Page:The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin.djvu/8

 Canadian. When, in 1836, a territorial census was taken, it was found that the three areas named had an aggregate population of nearly 9000, of which more than 5000 was in the lead region included in the then county of Iowa. The Green Bay region (Brown County) was next, and the Prairie du Chien settlement (Crawford County) smallest.

The census, however, recognized a new county, Milwaukee, whose territory had been severed from the earlier Brown County. It was bounded east by Lake Michigan, south by Illinois, west by a line drawn due north from the Illinois line to Wisconsin River at the Portage, and north by a line drawn due east from the Portage to the lake. In terms of present-day divisions, the Milwaukee County of 1836 embraced all of Kenosha, Racine, Walworth, Rock, Jefferson, Waukesha, and Milwaukee counties, nearly all of Ozaukee, Washington, and Dodge, a strip of eastern Green County, and most of Dane and Columbia. In that imperial domain the census takers found a grand total of 2900 persons, or almost exactly one-fourth of the population of the entire territory.

Two significant facts distinguish the Milwaukee County census list from the lists of Brown, Crawford, and Iowa counties—the recency of the settlement and the distinctive local origin of the settlers. These people had only just arrived, most of them in the early months of 1836. One could almost count on his ten fingers the individuals who were there prior to the summer of 1835. In reality they were not yet "settled," for most of the rude claim huts—mere shelters of the pre-log house stage—were haunted at night and shadowed at noonday by men only, resident families being still rare, though many were on the lakes, at the ports of Milwaukee and Chicago, or on the overland trail which was to end at the cabin door. It was the prophecy of new communities, not the actuality, that the census taker chronicled when he recorded the names of claim takers with