PAGE Fires, Generally and in Particular; Consolation for the History Repeats Itself; Our Military Record; What of the The Professor and the Finger Bowl; The Printing of Histori- Increase A. Lapham and the German Air Raids; Save the THE QUESTION BOX: The Oldest Church in Wisconsin; The First Mills in the Fox Daniel Webster's Wisconsin Investments; Names Proposed The First Settler of Baraboo; The Chippewa River During the COMMUNICATIONS: 75 187 309 426 87 193 319 Old Copperheads and New; A Presbyterian Objects... 202 327 "Camouflage" and "Eatless Days" Two Hundred Years Ago; 432 Wisconsin's First Versifiers; Memorandum on the Spelling of "Jolliet"; The First Edition of the Zenger Trial, 1736; A Novel Transportation Device 64 Introducing Ourselves; Our State Flag; The Society and the Legislature; Nelson Dewey Park and the First Wisconsin Capitol; Perrot State Park and John A. Latsch; Forest Fires, Generally and in The Oldest Church in Wisconsin; The First Mills in the Fox River Valley; Colonel Ellsworth's Madison · Career; The Story of "Glory of the Morning"; The Qarah Indian Reservation; First Exploration of Eastern Wisconsin; A Community Changes Its Name; How the Apostle Islands Were Named; The Services of the Menominee in the Black Hawk War 87 253803 INCREASE ALLEN LAPHAM, FIRST SCHOLAR OF WISCONSIN BY MILO M. QUAIFE The most characteristic and comprehensive theme in all American history is that of the westward movement. From the time of the first feeble landings at Quebec, at Plymouth, and at Jamestown, the history of our country has been characterized by a steady westward surge of the population, reaching out eagerly for new lands to conquer, and in the process carrying the banner of civilization ever westward and establishing successive new communities and states. The present generation of students of American history has not been unmindful of the importance and interest which attaches to this westward movement, and has not failed to accord it, in the main, all due recognition. With the doings and deserts of our pioneer farm, canal, railroad, and city builders, our hewers of wood and drawers of water, in a word, historians have long made us familiar. Unfortunately, however, too little attention has been given, and too little recognition accorded, the equally important service of those among our western pioneers who laid the foundations of our spiritual and intellectual civilization. That man may not live by bread alone was stated long ago on excellent authority. The hewing down of the forests and breaking of the prairies, the building of houses, highways, and cities were all essential steps in the process of transforming the wilderness into an abode of enlightened civilization. Equally essential was the establishment of institutions of learning and religion, and the development of a taste for literature and art. The blossoming of these finer fruits of civilization inevitably tended to sweeten and refine the society of the pioneers, which other wise, engrossed in a stórn physical struggle with the wilderness kust have become hard and gross in character. Fortunate indeed is the pioneer community which numbers among its settlers intellectual and spiritual leaders fired with enthusiasm and endowed with ability. Fortunate it was for Wisconsin when in the very year of her birth as a territory, Increase Allen Lapham cast his lot for the remainder of his life with her. The service rendered by the intellectual aristocracy of pioneer Massachusetts and the other New England colonies has long been accorded ample recognition. The valiant labors of Increase Lapham in the service of the state of his adoption have largely gone unheeded and unrewarded to the present moment. Yet it is safe to predict that when the future historian shall come to scan the record of the first half century of Wisconsin's history as a territory and state, he will affirm that no man brought greater honor to her or performed more valuable services in her behalf than did the modest scholar, Increase Allen Lapham. The frontier has ever been proud of its self-made men, esteeming chiefly, not who a man might be but rather what he was able to do. Lapham was a true frontiersman in this respect at least, that he was a wholly self-made scholar. He was born in March, 1811, at Palmyra, New York, "two miles west of the Macedon locks on the Erie Canal." His father, Seneca Lapham, was an engineering contractor, the pursuit of whose profession necessitated frequent family removals. Thus, in 1818 the family was located at Pottsville, Pennsylvania, where the father was employed on the Schuylkill Canal; two years later he was back on the Erie Canal and the family was residing for a second time at Galen, New York; the next few years witnessed further removals to Rochester and Lockport in New York, and to several points in Ohio. The boy, Increase Lapham, was evidently a precocious youth. At thirteen years of age he "found frequent sale" |