Petition for aiding in the construction of the St. Croix and Lake Superior Railroad Company

Mem no 13a

Petition of J. Ritchie and 76 other legal voters of Douglas County for authority to aid in the construction of a railroad.

27/1 Pres by Mr. Barron

Judy Com, 6/2 Rep back with no. 32 s

27/1 Jud Com 26

AG Bertrand H Miller John Lean Pete S Bradshaw [illegible] Bela Brooks H.D. Smith William Kimball James Collier

To the Legislature of the State of Wisconsin

The undersigned citizens of the county of Douglas in said state respectfully petition your honorable body to pass an act to authorize the county board of Superior of said county to pledge the sum of one hundred thousand dollars to the St. Croix and Lake Superior Railroad Company their successors or assigns on any other company or corporation which shall fulfill the following conditions preceeding [illegible].

First such company shall complete a railroad connection with the cars running to and from the Bay of Superior in said county through the navigable waters of the St. Croix Rivers or Mississippi at or in the vicinity of Geneva or some points to which steam boats of said rivers make regular trips to and from St. Louis Missouri. Second such railroad shall be even the nearest practicable route and be the first completed railroad with the cars running thereon between Lake Superior and said rivers as aforesaid.

That said act provide for the submission of the proposition to the legal voters of said count at the election for town offices in the years 1844 and if a majority of the votes cast shall be in favor of said pledge the county board of supervisors of said county shall in the first day of January after the completion aforesaid issue to such company or then assign a bond or bonds in the usual form of public securities for one hundred thousand dollars payable thirty years thereafter, annual interest therein at eight

percent per annum payable at the office of Treasurer of State.

Your petitioners respectfully represent that the area of Douglas County is about 1,548 square miles situate in the extreme northwest corner of the state commanding the western extremity of Lake Superior with an unexceptionable harbor the present population is between 500 and 600 casting legal votes there are subject to taxation nearly 100,000 acres of land the aggregate value of taxable property is $461,500. The commerce of Superior during the year 1843 was not less than $45,000 if exportations and half as much of importations in the aggregate about $100,000. Copper mining was commenced during the last summers and vigorously prosecuted in five several localities at the head of this Lake, with common trade and mining thus in actual progress your petitioners believe that upon the completion of the railroad in question three quarters of the land in the county will be brought under cultivation or occupied for mining purposes augmenting their tax basis to 700,000 acres and $5,000,000 upon which a tax of two miles on a dollar will provide for the interest upon the pledge and provide for the ultimate redumption of the bonds as the basis increases before their maturity.

Believing that the lands granted to aid the construction of this railroad can only be secured for that and by such material aid as hereby prepared your petitioners earnestly solicit early action in this behalf and they will as in duty bound pray &c.

Dated at Superior, Douglas Co., Wis. Jan 4, 1864

Richard Relf Geo Holcomb W. Cranwell Thompson Ritchie D. Geo. Morrison Louis Rochefort

E.C. Clarke A.A. Hood Jas. S. Ritchie G.W. Gates Emerson Chase Charles Few Ourn Sheridan R.H. French James Newton William Conner LL Wheelock AC Waynard Joseph Cadolly HW Shaw D Schuth Wm Wanderle John B Lohan Jr John Collins Timothy Salmon George Larson D.C. Hohly Jas. Mayer Bertrant Schreiber John B. Lefevre Dent Louis Dubrevil Joseph Berard V.A. Thomson M.D. A. Gallagher George Walker William Crawford Robert McClean [illegible] Gouge Angus A. Ladieu James Edwards James Buchanan Eber H. Bly George R. Shuntz John Wallen Daniel Waterman John H. Bradehum M Howenstein E.E. Wheeler Isaac Young M.E. Wright William Shooster R.C. Coburn John Defoe Charles Lord Jas. R. Snyder James Wright Thed. Clark John Smith Francis Brenderfast Antoine [illegible] John Scott Sigfried Sylvester Washington Ashton Carl [illegible] Jackson Engles John Keys Orrin D. Treadwell H.M. Paytan Louis Ruehl