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The Concord Wisconsin town picnic on Sunday August 11th was the one fixed time and place on our journey. Our travels had started in Wisconsin before heading eat to Michigan, south to Indiana and Illinois, northwest through Iowa to Minnesota before returning south back to Wisconsin. We booked two nights in a hotel in Milwaukee. We met our host Cindy Arbiture at a pizza restaurant about half-way from Milwaukee toward Concord. She gave us a bit of the history of the town and a preview of the following day’s celebrations.
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The land that had been occupied by the Potamatomi,Sac, and Fox, native Americans, but "Yankee farmers" began settling in the early 19th century. In 1846, Concord was formed when the township of Union was divided. It seems like they changed the name but kept the original spirit of the place. There were a number of settlers who were veterans of the Revolutionary War, and at least one who had reportedly served as a Minuteman at the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The railroad bypassed Concord, but it was a midway stop for coaches taking the two-day trip from Milwaukee to the capitol in Madison. While factories and commerce followed the railroads, Concord flourished due to dairy farming and other forms of agriculture.
Concord grew quickly. In 1850, they had a population of 725, which doubled to 1627 by 1870. In the midstof this growth, dozens of stores and businesses were established. On February 1, 1860, Charles Ingalls married Caroline Quiner in Concord. Their daughter was Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of The Little House on the Prairie. It seemed like every town I visited in the midwest had some connection to Little House on the Prairie. Minnesota, South Dakota, Illinois,Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri all have Concords, and it seemed like each had some connection to the Ingalls family. Perhaps this is an expression of how revered these stories are, or perhaps it a result of Charles Ingalls' wanderlust. Looking back at these stories, you have to wonder why Ingalls dragged his family all over the plains, sleeping in dugout turf houses, nearly freezing to death in winter while facing floods, raging thunderstorms, blizzards, hostile natives, numerous diseases, all while on the edge of starvation.
While almost all the stores and many of the old homesteads are gone, Concord today, with a population 1973, retains its rural roots. The Concord Historical Society is valiantly trying to preserve the past Each summer, for over 100 years, the town gathers for a picnic. There was face painting, pie eating, egg toss, raffles, and a bunch of other events designed to let kids have fun and adults act like kids.
