Collected & edited by Amorin Mello

Originally published in the September 1st, 1877, issue of The Ashland Press.
Transcribed with permission from Ashland Narratives by K. Wallin and published in 2013 by Straddle Creek Co.

… continued from Number VII.

My Dear Press: – Among the early names associated with Ashland, I must not omit to mention a few others.

1.  E. F. Prince

Eugene de Fersey Prince

Martin Beaser

came to Ashland early in 1857.  He was brother-in-law to Martin Beaser and was induced by him to come from Buffalo to this place.  He had been employed as clerk in a large ship building establishment, and when he left the employees of the yard showed their regard for him by presenting to him an elaborate and valuable set of silver service.  He erected, in the same year, the house in which he now lives, on Main Street, in Beaser’s Division.  From 1861 to 1872, he resided in Ontonagon and Duluth, but upon the commencement of work on the W.C.R.R., at Ashland, he returned to his old home, where he now resides.

Though still young and vigorous, he is entitled to be reckoned as one of the “Old Folk” of Ashland.

2.  Oliver St. Germain

came to this place in 1856, and built a home on Main Street, adjoining Mr. Prince’s place.  The house, with all its contents, was burnt down in the spring of 1858, inflicting a heavy loss upon Mr. St. Germain.  He pre-empted a quarter section of land adjoining the town site, and cleared about twenty acres in 1858.  The railroad passes through this clearing about a mile from town.

In the general wreck which followed the crash of 1857, he was compelled to abandon his Ashland home, and for some fifteen years lived at Ontonagon, Carp Lake, and Superior City.  In 1872 he returned to his early home, and was among the first to build a house in Vaughn’s Division, in which he now resides.  Though like the rest of us, he has encountered hard times, still, in the midst of discouragements, he is ever cheerful and hopeful, and determined never to give up, as long as a plank is left in the ship.

3.

I approach with reluctance another name, for I am conscious of my inability to do justice to his memory; nor fairly exhibit to this generation, his manly social, and religious character; nor make clear, in its true extent, the important part he acted in moulding and elevating the society, not of Ashland alone, but of the Counties of Ashland and Bayfield.  In the annals of that History recorded by God himself, upon the tablets of Eternity, I doubt not his name will eclipse in true greatness and glory, those of Caesar and Napoleon.

I allude to

Rev. Hemenway Wheeler.

Reverend Leonard Hemenway Wheeler of the ABCFM Mission.

He was a native of Vermont, educated at Middlebury College, and at Andover Theological Seminary.

Reverend Sherman Hall of the ABCFM Mission.
~ Madeline Island Museum

Bishop Frederick Baraga of the Catholic Mission.
~ Madeline Island Museum

At the time of the completion of his course in theology, he had nearly decided to devote his life to the foreign mission field, in which he had near relatives.  At this juncture, his attention was directed to the condition of the Chippewa Indians on Lake Superior.  He offered his services to the American Board of Foreign Missions, who, besides the foreign work, had charge of the missions among the American Indians.  His offer was accepted, and he was directed to join the Mission at La Pointe, then one of the stations of the Board, under the care of Rev. Sherman Hall, who still survives, at a very advanced age, at Sauk Rapids, in the state of Minnesota.  Mr. Wheeler, in the early part of 1841, was married to Miss Harriet Wood, of Lowell, Mass., a refined and cultivated young lady, who, like her husband, was thoroughly imbued with the spirit of missions, and with true heroism, she left her cultivated home, and society, and went into what seemed banishment from civilization.  We of this day, with our numerous steamboats, from Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo, – with the iron horse, drinking the waters of the lake at our very doors, and with the streams of commerce, and of social life sweeping by and among us in a constant flow, can have no idea of what it involved to come here for a life work, forty years ago.

At that time, there was a small settlement at the Sault.  The site of the present beautiful and substantial city of Marquette was Indian hunting grounds.  L’Anse, Houghton, Hancock, Calumet, Eagle harbor, Eagle River, Ontonagon, Ashland, Bayfield, Superior and Duluth were then in the unknown future.  La Pointe was at that time the most important town on the Great Lakes.  It had, in the 17th century, attracted the notice of the French explorers, and of the Jesuit missionaries, who made choice of it, as a trading post and as a mission station.  The mission had been continued for near two centuries, and the trading post still held, though now under another race of men, was now the headquarters of the American Fur Company, where a factor resided, and where great warehouses were erected for the reception of the vast supplies of goods to be used in the Indian trade, which were brought once a year in the company’s vessel.  From La Pointe these goods were distributed to various trading posts, scattered around the basin of Lake Superior, for more than four hundred miles, and extending inland indefinitely.  Among these posts may be mentioned L’Anse and Iron River, in Michigan; Lake Flambeau, Montreal River, Lac Court Oreille, and St. Croix, in Wisconsin; Fond du Lac, Grand Portage, Vermillion Lake and Crow Wing, in the Territory of Minnesota, thus embracing the largest part of the waters flowing into the gulf.

View of La Pointe, circa 1843.
“American Fur Company with both Mission churches. Sketch purportedly by a Native American youth. Probably an overpainted photographic copy enlargement. Paper on a canvas stretcher.”
~ Wisconsin Historical Society

La Pointe was the emporium, the metropolitan city of this vast extent of country.  It was the Mecca of the Ojibwas, occupying the extensive country I have named.  To reach La Pointe and be buried there, was to be close to the gate of entrance to the “happy hunting grounds.”  It was to him the “sweet Island of the blest.”  With joy he hailed its sight, as he emerged from the forests in which months had been spent, gathering his pack of furs; and with regret he turned his lingering look upon it, as he again plunged into the wild wastes for his solitary hunt of half a year.

“Boardwalk leading to St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in La Pointe.” Photograph by Whitney & Zimmerman, circa 1870.
~ Wisconsin Historical Society

It was the scene of some of the most important treaties made with the Chippewas of the Northwest, by which they ceded to the United States, lands in extent sufficient to form respectable states. It was also the gathering place where the annual Indian payments were made for many years, and where the native chiefs, with their braves, delighted to hold their great councils.

Fifty years ago, no other place in this part of the West afforded access to so large a number of natives as did La Pointe.  The truths made known to these “untutored minds,” and the light flashed into their dark understandings, by the preaching of the simple story of the Cross, could soon be carried to the head waters of the Mississippi, or to the dwellers on the tributaries of Hudson’s Bay, or of the Arctic Ocean.  As a central point for carrying on this work of benevolence and love, it was unsurpassed.

Undated photograph of Hall & Wheeler’s ABCFM Mission Church at it’s original location on Sandy Bay (Middleport) before it was moved uphill onto Mission Hill.
~ Madeline Island Museum

It was the consideration of these facts that induced the American Board to establish a mission station at La Pointe, and to send thither for this purpose, about fifty years ago, the Rev. Sherman Hall.  He had successfully planted the mission, and established a school at the time of the arrival of Mr. Wheeler.

Mr. Wheeler immediately entered actively upon his life work devoting himself to learning the Ojibwa language, and preaching by means of an interpreter, teaching in the school, and striving, in every way, to promote the spiritual and material welfare of the people.

To be continued in Number IX…