Milwaukee Free Press – June 17, 1909

FIRST MILWAUKEE BOY

MR. ALLENDER ONLY CLAIMS TO COME IN THIRD

The Old Northport Resident Was Misrepresented – No Indian Blood in His Veins.

NORTHPORT, Wis., June 14 – To the Editor: Some weeks ago the Free Press was kind enough to print a communication from here about the first white boy. The Sentinel sent a reporter here who interviewed Mr. Allender and then wrote up and printed a three-column article that wholly misrepresented Mr. Allender and his claim. The Sentinel account makes Mr. Allender out to be an old one-eyed wagoner of the civil war and part Indian.

Mr. Allender served three years in the First Wisconsin cavalry. This regiment has always had the distinction of being the best regiment and of doing the most service of any cavalry regiment, either north or south in the civil war. Mr. Allender is a full white man. His father was Scotch-Irish; his mother, English-Dutch, and his eyes both of them are in as good condition as any man of his age. Perhaps the reporter interviewed some one else.

Mr. Allender does not claim to be the first white boy – not but what he is a white man, but because he does not want what perhaps belongs to Mr. Sivyer, Fowle or others.

The Allender bible record has been found, though in bad condition. The dates are perfectly legible.

Daniel Allender was born in Milwaukee, April 14, 1838, which would make him stand about No. 3 among the white boys.

Mr. Allender thinks that a wrong has been done him and he wishes the Free Press would help to put him right before the people. As you know how these old pioneers and soldiers feel and how proud they are of their record, and how they look back and talk of the old times long ago when they were in their prime and will tell us with a sort of mournful pleasure of the days and years of care and disappointment and sometimes of actual want. They take great pride in the thought that their nerve and endurance have brought them through so many hard places.

It does seem strange to look back and see the great changes that have taken place within the short period of one man’s life and see some of these hale, old hearty fellows still able to tell us all about it and dispute over the honors.

When I go to the large cities and meet the great masses of people moving along your streets I always recall the lines I read so many years ago; they run something like this:

Behind the squaw’s light bark canoe

The steamboat rocks and raves

And city lots are staked for salve

Above old Indian graves.

I hear the tread of pioneers

Of millions yet to be

The first low wash of waves where soon

Shall roll a human sea.

SHELDON BRADT.

Northport, Wis., June 15.

June’s Notes

- Solomon Juneau was the founder of Milwaukee and is the man for who Juneau county is named. He died Nov. 14, 1856. His nephew Joseph Juneau founded Juneau, Alaska.

- Byron Kilbourn, 1801 – 1870. Surveyor, land speculator, canal and railroad promoter, politician, b. Granby, Conn. He moved with his parents to Ohio in 1803, and left school at the age of 13 to clerk in his father's store. In 1823 he secured an appointment as an Ohio state surveyor, and for ten years was active in surveying canal routes in that state.

In 1834 he surveyed a portion of Manitowoc and Sheboygan counties, Wis., and in 1835 purchased land on the west bank of the Milwaukee River. To promote this town-site, Kilbourn helped finance the Milwaukee Advertiser, and, hoping to make Milwaukee a trade center, actively promoted the Milwaukee and Rock River Canal Co., which would have connected the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. He started the project in 1838 and was forced to abandon it four years later having dug only a mile. He also sponsored Milwaukee harbor improvement, boat building, the Milwaukee Claim Association, and the Milwaukee County Agricultural Society. In 1838 he and Solomon Juneau (q.v.), his townsite competitor, secured the union of Kilbourntown and Milwaukee village (Juneau's promotion on the east bank of the river). Differences soon arose over the bridging of the Milwaukee River, however, and the final settlement did not come until 1846.

- Kilbourntown is now the Westown neighborhood in Milwaukee. From Wikipedia.org: Westown is an area west of the Milwaukee River and downtown, bounded by I-794 on the south, Marquette University neighborhood on the west, McKinley Avenue on the north, and the river on the east.

The neighborhood comprises the original Kilbourntown in what is now downtown Milwaukee. The Shops of Grand Avenue along with various theaters, restaurants, nightclubs, lies along Wisconsin Avenue. Other attractions in this neighborhood include the Milwaukee Public Museum, the Bradley Center, the US Cellular Arena, the Milwaukee County Courthouse and Old World Third Street.