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    The town of New Glarus is the second in the northern tier of Green county, beginning from the west.  It is bounded on the north by Primrose, Dane county; on the east by the town of Exeter; on the south by the town of Washington; and on the west by the town of York.  The country is hilly and broken.  A birds eye view of the town might suggest the idea that a gigantic hand had strewed the hills on the surface, hills of the most diversified construction, although generally about the same height.  They are from 200 to 300 feet from the foot of the valley.  The ascents to these hills are generally gradual, so that they are accessible with teams from almost any side.  The country is very well watered, almost every farm having springs and running streams.  The main stream is the Little Sugar river, which is formed in this town by the confluence of a large number of little brooks.  The main branch enters the town on the northwest of section 4, takes its course in a southeasterly direction, and makes its exit on section 25.  The numerous little streams arising in the western and southwestern part of the town flow through the northern part of the town of Washington, in an easterly direction, and unite with the Little Sugar river in the town of Mount Pleasant.  The valleys are winding around in all possible curves and angles, not unlike one of those ancient labyrinths, and just as well adapted to mislead a stranger.  They are now widening and now contracting, in obedience to the freakish fancies of those lively promontories, projecting here and there into the valley ground.  There is one exception to this rule.  The “Shmurzi Thale,”(Roasting Valley) running nearly due west of the village of New Glarus, is not only straight, but even without springs.

    The land is well adapted for stock farms.  The rich, well watered meadows in the valleys guarantee a heavy crop of hay, even in dry summers, and afford a rich pasture for the Switzer’s favorite, the cow, even at times when on the prairies all the grass is singed by the drought.  The blessed timber-clad hills are the progenitors of innumerable springs, which send the refreshing element through those cozy valleys, that never fail to make the Switzer and his “Lobeli”(Pet name for a cow)  feel at home.  The soil on the hills and slopes is a white clay, with a limestone foundation, whilst in the valley it is a rich black loam.  The most common kinds of timber growing are: Oak, poplar, hickory, elm, walnut, and cherry.  Limestone quarries are numerous.  Mineral has never been found.

    The settlement of New Glarus is perhaps more peculiar and more interesting than that of any other town in the county, because the social, political and religious conditions of the old and of the new world have come into immediate contact here.  It has been remarked very many times in a superficial manner, that those experts, who were sent here from old Glarus in 1845, had selected a very poor locality, at a . . .

p. 1024

. . . time, when all the land of the great northwest was open to them.  It has been considered strange, that intelligent men, after traveling through the States of Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, should recommend these trough-like valleys, these rough, stony hills as being the most suitable place for a settlement.  Many a visitor of this colony has received the impression, that if the same amount of work had been applied on some rich, fertile plain, the result would have been much better, the wealth of the population would now be much greater.  Would it?  It is indeed quite an interesting occurrence.

    Were those experts deep, thorough historians, reasoning from historical facts, that the most energetic, enterprising and enduring people have been educated in and by such localities, where nature mostly depends on human labor and perseverance to do any good for man?

    Did they compare the civil virtues of those people living in the naturally richest parts of the world with those living in the poorest?  Did they ponder the fact that nature is modifying man, as well as man is modifying nature, and that this reciprocal modification is the natural source of the character of a community, and that consequently the physical disadvantages of a country, challenging his industry and stimulating his energy, are more favorable to man’s ultimate progress, than the mere agency of a fertile soil, which tends to make the occupant unwilling to perform even the small amount of labor necessary for the reproduction of a rich harvest?  Or have they simply been attracted by the similarity of this region with landscapes in Switzerland?

    We do not know what idea was predominating in their minds.  But one thing we do know, and that is, that no other class of people were as well adapted for this district, or could have made New Glarus what it is to-day.  And we feel confident in saying that not only (Ehen werden im Himmel geschlossen) ”marriages are contracted in heaven,” but that Divine providence also ties the knot that unites men and their habitation.

    It is an act of great self-denial, a self-sacrifice, a sort of re-generation, that is forced upon every grown person, who undertakes to make a home in the new world.  Did you ever notice a foreigner move through the streets of your city or village the first few days after he came across the ocean?  Did you ever observe his embarrassment, arising from the consciousness of being different in manners, clothes, appearance, language, in most all the objects of interest, pleasures or aversions?  Did you ever stop to think, that every one of these has been taken away from relations and connections, that have become a part of his nature?  He has grown up in a country, where the government, the Church, the school, the society, the family, -- in short all the public and private relations have virtually guided, directed, superintended and carried him in the way he should go, and prescribed the course that his individual life had to take, leaving hardly any question for him to decide.  Did you ever realize that these foreigners had to conform their whole being, physically and mentally to a new world?  They have to abandon their old, form new habits, learn a new language, a new way of living and thinking.  This is the gravest of all the sufferings that an emigrant has to endure, the root and foundation of home-sickness, which is the most intense of all sicknesses; and the more a person is attached with piety to the venerable customs of the society of the fatherland, the harder will be the combat.

    This sacrifice has been offered by the first settlers of the town of New Glarus.  They were perfect strangers in every respect.  Not even one of them knew how to handle a plow, or how to sow wheat, or to plant corn, or to build a grain stack, or to do anything of the kind that was daily required of them in their occupation as farmers.  They only knew how. . .

p. 1025

. . . to tend cows.  It will never be fully understood by any one who has not had a similar experience, what privations, inconveniences and humiliations they suffered.  “We often cried,” says one of the old ladies now, jokingly, “until our heads were like (Small wooden casks, used for carrying drinking water into the fields) Laegele, and wished we were at home again, even if we had nothing else to live on but (Whey and spinach) Schotte and Chrut.”  But it was worse with them than with the Helvetians of olden times, who tore down the bridges and burnt villages behind them when they started out to take possession of Gallia.  They could come back and restore things, and were glad to do so, whilst the New Glarusers were very much in the dilemma of the bird in the adage: (Eat, bird, or die) "Vogel, friss oder stirb!"  They had to stay and try.

    It would take up too much room to give a full description of the journey of the first settlers, which took up nearly the whole summer of 1845; but in order to give an idea of what traveling was in that day, we will select some of the dates of a day book which Mathias Durst, one of the fellow travelers, has left us.

    We started from Biasche, on the lake of Wallenstadt, in Switzerland, on the 16th day of April; 155 persons were expected to assemble there, but when we were ready to start our number was 193.  We understood that our contract was including our board, but our captain told us that he had nothing to do with it.  This created quite an animated dispute between our leaders and the captain.  But we could not take what was withheld from us.  When we arrived at Zurich, those of us that had to stay on deck were half frozen, and those who found a standing room in the cabin were half lame.  There we learned that there was no room for all of us in the ship that was to take us to Basel.  In great haste and during a heavy rain we had to procure four wagons, in which we put our women and children, and were afterwards glad  that they could not find room on the ship, because we men suffered greatly of wet and cold.  We came to Laufenburg that day, and stayed over night in a large hall of a hotel, where we laid on straw during one part of the night, and walked through the streets of the village during the other, in order to keep warm.  We came to Basel at the same time with the wagons.  The landlords in the city were very friendly, and took very good pay for their friendliness.  From Basel we started next morning on the Rhine, and came to a place in the evening where there was a very big hotel, but they only offered beds to single persons, and would not allow a family to come into the house.  I, however, was quick enough to run into the house and take the key from a room with two beds, where I put my family to bed after dark without being noticed by any one in coming or in going.  In Mannheim we had to wait two days for the steamer.  All our money, that we termed the "beginning fund," was used up for the journey, and still we slept on boxes and benches for many a night.  From Dordrecht we were transferred to Rotterdam in two small boats, which were so overcrowded that none of us could lie down, or even fall down.

    At New Dieppe we were to embark for Baltimore, but we had to wait one week until the ship was fitted up for us.  We slept in the ship, but we had to do our cooking on the shore, like the gypsies.  On the 13th of May we bade good bye to old lady Europe, and trusted our lives to God and the ship.  Any sea-sickness?  Yes, lots of it, but excuse me from describing it; it is altogether too personal, and can only be understood when at sea.  On the 21st we had a storm, which lasted nearly a whole week, and was fiercest on the 25th.  The ship was laid over from one side to the other, dipping up tons of water, and dispatching the same down into the middle deck.  Our trunks became living, every one of them traveling on its own risk now east, now west.  A bag of potatoes fell over, and the potatoes were in a hurry to . . .

. . . find the lowest place on the floor, but were unable to do it in spite of their running to and fro.  A little cask of wine, that some careful passenger has slyly hidden in the corner below his berth is coming forth lively to join the general promenade.  A large basket-bottle with skill higher graded contents follows the irresistable law of attraction and tumbles clown-like on the battle-field, to be crushed the next moment by two colliding trunks.  Another pot of a more prosaic nature rolls forth and upsets.  The wine keg of course loses its bung on the way, and mixes its contents with the indescribable chaos.  The floor of the deck is inclining at the angle of 45 degrees, and the occupants of the berths have to brace themselves up with all their power, in order to avoid an involuntary sommerset.  “O, I wish I was at home!” was heard from many sides.  But we were on the open sea, and the danger comparatively small.

    We had poor board.  Our crackers were made of middlings and bran, too hard for wolf’s teeth, and coarse enough for a wolf’s stomach.  It often moved my heard with pity to see the children tire their jaws at them, to no purpose.  We were actually suffering from hunger.  This morning (June 5) the captain had a pig butchered, and treated every passenger to a ration of fresh pork, for which we were very thankful.

    On the forty-sixth day of our sea-voyage we heard the joyous cry:  “Land, land!”  I tell you it made the roughest thank God.  In the evening we saw the lights of the beacon.  It made us all rejoice when the pilot came on board our ship.  The next morning we were ordered to throw our straw beds into the water, and cheerfully we obeyed; but yet we had to stay two nights on the ship.  We landed on the 30th of June at Baltimore.

    From Baltimore to Columbia, Penn., we were forwarded by railroad, for the first time on our journey.  But we had hardly time to realize the glorious manner of flying through the country, until our glory was at its end again.  In the evening we had to leave the cars and walk over a bridge, two miles long, over the Susquebanna.  We were placed in canal boats again, like a flock of sheep, from thirty to thirty-five persons in a boat of twelve feet length and about seven feet width.  We could not all of us sit down at the same time.  Our boats were each drawn by one horse.  At Harrisburg the boats with all the freight on them were loaded on cars, which was done by running the cars into an excavation under the canal.  At Huntingdon our boats were again set into their element.  We moved through laughing fields, over some hills and through others.  We saw log-houses and finely dressed ladies in front of them, milking cows.  At first we thought that it must be some holiday; but later we learned that American women always wear their Sunday clothes.

    Whenever any of our party stepped out to buy victuals, the boatmen used to let them walk along side the boat for three or four miles, before they would give them a chance to step in again.  On one of these occasions, when several of the victims were completely tired out, I took a hatchet and threatened to cut the rope instantly, to which the horse was hitched.  This made them stop, and from this time trouble was ended.  On the morning of the 9th we reached Pittsburg.  As we moved into the city, we sang one or two of the Swiss songs, which drew the windows full of hearers.  A great fire has destroyed about 1,200 buildings of this city this spring.  But if the work goes along for a few months more, as it has done so far, there will hardly be a trace of the destruction left.  Americans are quick.

    A steamboat forwarded us from Pittsburg to Cincinnati in one week, and our captain gave us an opportunity here to witness the barbarous custom of running one steamboat into another, much to our terror and indignation.  The other ship was badly damaged.  Cincinnati has now 72,000 inhabitants, they say.  A great many of our party, misled by the cheapness of meat, bought more mutton here than could be used, . . .

. . . and we had to throw it into the river next day.  The last two nights we have also made intimate personal acquaintance with another American evil, the musquitoes.  They are little, long-legged flies, which draw the blood out of a body, and leave a certain poison in exchange, of which the parts will swell up.

    On the 23d of June we came to St. Louis.  Here we expected to receive news from the two experts, that had been sent before us to select a place for colony.  But instead of that we heard that they were probably killed by the Indians.  We rented rooms in the city for a month, and moved into them, with all our baggage, two or three families into one room.  After some days however we received a letter from W.H. Blumer, of Allentown, that our experts had gone to Peru, Ill., and it was thought best to send two messengers after them.  Jacob Grob and I were chosen.  We took passage on a steamboat that went up through the Illinois river.  But we made more experience in suffering than we liked.  The water was low and our steamer run aground many times, which caused long delay.  We had no money to pay for a cabin, and had to lay on trunks or on the floor, the mosquitoes feasting on us and nearly killing us.  Mornings we were as swollen, tired and scabby as poor Job.  We lost several days, sticking fast in the sand at five or six different places; only an iron patience could keep our spirits up.  Finally the captain concluded that the ship had to be left altogether.  Eight sailors entered a rowing boat and brought us in this way the last five miles to Peoria.  The fact that several of them were drunk and required the help of others to keep them in the boat, did not  accelerate our progress any.  From Peoria we were obliged to walk seventy-five miles to Peru.  The fare by stage was $5, which we could not afford to pay, and no boats were going.  We traveled through a country, the sight of which is able to encourage the most down-hearted.  We saw innumerable herds of cattle grazing on the rich prairies, corn fields in full splendor, pleasant groves and charming little log houses, scattered here and there.  But however modest the place of abode may be, the people are able and willing to furnish a good meal on short notice.  We arrived in Peru the 3d of August, and learned that Messrs. Durst and Streiff had been here, but had gone to Wisconsin.  Now we were indeed in a worse situation than ever.  No money, no friends, no knowledge of the country.  But we found a helper in our distress.  The Lord has gleaners all over his earth.  A certain J. Freuler, working there, was not only willing to lend us the necessary money to go by stage to Galena, but he also concluded to go with us.  We went by the way of Dixon, Forreston and Freeport to Galena, on a miserable wagon, but drawn by excellent horses.  (In Europe they have luxuriant stage coaches and very poor horses.)  At Galena the aim and object of our search was again thirty miles from us.  They have gone to Mineral Point, we were told.  And when we came to Mineral Point the same thing was repeated.

    But the directions became more certain and definite.  They have bought land on the Little Sugar river, thirty-two miles east of here.  There we found them.  And in the meantime the colonists at St. Louis had received news of the whereabouts of Durst & Streiff, and they came up the Mississippi to Galena, and reached there the same night that we returned--the seekers and the seekers' seekers.  Hail, Columbia!  O, the joy of meeting again!  We all made for our new home, the men on foot, the women and children on wagons.  Even this second tour had its difficulties.  We missed the road, or rather the directions (there was no road) several times.  But at last we got there.  It was the 15th day of August, 1845.  Every earthly trouble has its end, but most generally a new trouble links its beginning to that end." [Here Mr. Durst's day book closes.  It was of course written for friends in the old country, and describes things from an European stand point.]

    Here they were.  "New Glarus" shall be the name of this colony.  It is a blessed country.

Little Sugar river is full of fishes, that feel very much like being at home in spite of the absence of the "Lord of creation," or perhaps because of the fact.  Deer with number, rabbits in abundance; they came to inhabit these hills and valleys long ago, without the leadership of any Switzer.  Walnuts, hickory nuts, blackberries, wild grapes are in great plenty.  There is no need of starving.  "Our meat market," says one of the settlers, "was round about us in the woods and in the water.  Our cooking was done under the great dome of heaven.  But our first house was a poor concern.  It was a shanty 12x50 fet, just wide enough to hold two rows of sleepers.  It was quite a spectacle to see us go to bed.  Those that slept on the hind end had to lay down first, and this respective order had to be observed, until all were disposed of for the night.  If one had the misfortune to have to step out n the night (which occurred very frequently, for our stomachs naturally revolted against unsalted fish), it always created quite an uproar.  'Can't you keep off from my pillow?'  'O, you stand on my toes!'  'Ou! ouch! you ___!'  Who is here again?'  Such remarks would be thrown at him both ways, and by them we could hear how far or near he was.  The shanty was built in a hurry.  The boards were hauled from Galena.  All the fresh air that we cared for had access through the slits.  The sides warped in and out, giving the wind a chance to blow all kinds of minor melodies, reminding us of home.  Some of us had brought umbrellas from Switzerland, and we were glad to use them 'in the house' every time it rained.  But we erected quite a number of log cabins before winter set in, which were occupied by two or three families each, and gave better satisfaction.

     "For our clothes we were dependent on what we could earn or find at other places.  Many a woman went to Monroe to wash, and carried her wages back in the shape of old clothes for her family.  Even several years after, when we first assembled at our log church, the men went in shirt sleeves, through which their elbows looked out inquisitively.  And one of the most accomplished ladies made her appearance at a funeral service in a pair of old men's boots, that had been picked up in the streets of Galena, and brought to her as a present by a gallant landsman.  Children's clothes were economically cut out of old bed clothes."

     There were several squatters in the neighborhood--Armstrong, Greenwood, Slater, Morley, Britton, Harvey, Lemon, who are often gratefully mentioned by the colonists, as having aided them in many respects during the first years.  But the fight for an existence was a hard one, although it did not require more than one year, until they could live on the products of their own land.  They broke small pieces of land and raised wheat, which they threshed with hickory sticks.  But as soon as they had a surplus, they tried to find a market.  And what did they find?  Wheat sold for thirty cents a bushel in Milwaukee, and it cost twenty-five cents to get it there.  This was slow business to make up money for even a pair of boots.  This they stood for several years, and the general impression was, that they could not stay and make any headway, other than merely providing for their daily wants in the most primitive manner.  But in 1850, when the railroad came as near as Janesville--forty miles--they commenced to think that the land was worth having.  Than the entering period came.  Fifty dollars would buy a forty acre piece at the land office in Mineral Point, and every $50 that could be raked up went to the Point.  This excitement must be observed in order to be understood.  Several neighbors would often cast their eyes on the same forty.  The one that could make up $5o first was the victor.  Sometimes it was a close shave.  It happened more than once, that a man, after he got wind that his neighbor was about going to the Point the next day, started in the night and bought the land before the other came.  The land entering

period was not the most favorable for cherishing friendly and neighborly feelings.
     The school at New Glarus was commenced under great difficulties.  One of the scholars of the first English school describes the same as follows: The place where the school was taught was the largest and best house in the settlement, that is to say, a log-house about 18x20, a private house, the one room being kitchen, sitting room and dining-room of a large family, and school-room at the same time.  The bed in it was the general depository of all scholars' books, slates, dinner pails, hats, caps, mittens, etc.  Mr. Kilroy, the teacher, had us seated on benches all around the room.  He ordered us to learn all together at once.  Every scholar studied spelling, reading and writing after his own method, and at his own time.  The only command of the teacher was, Chinese-like, that every scholar must learn aloud.  He walked up and down in the room, stick in hand, and punished the disobedient, who did not speak up loud.  When he was tired, he would demand and take room of the length of his body on one of the benches, and try to sleep.  Then we would learn pretty loud, so loud that Mrs. Schmid, who was cooking and taking care of her children, would emphatically raise her large wooden pot-ladle, and declare in full force and earnest, that she would certainly put a stop to this noise.
     The teacher was boarded around, and was treated as nobly as possible.  One of the ladies remembers now, that she borrowed a coffee cup for him, so he might drink his coffee from a cup, instead of dipping it with a spoon out of the pan with the family.  Whether this was sincere courtesy, or whether she was afraid of the tobacco juice, hanging on his mustache, would surely be an impertinent question.  Mr. Kilroy did not teach but two terms.  Since that the schools of New Glarus have advanced with the times.  A new school house was built in 1849, and a fine bell was presented for it, by friends of the colony from the old home.  When the bell was rung for the first time, on a Sunday morning, just after it had been hauled from Milwaukee, by Mr. Baumgartner, it was on the ground, on an elevation just behind the school house, and the people standing around it were moved to tears.  Now-a-days, it must be said, there is a great amount of bell-ringing done at New Glarus; but it leaves the great majority of the people cold, up to the heart.  Worldly matters are predominant.
     The town of New Glarus has been a wheat-growing district for many years.  Those hill-sides and plateaux have in many instances stood the abuse of being plowed and sowed with wheat for twelve or fifteen successive years.  Little else was raised during the time of twenty years, for 1850 to 1870.  But when the price of wheat came down, after the close of the war, when the hill-sides were cut up by numerous ditches, when the arable portion of the fields was washed away in many places, and above all, when the "chinch bugs" appeared, and ate up the wheat crop year after year, then the farmers were forced to think of the next thing on the programme.  The old system had to be abandoned.  "Aut Caesar aut nihil!" was the alternative of the captives of the old Romans, when the point of the sword was on their breast.  So it was with the farmers of the hilly part of Green county.  "Either cheese or nothing!" and happily we got the cheese.  The old wheat fields were seeded with clover and grass.  Cows were put on them.  Cheese factories were built.  After the fact was proved, that there was a ready market for cheese, it only took five or six years until cheese-making was the main branch of work for the whole farming population.  At present, no less than 800,000 pounds of cheese are annually manufactured in the town of New Glarus during six or seven months.  This does not only pay better, but the farms are constantly made more productive.
     The grubbing and breaking of the land has not ceased yet, and will probably not, until every

available piece of land is plowed and turned into meadow.  Fortunately nature has furnished some stony hill-sides and ravines, where they can do no better than let the timber grow, or else they could shave the whole town bald.  An another important fact, tending to leave some bunches of timber, is, that the sons and grandsons of the first settlers are not quite so ambitious to change the face of the earth, as their fathers were in their days.  Fruit trees have never done well.  As a rule untime frosts will destroy the blossoms of the apple trees, and the trees themselves will die soon.
     A vineyard was started in 1860, by Mr. North, formerly of Alsace, a great grape district of Germany.  Mr. North's vineyard has been a success.  It now counts 1,800 plants covering about one acre, and has yielded as much as 500 gallons of wine in one season, 300 being the average.  The many large and commodious barns are another pleasant feature of the town of New Glarus.  Generally these barns are built on hill sides, with drive-ways from the backside into them, some twelve or fourteen feet above the hay floor, thereby greatly reducing the work of unloading hay.  In the stone basement there is room for sixty or seventy, and sometimes over 100 head of cattle.