The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin

But if the Germans declined the role of foresters, by refusing to settle in a partially isolated town like Eagle, the Yankees did the same. New Yorkers and New Englanders were scarcer there than Prussians or Hanoverians. The town was occupied mainly ... Read more

But if the Germans declined the role of foresters, by refusing to settle in a partially isolated town like Eagle, the Yankees did the same. New Yorkers and New Englanders were scarcer there than Prussians or Hanoverians. The town was occupied mainly by families from Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana - with a few from Virginia and North Carolina; in short, by men who had enjoyed or endured a recent experience as frontiersmen in heavily wooded regions. So many belonged to the class described by Eggles ton in The Circuit Rider, The Hoosier Schoolmaster, and The Graysons, that the name Hoosier Hollow, applied to one of the coulees, seems perfectly normal To the Yankee, we may be sure, the heavy woods in the town Of Eagle were a sufficient deterrent to settlement there. The Germans shunned it either because they disliked heavy clearing when it could be avoided and when no compensating advantages Offered, as was the case near the lakeshore; or because they disliked the risk and the expense of crossing the river to market; or for both of these reasons combined. Probably either reason, singly, would have sufficed. Less