Ebenezer Hyslop, Crossmichael and Osseo, Wisconsin.

OBITUARIES: Ebenezer HYSLOP, Osseo, Trempealeau Co., WI.
In the Osseo News from the Osseo, Wisconsin paper (dated April 20, 1921) it states:

Ebenezer Hyslop, whose death on April 11, 1921, was announced last week in The News, was born on August 24, 1829, on a farm in the Parish of Crossmichael in Kirkcudbright county Scotland and he was therefore in this 92nd year. The past few years his eyesight has been failing and for some time before his death he was blind and practically helpless. He was married in 1852 and a week later came to the United States and in 1859 came to Osseo where he has since resided. His wife died November 30, 1899. To this union was born twelve children, three of whom died in infancy and one, Mabel (Mrs. Ray Slye) died April 11, 1911, in Seattle. The children who survive are Robert, Anne now Mrs. Wm. Gilbert, Barbara now Mrs. James McIntyre, Agnes now Mrs. A.L. McKenney of Osseo, James of Price, William of Blair, Andrew of Lake City, Minn. and Margaret now Mrs. O.J. Bunn of Seattle.

The funeral was conducted Wednesday from the Congregational Church by Rev. Harry Millford of Seymour and was largely attended. The remains were laid to rest in the Osseo cemetery beside those of his wife.

Mr. Hyslop has several times written interesting articles on early days for The News and the history of Osseo is the history of Mr. Hyslop. No more fitting obituary of a grand life could be given of him than the following memories dictated by him in May 1916:

May 16, 1916

According to the request of some of my family I will write a short sketch of my life.

My father was a farmer so I was born on a farm in the Parish of Crossmichael in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, Scotland, on the 24th day of August, 1829. At the age of 32 in the year 1832 my father died leaving my mother, at the age of 22 with four small children, the eldest Janet, about 6 years old, the youngest, Jane, about 9 months; so the farm had to be given up and mother went back to her parents taking the two youngest, Jane and myself with her. Janet went to my father's parents and my brother, Andrew, to one of my father's brother's, where he lived until he reached manhood.

Between the age of 17 and 18 I learned what would here be called a carpenter trade, but it was coarse country work and was always distasteful to me.

On the 5th day of March, 1852, I was joined in marriage to Miss Anne Gillespie at her parent's home in the Parish of Colvend in the same Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. My brother was married the day previous. For years we had been planning to come to America, so those marriages were planned in preparation to that effect. On the 13th day of March 1852, one week after, our marriage, we left old Scotland for Liverpool. In the party was my mother, brothers and sisters and my wife and myself. We sailed from Liverpool March 17 to New York, landing April 14, 1852.

In 1855 we came from New York to Wisconsin where I have made my home all these years. On arriving in Milwaukee in the fall of 1855 I received, along with my brother, employment at building bridges on what I think was called the Menomonee river which empties into Lake Michigan. There were three small bridges being built near Wauwatoso. When those were completed we came on to the Wisconsin river where there were three larger bridges being built. At that time what was then called the Milwaukee Mississippi R.R. trains were running to Madison but no farther; the grading was done to near the Wisconsin river. So we had to walk from Madison to Hayworth where we staid all night, next day crossing the river and again walking to what was then Richland City, where the Bridge Building Co. had their headquarters. Bridge building being work we did not care for, we got work in the spring of 1856 on an Academy which was being built by Mrs.Slisby. The Academy was afterwards moved to Spring Green. Mr. Slisby went to war where I afterward heard he was killed.

In the fall of 1859 I engaged with R.C. Field, who was then moving to Osseo, to work for him for one year, he was to furnish me a house, which is now part of the house occupied by Ellis Johnson. When we came to Osseo what is now the Onaka & North Western R.R. and passes through Augusta, Fairchild, etc. was all surveyed and staked to run down the south side of Beef river from Milwaukee to St. Paul and at that time was called the West Wisconsin R.R., but railroad fashion they changed the course and Osseo was left in the lurch.

When we arrived in Osseo on the 14th day of October of 1859, there was one hotel which had just been completed and one other small house occupied by W.H. Thomas and family, that being all the dwellings at that time. That house is now a part of Erick Nelson's residence. The hotel which stood where Bert Hume's blacksmith shop now stands was afterwards burned down.

In the winter of '59 and '60 we resided in a small room and bedroom in the north east corner of the hotel and where my daughter, Mrs. McIntyre, was born, the first white child as far as was known, born in Osseo. In 1860 the school house was built . Mr. Field receiving the contract for building and I built the first school house in Osseo, now the Town of Sumner Hall.

One object of coming north from Richland was to get land for a farm. With that object in view after arriving in Osseo I went down over the ridge in to Elk Creek where there was lots of land but nothing else so came back and went up into Thompson Valley; there were farms and land but no claims either. The next was to go over into what is now Tracy Valley. There I took a claim on the S.W. 1/4 of Sec. 20 and in the summer of '61 got 20 acres broke but sold it to John Tracy for just what the breaking cost me. I had two or three claims after that but at last took up a homestead on Sec. 4, one mile north of the depot. I being a carpenter worked at my trade and let the boys and my wife do the farming part, working wherever work was to be get in and around Osseo, Thompson Valley, Scot Valley, etc. In those days it was work or starve so I preferred the work.

In the winter of 1864 I went to St. Louis and was sworn into the Quartermasters Department of the Army and was sent to Nashville, Tenn., but was transferred to the Railroad Department and worked there until March 1865.

In the winter of 1859 and '60 a Scotchman, Wm. Allison, in traveling through Osseo called on us in our rooms at the hotel, he was on his way home to Durand and Scotchmen like we got acquainted. In '61 I thought I would like to go down that way and take a view of the country but found nothing better in that direction. A few years later, I went again, traveling both times on foot the forty miles, going through Mondovi where at that time there was a flour mill but little else; now a nice city.

In 1886 after finishing the Hishey Field residence, now the York Inn, I took a notion that I would like to see Florida and in the late winter I went there. An old acquaintance of mine was living there. I stayed until May or June when I took a contract to build a house but Oh my, such lumber, right from the saw and heavy and the green shingles we had to hoist them up to the roof by tackle. We scarcely made wages, I preferred Wisconsin and came home. All that summer of 1886 I could hardly drag myself around.

In going by train through, I think, a part of Georgia, I saw peach trees all in bloom. In going again from Jacksonville to Samford, I think it was called in Florida, the road went past orange groves, the first I had seen. Oranges scattered all over the ground and hogs amongst them as I thought eating them. Oh such a shame thought but found afterwards that oranges did not shun the hogs taste. Such an idea. Poor hogs.

In the summer of 1889 my eyesight failed me so I had to submit to an operation to give me what little sight I have. The operation consisted of making an artificial pupil and was performed by Dr. Reynolds of Rusk, afterward of Eau Claire.

As far as incidents in my life are concerned they are, so far, just the common humdrum sort as are likely to be. One I may relate in my early life. I had not been long at my work as an apprentice in Scotland when one day I happened to be working at the door of our shop when a girl and young boy passed along the road in front of the shop; they had just about passed when I looked up and as I saw the girl something seemed to say "My Wife." I soon afterward got acquainted with her and in the course of a very few years she came to be really my wife. The boy who was with her was her brother Will who afterward came to America and settled in Maine where in 1899 my son, Will, went with his mother to visit them. She had not been in very good health for a long time and thought the trip would do her good but in about ten days after she arrived home she died on November 30th, leaving me alone after nearly 48 years of wedded life.

My first vote was in 1856 for John C. Freemont for president. He was defeated by Jas. Buchanan. As a general thing I have always voted with the Republican Party but of late years on the Progressive side. I never was a good "Stand Patter." I was for Progress.

In 1856 Thos. Love, who had come with his family from California, and I went to work in Eau Claire with a Mr. Hutchins who at that time was building himself a new house there. I worked there until August when W. H. Thomas asked me to come back and work for him on the new mill which I did, working there until it was finished. Working again in Eau Claire in 1870 and 1871.