Covers from the stampless era – the period prior to 1855 when postage stamps became mandatory on U.S. mail – are fascinating to collect. In addition to their postal history, they are ideal for the social historian because the cover and letter are one and the same.
The stampless letter depicted in Figures 1 and 2 is a case in point. It was mailed on December 25, 1836, from Green Bay to Milwaukee. The territory of Wisconsin was organized earlier that year, and the First Wisconsin Territorial Assembly adjourned in early December 1836. This letter alludes to a decision at that assembly to place the territorial capital in Madison. That was a controversial decision, at least in the northeast quadrant of the territory.
Figure 1 - Front of stampless folded letter.
Figure 2 - Letter.
Let’s start with the postal history. The cover has a manuscript rating of “12-1/2” cents, which was the rate in 1836 to mail a single letter sheet traveling between 81 and 150 miles. (The distance from Green Bay to Milwaukee is about 117 miles.) Whether this amount was paid by the sender or the recipient is unknown, but it was likely paid by the recipient, which was common at the time.
The cover is postmarked with a red straight-line “GREEN BAY, W.T.” measuring 41 millimeters. According to the American Stampless Cover Catalog, the earliest known use of this postmark is September 10, 1836, with the latest being December 13, 1839.
The letter writer, John Winslow Cotton, clearly knew the recipient, Joshua Hathaway. Both were Wisconsin pioneers and probably engaged in real estate transactions. The content of the letter is part business and part gossip.
Cotton was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1800. He graduated from West Point in 1823 and was commissioned in the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant. He would serve in the U.S. Army for more than 25 years, retiring after the Mexican-American War in 1848.
Cotton's first posting was to Fort St. Anthony in Minnesota (what would later become Fort Snelling), and in 1824 he was transferred to Fort Howard in Green Bay. It was there that he met Mary Arndt, daughter of Judge John Penn Arndt, and in 1825, Mary and he would marry. He would be posted to other locations before taking a leave of absence (due to an unspecified illness) between 1835 and 1837. He returned to Green Bay during that period and that was when he wrote this letter. He returned to active duty sometime in 1837 and upon retiring from the Army in 1848, he moved back to Green Bay where he stayed until his death in 1878 at age 78. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Allouez, Wisconsin, which is part of the Green Bay metro area.
The most interesting part of the letter to me are the last two sentences:
The Judge has just returned from Bellemont [sic], but is quite unwell from exposure & bad living at that place.
Some excitement here about the seat of government – a good many are highly annoyed at the Judge, thinking that he might have placed it at Astor or the Portage.
"The Judge" was most certainly his father-in-law, Judge Arndt (Figure 3). Arndt was born in Durham, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles due north of Philadelphia, in 1780. He gradually moved west, finally settling in Green Bay in 1824 where he was a successful businessperson and politician. He built the first sawmill in Green Bay in 1827, and he was also responsible for the first schooner built in Wisconsin in 1834. He was a probate judge for Brown County, and in 1836, he was elected one of Brown County's four councilors to the First Wisconsin Territorial Assembly.
Figure 4 – Judge John P. Arndt, 1780-1861. Source: Wisconsin Historical Society.
That assembly met in the town of Belmont (not "Bellemont" as spelled by Cotton), which is in the southwest corner of the state of Wisconsin, from October 25 to December 9, 1836. That location was more or less central to the territory of Wisconsin, which encompassed not only the present-day state of Wisconsin but also the states of Iowa and Minnesota and roughly the eastern one-third of both present-day North and South Dakota.
A key decision made at that assembly on December 3, 1836, was to place the territorial capital in Madison. A number of towns were in the running, but Madison prevailed largely due to the lobbying of Judge James Duane Doty who owned a considerable amount of land in Madison and would become governor of the Wisconsin Territory in 1841. The motion to approve Madison as the capital passed by a 7-6 vote in subcommittee, with Judge Arndt being one of the seven “yeas.”
According to Cotton, Judge Arndt's constituents were "annoyed" at him, hoping that the capital might be placed at Astor, which at the time was a standalone town and today is an historic district in the city of Green Bay.
The letter's recipient, Joshua Hathaway (Figure 4), was one of Milwaukee’s pioneer settlers. Born in Rome, New York in 1810 and trained in law and civil engineering, Hathaway was appointed as a federal surveyor for the Northwest territory in 1832. Working initially out of Chicago, he transferred his headquarters to Milwaukee in 1835, pitching a tent at what is now the intersection of Broadway and Mason Streets. He later bought the land from the government and built on it one of Milwaukee's first brick houses, which was to be his lifelong home.
Figure 5 – Joshua Hathaway, 1810-1863. Source: “Pioneer History of Milwaukee,”
James S., Buck, 1890.
Hathaway made a substantial fortune speculating in real estate. Among his land interests along the Lake Michigan counties of Wisconsin, he was especially identified with the development of the village of Kewaunee.
He was also very active in his local community. During his time in Milwaukee, he served as probate judge, secretary of the Milwaukee and Watertown Plank Road Company, school commissioner, street commissioner, commissioner of surveys, assessor, and as a member of the Milwaukee city council. In the pioneer period before a minister was found for the Episcopalians of Milwaukee, Hathaway functioned as a lay clergyman. He later was one of the organizers of St. Paul's Episcopal Church and a member of its vestry. He was a Democrat, a life member of the Wisconsin Historical Society, and a geologist and botanist of local reputation.
He died at Milwaukee in 1863 in the home on the site where he had pitched his tent 28 years previously. He is buried at Calvary Cemetery in Milwaukee.
A few other observations on the letter:
Orrin Rice, who owed money to John Cotton, may have been a farmer and landowner who was born in Massachusetts in 1787 and died in Wisconsin in 1860.
I don't know the subject of the bet between Cotton and Hathaway mentioned in the second paragraph of the letter. Online, I can only find a few copies of the Wisconsin Democrat from 1836, one being from December 22.
Twin Rivers is probably today's Two Rivers, Wisconsin, a town 43 miles southeast of Green Bay. It's at the confluence of the East Twin and West Twin Rivers.
This cover was part of the “William B. Robinson Collection of Wisconsin Postal History” auctioned by H.R. Harmer in October 2022.
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The letter reads:
Joshua Hathaway
Milwaukee
Wisconsin Territory
Green Bay
Dec 25 1836
Dear Sir
I recd your letter dated in Dec. I enclose you two notes amounting to $334.39 for collection, also an order on Orrin Rice for $33.33, being in part payment of a bond, said amount being due me the 15th day of next month.
With regard to your inquiries on the subject of the piece in the Wisconsin Democrat you will perceive that it is answered in the last paper & that you have lost your bet.
I have not been able to get you the plat of Twin Rivers but think I shall be able to obtain it in a few days.
The Judge has just returned from Bellemont [sic – Belmont], but is quite unwell from exposure & bad living at that place.
Some excitement here about the seat of government – a good many are highly annoyed at the Judge, thinking that he might have placed it at Astor or the Portage.
Yrs. Sincerely
J.W. Cotton
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Sources:
(i) Green Bay Weekly Gazette, September 14, 1878, "Death of Capt. J.W. Cotton," p. 3 and CPT John Winslow Cotton (1800-1878) - Find a Grave Memorial.
(ii) Arndt, John Penn 1780 - 1861 | Wisconsin Historical Society (wisconsinhistory.org) and The Story of the Arndts, John Stover Arndt, 1922, pp. 182-188.
(v) History of the Territory of Wisconsin, Moses M. Strong, 1885, pp. 228-229.
(vi) Judge John Penn Arndt (1780-1861) - Find a Grave Memorial and Mary Biedelman “Auntie Cotton” Arndt Cotton (1809-1896) - Find a Grave Memorial.
(viii) Archival Resources in Wisconsin: Descriptive Finding Aids, Joshua Hathaway Papers, 1831-1870, 1883.
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