History?

The history of the Hayward Lakes area should be simple. Counties in England for example have written and oral histories that go back a thousand years while here in Sawyer County we have only two hundred years of written history to study. That apparent simplicity is deceiving.

This week I received a copy of a document from my neighbors, the Mike Martin family. It is the history of the Amish settlement of Sawyer County and adjacent Rusk County. The first settlers came here from North Dakota in 1909. They settled near Weirgor and Glen Flora. Eli J. Bontrager and several others were charmed by the country and the climate. At the same time Gideon Hochstetler and his son-in-law Jacob R. Miller settled seven miles south of Radisson. It was within a couple of years that other members of their families joined the growing colony which grew to thirty-two Ameishmen and their families. The settlers came from Iowa, Montana, Indiana, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma.

The land was cheap and fertile but covered with stumps and leftover trees. Levi Bontrager commented in the "Sugarcreek Budget", "We think it is a place for a man of small means. Of course anybody that is afraid of stumps, logs and brush has no business at a place like this...There are lots of places here where you can make yourself nice homes. And it would not take the busy man long to clear up 40 acres."

Many others felt the same way about this area. Reality set in sometimes when the temperatures dropped to thirty-five and forty below and the winter gales whined around rampikes left behind the loggers. Life must have seemed bleak to those hardy souls who struggled through the first few years. Winters in my lifetime fluctuate between the milder ones that hang on and then become mild springs to harshly cold, blustering and miserable. The settler who was not able to put up enough food would have to depend on neighbors or have an empty stomach until spring.

I am still reading "The Birth of the Modern World Society 1815-1830" by Paul Johnson. I am looking for more insight on how world events may have affected population movements in the United States. I just finished a smaller book called "Stitch of Courage" Historical Letters 1861-1865, by Linda K. Hubalek. In this book Maggy writes letters to her sister in Ohio and describes how the "women of Kansas faced the demons of the Civil War, fighting bravely to protect their homes and families while never knowing from one day to the next whether their men were alive or dead on a faraway battlefield."

This tied in conveniently with a PBS special on the Civil War and how the people of Gettysberg struggled to handle the horrors of the battlefield and how the women who were untrained and unprepared became nurses to the fallen soldiers. One young woman wrote in her memoirs that she never knew her strength until it was tested so sorely. she lost most of her family, mother, father, brothers and sisters during the war.

How does this reflect on Sawyer County history? This part of the state was reserved by treaty for the native Americans at that time. The native residents of Reserve, Wisconsin also fought in the Civil War on the side of the Union. The cemetery at St. Francis Solanus has many Civil War, WWI and WWII veterans buried there.