George W. Taggert, Sr., was born February 22, 1813, at Preble, Courtland County, New York. In 1831 he moved with his father and mother to Byron, New York. In 1836 George left home and went to Chicago, Illinois, when he purchased a homestead located near Rochester, Racine County, Wisconsin Territory. George filed his claim at the Chicago land office and returned to New York state to marry Eunice Louise Fulton, daughter of Captain Robert Fulton of North Chili. The Taggerts remained in New York state during the year 1837, and in 1838 they journeyed to their new Wisconsin home, which neither had yet seen (Milwaukee Sentinel, November 20, 1900). In a diary of the year 1838, George W. Taggert, Sr. recorded his experiences in his first year of farming in Wisconsin.
George farmed for several years at Rochester but became dissatisfied with this location. The land upon which he had settled proved unhealthful. Two streams, one on either side of the Taggert farm, had been dammed. Occasionally, a part of the Taggert farm became inundated. The decayed vegetation brought sickness, and, with several other families in their neighborhood, the Taggerts decided to move on.
A treaty, signed in 1850 between the federal government and the Menominee Indians, prompted the decision to move. With the news that choice lands would soon be opened for settlement, George and his neighbors formed an informal association that in 1849 moved onto the Indian lands which they could not claim legally until the treaty was signed the following year. In 1850 George brought his wife and family, which now included two sons and three daughters, to their new home in what is now Waupaca County.
But farming did not prove profitable for George, and when he arrived at what is now Waupaca Falls, he sought to procure a controlling interest in the valuable water rights on the Waupaca River. He failed in this attempt and shortly afterward moved his family once more to what is now Lind Township in Waupaca County. An account {1849-1863) of the move from Rochester to Waupaca County and the several years that followed is contained in the reminiscences of Hannah Taggert Patchin, the oldest daughter of George Taggert, Sr. These reminiscences were written in 1928. George became the proprietor of a general store in nearby Weyauwega, of which an account book for the years 1855 to 1537 is in the collection. In addition to his store, George held a number of county offices. He was the first surveyor of Waupaca County (1854); the postmaster of Lind Township (1850-1853); appraiser of the school lands (1852-1854); and a justice of the peace in Weyauwega. The collection holds a case and decision book for the years 1871-1874 kept by George Taggert, Sr., when he filled the latter position (New London Press, November 25, 1897).
Letters from George Taggert's wife's family, the Fultons, make up a large part of the correspondence of the early years (1838-1857). The Fultons kept the Taggert family informed of the events in the New York area area which the Taggerts had recently left. Several letters to Mrs. Taggert (1885-1887) from her brother, Levi Fulton, co-author of the Fulton-Eastman bookkeeping and penmanship system and superintendent (1870-1890) of the Western House of Refuge in Rochester, New York, shed some light on the activities of a penal reformer who pioneered in the resititution of criminals through industrial training (Rochester, New York Post Express, December 1, 1890). The only correspondence from George Taggert's family in the east is from his brother, Dan Taggert, a clerk in the Treasury Department at Washington, D.C. Dan Taggert's letters (1877-1879) contain comments on national politics, especially as they affect a government employee before the era of civil service reform.
This collection contains no written remains of either Ida Louise or Mary Jane Taggert, George Taggert's daughters. But Robert Taggert, a son who graduated in the first law class of the Wisconsin Law School at Madison, has left two volumes of law school lecture notes (1872-1973). The papers of George Taggert, Jr., are equally meager. However, newspaper clippings (1931) in the collection comment on the $11,000 Civil War memorial that George Taggert, Jr., commissioned for the town of Weyauwega by the Milwaukee sculptor Anton Spolthoff. The statue depicted George Taggert, Jr. in his Civil War uniform and his horse “Old Trooper”. When George Taggert, Sr., died on Novermber 19, 1900, his general store was taken over by his sons, George, Jr., and Robert.
Of Hannah Taggert Patchin, third daughter of George Taggert, Sr., the collection contains a considerable record. Hannah lived in Weyauwega where she and her husband James operated a loan office. Hannah became interested in the woman's suffrage movement after the death of her husband in 1898. Letters from Susan B. Anthony (1894-1896), President of the National Woman's Suffrage Association, comment on the organization of the Wisconsin suffrage activities. In 1908 Mrs. Patchin attended the annual convention of the national Woman's Suffrage Association at Buffalo, New York, and in 1917 she was a Wisconsin delegate to the W.C.T.U. convention in Washington, D.C. Mrs. Patchin was also active on the state level. She donated the prize money for the annual (1917-1926) essay contest in Wisconsin grade and high schools. The Wisconsin Woman's Suffrage Association at Milwaukee sponsored the contests, limiting the topics to “What Smoking Does to the Scholar” and “What Drinking Does to the Scholar.” Another philanthropic adventure concerned Mrs. Patchin's monetary help in the support of an orphanage for Russian children who had fled the Red Revolution of 1917. This orpanage, located in Prague, Czechoslovakia, was operated by Catharine Breshkovsky, the “Grandmother of the Russian Revolution.” Several letters (1924, 1930) from Mrs. Breshkovsky describe the conditions and needs of the orphanage. Mrs. Patchin's woman's suffrage activites are recorded in a scrapbook which she kept between 1888 and 1928. These activities consisted of rendering financial aid and attending conventions.
The bulk of the Taggert correspondence consists of letters of the family of Mr. and Mrs. Beebe H. Strong of Antigo, Wisconsin. Mrs. Strong was the granddaughter of George W. Taggert, Sr., and her husband was Treasurer of the Baraboo Electric Company, Baraboo, Wisconsin. A letter book (September 21, 1903 - March 22, 1911) of the Baraboo Electric Company is in the collection. There are also letters from Mr. and Mrs. Strong to their only daughter, Marian, who attended the State Normal School at Milwaukee (September, 1919 - June, 1921). Her brother, William Strong, the donor of the collection, wrote several letters (1923) to his mother while he worked in a gold mine near Gardiner, North Dakota in the Jardine Mountains.
In 1925 Marian Strong married Thomas R. Amlie, a lawyer in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. From 1931 to 1938 Mr. Amlie served as a member of the House of Representatives at Washington, D.C., having been elected on the Progressive-Democratic ticket. Several letters from Mrs. Amlie to her mother (1926, 1928) concern Mr. Amlie's activities before he won his first election in 1931 (Milwaukee Sentinel, January 29, 1939). This correspondence was cut short in December, 1930, when Marian Strong Amlie died in a tuberculosis sanitarium in Janesville, Wisconsin.
