| East Dubuque Local Area History Project | |
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by
M. M. |
The first settlers came to East Dubuque around the time of Julien Dubuque in the late 1700’s. Galena attracted most of the people in the early days. There were a few miners and farmers, but East Dubuque didn’t have a lot of people until the 1850’s. |
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| D’Bois was a fur trader. He had a trading station and built a living cabin across from Catfish Creek. He probably came with Julien Dubuque in 1788. Indians probably respected D’Bois, because they left his cabin alone and it stood for a long time. People around here told stories that he lived to old age. | |
| George Jackson was an early settler. We know that because he had a smelter on an island. He probably smelted ore from Julien Dubuque’s mines. | |
| The Frentress family was the first farm family in the Menominee area. They mined lead for a while in Beetown, Wisconsin. Then they leased a farm. | |
| The Mattox family were the third settlers. They settled one mile east of the Frentress family in 1833. More and more people started coming into community and started building cabins. | |
| Two men named Boxley and Thompson had a farm near the Frentress family. They were planting corn in a field when the Black Hawk War started. They were scalped by Indians. They were the first white people to die in East Dubuque. | |
| Thomas Jordan settled in the actual town area of Dunleith, later called East Dubuque. He ran a canoe ferry for the large numbers of miners and prospectors who were constantly coming and going from Galena. Before the town was called Dunleith, it was called Jordan’s Ferry. | |
| The first school was taught in one of the D’Bois cabins. It was taught by a man named Kennedy. | |
| The first religious meetings were held in a school house in 1838. They called their church the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1838-1839. | |
| More and more settlers came and farmed and mined. Dunleith didn’t really become a town until the railroad came. | |
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Bibliography Smoky Tales of Bygone Blazes. East Dubuque Volunteer Fire Department, 1971. History of Jo Daviesss County. Chicago: H.F. Kett & Co., 1878. |
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