Hartford, WI USDA Benefits

Hartford is a city in Washington and Dodge counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 14,223. All of this population resided in the Washington County portion of the city. The portion of the city in Dodge County consists of only industrial/commercial parcels. Located approximately 38 miles (61 km) northwest of Downtown Milwaukee and 22 miles (35 km) from city limits, Hartford is located on the outer edge of the Milwaukee metropolitan area.

In the early 19th century, Hartford was inhabited by the Potawatomi and Menominee people, who had a trading post on the Rubicon River and a village on the eastern shore of Pike Lake. In 1831, the Menominee surrendered their claims to the land to the United States Federal Government through the Treaty of Washington, and the Potawatomi surrendered their land claims in 1833 through the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, which (after being ratified in 1835) required them to leave the area by 1838. However, when the first White settlers arrived in 1843, they found that the Potawatomi were still living at the Pike Lake village. Some Native Americans remained in the area and were referred to as “strolling Potawatomi” in contemporary documents because many of them were migrants who subsisted by squatting on their ancestral lands, which were now owned by White settlers. Eventually the Potawatomi who evaded forced removal gathered in northern Wisconsin, where they formed the Forest County Potawatomi Community.

In July 1843, Timothy Hall became the first White person to purchase and settle land in the Hartford area, although when he arrived he found a Canadian named Jehial Case squatting near his land. Later that year, German immigrant settlers John Theil and Nicolaus Simon surveyed the Hartford area and determined that the Rubicon River would be a suitable location for a hydropowered mill. The following year, James and George Rossman joined Simon and Theil’s venture. The men purchased forty acres abutting the rapids of the Rubicon River and constructed a dam and a sawmill that harnessed the river’s power to make lumber from the old-growth forests covering the area. In 1846, a third Rossman brother, Charles, arrived in Hartford and constructed a gristmill to process grain grown by the settlers. On January 31, 1846, the land was incorporated as the Town of Wright, before the name was changed to the Town of Hartford in February 1847, after Hartford, Connecticut. Many of the original settlers were Yankees from New England and were part of a wave of farmers who headed west in the early 1800s, though some other settlers—including Theil and Simon—were German immigrants. The early settlers cleared land for farming; constructed roads; created a post office; erected churches, starting with the First Congregational Church of Hartford which formed in 1847 and followed by Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, and Catholic churches in the 1850s; and established businesses to serve the town’s agricultural economy, including equipment wholesalers, general stores, and dry goods dealers.

The La Crosse and Milwaukee Railroad was constructed through the community in 1855, and while rail connections were important to Hartford’s growth into the early 1900s, the company failed in 1861. Many local landowners had taken out mortgages on land for the railroad in exchange for company shares. The company’s failure left the landowners with mortgages to pay off, creating a local crisis in which some families were forced to sell their farms. The Hartford Home League newspaper started during the crisis to advocate for the farmers.

The community’s early years saw increasing tension between the settlers and Native Americans. For example, on August 25, 1861, a group of approximately a dozen Native Americans was living near Horicon Marsh, northwest of Hartford. They owned a horse, which got loose and wandered into a neighboring settler’s cornfield. The settler shot and killed the horse, and the Native Americans vowed to take revenge. The story traveled quickly, becoming increasingly exaggerated as it spread. By the time the story reached Hartford on August 26, the dozen peaceful Native Americans had been transfigured into an army of 5,000 warriors preparing to massacre the settlers in the area. Many able-bodied men in Hartford armed themselves, formed a war party, and set out to fight the Native Americans. But when they arrived at Horicon Marsh they found that the threat was entirely fictional. The incident caused widespread fear among the local Native American community as well as in the surrounding settler communities.