Note 97 — CONTENTS OF VOLUME I (continued 6)

Lucius G. Fisher, a native of Vermont, was born at Derby, August 17, 1808. His father was a substantial farmer of Derby, but due to business reverses the son failed to obtain the anticipated college education, a fact which he never ceased to lament. While still a youth he formed the design of migrating to the West, but the execution of this project was delayed for several years, first by reason of his disinclination to separate from his mother, and after her death by the necessity of assisting in the support of his father and sisters. After several years of school teaching and two years of service as sheriff’s deputy, Fisher in 1834 entered the employ of the Messrs. Fairbanks, of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, to travel for them and introduce their “recently invented” platform scales. The immediate inducement to this employment was the proffered salary of $500 yearly and all expenses; but the work was accepted by Fisher, as he reports in later life, in order to find, in his travels, “that better country” he had determined, when but sixteen years of age, to seek.

The employment with the Fairbanks company continued profitably for Fisher for three years. Then the panic of 1837 brought it to a disastrous termination, under the circumstances set forth in the narrative which follows. The manuscript from which these facts are drawn, and the greater portion of which we print, tells the story of the writer’s life from birth until the time of writing, at Chicago, in the spring of 1883. To summarize its concluding portion, Fisher left Beloit for Chicago in 1866, where with Ralph Emerson he built a block at the southeast corner of State and Washington streets on the site of the present Columbus Memorial Building. Although burned out in the great fire of October 9, 1871, Fisher prospered in Chicago and became comparatively wealthy.

The manuscript narrative of his career was presented to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in January, 1917 by a grandson, William Scott Bond, of Chicago. Because of the valuable picture it presents of pioneer days in Wisconsin, and particularly of the early development of Beloit, in which Mr. Fisher played a prominent and creditable part, the narrative seems eminently worthy of the wider publicity and service which its publication in the Wisconsin Magazine of History involves. In preparing the manuscript for publication a uniform typographical style has been imposed, and certain minor lapses in composition have been eliminated; but these editorial changes affect in no degree the character of the narrative as it left Mr. Fisher’s hand.