History repeats itself in making the Indian War of 1832 the impulse to
a great new expansion movement among American pioneers. Just as the
Pequod War of 1638 by familiarizing the coast settlers of Massachusetts
with the rich lands of the interior enticed them westward, and as the
Seven Years’ War destroyed the last obstacle to western and northern
expansion in New England, so in a very real sense this war made the
beginnings of the agricultural settlement in Wisconsin. Immediately
after the Black Hawk War the survey of the lands in southern Wisconsin
began. In the four years, 1832 to 1836, the entire region from the
Illinois line north to the Wisconsin, the Fox, and Green Bay, and from
the Mississippi to Lake Michigan, was checked off into townships and
sections. Hardy, resourceful government surveyors, with their crews
(usually two chainmen and one axman) traversed every square mile,
whether prairie, forest, valley, or bluff. In 1834 a land office was
opened at Mineral Point for the sale of lands in the western portion of
Michigan Territory (as it was then).
The ranges of townships numbered 1 W and 1 E, of which the townships
numbered eight (Muscoda and Pulaski) bounded by the Wisconsin, were
for some years the northernmost, were surveyed by Sylvester Sibley in
1833. The next year those lands were offered for sale and some tracts
along the river were actually sold to private individuals. Among the
purchasers were Thomas Jefferson Parrish and Charles Bracken, who
were well-known lead miners and smelters living farther south. Others
among the early land owners of Township 8-1 W have been identified as
mining men.
[Illustration: THE LEAD REGION