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WHAT'S NEW THIS WEEK....
(click on the newsboy)
Welcome to Florence County, Wisconsin GenWeb Project. My name is
Anne and I'm the host of the site. My ties to Florence County
are
with the EGAN - WINES family from Long Lake, as well as my father's
TAYLOR family who resided in Tipler in the 1920's -- I live in New England
now
so if you have any information or photos you would like posted to the
Florence site, please send them on in -- we have unlimited space
and would love to post ANYTHING that is related to Florence County...
school records, class photos, newspaper items, obituaries,
biographies, cemetery / headstone photos, etc.
Florence County was created in 1882 from
territory that included parts of Marinette and Oconto Counties --(you
will need to know this when searching for census or land records). The
county was named for Florence Hulst, the wife of N.P. Hulst, who
discovered a
number of iron mines in the area. The county seat is also named
Florence. The county's natural resources consisted of vast
quantities of hardwood and pine timber bordering the Menominee River,
along with several large iron mines.
Florence County is one of the few counties in Wisconsin in which
the early pioneering era is still fairly recent. The area was
undoubtedly visited by early French voyageurs and missionaries from
the Green Bay region. The first European to leave any description of
his journey along the Menominee and Brule Rivers was Captain Thomas
Jefferson Cram, who surveyed the northwest boundary of Wisconsin in
1840-41 (Carlson and others. 1971). Cram surveyed the Brule River,
which forms part of the boundary with Michigan, and reported many
Chippewa and Menominee Indians there.
Florence County was a hunting and trapping region until iron ore
was discovered in 1877. Three years earlier, iron had been discovered
on the Michigan side of the border. Mining operations began during the
winter of 1879-80, and peak production was reached in 1920. The
population of the area that became Florence County increased from
fewer than 300 in 1880 to 2,604 in 1890, only 8 years after the county
was organized.
The logging and lumbering in Florence County are associated with
those industries in Marinette and Oconto Counties. The first sawmill
in the territory was built in what is now Marinette County by William
Farnsworth and Charles N. Bush in 1832. Although this date marked the
beginning of lumbering in the territory, very little lumbering was
done in the survey area prior to 1865. The primary timber in the early
logging period was eastern white pine; a limited amount of red pine
also was logged. By 1898, most of the eastern white pine had been cut.
In the early 20th century, when the pine was gone, the logging of
eastern hemlock and hardwoods was begun.
Farming in Florence County had its origin in the need for
agricultural products by the lumber companies. In 1890. there were 90
farms in the county. Farm numbers increased to 349 farms in 1920 and
580 farms in 1935. After this period, the number of farms in Florence
County declined with the failing of small family farms and the growth
of larger commercial farms.
Please enjoy your visit and we're always looking for help --
look-up volunteers and if you have any information to contribute to
the site, just let me know!
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