Untitled From Commemorative Biographical Record of the Counties of Rock, Green, Grant, Iowa and Lafayette Wisconsin, publ. 1901 - page 42-44

HON. LUTHER BASFORD, of Lancaster, dates his coming to Grant county from July 1, 1836, and is one of its oldest surviving pioneers. He was born in Chester, Rockingham Co., N.H., in November, 1814, and was a mere child when he lost his father, Richard BASFORD, who was also a native of the Granite State. His mother, whose maiden name was Betsey GIBINS, lived to the age of eighty years. The BASFORD family originally came from the northern part of England, and the GIBINS family from Londonderry, Ireland, but the descendants of both have for several generations been born in America. Luther BASFORD is the youngest of three children born to his parents, and is the only survivor. His brother, Jason, was for many years a prominent citizen and real-estate dealer in Kankakee, Ill., and his sister, Caroline, passed all her life in her native New Hampshire. Both died leaving families.

At the age of sixteen years Luther BASFORD left his home in the Granite State and went to Albany, N.Y., where he learned the carpenter's trade, working at same five or six years in Albany and New York City. About this time a company of speculators, comprising Albany and New York men, had entered the land in Wisconsin on which the village of Cassville, Grant county, now stands, with the expectation and intention of founding an important city. Mr. BASFORD was engaged by this company to accompany them and assist in erecting in the contemplated metropolis a first-class hotel structure, to be known as the "Denison House" - and this event happened nearly sixty-five years ago. Owing to unpropitious circumstances the project of the company failed of success for the time being, and in the fall of the same year Mr. BASFORD returned East, visiting New York, Boston, and his old New Hampshire home. The following winter he spent in traveling, when he was again solicited by the old company to return to Wisconsin.

Transportation in those early days was quite a different thing from what it is now, and on first entering the employ of the company, in 1836, Mr. BASFORD came West via the Erie canal from Albany to Buffalo, N.Y., and thence through the lakes to Green Bay, Wis., where twenty-five Indians and half-breeds were employed to escort the party and carry its effects to Fort Winnebago, now Portage. There the Indians were dismissed, and a yoke of oxen hired to convey the luggage to the Wisconsin river, about a mile and a half distant. On the banks of this river the party of six whites encamped in the midst of an assemblage of Indians numbering at least 1,500. The means of transportation down the Wisconsin now became a serious question, as they had no boat, but they were equal to the emergency. With a whip-saw, borrowed at the Fort, lumber was cut and a flat-boat built, on which the party floated down the river, and in safety reached Cassville, July 1, 1836.

Mr. BASFORD, with others, when the company decided to cease operations for the time being, started homeward on the same flat-boat that had landed them at Cassville, intending to float down the Mississippi river to St. Louis, Mo., but at Rock Island, they found the river so jammed with ice that they were fain to abandon their boat and to proceed by team to the city they had fixed upon as their temporary destination for transfer purposes. At St. Louis they took steamer for Pittsburgh, Penn., but when near Lawrenceburg, Ind., well up on the Ohio river, the steamer was so nearly demolished by a cyclone that she could proceed no further; happily after the subsidence of the storm, the steamer "General Pike" came alongside and took the party on board, conveyed them as far as Cincinnati, whence our subject journeyed by stage to Pittsburgh, Penn., via Wheeling, V. Va., etc. From Pittsburgh the party proceeded eastward and when near Philadelphia struck a railroad, and so continued onward, by rail and steamer, until New York was reached, Jan. 2, 1837. How Mr. BASFORD was occupied that winter has been alluded to above.

Soon after his return to Cassville, in the following spring, Mr. BASFORD purchased several lots in the new town, and built upon them. For a considerable length of time he followed his trade of carpentering in Cassville, and then embarked in farming. In 1862 he engaged in merchandising at Glen Haven, Grant county, in which he continued until 1887, when he sold out, and, accompanied by his wife, he went to San Diego, Cal., where he spent one winter. On his return to Wisconsin Mr. BASFORD settled in Lancaster, and resumed mercantile trade under the firm name of C. H. BASFORD & Co., and this has continued to occupy his time and attention up to the present hour.

Mr. BASFORD was joined in matrimony, at Cassville, in 1839, with Miss Elizabeth Jane BLESSING, a native of what is now West Virginia, who in 1837 came to Grant county, Wis., with her father, her mother having died in her native Virginia. Soon after the discovery of gold in California, Mr. BLESSING joined the throng that wended its way toward that Territory, but did not live to return to Wisconsin. To Mr. and Mrs. BASFORD, were born several children, two of whom still survive, viz.: Martha J., Mrs. SCOTT; and Charles H., who is associated with his father in business under the firm style give above. Another daughter, Mrs. Addie E. BROWN, of Bloomington, Grant county, died six weeks after her marriage, and Caroline passed away after attaining to womanhood; Alice and Harry died in early childhood. The mother of this family was called to rest in 1890, at the age of sixty-eight years.

Mr. BASFORD has ever been one of the representative men of Grant county, has been remarkably successful as a business man, and as a citizen has always been held in the highest esteem. As a Republican he has been most popular in his party, was elected a member of the lower house of the State Legislature in 1859, served as sergeant-at-arms of the Senate in 1864, and in 1871 was again elected a member of the House of Representatives.

Notwithstanding his cares and close attention to his business affairs, Mr. BASFORD has found time to travel considerably, and has seen much of the world. He has four times crossed the Rocky Mountains, and there is one episode in his life of travel to which he can refer with pride - and it is probable that no other living man has had the same experience - and that is the fact that, in 1832, he rode from Albany to Schenectady, N.Y., on the first trip on the first passenger railroad built in the United States. The locomotive that drew the train was on exhibition at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

The people of Grant county owe an everlasting debt to Mr. BASFORD, as it is to the energy, foresight and inimitable perseverance of such as he that the county has been raised from its primeval condition in pioneer days to its present proud position in the sisterhood of Wisconsin counties, he having located here in the year 1837.



This biography generously submitted by Carol Holmbeck