Waukesha, WI USDA Benefits

Waukesha (/ˈwɔːkɪʃɔː/ WAW-ki-shaw) is the seat of government of Waukesha County, Wisconsin, United States. It is part of the Milwaukee metropolitan area. Its population was 71,158 at the 2020 census, making it the seventh-most populous city in Wisconsin. The city is adjacent to the Village of Waukesha.

The area that Waukesha now encompasses was first settled by European-Americans in 1834, with Morris D. Cutler as its first settler. When the first settlers arrived, there was nothing but dense virgin forest and wild prairie. The settlers laid out farms, constructed roads, erected government buildings and established post routes.

The original founders of Waukesha consisted entirely of settlers from New England, particularly Connecticut, rural Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, as well some from upstate New York who were born to parents who had migrated to that region from New England shortly after the American Revolution. These people were “Yankee” settlers. In other words, they were descended from the English Puritans who settled New England in the 1600s. They were part of a wave of New England farmers who headed west into what was then the wilds of the Northwest Territory during the early 1800s. Most of them arrived as a result of the completion of the Erie Canal as well as the end of the Black Hawk War. When they arrived in what is now Waukesha County, the New Englanders laid out farms, constructed roads, erected government buildings and established post routes. They brought with them many of their Yankee New England values, such as a passion for education, establishing many schools as well as staunch support for abolitionism. They were mostly members of the Congregationalist Church though some were Episcopalian. Due to the second Great Awakening some of them had converted to Methodism and some had become Baptists before moving to what is now Waukesha County. Waukesha, like much of Wisconsin, would be culturally very continuous with early New England culture for most of its early history.

By 1846, the area was incorporated as the Town of Prairie Village (soon changed to Prairieville). On February 8, 1847, the town changed its name to “Waukesha,”. On January 10, 1852, the settled area once known as Prairieville was separated from the town of Waukesha, and incorporated as a village and in 1896, incorporated as a city. The first appointed mayor of the newly incorporated city of Waukesha was John Brehm, who served from January to April 1896. Welsh immigrants settling in Waukesha as early as the 1840s, and large numbers arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when they were one of the largest ethnic groups in Waukesha. Around the same time there was also relatively large amounts of Serbian immigrants settling in Waukesha, many more of which arrived after Yugoslav Wars. In the late 1800s a large number of Belgian families arrived in Waukesha as well.

“Waukesha” is thought to be an Anglicization of the Ojibwe word Waagoshag, the plural of fox (waagosh), or the Potawatomi name Wau-tsha. Wau-tsha (sometimes written as Wauk-tsha or Wauke-tsha) was the leader of the local tribe at the time of the first European settlement of the area. This is confirmed by accounts of Increase A. Lapham, an early settler and historian of the region. According to Lapham, the Algonquian word for “fox” was pishtaka. Cutler also told visitors about Wau-tsha, who was described as “tall and athletic, proud in his bearing, dignified and friendly.”