Settling New Land near Cooksville—and Claim Jumping! PART TWO by Larry Reed

McCarthy House 1975

The McCarthy family of Porter Township related an incident involving “claim jumping” in the early days of land settlement near Cooksville. It begins with a question: Can a man on foot beat a horse-drawn buggy in a race from the Town of Porter to Milwaukee, a distance of nearly a hundred miles? The answer is “yes,” if the country is new, without many roads and with rivers to cross—and with a very determined pioneer on foot.

That happened in 1843, and the race was won by Dennis J. McCarthy who had settled on land just east of Cooksville near Caledonia Springs but had not yet formally claimed or registered it. 

The cause of the” race” was an incidence of “claim jumping.” In 1843, McCarthy settled in Section 9 of the Porter Township intending to establish his residency on his claim—and to be the first individual to ever own that piece of government land— but he had not yet filed the necessary papers with the U.S. Land Office.  Before he could file the papers for the land, McCarthy heard that a Mr. Lyons from the nearby Town of Dunkirk intended to jump McCarthy’s claim by traveling to Milwaukee in his carriage the next day to file papers. McCarthy immediately set out on foot for the Milwaukee Land Office himself. He did not have a horse available. The race was on.

And McCarthy beat Lyons to the Land Office, reaching the Milwaukee office before it closed and successfully filing his papers first. It was said that Lyons had taken his time, never dreaming a man on foot could beat him to Milwaukee.

From Milwaukee, McCarthy took a stage back to Janesville, maybe continuing onward along the stage route, perhaps all the way to Cooksville, returning triumphantly home to his log cabin. He’d soon build a handsome limestone house in its place, now known as the McCarthy House. And soon St. Michael’s Catholic Church would be built nearby on a corner of McCarthy’s property on Caledonia Road, as well as a cemetery for his fellow Irish Catholics

St. Michael's Church 1948

That first St. Michael the Holy Archangel Church, as it was formally named, was a log structure erected about 1843. This building was destroyed by fire in 1867, and a small, clapboarded frame church was then constructed. This church was dismantled in 1948 and sold for salvage for $800.  The cemetery, filled with Irish names, remains, as does McCarthy’s limestone house.

McCarthy recalled the early days when deer, bears and wolves roamed the area — at times, fire brands had to be lit in the house windows to drive away the howling wolves. And fishing was too easy to be a sport: one just had to put a gunny-sack over a barrel hoop, place it into the narrow stream of the Caledonia Creek and beat the water with branches to net a sack-full of fine white bass. And soon a stone bridge would be built over nearby Caledonia Creek in 1857 in an attempt to bring a proposed railroad to the Cooksville area, but the railroad company went bankrupt and eventually decided to send the new railroad in another direction. 

Caledonia Springs Bridge - painting

The grain and produce that local farmers like McCarthy produced were usually transported by an ox team to Milwaukee, which took at least two days to get there and one-and-a-half to return— about twice the time it took for a man to walk there, especially if the man was in a hurry to claim his small part of the American dream in 1843.