James Weaver and Hops
by Michael R. Reilly, May, 2013
The Hon. James Weaver, was born in the county of Kent, England, October 17, 1800, and died in Lisbon Township, October 8, 1886. In his native land he was reared to the occupation of “gardener”, and received a good common school education. On the 9th or 10th of March [William Weaver note], 1830, accompanied by his wife and six children, he set sail in the old coal [William Weaver note] brig “Emma”, commanded by Captain Frost [William Weaver Jr. bio note] from the harbor of Rye on the 19th [not the 17th as many records indicate] of April, and after a voyage lasting six weeks, stepped on shore at New York. On reaching Oneida County, state of New York, where he made a location, he had just enough money to purchase a cow. He at once turned his attention to agriculture and to growing hops, which at that time was an important industry. His father bought a farm for James that already had engaged in hop cultivation; see letter below:
Letter 1: James Weaver, from Augusta (Oneida County, New York) April 27, 1831, to (Uncle) William Beal, Tenterden, Kent, (England).
“Father as bought two farms, one for me and one for John and William. Mine is a farm of 34 acres with a house and stables and hop house. Mine is about 32 acres cleared and 2 of wood and I am just now begin to work the land and I like the look of it . I suppose you would not get such land in England for £50 per acre. It low land and a fine stream of warter run threw it and the price of it was 17 dollars per acre and my brothers is farm of 40 acres about 10 wood with a house and barn and stables and thorge was 15 dollars per acre.”
—
Note: John Weaver also raised a hop crop back on his “hired farm” in Augusta, Oneida, New York per his wife diary story: “My husband sold his crops on then ground, except wheat and barley, which were harvested. There were potatoes, hops, and corn not harvested, besides a good, large and fine vegetable garden and some fruit.”
Whether John continued cultivating hops after resettling in the Town of Lisbon is unknown?
—
James Weaver writes to his cousin again in 1833: “I add a good crops of hops but was unlocky in selling of them for I sold to soon like maney more of my neighbours. I add 1,066 and sold at 11 dollars per cart wich if I add kept a nother mounth or 2 I mite got twice 11 but it was not my luck. I only wish I add but known if hops ware but a shorte crop in England that would made a difference hear. I now by your letter that hops were short in England but I add now thought that would make eny difference heare till was to late.”
“Now dear friend if you will be so good as for to send me a letter so as for me to receive it in September I will be verry much a blich to you. I think you better send it a way by the first of August and I want you to give me the pertickler account of the state of hops and what the price is and how the crops is like to be so that I may now better what to do with mine if I grow eny.”
James Weaver to cousin Richard Hardeman, Augusta, New York, March 30 1833
And the following year, he wrote, “Last year I sold my hops the heist price that eny was sold at in the town. I pick some pretty erly and sold at 19 dollars per hundred weaigh and when I carried them to the man I contracted the rest of mine at 16 dollars per hundred and some keep and sold at 15 so I think I did the best. I never got over 11 dollars per hundred till last year. I do not exspect to get more than that this year for hops are come down some excepted a firing market . I growed about I ton last year. This year I think I shall grow about 15 hundread . I think I cleared 150 dollarsby my hops last year and I are able to keep my family well much better than I cold if I was in England for living I can grow . I made 120 weaigh of stager this spring and Rebaker as two.”
James Weaver to cousin Richard Hardeman, Augusta, New York July 20 1834
In the year 1837, the westward journey was resumed by way of the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes. The old vessel on which they came, the “Julia Palmer”, by way of the Great Lakes, landed at Milwaukee on the 9th of June.
The magnificent city was then a hamlet, no pier had been constructed, and the passengers were therefore taken ashore, at the mouth of the Milwaukee River, on an old flat-bottomed scow. As there was no bridge across the Milwaukee River, they were taken over by means of a crude ferry-boat drawn by hand, along a rope stretched from shore to shore. Son Thomas says he landed with only a pair of slippers protecting his feet, and they walked to what was to become the town of Lisbon. The principal part of the business was done on East and West Water Streets, and Grand [Wisconsin] Ave., and what is now the most valuable portion of the city was then a tamarack swamp, made joyous at evening by the croaking of hundreds of frogs. Where the great railroad depots, the principal factories and Pabst’s brewery now stand. Wisconsin had not dreamed of having a railroad, factory or any other great industry.
Mr. Weaver came on to Lisbon Township, which was then embraced within the limits of Milwaukee County. There were but three log cabins in the town, the one erected by Mr. Weaver being the fourth. It was as good as any the first settlers had, a cabin having a fire-place extending nearly across one end, and covered with a shake roof, but his son, Richard, says that oftentimes when they arose in the morning, two or three inches of snow covered the floor and bed. Son Thomas says the it was a mud and stick chimney.
The Indians had not yet departed for their western home; as many as three hundred Winnebagoes camped within eighty rods of the Weaver homestead. His son, William, says he saw many Indians with their ponies, papooses and squaws pass in single file the home of his father. They were never troublesome however, as they belonged to the friendly Winnebago and Pottawatamie tribes. They were ever ready to exchange the product of the chase for the product of the white man’s toil. William said that for a pot of potatoes he could get a large buck’s pelt. Thomas often carried on his back from Prairieville, a sack of flour, and old fashioned coffee mill to ground the corn into making “johnny cakes.” William stated that the only means of locomotion were the oxen, while the vehicle was nearly always a sled or cart. The roads were tortuous, winding through forests and around swamps, and where a soft piece of ground was to be crossed, a corduroy road was constructed. [Note: The earliest roads were merely narrow paths and trails carved into terrain that was difficult to traverse, and those in marshy areas were especially bumpy, whether due to natural tree roots or because the man-made roads were reinforced with logs to minimize the risk of wagon wheels or horses becoming mired in mud.
They were dubbed “corduroy” roads because the positioning of the logs side by side perpendicular to the direction of travel resembled the wide wales of course woolen fabric called corduroy. ]
Churches and schools, the great promoters of civilization, with their elevating and moralizing inlluences, as yet had not been established. It was the happy lot of Mr. Weaver to assist in creating and promoting these institutions. Son Thomas says he and his brother walked to Milwaukee in order to be confirmed in the Episcopal Church.
Having secured three hundred and twenty acres of wild land, this pioneer began its development, and in connection with general farming, raised hops from roots which he had brought with him from the east, thus becoming the founder of that industry, the cultivations of hops, in this county.
Weaver apparently brought a number of roots with him and began a hop yard. Indeed the census returns for 1850 show that Waukesha County had a virtual monopoly on hop culture, producing 13,119 pounds of the total of 15,930 pounds harvested in the state.
Though James Weaver is considered the first to cultivate hops in what was then the Territory of Wisconsin, hops had been imported into the area for some time, as shown by this 1836 advertisement:
For Sale by the Subscriber
1000 Lbs Pressed Hops
S. D. Cowles & Co.
Source: Milwaukee Advertiser, August 1, 1836 ad in the Milwaukee Advertiser August 25, 1836. Note: Sylvester D. Cowles, from Connecticut, born abt 1809, was a grocere/merchant in Milwaukee’s west ward until at least 1867 according to Milwaukee City Directories. In 1850 his business/residence was next door to the Philip/Jacob brothers brewers.
1,000 pounds of hops is indeed a large quantity, and though used for other purposes, the majority was most likely used to brew beer. Now the earliest proof so far uncovered indicates that the first brewery was first started in 1840. The ad above shows that beer brewing had already begun, probably in small batches by the local public houses and taverns.
“Although a number of farmers in Illinois and Iowa experimented with the crop, when midwesterners began to look for expertise in hop growing, invariably they turned to the growers in Wisconsin. Hops had been discovered growing wild by the first settlers in that area of the country. Those who had traveled near Racine in the mid-1830s remembered that they had found “many varieties of wild onion, plum, and crab apple, and among them the hop”.
—
Native Americans did not brew with them (as far as we know) but did use them medicinally. The several varieties of hops, one of which is Eurasian and three of which are North American, are all the same species (Humulus lupulus).
The early American colonists had many uses for hops. Wines and Beers of Old New England by Sanborn C. Brown (1978), notes:
“The hop cones used in the beer brewing were not the only part of the plant that the farmers found useful. It was a common vine in the settler’s kitchen garden. The young shoots in the spring were eaten as a special treat in salads… a wax extracted from the tendrils was used as a reddish-brown vegetable dye, the fibers were used in textiles as a substitute for flax, the stalks were used for basket and wicker-work, and the leaves and spent hops were an especially excellent food for sheep.”
One source says that “Wisconsin began hop cultivation in the 1860’s.”, but Mr. Libby of Lisbon was showing his hops at the Wisconsin State Fair in 1852.
So there may not have been a ready beer brewing market for hops, the early town of Lisbon residents surely put their hop crop to other uses.
The article “The Staff of Life” by Georgia Smart, in the Landmark Spring 1972 issue, page 23, talks of women’s making their own yeast at home. Making it “from the best hops, the dried ripe cones of the flowers on the climbing vine of the same name, Or as some of the older cook books say, ” They made it from the emptins of the beer keg.”
Note: a recipe follows on same page.
—
From the book “Wisconsin Lore” by Robert E. Gard and L. G. Sorden, their chapter “Pioneer Medicine and Early Day Cures”: “Hops had to be picked and dried, a pillow made and stuffed with them, to be used by a restless one to induce sleep. There must be enough hops dried and stored to use in treating future colds. A generous amount of them would be steeped in vinegar and used as a poultice, or laid over an aching ear.”
In Merton historian Ruth B. Schmidt’s book, “From Mother’s Pen”, she wrote a short story titled “Hops” on pages 145-146:
“When I was a small girl, hops meant the vine that grew along the woven fence around our yard. It was very prickly, and had tiny cones (like pine cones) which had to be picked at a certain time in the fall (before the yellow sticky resin at the base of the cone dried up.)
We spread the cones over the floor of the front porch, where they could dry until each little flake, or scale of the cone loosened so these “petals” could be rubbed off the cone-core. Each petal dried until it was crisp and hard, then we crushed them into fine pieces and used them to fill small pillows. After all of the cones were made into “pillows”, the pillows were packed into a box until Pa’s asthma began to bother him.
We never asked what connection there was between Pa’s asthma attacks and the hop pillows, and to this day, I don’t know if there was a reason why Pa had to rest his head on a hop-pillow when he couldn’t breathe on those cold winter days. I simply remember hops was like any other crop in our yard. It had to be harvested for a purpose.
It seemed like Pa began to wheeze and choke-up as soon as the cows were kept in the barn, and he had to go in the dusty haymow to throw hay through the chutes to the cattle below. And I still don’t know whether Pa’s asthma was from hay dust, or from the dandruff and hair pollution in the barn when the cows were in 24 hours a day, or if it was from the cold weather.
Later in life, I learned there was some connection between asthma and allergies, but in 1910,, i had never heard the word “allergy”. It was part of “growing up at home, to know that in winter time Pa would become so congested he could not breathe if he laid down, so he slept in an old Morris chair with hop-pillows around his head.
When I went to school, we studied the history of Cassell Prairie [Sauk County, Wisconsin]. I learned that in the 1860s, our whole neighborhood, especially in the valleys, had large hop farms. these gave employment to many single people who helped build the trellises for the hop vines, and for “pickers” in the fall she picked the cones for farmers to ship to Milwaukee breweries. At first, the hop business was so profitable, that a farmer could earn a thousand dollars an acre from this crop. It was then that I learned hops had become an important industry in the United States, second only to England, in furnishing cones for the manufacturing of beer.
Although in looks, hops are much like ivy or grapevines, they belong to the “nettle” family and are closely related to hemp as a plant. A peculiarity of the hop vine is found in the way the stem twines around the trellis, always twisting from left to right. In the summer the vines bear clusters of flowers, the petals drying into small cones-like clusters that become the hop cone in the fall. It has a yellow resin at the base of the cone, and soft cones before they are dried, that gives the beer its flavor. That is why we had to pick the cones close to the vine and before it became dry.
At the peak of the hop growing craze, a blight or insect, infested the vine just before the flower clusters formed, and no cones developed on the vines. The expensive investment of trellis building, and low prices of the small harvest ruined many farmers. The Wisconsin hop farmers turned to raising wheat as a cash crop.
Each winter the vines died down to the ground and each spring a new vine grew, but once the blight hit a field it eventually ruined the crop. (Only the female plant bore cones, or seed-catkins.)
All through my childhood years, when “hops” was a familiar word to me, I knew it only as a garden plant, not as an industry. I never thought of its value in any way other than medicinal. Now that I am an old lady and read medical magazines bombarded by theories of allergies, my curiosity is aroused to learn if there was any base for my early belief that hops were harvested, only to relieve asthma..”
Ruth wrote a similar, shorter story version in her 1977 book, “Out of Patterson’s Pocket”, called “Hops on the Fence”, chapter 45 on page 95:
“A dense vine covered more than half of the fence around our front yard. The leaves were sand-paper rough, and about the size of grape leaves. The vines entwined rightly around the wires of the picket fence like a trellis, and it was impossible to tear it off.
In the fall of the year, the vines were full of tiny hops, or seed cones, very much like tiny pine cones. We picked these and dried them. The husks did not separate easily into flaky petals. we had to beat them, and walk on them to crumble the petals of the cones so we could make a filling for a pillow for our dad’s bed. Pa had asthma so bad that he had to sit up in a Morris chair to sleep, but if he could bury his face in the hop-pillow, the tangy aroma of the hops seemed to open the clogged passages in his head so he was able to sleep.
Hops had been raised as a profitable crop in our neighborhood a few years before Pa was born. The crop had paid big returns until a certain louse attacked the leaves and after that, hops did not produce well in Sauk county. The eggs of the lice seemed to stay in the soil for years and years, and hop raising was discontinued.
How my folks happened to have hop vines in our dooryard fence was never explained to me, but the vines made a solid wall around our lawn each summer. Apparently there were no more plant lice to affect the hops after fifty years between the times of large hop vineyards and the ornamental vines on our fence.
The hop cones are usually sold to breweries as the major ingredient of beer, but the hops of our farm provided only a medicinal relief for my dad’s asthma.”
—
“Sauk county, Wisconsin, also had its pioneers and eventually claimed to have become the center of hop production. In 1842-43 “the distinguished Hungarian political refugee,” Count Agostin Haraszthy, “founded what is now Sauk City, where he planted the first hop yard in our State, and encouraged others to do likewise.” Apparently unaware of Weaver’s efforts, and earlier work of Waukesha growers, by the late 1860s most agriculturalists believed, erroneously, that commercial hop growing in Wisconsin began in Sauk County.”
Apparently a number of factors weighed against the early success of hops in the area principal among these was necessity of new arrivals to establish farms and produce less exotic and more practical, crops. Furthermore, New York production, which was constantly increasing, was meeting domestic demands. Waukesha County’s time would soon come.
The main crop of the early pioneers was raising and selling wheat and Wisconsin was a bread basket of the United States with Milwaukee being dotted with many flour mills. Farmers were looking for an additional crop and began raising barley and hops for the emerging brewery business, Hops was a high labor industry that needed only a few acres of ground space.
In addition, there was a need for a specialized hop-drying tower building, a two-story plus structure with a stove on the first floor and drying racks on the second floor. The smoke and steam from the drying hops rose through the roof vents. Northwestern Waukesha County had sixteen of these peculiar buildings in the late 1800s. The town of Lisbon had the most of any township with six of them owned by the five Weaver brothers and a brother-in-law, James Craven.
A side note from Landmark Spring 1972 issue, page 22, editor Libbie Nolan writes that “As a geographer, Prof. (Charles F.) Calkins poked into local history to discover hop growing as part of this county’s (Waukesha’s) geography. From another point of view, religion also determined where hops were NOT grown: in the western area of the town of Lisbon where the Scottish Presbyterian non-drinking settlers didn’t believe in the ultimate use of the hops. ”
With the passage of time many of the early farms became well-established, new sellers were claiming the those precious remaining lands and rapidly turning them into production, and the opportunity for greater experimentation with hops was apparent. The whole situation is summarized well in the obituary are Richard Weaver son of James Weaver [1827 to 1906] that appeared in the Waukesha Freema:
“As soon as Mr. Richard Weaver began to do for himself i.e. prosper he took up the same line of work the raising of hops which proved successful. As great oaks from little acorns grow, so grew the business of raising hops on a small scale to buying from his neighbors and selling to the hops users until 1850 he started back co-partnership with his father.”
—–
CASH….and the highest price paid for Staves and Heading Barley and Hops, at the Eagle Brewery, by L. Blossom
Source: Daily Sentinel and Gazette, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, March 3, 1847, page 4.
—–
In 1850 (Notice: the original bio states 1860 in error), in company with his father, he began dealing in hops, the partnership continuing three years, when the latter disposed of his interests to his son, William, the firm becoming “R. Weaver & Bro.”, in 1853 aka “Weaver and Bros., Brokers in Fancy Hops.” Their operations were carried on so extensively, for thirty years, that they became well known throughout the northwest. Being widely known as men of integrity, their credit was almost unbounded, and their success phenomenal.
Besides James, and his sons, Richard and William being involved in raising and dealing in hops, brothers Thomas and Alfred were very extensively engaged in farming and in hop-growing. As well as James Stone, William Libby, and Richard Craven.
The town of Lisbon had a brewery which stood about one-half mile north of the mill [Sussex Mills], on North Street [now Maple Ave.] from Sussex. It was first assumed built by Stephen Stone about 1855; going into business with Richard Weaver, but both gentlemen probably had it built in partnership. Using Mr. Weaver’s hop crop in the brewing processes. In 1861, Mr. Ephraim Boots became the proprietor.
But few hops were grown in Wisconsin, up to 1860, when owing to an increased demand by the breweries of the state, there was a gradual but healthful increase in hop culture. Although hops were grown on a smaller scale earlier, 1860 really marks a taking off point for Waukesha County hops production.
Production figures for hops from the original census manuscript schedules show the rapid rise in output for Waukesha County. To be sure, census production figures show an increase from 1849 to 1859. However, the increase between 1859 and 1869, the “hops boom”, amounted to 457%. The same general trend is evident for the next decade. Eventually, by about 1900, hops lice and other past had destroyed the productivity of Wisconsin as a major region of hop culture.
—
Hops and their Culture
In evidence of the great profit made in raising hops, the little town of Kilbourn City, in Wisconsin, took last season about $1,000,000 for hops; and that throughout the State of Wisconsin not less than $2,000,000 more were received for this product in 1865.
W. C. Hanford, Esq., of Rockford, Ill., who is a successful cultivator of hops, says there are two distinct varieties, the “Early Cluster” and the “English Mammoth”, and he prefers the latter. …..Source:Waukesha Plaindealer, Waukesha, Wisconsin, April 17, 1865, page 1.
—
After 1900 only a very few farmers engaged in hops production in the entire state. A few years later the advent of the hop louse, and other causes of failure at the east, so raised the price of hops as to make them a very profitable crop to grow. Many acres were planted in this state from 1863 to 1865, when the total product was valued at nearly $350,000. The success of those engaged in this new branch of farming, encouraged others to adopt it. The profits were large. Wheat growing had not for several years been remunerative, and in 1867 and 1868, the ” hop fever ” became an epidemic, almost a plague. The crop of Sauk county alone was estimated at over 4,000,000 pounds, worth over $2,000,000. The quality of the crop was excellent, the yield large, and the price unusually high. The secretary of the State Agricultural society says, in his report for that year,
To many farmers, hop raising appeared to offer a sure and speedy course to Wealth. But a change came quickly. The hop louse ruined the crop, and low prices caused by over production, aided in bringing ruin to many farmers. In 1867, the price of hops was from 40 to 55 cents per pound, while in 1869 it was from lo to 15 cents, some of poor quality selling as low as 3 cents. Many hop yards were plowed up during 1869 and 1870. The area under cultivation to this crop in 1875, was, according to the ” Report of the Secretary of State,” 10,932 acres.
—–
About 40 acres of hops have been set this spring. [Town of Eagle].Source: Waukesha Plaindealer, Waukesha, Wisconsin, June 9, 1868, page 3.
—–
Oconomowoc – Hops in this vicinity look well, and if they get through the next two weeks all right, there will be a good yield. In and around Hartland, the hop yards do not look thrifty, and the yield must necessarily be very light. Source: Waukesha Plaindealer, Waukesha, Wisconsin, August 11, 1868, page 3.
—–
Mapleton – We have an excellent crop. The hops are large and the picking good. We have nearly three hundred pickers here, I doubt whether Kilbourn City, with its coll 5,000, are having as merry times as we are. The girls all vie with each other to see who will pick the most while in the field, and in the evening to see who will look prettiest, as they “trip the light fantastic toe.” [Article continues about some dangers in young male proprietors and the girl pickers.]Source: Waukesha Plaindealer, Waukesha, Wisconsin, September 29, 1868, page 3.
—–
The Hop Fever – Its “Rise and Fall” . Source: Waukesha Plaindealer, Waukesha, Wisconsin, January 5, 1869, page 1.
—–
James writes to cousin in 1873: “We shall almost see thing grow and our wheat harvest will be about as earley as yours about the last of July or the first of August and you must tell Henry that our hops in this state are badly winter killed that his old yard and hops are a going to be pruty well use up this year in this country so we look for a good price this year agine if there his a good crop as the Germans bead the English I think drinking began bear you would be surprise to see what brewers we have in Milwaukee one thing more and that his I am glad that your blessing increases and I hope you will all do well I have left all politics out but we have corruption a nuf but I am glad the Aliman Claim his settled so nicely.”
James Weaver to Richard Lisbon May 2/1873
In 1879, Mr. Richard Weaver, accompanied by his wife, went to the Pacific Slope, visiting San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, Placerville, the mining camps, Portland, Salem, Eugene City, and making a trip the entire length of the Willamette Valley. The object of the trip was to purchase hops. Mr. Weaver bought some fifteen car loads at a cost of $28,000, being the first to ship from that section direct to the breweries at Milwaukee.
Their father, James Weaver, had planted the first hill of hops in June, 1837, and sold the product of that planting $1 per pound; from this small beginning the business increased until in 1882 it reached almost $600,000. In that year, he detected a crop failure in Europe and the eastern United States of the hop plant. He got information via telegraph and used it to buy all he could of the Wisconsin, Missouri and Washington state hops for 15 cents a pound, and when the world realized the crop failure, he had the majority of what was available. Richard had a small corner on the world supply and sold it at $1 a pound making a reported $600,000 in 90 days.
One check given by the Weaver brothers, on the 17th of November of that year, and drawn on the ”old reliable” Waukesha National Bank, called for $25,697.51. These gentlemen are recognized as leading financiers in the county.
—–
Crop acreage for hops in Waukesha County for 1883 was reported by County Clerk Chas. F. Hepp, as 97 acres.
Source: Daily Freeman, Waukesha, Wisconsin, August 14, 1883.
—–
Richard Weaver became Sussex’s first millionaire as he was in business with his father James and brother William buying and selling hops. The beer-flavoring ingredient once was the foremost agricultural product in Lisbon.
However, the great Weaver business went into an eclipse after 1882 and 14 years later it was history since hops could no longer be raised in the Town of Lisbon because of the hop louse. Diversified dairy farming replaced hop growing as a way to earn money.
Meanwhile, he was a big bank executive at the Waukesha State Bank and large land owner in Lisbon and northwestern Missouri (Empire Prairie) and a walking banker in Sussex/Lisbon.
A distant relative of his, Adelaide Weaver Weeks, once told Fred H. Keller that “Richard was quick to loan out money, and just as quick to foreclose.”
Mr. James Weaver was a leading and infuential man in his community; he assisted in the organization of the town of Lisbon, in which he held the office of Supervisor and others of minor importance. In 1865 he was chosen as Assemblyman from his district, and represented in a satisfactory manner the interests of his constituents. From the time he cast his first Presidential vote for Andrew Jackson until the day of his death, he adhered unswervingly to the principles of the Democratic party. He and his wife were devout members of the Episcopal Church, being pillars in the congregation that worshipped in the beautiful stone edifice erected in Sussex. Mr. and Mrs. Weaver were of that quiet, unobtrusive disposition that never lets the right hand know of the good deeds done by the left.
Sources:
Portrait and biographical record of Waukesha County, Wisconsin, containing biographical sketches of old settlers and representative citizens of the county(1894)
Author: Excelsior publishing company, Chicago. [from old catalog]
Subject: Governors
Publisher: Chicago, Excelsior publishing co.
Possible copyright status: NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT
??
Note: I have taken the original; 1894 bio of Richard Weaver and added additional information from his brother, William and father’s brother, William, whose bios were also done in 1894. Michael R. Reilly May 18, 2013.
—
Plant to get historical marker by Fred H. Keller, Source: Sussex Sun, Tuesday, September 10, 1996, page 27.
—
Hop Growing History in Lisbon, Waukesha County, and Wisconsin
Compiled and Edited by Michael R. Reilly,
—
Source: Milwaukee Advertiser, August 1, 1836 ad in the Milwaukee Advertiser August 25, 1836
For Sale by the Subscriber
1000 Lbs Pressed Hops
S. D. Cowles & Co.