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Kellogg, Linus Porter.

[Letter of a frontiersman in Wisconsin, with manuscript map.]

Falls City, Dunn County, Wisconsin, 17 September 1862. Folio letter (31 x 19.5 cm), white paper. 6 pp., including manuscript map with note on verso; ms. map size, 19.5 x 29 cm. Docketed in margin by Ulysses Kellogg. With original envelope.

A lively letter evoking the Wisconsin frontier scene, including a detailed manuscript map based on personal observation and an account of an Indian raid scare.

Born in West Meredith, New York, Linus Porter Kellogg (1833–1864) ventured to the mid-West, apparently in the late 1850s, and in 1864 joined the Union Army in Iosco, Minnesota, some two years after composing this letter. Tragically, Kellogg sickened during his service and returned home to New York, where he passed away in 1864 at the age of thirty.

Residing in Falls City, Wisconsin—a county founded in 1854 and organized in 1857—Kellogg writes to his parents back in West Meredith. Addressing several questions they have put to him in a recent letter, Kellogg begins with an account of fruit in the region: “We have excellent melons. Both water & musk (and bye the bye) that puts me in mind of the fact that I must eat one now right off—I’ve done it, & it was tip-top an old fashioned rusty coat musk melon. I just wish you had a piece.”

After noting that he has not resided in Dunnville since teaching music there, Kellogg proceeds to offer a lively account of Falls City and its relation to nearby shipping waterways, the logging and wheat industries, and so on:

[Falls City] has one hotel, one store, two black smith shops by name, one carpenter shop (my partner Wiggins), one saw mill, one grist mill… I believe it is two miles from the river, situated on Spring brook which is large enough to drive logs in from near the head which is about 16 miles from the north.

Kellogg is leasing some five acres of land, which he describes in detail, then remarks, “if I live in this country I wouldn’t take one thousand dollars for it!” He relates that his house is small and “not very convenient,” but notes his wife, one Bessie Trip, “is a good housekeeper to cook.”

Remarking that he “should like to write as the Ho[o]sier say a heap more but haven’t time,” Kellogg nevertheless launches into the first of two postscripts, in which he describes a fairly chilling Indian raid scare:

We have had some imaginary trouble with the Indians here (Chippawa), so much so that that the people all skedaddelled off the prairie, week a-go Sunday, a man came down the road running his horse and yelling Indian saying that they had come 500 strong and over killing every body. Consequently a great stampede of women & children I was sent off with one load. I went about 5 miles… and dove under a tree and waited for Indians & things. About night we got news that it was a false alarm; then we sneaked off home; but I rather fight Indians than to be sent off with a load of women crying & wringing their hands &c it makes me mad and I can’t help it.

Kellogg’s second postscript addresses the Union draft currently underway in Dunn County, which has furnished some 102 men—a number which exceeds the quota. He remarks with fervor:

I wanted to go like a dog but Bessie would not consent to it; it seems to me as though the Kelloggs ought to be mixed up in this fuss and help put down this un-holy rebellion. But I’m compelled to remain ingloriously at home. I suppose it’s all right but I don’t like the style seems as though I ought to be there and have two or three shots & I know when I shot something [it] would drop.

Kellogg packs numerous engaging details into his map, including the towns of Chippewa Falls, Durand, and Lake City; the Chippewa River and various tributaries; roads, lakes, falls, saw mills, islands, a compass, measurements in miles, landings, and a few interesting notes: “Lots of big trout here”; “Beef slough”; “River navigable for boats”; “The largest saw mills I ever saw they can saw one hundred and twenty five thousand feet of lumber per day,” and so forth. The following note appears on the verso, attesting to the originality of the map’s composition:

This map may give you some idea of the country. It’s very imperfect of course as I draw it from memory. I’ve been all over the ground that’s marked out and the general features are correct. There is innumerable small creeks that I did not put down. I have no map to draw from. It’s all from personal observation; we are only about 30 miles from the Mississippi.

A compelling letter and map from the Wisconsin frontier.

REFERENCES: Kellogg Family Descendants at dcnyhistory.org

CONDITION: Good, light staining, some separations along old folds of letter and map, but no losses to the text.

Item #5373