The most characteristic and comprehensive theme in all American
history is that of the westward movement. From the time of the first
feeble landings at Quebec, at Plymouth, and at Jamestown, the history
of our country has been characterized by a steady westward surge of
the population, reaching out eagerly for new lands to conquer, and in
the process carrying the banner of civilization ever westward and
establishing successive new communities and states. The present
generation of students of American history has not been unmindful of
the importance and interest which attaches to this westward movement,
and has not failed to accord it, in the main, all due recognition.
With the doings and deserts of our pioneer farm, canal, railroad, and
city builders, our hewers of wood and drawers of water, in a word,
historians have long made us familiar. Unfortunately, however, too
little attention has been given, and too little recognition accorded,
the equally important service of those among our western pioneers who
laid the foundations of our spiritual and intellectual civilization.
That man may not live by bread alone was stated long ago on excellent
authority. The hewing down of the forests and breaking of the
prairies, the building of houses, highways, and cities were all
essential steps in the process of transforming the wilderness into an
abode of enlightened civilization. Equally essential was the
establishment of institutions of learning and religion, and the
development of a taste for literature and art. The blossoming of these
finer fruits of civilization inevitably tended to sweeten and refine
the society of the pioneers, which otherwise, engrossed in a stern
physical struggle with the wilderness, must have become hard and gross
in character.
Fortunate indeed is the pioneer community which numbers among its
settlers intellectual and spiritual leaders fired with enthusiasm and
endowed with ability. Fortunate it was for Wisconsin when in the very
year of her birth as a territory, Increase Allen Lapham cast his lot
for the remainder of his life with her. The service rendered by the
intellectual aristocracy of pioneer Massachusetts and the other New
England colonies has long been accorded ample recognition. The valiant
labors of Increase Lapham in the service of the state of his adoption
have largely gone unheeded and unrewarded to the present moment. Yet
it is safe to predict that when the future historian shall come to
scan the record of the first half century of Wisconsin’s history as a
territory and state, he will affirm that no man brought greater honor
to her or performed more valuable services in her behalf than did the
modest scholar, Increase Allen Lapham.
The frontier has ever been proud of its self-made men, esteeming
chiefly, not who a man might be but rather what he was able to do.
Lapham was a true frontiersman in this respect at least, that he was a
wholly self-made scholar. He was born in March, 1811, at Palmyra, New
York, “two miles west of the Macedon locks on the Erie Canal.” His
father, Seneca Lapham, was an engineering contractor, the pursuit of
whose profession necessitated frequent family removals. Thus, in 1818
the family was located at Pottsville, Pennsylvania, where the father
was employed on the Schuylkill Canal; two years later he was back on
the Erie Canal and the family was residing for a second time at Galen,
New York; the next few years witnessed further removals to Rochester
and Lockport in New York, and to several points in Ohio.
The boy, Increase Lapham, was evidently a precocious youth. At
thirteen years of age he “found frequent sale” for his drawings of the
plan of the locks his father had assisted in constructing at Lockport.
About this time he gained employment, first at cutting stone for the
locks and then as rodman on the canal. While engaged in stonecutting,
he wrote in later years, “I found my first fossils and began my
collection. The beautiful specimens I found in the deep rock cut at
this place gave me my first ideas of mineralogy and initiated a habit
of observation which has continued through all my life. I found
amusement and pastime in the study of nature, leading to long walks in
the country, and as I found no others of similar tastes these rambles
were usually without companions.”
When fifteen years of age the youth followed his father to Ohio where
he worked for a short time on the Miami Canal, removing at the close
of the year, 1826, to undertake similar employment at Louisville. At
this time, apparently, he first attracted the attention of members of
the world of scholarship, for we find the renowned scientist,
Professor Silliman of Yale, writing to thank him “for the liberal
spirit which you manifest in encouraging a work designed to promote
the public good”--the work in question being the _American Journal of
Science_, of which Silliman was the founder and editor. Within a few
months the boy made his first contribution to scholarship by sending
to Silliman, for publication in the _American Journal of Science_, a
comprehensive description of the canal around the Ohio Rapids.
At this time he was only sixteen, and his opportunities for schooling
had been exceedingly scant. Yet his habits of observation and his
powers of reasoning and of expressing himself in clear and convincing
English might well be coveted by the average college undergraduate of
today. A convenient illustration of these powers is afforded by
Lapham’s journal entry for October 24. 1827:
A smoky day. Mr. Henry, the engineer [of the canal], is of
the opinion that the smoke occasioning our Indian summer, as
the smoky weather is called, does not originate in the
burning prairies in the West, or in other extensive fires;
but that it is from the decay of vegetation. (If it is
possible for vegetables to be converted into smoke without
combustion this will appear very probable!!!!)
He relates an instance of a very smoky day at New Madrid
being followed by an earthquake; this he supposed to be the
smoke that had arisen through the ground. I told him that I
supposed it was owing to a peculiar state of the atmosphere
which was unfavorable to the decomposition of smoke; to this
he made no reply.
The years of Lapham’s youth and early manhood from 1827-36 must be
passed in rapid review. Two years in all were spent on canal work at
Louisville; over three more followed at Portsmouth, Ohio; in April,
1833, the Ohio State Board of Canal Commissioners installed the young
engineer (now twenty-two years of age) as its secretary at an annual
salary of $400. Thereafter for three years his headquarters were in
the state capitol at Columbus, his work being that of secretary of the
canal commission. Meanwhile the elder Lapham, advised and financially
assisted by his sons, Darius and Increase, had abandoned the calling
of canal contractor and settled upon a farm near Mount Tabor. This
became the permanent family home, and here Seneca Lapham acquired a
well-deserved repute among his fellows both for his sobriety of
character and for his progressive ideas and practices with respect to
farming operations. In the years under review Increase Lapham
continued to pursue with enthusiasm his scientific studies and
investigations, the range of his interests and observations widening
with every passing year. Relations of acquaintance and friendship were
established with a large number of scientific investigators, all of
them, doubtless, much older than was Lapham himself. The study of
botany and zoölogy, and investigations with respect to more scientific
methods of farming were begun. In a communication on “Agriculture in
Ohio,” contributed to the _Genesee Farmer_ in 1833, the modern
doctrine with respect to rotation of crops and scientific renovation
of the soil through the use of fertilizers was laid down. A third of a
century later, but still over a third of a century in advance of the
recent movement for the conservation of the natural resources of the
country, Lapham followed up this general line of thought by writing
and publishing as a Wisconsin legislative document a comprehensive
argument in favor of the conservation of the state’s forest resources.
Happy had it been for both state and nation if heed had been given in
time to the vital problem to which he thus early called attention.
To a practical application of the Jacksonian theory of spoils politics
was due the migration of Lapham from the capital of Ohio to the
new-born town of Milwaukee in the spring of 1836. In later years he
humorously explained that he was “reformed” out of office and
employment in Ohio; at the time, there is reason to believe, the blow
was not considered in a humorous light. Early in his canal career
Lapham had worked under Byron Kilbourn, who now had thrown in his
fortunes with the rising young village of Milwaukee. As a leading
promoter of the coming metropolis Kilbourn had extensive business
projects in view, among them that of procuring the construction of the
Milwaukee and Rock River Canal, which would, it was fondly believed,
go far toward realizing for the nascent city her dreams of
metropolitan greatness. There was much demand for men possessed of
engineering ability, and Kilbourn, who had conceived a friendship for
Lapham which was to prove lifelong, now brought him to Wisconsin on a
salary of $1,000 a year. Thus Wisconsin became his permanent home, for
he left Milwaukee only to remove in old age to a farm near Oconomowoc.
At the mouth of the Milwaukee River Lapham found, on his arrival on
July 3, 1836, fifty houses where a few months before had been but two
or three. In coming from the older settled portion of Ohio to
Milwaukee he had entered a new world. Chicago was still in the height
of its first mad speculative boom and conditions at Milwaukee differed
only in detail from those which prevailed at Chicago. Indeed, on
reaching Detroit on his westward journey, Lapham wrote to his brother:
“I am now, and have been since I arrived at Sandusky, in what might
very properly be called the world of speculators: everybody you meet
is engaged in some speculation; everything you hear has some
speculation at the bottom. The hotel where I am now writing has
suspended on the walls of the barroom plats of new towns; I have added
the ninth.” No wonder the impecunious young man, engulfed in such an
atmosphere, proceeded, immediately upon his arrival at Milwaukee, to
purchase three town lots for $5,000, payable “one-half in one one-half
in two years.” How did he expect to provide the money to meet this
obligation? He did not expect to provide it; he “bought them for the
purpose of selling them again at a higher price.”
Lapham, however, was never designed for a business man, and he never
acquired more than a very modest competence in life. I have spoken of
the speculative mania which then pervaded all the newer West merely to
illustrate the sincerity of the young immigrant’s devotion to
scholarship, from the pursuit of which even the thrill and
intoxication of perhaps the greatest boom the country has ever
witnessed could detain him only momentarily. Within two weeks of his
arrival at Milwaukee he records that he has made a map of the county
(possibly a professional matter) and “done a little botanizing.” Even
earlier, while at Detroit en route to the West, he had taken time to
write Professor Asa Gray an offer to collect for him specimens from
the new region to which the writer was going. “Let me entreat you to
pay particular attention to my _pets_, the grasses,” wrote the noted
botanist in reply; “I will see that you have due credit for every
interesting discovery.” Six weeks after his arrival at Milwaukee
Lapham wrote to another botanical friend that he found many new plants
at Milwaukee; and that “in order to inform my friends of what plants
are found here and to enable them to indicate such as they want I
think of publishing a catalogue of such as I find.”
Thus was conceived the idea responsible for the first publication of a
scientific character within the bounds of the present state of
Wisconsin, for before the close of the year there issued from the
office of Milwaukee’s newly founded newspaper a _Catalogue of Plants
and Shells, Found in the Vicinity of Milwaukee, on the West Side of
Lake Michigan_, by I. A. Lapham. It would probably be safe to affirm
that this was the first scientific work to be published west of the
Great Lakes, at least to the north of St. Louis. For in literary
matters Chicago, whose commercial progress Milwaukee never succeeded
in equalling, must yield the palm of leadership to her early North
Shore rival. Leaving out of consideration one or two lyceum lectures
which were printed after delivery, the earliest Chicago imprint of a
scholarly character of which I have any knowledge is Mrs. Kinzie’s
well-known story of the Chicago massacre, published as a pamphlet in
1844; and this, a reminiscent family narrative, does not deserve to be
regarded as scholarly in the true sense of the term.
In 1838, two years after his arrival, Lapham began the collection of
material for a gazeteer of Wisconsin. Published at Milwaukee in 1844,
it constitutes both Wisconsin’s first book of history and the state’s
first home-made book of any character to be published in more durable
binding than paper. So attractive were its merits that an unscrupulous
rival author, Donald McLeod, more adept at wielding the scissors than
the pen, promptly and brazenly plagiarized a large portion of its
contents for his _History of Wiskonsan_, published, appropriately
enough, by “Steele’s Press” at Buffalo, in 1846: and a copy of this
fraudulent publication was recently offered for sale by a dealer, with
due encomiums upon its rarity and worth, for the modest sum of thirty
dollars.
Thus far we have followed Lapham’s career in due chronological order.
Some thirty years were yet to elapse before his death in 1875, years
crowded with earnest, self-effacing labors in the cause of
scholarship. In what follows I shall treat of his various scholarly
interests and achievements in topical order, without regard to
chronology.
Although himself self-taught Lapham’s active interest in educational
institutions persisted throughout his life. In 1843 he secured the
adoption by the territorial legislature of a resolution to Congress
petitioning a grant of land for the purpose of establishing in
Wisconsin an institution for the instruction of the deaf and dumb, and
blind, and an asylum for the insane. He is the real father of the
Milwaukee public high school system. In 1846 he donated thirteen acres
of land lying within the city limits for the purpose of establishing
the first high school. In the spring of 1848 he was commissioned by
the city as its agent to secure a loan of $16,000 in the East for the
building of schoolhouses, and he made the long trip to New York and
Boston on this public mission. In the same year he proffered the newly
authorized University of Wisconsin the gift of “a pretty extensive
herbarium” of 1,000 or 1,500 species of plants. In March, 1848, by a
meeting of citizens held at the council house “it was deemed expedient
to establish a college in this city” and an executive committee of
five townsmen was appointed with full power to consummate the desired
object. Lapham was one of the five men charged with this weighty
responsibility, and out of this movement proceeded the “Milwaukee
Female Seminary,” which today is represented by the Milwaukee-Downer
College, one of the state’s noble institutions of higher learning. In
August, 1850, as president of the executive board of the college,
Lapham had the satisfaction of delivering to its first two graduates
their diplomas. When, in later years, he was offered a professorship
in the school he declined the position, modestly explaining that his
lack of education and of teaching experience rendered him unfit to
discharge the trust.
With our own State Historical Society his connection was long and
honorable. Before coming to Wisconsin he had actively engaged in the
work of the Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society. He hailed with
joy the formation of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in 1849
and was one of the committee of three which drafted its first
constitution. The society being formally organized, he at once began
to labor to promote its collections. He served as its vice-president
for twelve years, and as president for ten additional years. With the
Smithsonian Institution he established relations of mutual helpfulness
almost immediately upon its organization. Of his relations with this
and other learned institutions more will be said in connection with
certain lines of investigation which he carried on.
In 1849 Dr. Lapham proposed to the American Antiquarian Society of
Worcester, Massachusetts, to make an extensive survey of the mounds
and other ancient remains in Wisconsin provided the society would
defray the actual outlay of money involved. The enterprise thus
proposed was adopted by the Antiquarian Society, as a result of which
the survey was made, the fruits of it being given to the scientific
world a few years later in Lapham’s _Antiquities of Wisconsin_. This
work, published under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, is
filled with the author’s drawings, beautifully executed, of the
numerous earthworks and mounds he had located. Students of American
archeology will always owe the patient author a heavy debt of
gratitude for having carefully plotted and described these evidences
of aboriginal habitation in Wisconsin before the work of destruction
which inevitably attended the advance of white settlement had gained
much headway.
Thus in many departments of learning--in geology, botany, conchology,
in meteorology, history, and archeology--Lapham busied himself,
acquiring repute among the scholars of Europe as in America, all the
while earning his simple living by such professional work as he
permitted himself the time to do. Perhaps no single achievement of his
possesses more of interest to the world in general or has directly
added more to the well-being and comfort of every one of us than his
work in securing the establishment of a weather-service bureau by the
national government. It cannot be claimed that he fathered the idea of
such a service and its attendant possibility of foretelling weather
conditions far enough in advance to make the information of real
commercial value. Neither can Robert Fulton be credited with having
fathered the idea of the steamboat. Yet we rightly regard Fulton as
its real inventor, since he was the first to demonstrate the
practicability of the idea. So with Lapham and the weather bureau. For
twenty years he urged upon the Smithsonian Institution, the Wisconsin
legislature, and other agencies of society the practicability and the
immense advantage of such a government service. For twenty years, as a
private individual he made records and observations, seeking to
demonstrate his claims. But in the nature of the case (as Lapham
repeatedly pointed out) only some powerful agency like the national
government could take the many observations at different points
necessary to the success of the work, assemble their results, and make
them known throughout the nation in time to be of practical use to the
public. Finally, the persistent seeker after the public good succeeded
in attracting the notice of men powerful enough to compel the
attention of Congress. As a result the law for the incorporation of
the signal service was passed. How the result was achieved by Lapham
may best be told in the words of a man to whom he had appealed for
assistance. At the meeting of the National Board of Fire Underwriters,
held in New York in April, 1875, a resolution to appoint a special
committee to correspond with the United States Signal Service
Department in relation to wind as an element in fire risks was under
consideration when Hon. E. D. Holton rose and said:
There is a little man who lives in my town about so high
(holding his hand a little lower than his shoulders) who
lives in an obscure part of the town, and is known to
comparatively few people in the town. You go to his house
and find it filled with all the evidences of science,
specimens from the vegetable world and the mineral world.
Going to London a few years ago I was given by this little
man a letter of introduction to Sir William Hooker,
custodian of the Kew Gardens, which secured for me eminent
entertainment and influence. Five years ago as I was about
to leave my house to go to Richmond, Virginia, to attend a
meeting of the National Board of Trade, he came to my house
and had a resolution drawn to be submitted to the National
Board of Trade, declaring that the national government
should organize a service to _look after the winds of the
continent of America_.
When I came to Richmond I presented that resolution. It
received a most eloquent second from the late General
Wolbridge, an eminent citizen of New York. The National
Board of Trade immediately passed the resolution. As soon as
it was passed I sent it to my friend, General Paine, then
member of Congress from my district in Wisconsin, and in an
incredibly short space of time for that august body--which
is supposed to have at least as much red tape as the
National Insurance Company--it was passed. I did not expect
that the wind question would meet me at this angle of the
insurance trade, but it seems it has.
That gentleman I will name. I rise to make these remarks and
I wish to speak his name in this connection, because out of
his labors so persistent, in his humble house, so unknown to
his countrymen--for he is better known in foreign circles of
science than in his own country--and through his labors and
instrumentality, this thing has been brought into its
present shape. His name is Dr. Increase Allen Lapham of
Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
And how, it may be asked, did Lapham’s fellow-men requite his lifelong
labors devoted to the public good? The answer which must be made
affords much support to the proverbial belief in the ungratefulness of
republics. When in 1870 Congress passed the bill providing for the
weather-signal service, its execution was entrusted to the chief
signal officer of the army. By him Lapham was employed for a short
time as special assistant in the War Department at a yearly salary of
$2,000. When he sent home (he was stationed at Chicago) to his
daughter the proceeds of his first month’s wages, she wrote to her
brother as follows:
Last Friday father sent home $128.03 to be deposited as the
first money of any amount he ever received for any
scientific occupation (regular salary at least) and Thursday
afternoon I was down town and met B. He said he had been
around among some of father’s friends and collected $100 to
make father a life member of the Chicago Astronomical
Society--(You know this society owns the “big telescope” at
Dearborn Observatory).
I forbear to quote the daughter’s delighted remarks which follow; more
profitable will it be for us to consider for a moment the bitter irony
of this situation. After more than forty years of zealous public
service to receive so pitiful a salary, his first tangible reward, and
to have this discontinued within a few months time! To be fitted both
by inherent tastes and lifelong training to enjoy and profit by
membership in such an association, and yet unable, because our
countrymen estimate the services of scholars so low, to pay the paltry
membership fee! Here, indeed, is the cross on which in the United
States today we crucify scholarship.
One other matter and I shall conclude. Before he left Ohio Dr. Lapham
had labored to induce the legislature to make provision for a
geological survey of that state. From the time of his arrival in
Wisconsin he strove as an individual to carry out such a survey here.
Necessarily in order to do it thoroughly and to publish its results
the power of the state must be brought into play. At length in 1873
provision was made by statute for a geological survey of Wisconsin and
Governor Washburn appointed Dr. Lapham chief geologist to have the
direction of the enterprise. The work was pushed vigorously and
efficiently throughout the seasons of 1873 and 1874. Suddenly, in
January, 1875, Governor Taylor removed Dr. Lapham in order to make a
place for one of his spoils-seeking supporters. According to the
_American Journal of Science_ the new geologist’s “sole recommendation
for the position was political services, no one having ever heard of
him before as acquainted with geology or any other science.” Thus
finally did our state requite its first scholar--first certainly from
the viewpoint of chronology, and probably first from every other
viewpoint. “Knowing that time, which cures all things,” wrote the
three assistant geologists he had chosen two years before, “will do
you ample justice, and feeling most strongly the irreparable loss that
the state has sustained in the disseverment of your connection with
the survey, we remain with the most sincere respect, Your obedient
servants.” As an indication of the quality of the assistants selected
by Dr. Lapham it may be noted that one of the men who thus testified
this appreciation of their deposed chief was Thomas Chrowder
Chamberlin, who has been for many years chief geologist of the
University of Chicago.
Time indeed cures all things, notwithstanding that the mills of the
gods grind slowly. Of Dr. Lapham’s spoilsman successor as chief
geologist of Wisconsin, it may still be said, as at the time of his
appointment, that his reputation as a scientist yet remains to be
made. Governor Taylor, who made the removal, sleeps in silent Forest
Hill within sight of the capitol where formerly he ruled a state;
while in the holy of holies of the beautiful new state capitol, the
governor’s reception chamber, in the midst of famous soldiers,
explorers, and legislators, an eminent artist has chosen to depict the
application of scientific knowledge to the benefit of mankind in the
person of Doctor Lapham seated at his desk, before him an open
manuscript, and on the wall nearby, supported by two children
typifying the winds, his map of the United States, showing the first
storm traced across the country. More recently still, prompted by the
urging of citizens of the locality, the federal government has given
to the highest eminence in Waukesha County, overlooking the beautiful
lake region which Dr. Lapham so loved in life, the name of Lapham
Peak. Time is slowly proving his worth. More fitting memorials than
these he could not have asked.