunn knocked all the work possible out of Father and Pete. After a few weeks they cut a hole in the woods along the marsh and commenced preparations for a shanty to live in. In the meantime, my oldest brother and the only one left got the billious fever and died in a few days. I then surely had reason to be lonesome, if I only could realise it but my Father's feeling is easier imagined than described. Mrs Dunn I must say was very kind to me as well as Mrs Donohue who was then a young married woman just started housekeeping, our next neighbour, and also Mrs Connor Leson. Well, the shanty along the marsh being fixed up and plastered with mud, an excuse of a fireplace and chimney, we started housekeeping in the new world. The nearest neighbours, except Dunn and Donohue, were 2 miles away. With screech owls hooting on every side and Indians camped less than one half mile away - during the first Fall and Winter my Father and Peter shook with ague every day. It was my work - although only about 5 years of age - to carry water for them from a spring a short distance as after the shake there would be an awful fever. I had the ague also but not so bad. They cleared a small piece of ground during the Winter between shakes. Quinine used to break it up sometimes for about a week then it would come on again.
As Mr Dunn was the only one who had ox teams and breaking plow we had to get his plowing rig, my Father giving a days work in return for each yoke of oxen and plow. Sometime during the opening up of the spring and after he got rid of the ague, Peter thought it was time he was looking out for himself so he hired out to a bricklayer in Watertown. Then I or we were really alone from early spring.
All summer Father had to be away exchanging work for help to break land or something a great deal of the time. Day after day I was alone with nothing to eat perhaps but dry bread. The cow that Father bought strayed away and was never found. Looking for that cow occupied 2 or 3 weeks of his time in the heat of the summer all that summer and the next winter and most of the spring months, we subsisting on something. After we moved in to our shanty along the marsh, Mrs Dunn showed Father how to make bread. He used to bake it in a flat kettle set on some stones with fire under and on top and in fact used to make fine bread. Along towards the last of the winter my Father heard from my Uncles that they were going to leave Ireland, that they could stand it no longer. I suppose he must have been overjoyed at the prospect of seeing them once more. Sometime along in the month of May 1849, nearly two years after we arrived in the woods, a team drove up to our shanty, and my Uncle Martin, James and Thomas and Aunt Julia, afterwards Mrs Collins, got out of the wagon. They must certainly be a surprised lot, although they were informed by Father several times, they could not realise things were as they were.
From that time on I was never alone. My Uncles and Aunt were good to me and I had company. Anyhow, my Uncle Thomas was a baker by trade and went to work in a bakery at Watertown. Uncles Martin and James and Aunt Julia lived with us. The menfolk helped Father to clear and break some more land. In a few months, Aunt Julia was married to Tim Collins who stayed with us also for some time.
Most all of these newcomers had quite a few children and, after providing a habitation and the necessary needs for housekeeping, the next thing was to provide some place and some means to start the children toward an education. Accordingly they got together and built a small shanty out of round logs, I should judge about 12 x 16. This was built, I think, in the spring of 1849. The first summer it was not plastered but chinked with wood between the logs. I well remember the days I sat on the rough wooden bench, shivering from the cold wind that used to blow through the cracks between the logs.
The first teacher was a young lady by the name of Mary Shay, a daughter of one of the late arrivals. She was hired for the munificent salary of $5.00 per month with the privilege of boarding around with families belonging to the school. I was her most advanced scholar. I could spell and read my primer. All the rest were in their A.B.C. My Father and cousin Pete taught me the letters and got me a primer. This was when we first moved into the shanty by the marsh. I used to hear them read and I was ambitious to learn to read. During the many days that I was alone, as described in the first part of this paper, I spent studying my new primer until I was able to read it and some other printed matter that came to my hands, so when our new school opened I was in advance of the whole school. Whether the salary of the teacher was paid by private subscription or from taxation I don't know - or whether there was any school law or not at that time I cannot tell. There certainly were not many state laws as the State was admitted into the union about a year and a half before.
Our teacher, Miss Shay, according to my way of thinking, was the embodiment of all virtues. I certainly thought that she was the finest lady imaginable and could not be improved on. (This illustrates the first impressions of a child) She certainly was a very fine woman. Shortly after she married, in a short time afterward she got consumption and went to an early grave. This school house was built on the hill somewhere close to where the residence of Mrs Karen Donohue is now located.
Education in the early days was not the fad it is now. Still, if you were to visit a convention or any public gathering, you would find representatives far superior to what you will find at this time in ability in every way.
A person that would attend the first meeting of the County Board that I was a member of forty one years ago and take a verbatim report of the doings and sayings of the members of that board and their proceedings, and then attend the meeting of the County Board last fall, would be forced to the conclusion that the enormous amount of money spent for education was wantonly wasted, if the ability of the members of that board would be any criterion to go by as to the benefits obtained by the so called improvement of the educational system.
The members of that board 41 years ago were the product of the eastern states with a few of foreign birth. No doubt, many of them had but a limited education. Still the material ability was there that cannot be found in these times.
I was next elected assessor and served one year. After starting that office on a new basis, there was a great deal of fault found with previous assessments. I was vigorously urged to continue in the office but refused, principally because it took me from my work in the busy season. I was next appointed town treasurer to fill a vacancy caused by the death of the treasurer. In the Fall of 1872 I was elected a member of the Assembly, being one of the youngest members of that body. Among the members of that body who were about my age were many who since that time became national figures, notably John G. Sponer, Judge J.J. Jinkins, Gen. Winkler, Judge Walker and Judge S.W. Lamorcux and some others. Previous to this time, in 1870, I was elected chairman of the town. This was the first session under the township system. Previous to this the board consisted of 5 commissioners (which I think would be a good system at the present time). This office I held off and on for 19 years. I was on the board during the erection of all our county buildings and was chairman of the building committee that had charge of the building of the County Jail and sheriff's residence. In the Fall of 1878, I was elected County Clerk and after my official term expired I moved back on the farm and later on bought my brokers out and became possessed of all the farm.
In the spring of 1891 I sold the farm, receiving the highest price per acre for a farm of its 130 acre size ever paid up to that time. That fact was noted in the county papers. My brother, Tom, was then in Superior, Wisconsin, in the real estate business. Superior being boomed beyond the limit, however, I bought some improved property that then was paying a big dividend but later collapsed. I had not moved the family there but moved them to Juneau. I returned to Juneau and accepted a position in the State Prison which I held for 4 years, the position of yardmaster and superintendent of general repairs.
After leaving the prison I moved the family to Superior and took charge of the property in July 1895. I went to work and fixed it up and had it going in pretty good shape when on January 6th 1896 I got burned out. I did not rebuild but in the spring moved to Hartford, Wisconsin, and went into the mercantile business with my son-in-law, T.J. McGallow. We were in business together for nearly 3 years when we sold out. He moved to Ellsworth, Wisconsin, and went into business there. I bought his residence in Juneau which he rented before moving to Hartford as he had previously been in business in Juneau. In February 1899 we moved into our residence in Juneau where we have since resided except for short intervals when we visited our children and friends. I have lived practically retired since moving here with the exception of a term or so that I acted as deputy county clerk for H.A. Besewitz, County Clerk, and a few other jobs that came along.
In the first part of this narrative, I forgot to mention my first school experience and a small sketch of school and educational conditions in the early days might be of interest to those who may come later and look over the contents of this rambling story.
About the time my Uncles and Aunt arrived, the neighbourhood began to fill up with people who had some years previously purchased their land and went back east to wait for settlers to come in, and in a short time we had plenty of neighbours as no family owned much over 80 acres except John Dunn who owned 240.
My marriage in May 1862 was the starting point of the new history of my life and in these days there was making new history in the United States. We were in the midst of a great war and it was all uncertainty as to the result, and it was certainly a troublesome time for all who were liable to be made serve in the army especially for me it was troublesome and uncertain. My Father died in November 1862, and I being the then head of the family, with a young wife, and sole manager for the family as the other boys were too young to be of much account, and the homestead being heavily encumbered, it was up to me to keep things going. Being in the situation I was in I could not go back to the army even though I should wish to. If I did, no doubt all would be lost, so I stuck to the home although it cost me dearly to pay my contribution to support of the war in subscription and in the end was obliged to furnish a substitute for the army, but by diligence and hard work I weathered the storm and in a few years released the homestead of all encumbrance.
At the time of my Father's death he was town treasurer, an office held for 12 years although he never made much of it, for at the time of his death he was a good deal in arrears to the town. The town board who were my friends and wishing to give me time to make a settlement, appointed me to fill the vacancy, and the following year was elected to the office which gave time to straighten up things which I did in due time as there was considerable business in the office during my time. I collected three war taxes for the payment of volunteers along with the general taxes. I then gave up the treasurership after it being in the family 14 years.
During the summer or Fall of the year, my Father got acquainted with the widow of Thomas Dalton, who died after settling on some land in Sheields near Mud Lake. After his death the widow moved to Watertown and was married to my Father sometime along in the Fall of that year. She had two children, Margaret the oldest and John. Now I had young playmates and also a good stepmother that took more interest in me in fact than if I was her own. The future, after all the shadows, opened up bright once more. In the meantime, Collins and his wife found quarters for themselves. Uncle Martin, I think, hired with Daniel Hurley who owned the lime kilns on the north wood for $8.00 a month. Uncle James remained with us for some time. Of course times were hard but from this time on we got along fairly well. At least I was happy being well provided for. There was nothing too good that my future Mother could not get for me. Of course I had a good deal of drudgery and hard work, but when night came, I had a good bed to sleep on and always had a fair supply of the necessities of life. In July following, in 1850, my half brother James was born and in June 1853 Thomas F. was born.
As to myself there is nothing of interest to relate until I arrived to manhood. When I arrived at the age of 21 years and Margaret at the age of 18 years, I suppose it was destined to be that we should spend our natural lives together. We were married May 20th 1862 in St. Bernard's Church, Watertown, Wisconsin, a union that I can safely say neither of us regretted during the long span of almost 50 years. If we live until May 20th of next year we expect to celebrate our Golden Wedding. There were 3 children born to us, Patrick H. born March 16, 1863, who died in infancy, Margaret A. who became the wife of Terance A. McGallow and died at her home in Ellsworth, Wis. July 20, 1910, and Thomas J. who resides in Superior, Wisconsin.
In concluding this story, as the greater part of it relates to myself, and after a lifetime of nearly three score and ten, over 65 years of it spent in Dodge County, the judgment as to my record I will leave to those who have known me. Faults I have and I freely confess it, but they are faults of the head and not of the heart. The rule of life that I laid out for myself is honesty and fair dealings with my fellows, whether in private or in public life. Punctuality in all transactions and equal and exact - Justice to all - which I think I have consistently carried out, at least I have tried to. I have no use for trimmers or apologists for conceptionists, especially conceptionists in public office, and in my way of thinking, the man who would shield or hide a corrupt or unworthy man in public office is not a good citizen, for in so doing, and especially if he is a prominent man in the community, is compounding a wrong against the community, and in the eyes of the law the compounding of felony is looked on as a crime against the state.
It is said by some that I am a "radical". If so, it should be borne in mind that most radicals are honest in their convictions and their motives are for the betterment of society. The revolutionists, who refused to harbour the red coats of Great Britain, were "Radicals". The party who dumped the cargo of tea into the Boston Harbour were radicals. Israel Putnam who unhitched his team from the plow, but one in the stable and rode the other to the field of battle, was a radical, and in fact all the revolutionists. Previous to the Civil War all abolitionists and those who were opposed to human slavery were radicals. The so called conservatives are those who are content with the established order of things and would make no change for fear of endangering their pecuniary interests. In revolutionary times all who were satisfied with the rule of King George were conservatives or - as they were then styled - Tories. All the shiploads that left the country with Gen. Clinton when he evacuated New York were conservatives. All who favoured the institution and continuance of human slavery were conservatives. So it can be seen that being radical, when you are convinced in your own mind that you are right, would be no fault but, in fact, would be a virtue.
In concluding this narrative, I hope whoever may waste time in reading it after I am gone, will offer a prayer to the giver of all good for the repose of my poor soul.
Respectfully,
JOHN SOLAN
The Nallys of Rockstown in County Mayo, Ireland
