Potters' Emigration Society
N 43° 38.187 W 089° 25.531
16T E 304349 N 4834354
In 1849, Thomas Twiggs was sent by the "Potter's Emigration Society" to buy 50,000 acres and equipment for the emigrant farmers. Part of that purchase was land near this location.
Waymark Code: WM1E5X
Location: Wisconsin, United States
Date Posted: 04/17/2007
Views: 26
Near here in 1849 Thomas Twiggs began a settlement of unemployed potters from Staffordshire, England. To help farmers on both sides of the Fox River reach his store and blacksmith shop at Twiggs' Landing, he operated Emancipation Ferry, named to express his hope that here they would find freedom from the poverty of the Old World.
Historic Marker Erected in 1961.
In 1850 The Potters Society counted 60 houses inhabited by nearly 100 families. They had 28 oxen, three horses, "waggons" and plough harrows; a smithy and two stores. One letter to friends back home described a home "amongst the woods and Indians, at the west end of civilizations, with a chain of colonists down to the river...Mosquitoes are the greatest drawback (but) noone comes for rents."
Letters full of bitterness and blighted hopes also went back to England. They told of hard work, lack of money, and the diffculty of bringing supplies from Milwaukee or Watertown, along with charges of mismanagement against Society officials. Pottery workers quit contributing to the emigration fund, payment of emigrants' debts dewindled, management was dismissed and the Society died.
A letter sent in January, 1851, sums up the situation: "So much for Twiggite cultivation...The Emigration Society is "done up", the Society's store is sold up for debt, therefore the bubble has burst."
A few emigrants returned to England, and some moved to become craftsmen again in Wisconsin towns and villages. The majority stayed near the Fox River, worked through their troubles and passed their land to their sons. (Source; Places and Faces in Marquette County, Wis, Vol. III, Fran Sprain)
This Wisconsin Historical Marker can be found when doing part of sloughfoot's "Trail of the Serpent" geocaching series located along the Fox River. Based loosely on a book of the same title written by Robert E. Gard and Elaine Reetz, 1973.
County Highway CM, 5 miles Northeast of Portage at County Highway T.
County: Columbia
Location: Other
MarkerID: 106
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Visit Instructions:
- A picture of the marker with your GPSr or you holding your GPSr.