In 1845, former governor James Doty finished up work on his dream home-- a large log cabin built on Doty Island. The story of Doty is intertwined so much with the story of Neenah-Menasha that without him you probably wouldn't have seen the community develop in the same way. Doty's cabin, now preserved as a Neenah museum, gives an insight into the life of a former federal judge, territorial governor, and congressman. Doty also became a land speculator, perhaps best known for persuading legislators to move the state capital, from Belmont to a town site he was developing called "Madison." Doty had given pieces of land to the principal leaders of the Legislature. He was very clever and a man with great foresight, even though he may not have been entirely ethical. Doty was apprenticing to a lawyer in Detroit and became the secretary to Governor Cass, the governor of the Michigan Territory, which at that point included Wisconsin and Minnesota and Iowa. And in 1820, he joined a canoe expedition led by Governor Cass and they traveled through the Great Lakes, down the upper waters of the Mississippi, and then up the Wisconsin River, and get to Lake Winnebago. And it was a beautiful, placid, smooth body of water and, of course, we know that it was even more swampy than it would be today. And they come upon Doty Island at the north end of Lake Winnebago. We call it Doty Island now-- well because James Doty ultimately homesteaded it. Doty Island split the Fox River into two channels. And rapids on both sides were a sure sign of water power. Here, Doty could envision an ideal place for a settlement, where the river would eventually provide both transportation and power for manufacturing.
Native American drumming
At the time of Doty's visit, a Ho-Chunk village known as "Menashay" stood on the Island led by Chief Hootschope, also known as "Four Legs." Across the south channel stood an immense Elm where local tribes would gather in council. A collection of artifacts, now displayed in Neenah's city hall, shows abundant evidence of the presence of Native Americans, who have lived in the area for thousands of years. Just northwest of Doty Island, treaty negotiations began that would result in the Menominee Nation ceding a large portion of their land to the U.S. Government. But another part of that Treaty of 1831 was the establishment of a education program, as it was called at the time, for the Menominee. The education program established a village in around where Neenah is today to teach farming and animal husbandry. And so, there's a series of block houses Hewn timber, squared-off timber log houses with a dovetail type joint on the end. There would have been a blacksmith shop appointed and also a mill. It doesn't last very long, about two years. In 1836, there is another treaty that is negotiated, known as the Treaty at the Cedars, where the Menominee cede additional territory, lands now north of the Fox River, including the lands where this mission is located. In Madison, Governor James Doty heard about plans to sell off the Menominee village and contacted his friend and political supporter, Harrison Reed. Harrison Reed was the editor-publisher of the Milwaukee Sentinel. And he had been a great supporter of Doty. And apparently, Doty tipped him off as to when the land would be released. Harrison said, "I don't really have any money." He was being paid by his subscribers with things like chickens. It was a barter system. And he was just scrambling. But this was an opportunity for him to become something. Reed placed a winning bid on the village lands and all the structures that were there. Even though the federal law said that you had to pay for it in cash up front, Reed, apparently, was able to get it on credit. Reed connected with an investor in upstate New York named Harvey Jones, a glove manufacturer from Gloversville, who dreamed of building his own town. They struck a deal to own all of the land together and split the cost of improvements. At the site, Charles Doty, son of the governor, and Harrison Reed's brother, Curtis, another supporter of Governor Doty, all pledged to help Jones with the building of a dam across the South Channel. You had this core of men revolving around Governor Doty, but none of them had any money. And this is just, like, a recipe for disaster. Mr. Jones came in with the money, and the other people in the group-- other four people-- were happy to take his money. Things were okay for, like, a honeymoon period, and then things went downhill very fast after that. Shortly after Harrison Reed mapped out a village called Neenah, Harvey Jones drew up his own settlement right next to it and began selling lots. Jones refused to pay Reed his share of the land sales because Reed owed him money for the cost of improvements, like the dam. Jones had the ability to create a debt that Reed couldn't pay. Because of the physical nature of this location, with two branches of the Fox River draining out around an island, out of Lake Winnebago, two water powers, there was an alternative. Leaving Neenah and Harvey Jones on the South Channel, James Doty and his son, Charles, raised funds to buy up hundreds of acres on the North Channel, and with Curtis Reed, they platted out a village they called Menasha. Back in Neenah, Harrison Reed announced that he was suing Harvey Jones and that he still owned a share of all of the lots, which couldn't be sold without his agreement. Reed was able to stop the development in Neenah, and it lasted for about 13 years. When Wisconsin achieved statehood, James Doty was elected to Congress. The federal government gave the new state a large land grant, to fund work on the Fox-Wisconsin waterway-- a series of locks, dams, and canals on the Fox River. The government would have to choose where to build the channel-- Neenah or Menasha. You can understand that when the federal government decided to build a channel, that meant big money because it meant people would move to that area, businesses would move to that area. When Menasha won the bid, bitter feelings persisted for years afterward. There's a story that Doty actually turned the map upside down, and that's the reason the North Channel was selected. I don't know that that's true. That's part of the folklore, if you will. These were the things that became the seedbed for longstanding debate between the communities. Each village fought to stop the township government from paying for improvements to the other. Finally, Neenah's village president, J.B. Hamilton, petitioned the county board to split their township in two. And that's how we have Town of Neenah and Town of Menasha, with the island split by the County down the middle, like Solomon would have divided the child in the biblical story.
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