The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1899-02-16
THE EARLY HISTORY
ARTHUR D. WHEELER TELLS INTER
ESTING SOUTHPORT STORIES.
FATHER DEM1NG's GREAT WORK
Founder of the Free Schools in Wisconsin
Great Difficulties Which Beset the
Path of the Early Settlers and HOW
They We're Surmounted


United States were settled and Their
origin and destiny determined in the
providence of God, by reason of the
character of the men and the largeness
and freedom of the ideas of the first set.
blers.
The landing OF the Pilgrim Fathers at
Plymouth in 1920 was soon followed by
an emigration of many thousands Of
settlers of the sturdiest thought and
highest ideals of Old England. Some
settled at Plymouth and others in the
Massachusetts Bay colony, but very
many made their way up the Connect
icut and located at points along the
wooded banks and rolling lands form
ing the beautiful river valley of that
stream. At Weathersfeld, south of
Hartford, John Deming located and
there in 1857 be married. During the
next one hundred and twenty FIVE years
the Demings, father and son, seem TO
have been men of character, force and
standing in the Connecticut colony,
serving upon the Governors council,
and doing their part in molding and
directing the institutions of that coming
commonwealth. In the fourth genera
ton Benjamin Deming was born at
Weatherefield in 1853. Later possessed
of that fever which has kept our Ameri
can people constantly on the move to
the west, he went to what was then the
far western frontier found in Vermont
and at the time of the Revolutionary
war was living at Bennington. He was
no Tory and so, instead of departing for
Canada with the thousands who did so,
he remained and fought and drew his
pay when he could get it with the other
free men who purposed to remain free.
suppose that he had his part with his
neighbors in that day at Bennington
when victory came and Molly Stark
was not left a widow.
In 1898 he was living at Danville,
Vermont, and there his SOD Reuben
Hopkins Deming was born. Those
were strenuous days of amending con
flict. War with England and the
watchfulness and war against the In
dams were followed close by the war
against nature which must be fought
before the fields yield their harvest and
that war against circumstances which
must be fought before mind and heart
can be trained. We know that out of
those New England homes there come
men who had not only learned the
three RS but had also learned q fourth,
Righte BUSINESS.
Reubel's manhood found him in
touch in interest with the questions
Immediately following our second war
with England. His father-in- law,
General Cahoon, and later his brother,
Benjamin Franklin Deming served
their state and nation as members of
Congress. To him, however; the ques-
tions of the souls life here and here
after seemed paramount and he became
a preacher of the gospel message, AS
an ordained minister of the Methodist
Episcopal church he preached in Yer
mont and for time in.New Hampshire,
being stationed not far from Ports
mouth. Death invaded the New Eng
land home and the young preacher was
left with his son George and his
daughter Mary Ann to mourn the
lovely and beloved wife and mother.
A dear friend of the departed wife was
herself left in grief as widow with
her three children Dana, Mary and
Luke Richardson, and after few
years had passed these two households
were joined, making one the happier
because of the revered and cherished
recollections of the friendships and the
high qualities of those who had gone
before to the better land.
In 1885 and 1886 that mighty stream
of western immigration, which has not
yet ceased to flow, was pouring over
the hills, through the forests and upon
the prairies of what was then the great
Northwest Territory land in the summer
of 1886 Mr.. Deming with his family
started for the then distant point upon
the frontier known as Pike River in
Wisconsin Territory. His wife was a
woman of the noblest and loveliest
traits of character. From her grand
mother, Hannah Putnam, the daughter
of Gen. Israel Putnam, she may be said
TO have inherited sturdiness and I'M
daunted courage. From the Danas
she undoubtedly had some of those
finer traits and qualities of mind which,
in the different members of that family
have made great lawyers, United
States Senators and authors whose
names are respected and cherished.
Those were the pioneer days. About
1865, looking back upon these earlier
experiences, Mr.. Deming wrote:
After a toilsome journey of nine
days from Detroit to Chicago we
reached the latter city Of mud and mire
on the sd of October, leaving the city
in the afternoon and spending the
night upon the prairie some six miles