The following excerpts are from the scrapbook of Beloit First Families, a collection of articles compiled by Minnie McIntyre Wallace that appeared in the Beloit Daily News in the 1930s.
David Merrill was born at Shelburne Falls, Mass., Dec. 12, 1812… In 1840 he came to Wisconsin and … on March 20, 1842, he was married to Miss Agnes Fonda of Beloit. The Rev. Dexter Clary of the First Congregational Church officiated at the ceremony, which was called the first public wedding in Beloit. Mr. Merrill then took up his residence in this city…
In 1843 Mr. Merrill bought … 10 acres of land … lying between E and D Streets, now St. Lawrence and Roosevelt Avenues, which [was later] occupied by the Yates-American Machine company factory… In March, 1844, Mr. Merrill built a cheap summer house of basswood lumber bought from John Hackett for $10 per thousand feet. He paid for this lumber in labor at $1.50 per day for himself and his team – giving 12 hours work a day and boarding himself and his team.
In April he began the building of a stone house at the southeast corner of Third and … St. Lawrence Avenue, hauling the lumber for it from Milwaukee. He sold Mr. Case two lots for $50 and Mr. Case worked out the purchase price by doing the carpenter work on the new house. On the same arrangement William Thompson got two lots for doing the mason work. Mr. Merrill moved into the new house in the middle of July. This was the second house built on the west side of the river.
Mr. Merrill records in his diary, from which much of this is written, that “this was the most eventful year in the early history of Beloit, being both the wettest and driest seasons ever known.” It began to rain May 10 and rained for 43 days with no consecutive 36 hours without rain. From June 22 to Nov. 7 there was no rain except a scud cloud in September which did not lay the dust. Turtle Creek was dry from its mouth up for three miles and Rock River at the lower ford was no more than ankle deep.
The dam across Rock River was begun in the fall. There was no obstruction to navigation previous to 1844 from Watertown to the mouth of the river save the bridge at Beloit built in 1842… In June 1844, during the high water a section of the bridge was removed to let a large steamboat pass on its way from St. Louis up to Jefferson.
Mrs. Lovisa Smith King, born August 20, 1839, at the home of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. George Smith, on Broad Street, was at the time of her death in 1926 the oldest native-born resident of Beloit. The Smiths came to this city from England three months before the birth of Lovisa.
“Grandma” King, as she was familiarly known to her many friends during the latter days of her life, had a keen recollection of early Beloit. She recalled when the streets were bottomless mudholes in certain seasons of the year and the pedestrians walked along winding paths in the absence of sidewalks. Indians were frequent callers at the Smith home on lower Broad Street when Lovisa was a girl, usually begging something to eat or wear…
The most precious memory connected with Mrs. King’s life in early Beloit was when she went to Hanchett Hall to hear Abraham Lincoln make his speech. Speaking about the occasion she said in an interview given to the Beloit Daily News not long before her death: “My but he was a homely man. It was on Saturday, the first day of October, so many years ago. Everyone hurried with their work that they might go to the hall. When Lincoln rose I thought he was the tallest man I had ever seen. His hair was black and shaggy and his grey eyes seemed to see everyone at once. His clothes were common, not befitting the great man he was to become.”