Capt. Levi Moore is the oldest living male settler on the Baraboo Rapids.
Archibald Barker was the first white man who came to Sauk County with the intention of settling. He is now a resident of the town of Baraboo.
The first bridge built across the river was at a point were the present bridge crosses on the street leading to the depot. It was constructed in 1846, of rough round logs and was what was know as a “crib bridge”.
Abraham Laezert was the pioneer crispin in Baraboo.
David Schermerhorm also made boots and shoes here as early as 1848.
E.M. Hart was the first school teacher.
Dr. Charles Cowles was the first physician.
In 1859 William Crawford and James Crawford, Jr. while fishing below the lower dam, caught a sturgeon which weighted 113 ½ pounds, and was six feet long. A discussion of the merits of this “catch” among old settlers brought out some pretty tough fish stories, one by Archibald Barker, who says that, in 1842, while running the first raft of lumber ever taken down the Baraboo, he saw in the stream, at a point just below the Lower Narrows, a very large school of sturgeon plowing along, their backs being out of the water. They had, apparently formed a line reaching from one bank to the other and Mr. Barker says, when he first discovered them he thought some one had dammed the river. He killed three very large ones with a hand-spike, and while in the water trying to secure them, he was knocked down by others fully as large as those he had killed. While upon the subject of fish, it may be well to state that P.A. Bassett caught the first eel ever taken from the Baraboo River by any of the early white settlers.
Thomas Fullerton preached the first sermon in the Baraboo Valley, at the house of Mrs. Valentia B. Hill, in the winter of 1842. Mrs. Hill was the first person baptized in these parts and her son, Ichabod B. Hill was the first white child born in the same region; the latter event occurred January 9, 1842.
The first rat ever seen in Baraboo was found in Mrs. Garrisons store, which stood on the corner just east of the Sumner House, in 1858. The old lady called upon some of the boys, Levi Crouch among the rest, to kill the rodent, which they did, with neatness and dispatch.
It was a Baraboo Constable who acting under instructions from the Sheriff, levied, upon some swine to satisfy a judgment and upon reporting the fact to the court said; “I have seized the hogs and have them in my procession.”