Person Page - 1398

     Amelia May Haseltine had 3 with 2 living in 1900 children.

     Wife is reported as Etta (or Ettie) I. Russell but that is incorrect. Etta Russell was the wife of a different Eben Finch who was the son of Lewis and Lucinda Finch and lived in Adams County. Adams County Wisconsin genealogy site has an obituary of the other Eber Finch, who was married to Etta.

     In 1917 History of Trempealeau County Wisconsin, 1917: Chapter 10: Recollections of Antoine Grignon -As transcribed from pages 129 - 136 (Eben D. Pierce, Wis. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, 1913, 110 - 136) I was born at old Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien, January 9, 1828. My father, Amable Grignon, who was of French and Winnebago descent, was born at Portage, Wisconsin; my mother, Archange La Bathe, was born at Prairie du Chien, of a French father and Sioux mother, being a cousin of Wabashaw, the Sioux chief whose village was located on the site of Winona, Minnesota. She was a sister of Francois La Bathe, the noted trader, long a trusted employee of the American Fur Company. Amable Grignon acted as interpreter for the Federal Government on various occasions, and was stationed for a number of years at Fort Crawford as interpreter for its commandant, Colonel Zachary Taylor.

There were three children in the family, Paul, Archange, and myself, and although our parents had but a limited education, they determined to give their children the best opportunities within their reach. So I was taken to Col. Zachary Taylor, who permitted me to attend the school conducted in the garrison, thus laying the foundation for an education.

I next went for two terms to a private school conducted by a Mr. Cady [Cadle], then John Haney became my teacher. There were no public schools in that day at Prairie du Chien, and the parents of the pupils in the private schools paid the teacher a certain amount each month for their instruction. I remember, too, my French teacher, a Mr. Gibault, who also taught English, and a lady by the name of Mrs. Crosby, who held school in her home.

When I was a little past twelve years of age I went to school to Rev. Joseph Cretin, a Catholic clergyman, who afterwards became bishop in St. Paul. By the time I was fifteen years of age I had a fair education in the common branches of English and was ready to go out into the world better equipped than most French Canadian boys of my time.

When I was fifteen years old I went to work for the American Fur Company under a sub-agent named Alexis P. Bailly, of Wabasha, Minnesota. I was sent out to Turkey River, Iowa. We went by wagon, fifty miles southwest of Prairie du Chien, where a store building was erected and trade opened among the Winnebago. A few months later I came back to Prairie du Chien, and went by the steamboat "Otter" up the Mississippi to Trempealeau, which was then known as Reed's Landing or Reed's Town. James Reed had married my widowed mother and I visited her at his home, a large log house near the river.

There were but a few families in Reed's Town. John B. Doville and family were living there. He had been conducting a wood yard over on the island opposite Trempealeau for a few years, having been sent in 1838 by Francois La Bathe to occupy the island and furnish cord-wood for the steamboats passing up and down the river. Joseph Reed, a French Canadian, accompanied him.

The real object in holding the island the island was to secure the fur trade, and to keep Wabashaw's band of Sioux from giving their trade to rival companies.

Doville was quite an agriculturist; he cultivated the land formerly broken by Louis Stram at the Swiss mission, and also broke up more on the flat near where the city park is now located. He sowed oats, wheat, flaxseed, potatoes, and beans. He has the honor, I think, of being the first farmer in Trempealeau County. Stram broke the first land, but did not sow any seed except for garden purposes.

Alexander Chenevert was living upon the site that afterwards became the old Grant place. Farther up the river near Fred Ford's present residence, lived the Bunnells - Willard and Lafayette. Willard lived here until 1848, when he moved across into Minnesota. Lafayette Bunnell had moved to Minnesota a couple of years before his brother Willard. There was another Frenchman here at that time by the name of Michael Goulet, who chopped wood for Reed, and worked at odd jobs whenever opportunity offered. He did not remain long, a few years perhaps, and then went farther north.

I worked for Mr. Reed, who was farmer for Wabashaw's band of Sioux at Winona, and as he could get home only occasionally I helped look after his stock, and built some pole fences for him in the fall of 1843, on what afterwards became the Van Engen farm. This was the first fence built in the county. Reed had considerable stock, several head of cattle, a bunch of ponies, and some blooded horses. They grazed on the hills, and out on Trempealeau Prairie, and required little attention summer or winter, although we always put up some wild hay for them in case deep snow should make the grazing difficult. Cattle suffered more during the deep snow than the horses, who could more easily paw the snow away.

In 1844 a Frenchman, Assalin, came to Reed's Town. He was a carpenter by trade, and manufactured for Mr. Reed the first wagon in the county, that is, he made the woodwork, but the iron had to be shipped up from Prairie du Chien. Besides carpenter work and wagon-making Assalin manufactured sleds and French trains.

In speaking of these early French settlers I must not forget to mention Peter Rousseau, who helped Reed build his house. Rousseau was an expert with a broad-ax, and hewed the logs for Reed's house. This had two stories, and was large and roomy, and served well its purpose as an old-fashion backwoods inn.

Reed kept a bar, and I have often seen travelers sleeping on the floor rolled up in their blankets. Beds were a luxury seldom indulged in at that period. Around the old-fashioned fireplace in Reed's inn was often gathered a strange and varied company - traders, surveyors, trappers, and hunters, and a few blanketed Indians. As they sat smoking by the blazing fire in the evening, you might have heard stories of adventure that would thrill the heart of the dullest listener.

About the same year, 1844, there came to Trempealeau (Reed's Town) a Frenchman by the name of Antoine La Terreur, who was a cabinet-maker. He manufactured chairs, bureaus, chests, and other furniture, and was the first in our county to do work of that kind. Some of the chairs he manufactured are still, or were a few years ago, in the possession of La Vigne in Cedar Valley, Minnesota.

In 1845, Michel Bebault came here and hired out as a wood-chopper over on the island at the steamboat wood yard. He was about the best wood-chopper I ever saw at work. Three years later Leander Bebault and John La Vigne came with their families to settle in Trempealeau. La Vigne bought a little piece of land up in the tamarack, but had not lived there long when he decided to move across the river into Minnesota, where he settled in Cedar Valley.

Joseph Reed became a mail-carrier, and I think it worth while to relate some of the hardships he underwent in performing his duty. His route lay along the Mississippi from Prairie du Chien to Wabashaw's village at Winona. At the latter place he met the mail-carrier from Fort Snelling, near St. Paul, and after exchanging mails the two returned to their respective starting points. The trip was made by canoe in summer, and by French train on the river ice in winter, and by pony with saddle-bags at times when neither canoe nor French train could be used.

One year, in the latter part of winter, early in March, I think, Joseph Reed started from Prairie du Chien with the government mail bound for Winona. When he arrived the carrier from St. Paul was not there. It was mild weather, so Reed concluded to proceed on his journey until he met his partner from up river. By the time he reached Holmes' Landing, the weather had grown considerably warmer, and the ice showed signs of breaking up. Still he pushed on, and urging his pony over the ice, sped away towards the north. On nearing Minneiska19 he heard the ice begin to give way - groan, crack, and move; looking about he saw that an island in the river offered his only place of escape from drowning, as the ice was fast breaking up. He made his way thither, and arriving in safety started to explore his new quarters. He had gone but a short distance when he ran across the St. Paul mail-carrier, who had likewise made the island in safety. By this time the ice in the river was moving fast, and before another day had nearly cleared. So there they were with little provision, shut off from mainland by a wide channel.

After their provisions gave out, they subsisted on rose-apples; they halloed in vain for help, but it was a sparsely-settled region at that time and no one heard them. After living on the island nearly two weeks, they were rescued by a party of Sioux who were coming down the river in canoes. The Sioux took the two mail-carriers into their canoes and left them at Holmes' Landing, where after two weeks of recuperation they resumed their routes. They were weak, emaciated, and nearly starved to death.

I remained in Trempealeau until the year before the Mexican War broke out, when I returned to Prairie du Chien and went to work in a blacksmith shop. When war with Mexico was declared, I enlisted in Governor Dodge's regiment of hoe guards, serving therein for a year. We did not go out of the State, but were held in readiness in case we should be needed. While in service at Prairie du Chien during the winter of 1846-47, a report came to our commander that the Indians were massacring the whites in the locality where Vernon County now is. We were ordered out and with great difficulty marched up through the deep snow to the supposed scene of murder. When we arrived we found the report was false; the whites had not been disturbed in the least, and no Indians had been seen in that region for a number of weeks. So we returned ingloriously to our quarters at Prairie du Chien.

After getting my discharge I went to work as clerk for the American Fur Company in their store at Prairie du Chien under B. N. Brisbois. I remained in their employ until June, 1849, when I decided to go north and took the steamboat, "Lady Franklin," for St. Paul.

I soon secured employment at Fort Snelling, helping to get up hay for the cavalry stationed there at the time. I drove team and helped stack for a few weeks, when a man from St. Paul came and asked if I would run a boarding-house and bar for him at that place. I complied with his request, and worked for him for two months; at the end of this time I went down the river in one of A. P. Bailly's boats as far as Wabasha, where I went to work for Bailly. he was postmaster, and I carried the mail to and from the boats and also worked in the store as clerk. While there I was appointed deputy sheriff, and served papers on a man who was accused of stealing goods from my employer. I had a search warrant and went and looked over the man's house, but found none of the stolen goods in his possession.

In the winter of 1849 Bailly fixed me up a big load of goods on a French train, with a pony to haul it down the river; I took my departure for the site of Fountain City, where there was a large camp of Sioux. I traded among them until the spring of 1850, when I loaded my goods in a canoe and made my way down the river and through the sloughs to the present site of Marshland, where there was also a Sioux camp. I sold my pony and train to the Indians and bought a canoe of them, and traded with them for a number of weeks. They had been trapping up Trempealeau River, and had a fine lot of beaver, otter, marten, mink, and muskrat pelts. I had for my store a Sioux hut made out of buffalo hides - as comfortable as one could wish. After the spring hunting and trapping was over I returned to Wabasha, but not until I had an opportunity of attending a medicine dance at Minneowah, not far above the present town of Homer, Minnesota.

In the early fifties I assisted H. M. Rice, S. B. Lowry and David Olmsted in removing two bands of Winnebagoes from a point near Sugar Loaf, Winona, and a point on French Island, a few miles above La Crosse, to the Long Prairie reservation in central Minnesota. A few months later I secured employment with the Hudson Bay Co. at Long Prairie.

In 1854, I returned to Trempealeau and remained at home with my family until 1856. In the latter year Nathan Myrick, the pioneer settler of La Crosse, wrote me a letter asking me to take charge as interpreter of his store at Blue Earth, Minnesota. Accordingly I went to Blue Earth and began work for Myrick. The Winnebago had meanwhile been removed from Long Prairie to the Blue Earth agency, and Myrick opened a store at the latter place secure their trade. Myrick told me to trust all Indians that were honest, but to look out for the rascals, and said, "You have traded with them a long time and know them well and so you know the goods ones from the bad ones." I trusted them to the amount of over $3,000, and when they received their government annuity I got all the money they owed me, or very nearly all; I think I lost less than ten dollars in dealing with them.

I remained at Blue Earth until winter and then returned home to Trempealeau. I did not like the Prairie country and I wanted to be with my family, although Myrick offered to fix up a place where my family could stay at Blue Earth.

In 1850, I married Mary Christine de La Ronde, a girl from Portage, Wisconsin. Fourteen children were born to us, six of whom are still living, three boys and three girls. The girls when they were young ladies were noted in this part of the country for their singing; one of them became a school teacher and was very successful in her work.

In 1881, Major Halleck came from Washington, D. C., to enumerate the Winnebago, and wrote for me to assist him in the work. We went to Eland Junction and enumerated Big Black Hawk's band,30 and then proceeded to Black River Falls; after completing the work there, we went to Portage and Kilbourn, and wherever we could locate a camp of this tribe. Next spring I went with Major Halleck to Stevens Point to make a payment to the Indians and was with him a year, and whenever a payment was made I helped to locate and get the names of the Indians on the pay-roll. I also helped survey the land above Black River Falls, and assisted in locating the Indians on their homesteads. I have acted as interpreter on various occasions for the Federal Government, and on matters of business have helped the Indians whenever I could. I have lived here most of the time since I quit work for Myrick, and have always made my home in Trempealeau, being away only on business for short intervals. I live in the same house that I bought in 1857.

     Mary Christine de La Ronde had 14 with 7 living in 1900 children.