Person:Martha White (78)

In 1834, the first public land offices opened in Wisconsin and purchasers were attracted from the Eastern states. The ensuing immigration created pressures for statehood, which was granted May 29, 1848. Madison was named the capital, and the governor and legislature began to lay the foundations for a free public school system, roads, canals, and banks in that year.

in 1846, two White brothers homesteaded land at Verona, ten miles southwest of Madison. Three years later, the White brother's parents and three daughters came from Hartford, New York, to join them. The recollections of Martha Jane White, the youngest daughter born in 1839, were recorded by her in a letter titled, "My Pioneer Days": "I was born in Washington Co., Town of Hartford, State of New York. We started for Wisconsin in the Fall of '49 and came by way of the Western (Erie) Canal and the Great Lakes, as they were termed in those days. We took a Packet at Dumens Basin drawn by a horse that went on a trot as far a Troy. Then we took a canal boat and that was still slower . This horse went on a slow walk to Buffalo. There we took a steam boat and was something like a week crossing the lakes and landed in Milwaukee. I remember my Mother saying, 'Thank God I am on solid Ground. It was quite late in the Fall and the Lakes were rough. Then we hired a couple of teams to draw our goods to Madison, then only a small village, and from there to Verona. The next morning I was 10 years old. This is as I remember our trip.

My two oldest brothers came in '46. My oldest brother was married and had built him a log house. So, we moved in with him till my other brother partly completed his log house, which consisted of one room and chamber. There were 7 of us to occupy this small place. I well recollect of getting up one Winter morning after a snow storm into snow an inch deep that had drifted through the roof during a blizzard. This was a frequent occupancies. It seemed to us that we were in a wilderness. The country was thinly settled. Our nearest neighbors lived from one to two miles apart and of course they all lived in log houses with but one room. in course of time they put partitions in them, a kitchen, a bed room, and pantry. Some put up curtains up stairs for partitions. There were a few school houses when we first came. They only had three months Summer school, then later 5 and 6 months, no Winter school. The teacher got 2 dollars a week and boarded around at the homes of the scholars.

There were no churches. They had meetings in school houses. Once in a while a preacher would come along and preach a sermon. I well recollect the first time we went to a preaching service 4 miles from where we lived on Badger Prairie. We could not walk that distance. So, my brother said he would yoke up the oxen and take us. My sisters said they would not go in that style, but concluded they would. When nearly there they unhitched the oxen from the wagon and walked the rest of the way to avoid people seeing them. That made them still more homesick. The next Sunday my two sisters and myself took a walk in the woods. After walking a while, we sat down to rest on a log. They started to cry and they kept it up until at last I cried a little too in sympathy with them. But, being young, I was not home sick. My elder sister said if she lived til spring she would go back. Of course she could not get back til spring as there were no railroads. But, by this time she had gotten over being homesick. So they both taught school the next summer.

The next spring a family moved from the East that we were acquainted with and they came to visit us one evening. They had a little girl and she ran ahead of them and came in without knocking and fell to the bottom of the cellar. My brother had been laying the floor solid that day. It had been thrown down loose and she slipped between the boards but was not hurt. We all had quite a laugh over i

While living there we would often go to the door and see a prairie wolf running across the prairie and hear them bark at night. There were a great many deer. My brother killed a number the first Winter we came and we had venison to eat, which was very good. There were a great many Indians, a hundred or more camped about 80 rods from our house one night. My brother tried to console us and said they would not do us any harm. But later he said he did not sleep that night. I used to go out and watch my brother split rails. We had no fruit, not even pieplant (rhubarb), but in time we set out currants, raspberries, and apple trees. And, as time wore on we had more fruit and more conveniences. They used to cut the hay with a scythe and the grain with a cradle. But later they got mowers and reapers to cut the grain.

The people in those early days were very kind to each other, not very aristocratic. We certainly enjoyed ourselves. The men used to help one another butcher and the women would go too and fry out the lard and help make sausage. As time passed my two sisters were married and settled near my brothers.

in a few years I was married and my husband bought land on Nine Mound Prairie. He, with a neighbor, used to drive a breaking plow of seven yoke of cattle and break the (virgin) prairie sod. They did this for seven years every spring. Then my husband thrashed for 11 seasons. They did not have steam engines in those days, but drove horses standing on a horsepower from early morn til late at night. We had to go to Madison to trade. We had no stores nearer. I used to write down a list of things I needed most. I have rode from Verona to Madison after a yoke of oxen and carried a baby in a lumber wagon and got back late in the night.

I well recollect our first span of horses, how proud we were of them. I think the people appreciated things in those early days more than today. As time passed we had country churches and Sunday schools and better schools and more conveniences. in time of sickness the people used to help one another. We had no nurses. I well remember of going with my sister once a week for nine weeks to watch with a sick neighbor. The women took turns. That was the way we cared for the sick.

in conclusion, I will say I moved from Verona to Madison. I moved only three times during my married life."

Postscript: Martha lived to be 90 years old. She had three children before the Civil War and four afterwards. Her husband, Edward, was in the Army for about a year, returning home in the Fall of 1865. Because of England's support for the South during the war, and probably feelings going back to the Revolution, she was quite anti-English, although of pure English heritage. Her husband was almost 45 when her youngest son, Lucius, was born and Lucius was 45 when his son, Lucius, Jr., was born. Hence, it is unusual in 2000 when Lucius,Jr. can say, "My grandfather fought in the Civil War" and can recall his father's stories about walking behind a plow breaking virgin prairie sod, frontier life, home steading land near Madison, Wisconsin, and things that happened about 150 years ago.

Married at the Baptist Church in Verona. Birth place reported at Adamsville, Hartford, NY, but Adamsville is not a city in NY. Hartford is. So thus changed.