My Country, May She Always Be Right
But Right Or Wrong, My Country
Moses Hardwick was nearly 88 years old - to state it with exactness - 87 years, 10 months and 18 days. He came to Green Bay in 1816 as a soldier - arriving here in Col. Miller's command on the 17th of August and was stationed with that command a "Camp Smith" which was the first location of the troops on this river (Fox River), from two to three miles south of this point (Green Bay settlement). He was discharged the following year, his term of enlistment having expired. He was a native of Kentucky, and during his first years of service participation in the War of 1812, while stated at Sacketts Harbor, N. Y. for which he was receiving a pension during the late years of his life.
After his discharge at Green Bay, we hear from him as a farmer and a mail carrier - carrying the mail on foot from Fort Howard (Green Bay) to Fort Wayne and Detroit, via Sheboygan, Milwaukee (Wisconsin), Chicago (Illinois). Capt. Powell remembers him in both capacities in 1819 - his farm being on a piece of land in the present city of Ft. Howard, just north of where TAYLOR & DUNCAN'S foundry was burned. His mail carrying trips were made in the employ of the Fort Howard quartermaster's department, and were, as cam be readily imagined, long and solitary journeys, made necessarily on foot, for there were no roads, and scarcely any trails, in that early day and the carrier shouldered, not only the mails, but his own provisions, which consisted mainly of sugar and pounded corn, the most nutriment for amount of bulk. Several men were engaged by the department in this service - the round trip taking about two weeks - and they departed alternately, unless when the amount of mail required, two went together. This continued seventeen years, until the mail route was opened to Chicago, and the route regularly supplied by the Gov't.
In Mrs. French's History of Brown County there is a relation by Mr. Hardwick of one of these journeys which was probably connected with his first courtship. In one of his trips, he had permission to remain in Detroit until the opening of the lakes; but after he bad been there some time, he began to pine for a look at a Green Bay girl, whose heart beat responsive to his. And he made up his mind to return on foot. So, back through the deep snow and trackless wilderness he trudged all the way from Detroit to Green Bay, just for a look at "the girl he left behind him," The girl became his wife - how could she help it - after such a manifestation of devotion.
Mr. HARDWICK was one of the oldest of the Society of Old Settlers of Brown County. He was born as stated above, in Kentucky - at Lexington, Oct. 2, 1731; was married in Green Bay. to Angeline Chevalier in 1824, by whom be had four children - two sons and two daughter. She died in 1832, and in 1835 he married Charlotte La Rock, who brought him ten children, five sons and five daughters. All of these children, but three are now living. The widow still survives, at the old homestead on the Ridge Road, near the Church, in the Town of Scott.
(note: Moses Hardwick and his second wife moved in 1849 to become one of the first two homesteader families in the wilderness of Pensaukee, Oconto County, Wisconsin. He and Charlotte gave birth to their last five children in Pensaukee. Moses Hardwick Jr. also married and lived in Pensaukee during this time, starting his own family there. Daughter Polly Hardwick married William Shane, living in Oconto with her husband and children until her death in 1880. Moses farmed and owned the first tavern along the Pensaukee shore until the family retired to a farm near Bay Settlement, Brown County, Wisconsin, in 1865)