Category: Historic Timeline

Rodney Gillett, born in Albany, New York in 1833, buys the Henry Tourtilotte homestead in what is now the village of Gillett.  He marries Mary Roblee in Clayton the next year and she becomes the first white woman to live in the area.
Coordinates: 44°53′23″N, 88°18′23″W | Source

Organization of new Town of Pensaukee; Alteration of the Town of Howard & the name changed to Stiles
State Source

Organization of new Town of Howard
State Source

Richard B. Yeaton built a sawmill on the Pensaukee River in 1854 and called the settlement West Pensaukee. It was renamed Abrams for W. J. Abrams, a railroad investor, state representative in 1860s, and Green Bay mayor in 1880s. He owned land where the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Western rail line built a depot in 1881.
Coordinates: 44°48′27″N 88°4′20″W | Source

Shawano County created from Oconto, Waupaca, and Winnebago Counties
Atlas of Historical County Borders

George Beyer had traveled from Germany with his parents to the US some years earlier. In this year, the industrious young man came to Oconto County.

Brookside The first settler into the area which became a rural cross roads community was William W. Delano, a bachelor, who was in the area by June 1852, when he was elected the first surveyor for the newly established Oconto County.  With minimum necessities to maintain him, this single individual established his homestead in an area of virgin forest.
Coordinates: 44°48′17″N 87°59′52″W

Oconto County is formed from the northern part of Brown County. It extends the entire western length of the Green Bay and Lake Michigan to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula border. Oconto Mills is chosen as the county seat. It was the largest county in the state and had 5,000 square miles of unbroken wilderness.

Thomas Howard Couillard, Sr. and all his children and their families, along with Lavina Couillard, married to Benjamin Woodman with her family migrated to Milwaukee. Thomas Howard Jr. continued on to the Oconto Falls area & returned to Milwaukee in late 1849, early 1850.  Jacob Couillard, son of Thomas Howard Sr., moved by ox drawn covered wagon to Oconto County to an area on the Oconto River later called Couillardville.
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Peter Pecor came from New England and married Angelique Courchaine. Together they founded “Frenchtown”, now a part of the city of Oconto.
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