In the beginning, 175 years ago, the new land in Middle
America beckoned to settlers with waves of endless fertile prairies, undisturbed
oak-openings, springs of clear water, and flowing creeks and rivers with Native
American names. And it was good….
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| Wisconsin in 1718 |
The land of “Wild Rushing Waters”—called Meskonsin or
Ouisconsin or Wiskonsan or, the final choice, Wisconsin— had finally become
part of the United States. The nation had succeeded in acquiring, winning, and
finagling it from the French, the British and then the Indians (although the latter
remain as 12 nations within the state). The good news then, in 1787, was that
anybody—French, English or otherwise—who wanted to remain in America’s new official
Northwest Territory could and that, importantly, slavery was abolished within
the Territory.
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| U.S.A. map of 1783 |
In the 1830s the American government began surveying its new
lands west of Lake Michigan. Surveys divided the land into more counties, one
of which became Rock County, previously part of Brown County and later part of Milwaukee
County, named for a famous landmark rock near the river. And the counties were
divided into townships and sections, which allowed the U.S. government to sell the
land for the first time in 1837, a year after the Wisconsin Territory was
established in 1836.
The buyers, mostly eager migrants or land speculators who
lived elsewhere, out East in New England for instance, or overseas in the
British Isles. Sometimes buyers were early trappers, entrepreneurs and
“squatters” that had already “discovered” the land and made their “claims,” often
associated with companies that had long pursued fur-trading and
mineral-extraction.
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| Wisconsin Territory in 1836 |
The genesis of Cooksville was in 1837. That was the year
that brothers John and Daniel Cook of Ohio purchased their portion of Wisconsin
from the U.S. government for $1.25 an acre. The Cooks’ land, between the two new
small settlements of Janesville and Madison, bordered on the fish-filled
Waucoma Creek, later to be re-named the Badfish Creek, in the Town of Oak,
later re-named the Town of Porter in 1847.
And it was a good choice. The Cook brothers and families
arrived in oxen-drawn wagons in 1840, usually following Indian trails, to their
fertile, well-watered, wood-filled land on the promising frontier of an
expanding 59-year-old nation.
In the beginning, the new settlers used their wagons as
shelters but quickly built rough log cabins and animal shelters. Thanks to an
early saw mill on the Badfish Creek, lumber sawn from oak and other trees soon provided
construction materials for houses and barns and the nearby limestone hills supplied
blocks of stone for foundations as well as for a few early houses.
The Village of Cooksville was formally founded and drawn
up by its eponymous founders in 1842, 175 years ago. The plat of their new little
town on the prairie consisted of just three blocks divided into a number of
lots for sale along its several platted streets. And the Cooks built the first
house for themselves that same year of 1842, as well as that first saw mill on
the creek.
And it was good. But there was no time to rest after these
early efforts—except maybe on the seventh day when an itinerant Primitive
Methodist preacher presided over church services in the saw mill—because Cooksville
quickly began to grow.
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| Waucoma plat map of 1846 |
The settlement along the Badfish Creek quadrupled in size
in 1846. That is when Dr. John Porter and his brother Dr. Isaac Porte of
Massachusetts laid out their own new village across the street from the Cook
brothers’ village. The new village was four-times as big as its neighbor and
stretched eastward along the creek —which the Porters learned was called
“Waucoma” by Native Americans and which became the genesis of the name the
Porters gave to their new community: the
Village of Waucoma. They hoped it would be a successful and lucrative speculative
land development, as well as a new home.
For Waucoma the Porters created a “New England” style
layout with a large Public Square in the middle for all to use and enjoy, with
14 blocks each usually with 14 building lots and wide streets and alleys. John
Porter had purchased the land from U.S. Senator Daniel Webster, so a street was
named in his honor: “Webster Street.” Soon two brickyards were producing tens
of thousands of vermilion-colored clay bricks that would add handsome brick
houses to the simple, graceful pioneer architecture of the village and nearby
farms.
Both villages attracted eager settlers to the new fertile
farmlands where hunting, fishing and wild fruits, along with their productive
vegetable gardens, would sustain them. Of course, occasional imports of salt,
tea, coffee, gun powder and oysters were obtained now and then from the growing
settlements of Milwaukee and Chicago. More solid, well-constructed, handsome
American homes rose on the prairie, usually designed like very simplified Greek
temples, a foreign architectural style popular at the time. And soon several
mercantile stores and blacksmith shops were built to serve the growing community
of pioneers.
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| Waucoma-Cooksville,1858 |
In the 1840s, the area was serviced by a stagecoach. At
that time, only the little Village of Union existed on the stagecoach route between
Mr. Jane’s village and President Madison’s eponymously-named settlement on the
Four Lakes. Union provided the needed change of horses and a hotel at the
halfway point between those two settlements until the new Village of Cooksville—then
often called Waucoma—was established on the route, becoming a stagecoach stop
for the growing area. Soon “Waucoma House,” a stagecoach stop, hotel and tavern
for travelers was erected. From there, stages dashed from Cooksville up Old
Stage Road to join the old Territorial Road, the first well-traveled route through
Rock and Dane counties.
However, in the late 1850s when railroads traversed Rock
County, replacing stagecoaches, Cooksville was bypassed. The village slumbered,
but its sturdy, well-designed 1840s and 1850s buildings continued to shelter
the old pioneers and their children, and then those children’s children. The
peak population was about 175 during the Civil War era but its growth stopped
and its population dwindled. Early maps often called the village “Waucoma,”
although the name “Cooksville” would prevail, thanks to the Post Office housed
in the old General Store in the Cooks’ village.
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| Cooksville, 1891 |
By the beginning of the 20th century some of
the residences had become “summer homes” in the quiet old rural community. The
saw mill, which became a grist mill, ground to a halt; the village’s second-floor
“Opera House” above the local meat-market was lost to fire in 1893; Waucoma
House hotel fell into disrepair; and the Farm Implement Factory, the first in Wisconsin,
was torn down in 1928.
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| "Cooksville 1938" by Dorothy Kramer |
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| "Cooksville, 1955" by Dorothy Kramer |
Cooksville became the special little historic “town that time
forgot.” In some respects, it is indeed a revelation that the village has
survived and even thrived in its own unique way during those many years of quiet
rural life in the 19th, 20th and 21st.centuries.
Many other similar early settlements have disappeared or had their earliest
beginnings vanquished by progress and new construction.
And now, in 2017, the Village of Cooksville, an
officially-designated National, State and Local Historic District, is able to
celebrate 175 years of existence, which is old for a Ouisconsin or a Wiskonsan
or, finally, a Wisconsin village. (Governor James Doty urged spelling the
Territory’s name “Wiskonsan” but was over-ruled by the government in 1845, so
“Wisconsin” it is.)
And so “Cooksville”— as well as “Waucoma,” the legal name
for many of its properties —remains an early Wisconsin pioneer village from
1842, a “wee bit of New England in Wisconsin.”
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| "Cooksville Tour Map, 1984" by Mike Saternus |
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[The Cooksville
Archives and Collections welcomes
photographs and other documents related to the history of Cooksville and the
Town of Porter. Contact Larry Reed for more information. (608) 873-5066.]
