Untitled Surnames: Long, Mitchell, Johnson, Bunerman, Streeter, Howe, Switzer, Walker, Monteith

From Commemorative Biographical Record of the Counties of Rock, Green, Grant, Iowa and Lafayette, Wisconsin, publ. 1901 - page 215-216

WILLIAM R. DIXON, of Fennimore, is numbered among the older settlers of Grant county, his residence in the county dating from Nov. 16, 1846.

Mr. DIXON was born in Kanasha county, in what is now west Virginia, April 17, 1817, son of Peter DIXON. His grandfather, George DIXON, served as a scout in the Revolution under Gen. Washington for some six years. He was a flag bearer at the surrender of Lord Cornwallis. His father was born in Scotland, and when a boy was stolen and brought to America. William R. DIXON well remembers his grandfather, and recalls many incidents of the war of independence as related by him. The maiden name of Mr. DIXON's mother was Lucinda LONG, and her father, Isaac LONG, also served in the Revolution. Both our subjects grandfathers died in 1844, at the age of eighty-four.

Peter DIXON was one of a family of nine children. He was an officer in the war of 1812, and four of his brothers were also soldiers in that same war, two of them dying in the army. Mr. DIXON was the father of seventeen children, all of whom, with but one exception, lived to maturity. He was twice married, and his first wife, who died in 1825, was the mother of William R., who, so far as known, is her only surviving child. Six children of the second union are now living. The father died in 1863.

The DIXON family were opposed to slavery, and helped many a Negro to freedom. They moved into Ohio, when William R. was a boy, and for years were actively connected with the "underground railroad." In 1831 the grandfather, George DIXON, and all his surviving sons, moved into Warren county, Ind., where all the older members of the family died. In 1846 William R. DIXON came to Grant county, and on Dec. 16, the following year, he married Miss Emily MITCHELL, who was born near Knoxville, Tenn., and reared in Missouri, whither her parents removed early in her life. They died in that State while she was still a girl, and she came to Grant county, making her home with her sister. Here Mr. DIXON met and married her. They were the second couple married in the town of Fennimore.

Mr. DIXON had little idea of remaining when he came to Grant county, and was about to return to Indiana when he was asked to take a school. He was willing, and a subscription school was opened in what were known as the SWITZER and WALKER settlements. Many of the children who attended came from a long distance. There was no school house, but a log cabin was put up on Section 7 - a typical frontier school house; there were no glass windows, but open spaces were left between the logs and covered with greased paper. Cold draughts blew through the building in the winter. The seats were slabs brought from Prairie du Chien. Holes were bored for the legs. This school house did not fit in with present-day notions, but it answered for the times, and here in 1846 and 1847 Mr. DIXON taught the first school in the town. He was to receive ten dollars a month, and board around, but money was scarce, and he never secured the full amount of his wages. He had about twenty scholars, and he taught the same school the two following winters. School commissioners had been elected, but they gave little or no attention to school matters, and Mr. DIXON taught his first term without a certificate. In 1847 he was elected school commissioner, and he was really the first commissioner to give any attention to the public schools. In early life he was also tax collector, ands served on the town board for two years. He was both assessor and collector in 1871 and 1872.

When Mrs. DIXON began keeping house on Section 30, in the spring of 1848, the surrounding country was wild and unbroken. There Mr. DIXON improved a farm, and afterward exchanged it for one north of the village, which he cultivated for twenty years. Then he sold it, and bought a farm of 320 acres, which he occupied until in the spring of 1899, he sold it to his son Ora. That year he and his son removed to Fennimore. Now, at the age of eighty-three years, William R. DIXON is remarkably well for his venerable age. He has done his share in the development of this region. He is a Republican politically, and a Methodist in religion.

Mr. DIXON lost his first wife in 1855, and he married in April, 1859 Miss Harriet JOHNSON, who died in 1864. He was the father of four children by his first marriage, two of whom are now living; Mrs. Ellen BUNERMAN, of Cylinder, Iowa; and Ora A., of Fennimore. George and Mary L. are deceased. Emily (the wife of Clark STREETER, of Iowa county) and Walter are the children of the second union.

William R. DIXON and his brother George W. are the only members of their father's family who came to Wisconsin. George settled in the town of Fennimore, where he married, and he died in 1863, leaving a wife and two children. The widow and one daughter have passed away. The other daughter is the widow of Abe HOWE, and lives in Fennimore.

Ora A. DIXON, the eldest son of William R., was born June 20, 1850, and has always lived in the immediate vicinity of his parents home. He bought the old homestead, which he has recently sold, and now resides in Fennimore. On Nov. 4, 1876, he married Miss Eliza SWITZER, whose birth occurred in Fennimore July 30, 1854, a daughter of John SWITZER, an old pioneer of the county. To this union four children have been born, and three of them are living: Cora Gertrude is the wife of William MONTEITH, of Clark county, Wis.; William R. is a young man, and is studying electrical engineering; Katie is at home; Electa Pearl died in infancy.



This biography generously submitted by Carol Holmbeck