Changing the world forever for better

INFANT WRIGHTSTOWN GRASPS ITS SITUATION
by Eric Chaet

Some settlers of British North America were relatively well off, and became artisans, traders, and farmers. Some failed, some thrived on lands previously occupied by American Indian tribes. Others were indentured servants, or desperados from the “enclosure” of British lands—lords expelling them from land previously used in common, by the peasants — driven to the industrializing slums of London, for instance, which was developing into the megalopolis it is now. And there were Black slaves.

There was no Wrightstown yet. Pontiac hadn’t led his unsuccessful Indian rebellion, Tucumseh hadn’t led his. George Washington, whose executive ability during the American Revolution I admire and study, operated a tobacco farm with slave labor, and married rich Martha. He is said to have been the richest man in the Colonies.

Quashqwame, without authority to do so, signed away western Illinois and southwestern Wisconsin in the 1804 Treaty of St. Louis, which Blackhawk and his band refused to honor. They were defeated in 1832. The U.S. government, a tiny operation by today’s standards, paid for that little war, clearing the way for Hoel Wright to settle among the Menominees the following year. The Menominee had sided with the U.S. against their competitors (correct me if I’m wrong, please!) — the Sauk, Kickapoo, and Meskwami.

Along the U.S. east coast and the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and on the Great Lakes, steamboats and railways created a national market. Cincinnati became the pork processing capitol of the U.S. The cotton gin transformed Dixie, re-invigorating cotton profits and slavery. The cotton went to Britain, mainly, where coal-burning steam engines drove mechahnical wonders operated by wonmen and children, long hours, mainly — early days of the warming of the atmosphere..

Forests around Wrightstown were cleared by Dutch, Belgian, & German settlers, mainly, then the Irish, when British policy and a pathogen that destoyed the potato crop decimated Ireland. Muddy roads were planked over. Charles Day (County Road 96 in Greenleaf is Day Road) made shingles by hand, and hauled them to De Pere, 75 cents per load.

He bought thousands of acres of timberland, resold most of it to immigrants, retained 500, cultivated 400. Hoel Wright’s development plan for “Wrightstown” fell through, when the Milwaukee and Northern Railroad went through “Day’s Mill,” which became “Greenleaf,” named after the railroad’s general manager.

Carl Mueller, from Germany, clerked for Hoel Wright, and took over many of Wright’s interests. Mueller opened a general store, sawmill, brewery.

There’s a lot I don’t know — but by 1925, Bill Daanen and Leo Johnson were mining dolomitic limestone and sand, from the Greenleaf quarry, for roads and commercial and residential construction.

The term “manifest destiny” was probably first used in a newspaper article in 1848. The idea was that European-Americans had extraordinary, good qualities, and, so, were destined to rule all of North America, as some among the ancient Hebrews had imagined themselves to be the rightful rulers of “the holy land,” which has proved to be not very holy.

Between 1835 and 1848, the USA seized the northern half of Mexico, and relegated its citizens to treatment only slightly better than the treatment of Blacks or Indians. The Mexicans’ long-horned cattle were seized, and their deeds to property dismissed.

Hitler, it is said, got the idea of manifest destiny for his German Empire, from the USA. He intended to kill or enslave millions of people to Germany’s east, to give Germans “lebersraum,” living space. It is necessary to point out to children, I suppose, that tens of millions died because of what Hitler initiated, and Germany was rubble and occupied.

Meanwhile, in Wrightstown and Greenleaf, there was no modern plumbing, of course, no electricity, so, no wiring, no poles with cables attached, no cars, no phones. People hunted and fished, and raised and butchered hogs, and preserved the meat.

There was no international dairy industry. Arla, of Denmark (the European country, not the village to our east) wasn’t operating the milk processing plant in Hollandtown. There was no such thing as pizza.

During the first world war, German-Wisconsinites had to stop speaking German in public, as Mexican-Americans have to do with Spanish, now — or face hostility, even violence. Many schools had to stop using German, and many of German-language newspapers stopped publishing. Until that time, German opera companies would routinely tour Vienna, Berlin, and MIlwaukee. That ended.

Don’t be confused: Hitler “led” Germany in the Second World War, not the First.

Still a hundred years to go, to get to present-day Wrightstown!

Electric lights, compulsory school attendance with teaching of the history of English settlers only, internal combustion engines, oil from Pennsylvania and Texas and California, lots of immigration, radio, movies, prohibition of alcohol (marijuana later), the Great Depression, the New Deal, Blacks gaining access to industrial jobs, women also, the Second World War, lots of automation, Eisenhower’s interstate highway federal project, the breakup of the AT&T regulated monopoly, outsourcing labor to China, digitization and social media.

I don’t for a minute mean to say that European-Americans, or Blacks, or men or women, or Germans, or German-Americans, or Ancient Hebrews, or Mexican-Americans, or members of this or that American Indian tribe were or are good or bad, wise or foolish, failures or successes.

It seems to me necessary to know where we are, in order to have any chance of intentionally creating somewhere better. And where we are is built on what has happened here until now. But we can’t get trapped in mere history. We have to use it, each of us — as we emerge from infancy — or let someone else tell us what’s what and what we should do.

Always, please, correct me if I’m wrong!

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–Wrightstown Article #5 © Eric Chaet 2022, used in The Wrightstown “Spirit” by permission. To use this article in another publication, or to sponsor upcoming articles, email Eric Chaet at chaetsarticles at gmail dot com. .