West to Wisconsin: A Sketch of Jodie Foster's Third Great-Grandfather

      

Lucius George Fisher (1808-1886)

Overnight, the bottom fell out of the U.S. economy. Paper money was worthless; banks failed, men were laid off from factories and stores in great numbers. Lucius George Fisher walked the streets of Buffalo, not sure what to do. A few weeks before he accepted a job collecting debts on commission for a firm in his hometown, Derby, Vermont. Now the debts were uncollectable. He had traveled by stagecoach with $27,000 worth of bills to collect – and hadn’t gotten a dime, not a cent, even from the “best businessmen.”   

     “I had nothing to return to in Vermont,” he later wrote. “I was lonely and desolate….All confidence was destroyed between businessmen, and such a financial panic was never seen before or since in our country.” It was the Panic of 1837. He met a laid-off clerk, and the two walked the city until they came to the Buffalo wharf where they saw a schooner with a young captain on deck. 

     “Where are you bound for?” Lucius called to him. When the captain said Chicago, leaving as soon as there were fair winds and tides, at a rate of $20 per person, Lucius turned to his companion. “Let us go to Chicago; we may as well go one place as another,” he said. The young clerk agreed. Lucius told the captain to book two fares.

     Lucius was born and raised in Derby, the son of a “substantial” farmer, George Fisher, and Sarah Barber of Simsbury, Connecticut. He was the only son, with sisters Martha Emeline, who was always called Emeline, Amanda, Jane, and Rosetta, who was lame. He wanted to go to college, but business reversals on his father’s part meant there was no money for such an indulgence. He longed to try his fortune in the west – so many young men were doing that – but he could not bear to leave his mother behind. Sarah died in 1832 when he was 24. After her death, Lucius stayed to help support his father and sisters. He taught school for several years and served as a sheriff’s deputy for two. In 1834 he got a job as a traveling salesman selling platform scales for the E & T Fairbanks Company at a salary of $500 per year and expenses. Thadeus Fairbanks patented a new, stable and accurate platform scale in 1830 and needed a good salesman to get his product out. Emeline also got a job teaching in Montreal. 

     Things were going well when Lucius agreed to work on commission for the Fairbanks Company as a collector. Now he had no plans and nothing left to lose. “The feeling was a desperate, devil-may-care one,” he wrote. 

     They sailed June 2, the harbor still full of ice. The trip to Chicago took four weeks and two days, with rough weather the whole time. But with the young and sociable captain, Lucius enjoyed the trip thoroughly. It was July 3 when they landed. Lucius wasn’t impressed by his first look at Chicago. The city had just been incorporated and two months before, elected its first mayor. It had a population of about 4,000; a cornfield ran south from Washington Street. 

     The famed Daniel Webster happened to be in town, and a delegation from Milwaukee had come to try to persuade him to visit their city. Webster declined and headed back east. But Lucius took passage in an old steamer with the delegation to Milwaukee. They arrived on July 6. The town was no more impressive to him than Chicago. It had a population of about 1,000, and many of the houses were built on stilts. Worse, they’d been abandoned in the Panic. 

     Lucius had a cousin in Milwaukee, a young doctor and Amherst graduate, Lucius Israel Barber. He looked him up and wasn’t surprised by what he heard. Everyone had been engaging in land speculation, and when the bubble burst, they were all broke. No one knew what to do or where to go. If Lucius Barber had any suggestions, Lucius Fisher didn’t mention them in his reminiscences.

     So he decided to head to Galena, Illinois to mine for lead – why not? – with a few other young men joining him. The journey was an adventure and a frustration. They stayed in log shanties and cabins, sleeping on the floor or the crudest of bunks. At a bachelor shanty the occupants had nothing to eat but dried beans, but they boiled them for their guests, and Lucius ate them on a bark plate with a wood chip as a scoop. There was a miserable twelve-mile hike in the rain to the next place where they could find food, during which the men were “almost gored to death” by mosquitoes. His feet were in pain; they had nothing to eat, and he was drenched, exhausted, sick, and at the end of his rope when they reached the Rock River. There they came to a camp where Charles Goodhue, an old acquaintance from back east, happened to be. Lucius stayed with him and his company for a few days recuperating. Charles suggested he check out New Albany, Wisconsin before going to Galena, and offered him an interest in claims he’d just purchased there.

      Lucius agreed - why not? This Wisconsin settlement was as good as anywhere else. He and Charles went in on a canoe together, purchased from Winnebago Indians nearby. Part of their journey involved a rough trip over Koshkonong Lake, bailing as they went, but it was far preferable to walking six miles through marsh on a hot day, as the other members of their party did. On July 15th, they reached their destination. 

Beloit

     Lucius went for a long walk on the banks of Turtle Creek. He saw many ancient Indian mounds, “quite a number” of current Indian wigwams, and the racks the Indians dried their corn on. He had an uninterrupted view of the unbroken prairie. Like many easterners seeing prairie for the first time, he described it as the most beautiful land he’d ever seen. He bought $400 worth of land on speculation, money saved from his sales years, and paid to go in with other men on getting the land plowed and planted. He sent a letter to let his father know he’d purchased land for them. Then he headed back towards Chicago, not expecting to actually stay and settle this country. 

     In October 1836, a group of young men, twelve in all, met in a 27-year old doctor’s office in Colebrook, New Hampshire. They formed the New England Emigrating Company and chose Dr. Horace White to go west to scout land. He was given a horse, equipment, and a hundred dollars. White rambled through Northern Illinois, eastern Iowa and southern Wisconsin, finding the Rock River area the most pleasing. He purchased land in New Albany on their behalf. In spring of 1837 he returned to New Hampshire to share the news. Eleven of the twelve men moved west; two of them already living in shanties there during Lucius’ visit.

     

     As Lucius was making his way to Chicago, he became so sick that he could not walk. He learned that an aunt and uncle and their three youngest kids were living on the Fox River near Elgin, and hired a man to take him there. Abigail Barber – Aunt Nabby – was his mother’s youngest sibling. Nabby and her husband Noah Tyler were part of an extraordinary event that happened in New Hampshire – a mass conversion to Catholicism that became known as the Barber Conversion. Four of their daughters joined convents and eventually became Mother Superiors; one son joined the priesthood and in time became the first bishop of Hartford, Connecticut. 

     Lucius arrived at Nabby and Noah Tyler’s house in poor condition, still sick and weak. He was grateful for her good care. Although he stayed for several days recovering, he arranged for Charles Goodhue to come to Elgin with a wagon to transport him the rest of the way. He was glad he did as for several miles approaching Chicago, the prairie was flooded a foot deep with water. After a short time in the city, he returned to Milwaukee where he was laid up with what he described as lameness.

     In October Lucius’ father and sisters Jane and Amanda left Vermont and traveled west by land, with a three-horse team. By December they reached the Fox River and stayed with the Tylers till March. George Fisher left his daughters and went to the future townsite his son picked out where they rented half a cabin, and Dr. Horace White had the other half. 

     Meanwhile, a group of the new settlers met to pick a new name for the town, not being satisfied with New Albany. After many suggestions that no one could agree on, their plan was to draw letters out of a paper bag and arrange them until they came up with something pleasing. Before they could do this, one of the men wanted something sounding French and attempted a word that he thought meant ‘beautiful ground,’ which came out sounding like Bollette. Lucius said, “Beloit,” which reminded him of Detroit, and everyone liked it. Beloit, in Wisconsin Territory, it was then!

Making a Home, and a Town and a College

     One of the advantages emigration companies offered were like-minded people, people from “back home,” settling an area together. The New Englanders were Congregationalists, abolitionists and “temperance men.” A top priority was getting a church and school built. 

     In the summer of 1838 Lucius bought four yoke of oxen and broke the prairie. He and his father harrowed wheat and oats in March. Ever resourceful and entrepreneurial, Lucius went to Milwaukee where he made an arrangement with a merchant to sell items like boots and stoves to the new settlers coming into Beloit, opening the first hardware store. He staked a claim on 160 acres of timber land and hired four men to clear it, selling the logs. With the profit, he built a frame house and at last Rosetta and Emeline joined him. Now the family was together again. It was fall 1838, just a year and a half after he walked the streets of Buffalo so uncertain what to do. 

     Lucius was one of those people who was recognized for leadership ability and chosen again and again for positions of responsibility. When the settlers obtained a charter from the territorial legislature to start a seminary (a school) in 1837, he was appointed to the board. Similarly, when the Congregational Church was built in 1838, he was appointed to the board of trustees and named a deacon. 

     In 1842, Lucius and his sister Jane each married at last. Lucius was 33 when he married Caroline Field, and Jane was 37 when she married Edwin Bicknell, who had come as part of the New England Emigrating Company. Caroline had two children, Lucius Jr. and Anna before dying of a fever after a week’s illness in 1850. Jane had three children and died in 1855. She was the only one of the Fisher girls who ever married. Lucius remarried in 1851 to Rachel Colton and had three daughters with her, Sarah, Martha and Isabella. Only Sarah survived to adulthood. That same year, he became director of a newly-opened paper mill. In 1853 he would also start the Beloit Journal.

     Anti-intellectualism seems to go in waves in American history, and politicians and pundits criticizing elite colleges and “fancy degrees” are not new. As the New Englanders sought a charter in the territorial legislature, one congressman was said to proclaim on the floor that he was “born in a briar thicket, rocked in a hog trough and had never had his genius cramped by the pestilential air of a college.” But the New Englanders didn’t want to stop at a seminary, essentially the equivalent of a primary-through-college prep. They wanted a college. 

     Lucius wrote at the end of his life that he always regretted not being able to go to college. But he helped create one. Lucius was one of the first three to pledge his support, offering $1,000 in building supplies in 1844. He also donated “the large beautiful bluff lot extending to the river" and five additional lots.

     Yet two years later, the project had gone nowhere. Pledges were not being fulfilled. Lucius is considered today the man who got the college off the ground. He had several loads of stone delivered to the college site and had a date set for a groundbreaking. This seemed to galvanize others to make the dream a reality.

     The rest of Lucius’ life can so easily sound like a list, one accomplishment after another. He was the first sheriff of Rock County; he was appointed county commissioner and helped lay out three major roads. He served on a railroad company board, invested in land and railroads, and became a contractor building rail lines. He opened a bank and was named president. He was elected to the state legislature in 1856, declining to run for a second term as he said he had too many irons in the fire already. 

     When Beloit was chartered as a city, he was elected to the town council, then county supervisor. He was named a trustee of Beloit College. He was appointed postmaster of Beloit by Abraham Lincoln (who once defended him in court in a land dispute) when that was still a patronage job. 

     He was one of those people who was chosen whenever a leader was wanted, such as a committee to nominate a senator (he was made president of the committee) in 1862; and  a delegate to the Canal Enlargement Convention in 1863, appointed by the governor.

In later years, on a committee of the most prominent businessmen in Chicago including Marshall Field and Palmer Potter, Lucius was chosen to go to Washington to lobby for the Chicago Relief Bill before the U.S. Senate. This was an assistance plan to help the city recover from its disastrous fire. In 1884 he was named vice president of the board of the Chicago Theological Seminary. He served on the Board of Trustees of Beloit College for 36 years.

     Lucius had moved to Chicago in 1866. The young city he’d passed up for an open prairie in Wisconsin was now the business center of the Midwest. He still kept his interests in Beloit and maintained his house there. But in 1867 he formed Fisher & Co., a real estate firm with his brother-in-law, Edwin Bicknell, and devoted most of his business interest to real estate. 

     Lucius died at age 76 in 1886 in Chicago. He left his wife and three surviving children an estate worth nearly a million dollars in today’s value. He was taken back to Beloit where he was buried with a surprisingly plain, modest headstone.

 Note: Here’s how Lucius fits in my family tree: his mother, Sarah Barber, was the sister of my fourth great-grandfather, Roswell Barber. So my third great-grandfather, Myron Fitch Barbour, and Lucius George Fisher were first cousins. Fascinating fact: Lucius is the third great-grandfather of actress Alicia “Jodie” Foster. 

This is Story No. 6 in the "52 Ancestors in 53 Weeks" Challenge.

Sources:

     Fisher, Lucius G., edited by Milo M. Quaife. “Pioneer Recollections of Beloit and Southern Wisconsin,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 1 No. 3 (March 1918), pp. 266-286.  

     Merrill, Louis Taylor. “The First Settlers of Beloit,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 28 No. 2 (Dec. 1944), pp. 146-153.  

     Merrill, Sereno Taylor.  Narrative of Experiences in the Life of Sereno Taylor Merrill : written for his children, Beloit, Wisconsin: 1900.

     Richardson, Robert. “How Beloit Won Its College,”  The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 28 No. 3 (March 1945), pp. 290-306.

Newspapers:

     “Real Estate,” Chicago Tribune, 21 Aug 1867, p. 4. 

     “Historical Society. The Movement For Its Revival Progressing Successfully. Chicago Tribune, 18 July 1877, p. 2. 

     “Alaska. A Summer Traveler’s Observations,” The Inter Ocean (Chicago, Illinois), 13 Aug 1884, p. 6. 

     Will: The Inter Ocean, 8 May 1886, p. 16. 

Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023