"Grandpa Russell's Own Story of His Life"

""This is to certify that the following is the correct story of my life as I remember it and I desire that the history be written while I am yet here to verify same and hear it read. This is the ninety-second year of my life and thanks to a divine providence and still in the full possession of my senses. While sitting in my comfortable chair surrounded by my beloved children and grandchildren, I take great pleasure in dictating the following bestowing my blessings on all my children to the Fourth Generation.

I was born in Templemore, County Cork, Ireland, March 16, 1825. Our family consisted to two sisters and three brothers, Joseph, William and Micheal. My earliest recollections are having spent a happy boyhood, up to the time my Mother died. When I was fourteen of age, my father brought us to America. We sailed on the Tyrene, by Capt. Allocob. We landed at Quebec, then via the St. Lawrence to Montreal.

The English had sheds built along the shore for the comfort of incoming passengers. English agents there wanted my father to go into Canada to take up land and offered us a yoke ofr oxen and a year’s provisions, besides a quarter section of land for each of us boys, but my father said, “No.” I cannot agree to that. I have living long enough under the English government and now that I am so near to free American, there I will go.

From Montreal, we came down the St. Lawrence River thro Lake Erie to Buffalo, thence by boat thro the Lakes to Milwaukee. There we were met by our uncle Jim Lynch. He had been in Boston a few years ahead of us. My father had written to him to get us a piece of land somewhere in the West. He came to Milwaukee, then a small village on Lake Michigan. He had bought us a small family farm in Washington County thirty miles Northwest of Milwaukee. He had been there the previous winter and with his companions had cleared eighty acres in anticipation of our coming. There were no other people within ten miles of us. My sister, seven-years-old, and two other women were the only females in the whole Township. Before leaving Milwaukee, we bought two cows which we drove out.

Lynch and friends had built us a small log house, thatched with the bark of trees. We arrived in June. We had brought a few sacks of potatoes from Milwaukee which we planted in holes dug in the ground with four spades we had brought from Ireland. The spades were the only implements in the entire section. We had an abundant crop.

Our neighbors later were the two Mountains, “Big Billie” and “Little Bill,” Jim Murphy, Andy O’Brien, Tom Mangin and Tim Garvey. This was in in 'Town Nine', Merton was the nearest town, ten miles away.”

I married when I was 28 years old to Mary Martin on Easter Sunday, March 23rd, 1857 by Rv. Fr. Hoobs (in Hartford, Wisconsin).""

(Patrick Russell eventually moved to Iowa in 1870 and purchased a 160-acre farm near Fredricksburg where “we heard the wolves howl around the log house.” He died surrounded by family on February 2, 1917).

* Russell, Patrick, “Grandpa Russell’s Own Story of His Life,” notes dictated to Mary Loretta Russel Lynch, July 10, 1916.