In 1855, Electa had a big decision to make. Back in Wisconsin, Electa’s brother John W. Quinney was sick. He knew he would die soon. He wanted Electa to come back and see him.
Electa had been living in Indian Territory for nearly 20 years. Her sons, who were now teenagers, had grown up there. John Walker Candy’s family was there, too, and he had a good job as a printer. What should she do?
Electa traveled to Wisconsin. Her husband and sons came along. She was with her brother when he died on July 21, 1855, at his farm in the town of Stockbridge, near Lake Winnebago.
While Electa was away, Wisconsin had changed. It became a state in 1848. There were now railroads, cities, and many more people. When her brother John died, he left Electa his farm. This gave her a place to live in Wisconsin. She decided to stay. She did not go back to Indian Territory.
More people lived in Wisconsin when Electa returned in 1855. Milwaukee was becoming a city.
Her farm sat along what was then called the Military Road. Margaret Daun, whose family lived there many years after Electa, said the house was originally a log cabin. Later, the logs were covered with boards. The house had 2 bedrooms upstairs and a kitchen, living room, and bedroom downstairs. There was also a barn, a shed, and some other small buildings. The farm sat on a hill overlooking Lake Winnebago. The lake was about a mile away.
Electa’s farm was near the village of Stockbridge alongside the Military Road. This was the first real road in Wisconsin. Work on the Military Road began in 1835. Some stretches followed old Indian trails.
The Military Road had an important purpose. It was built to connect the state’s 3 military forts: Fort Crawford, Fort Winnebago, and Fort Howard. Once it was built, settlers could get around more easily. They could travel from Green Bay all the way to Prairie du Chien. As a result, many people began moving to Wisconsin. Today, what was once the Military Road through Stockbridge is part of State Highway 55.
The Military Road
But life back in Wisconsin was hard. John Walker Candy had hoped to start a newspaper for the Stockbridge Indians. He never did. He had a very hard time finding any job. “Instead of supporting his wife he was supported by her,” a friend later said.
John wasn’t the only person struggling to find work. In 1857, the entire United States suffered a sudden, terrible financial panic. It continued until 1859. Many people lost their jobs. Many banks and businesses failed. The panic was worst near the Great Lakes, including in the state of Wisconsin.
In 1857, the entire United States suffered a sudden financial panic.
Just how difficult was the Panic of 1857? We find a clue in the story of a portrait of Electa’s brother John W. Quinney.
The portrait was painted in 1849. In July 1857, after John had died, Electa agreed to give it to the Wisconsin Historical Society. John had been an important Stockbridge leader, and the historical society would be able to preserve his portrait. Electa sent it to Fond du Lac to be framed. Then the panic hit.
The portrait of John W. Quinney
In January 1858, the portrait was still at the frame shop in Fond du Lac. Electa owed $8.50 for the framing and could not pay the bill. The shop owner refused to send the painting to the historical society until he was paid.
Electa apologized in a letter to Lyman Draper, the secretary of the historical society. “Owing to disappointments and adverse fortune … I have not been able to redeem [the portrait] in order to send it to you,” Electa wrote. “Be patient… . I will redeem it and have it sent on as soon as circumstances will permit.”
Eventually, a man who was working with the historical society paid the bill for Electa. Today, the Wisconsin Historical Society still owns the painting.
In 1859, John returned to Indian Territory, while Electa stayed in Wisconsin. We don’t know why he left. This is one more missing puzzle piece in Electa’s life. Maybe he thought he would have better luck finding a job in Indian Territory. We also don’t know why Electa stayed behind, but perhaps she had to stay to look after her farm. John’s daughter Elizabeth, who had been visiting Wisconsin, left with him. Electa’s family and friends were surprised.
“You say that Mr. Candy and [his] daughter … will leave soon but you do not inform us of the place of their destination. Are they going to Keshena, Kansas gold mines, Cherokee nation or where?” Electa’s friend Levi Konkapot Jr. asked in a letter in February 1859.
“Where is Uncle Candy?” Electa’s nephew Jeremiah Slingerland wrote in July 1859. “I heard he and Elizabeth were at Portage. Is it so? Foolish things, what are they doing? Don’t they want to return?”
Around the time that John left, Electa lived for a little while on the Stockbridge-Munsee reservation in Shawano County. The reservation was about 80 miles north of her farm in Stockbridge. She had a house and a garden on the reservation. Her sons sometimes traveled north to the reservation, too. They were growing up. In 1859, Alex was 21, Daniel was 19, and John was 17 years old.
“Daniel has been up here,” Jeremiah Slingerland wrote that year. “I don’t know what he came after but to steal some of our girls,” Jeremiah joked.
But by 1860, Electa had moved back to Stockbridge. Electa’s friends tried to get her to return to the reservation.
“I passed your place the other day, your little garden spot looks well,” one friend wrote in 1860. “I often think how pleasant it would be if you were living here.”
Jeremiah’s wife, Sarah, thought so too. “If you were … living up here I should feel that … I had a dear friend near me,” Sarah wrote in 1862.
Back in Stockbridge, Electa was very poor. Her sons tried to help. But their farm was small. She could not grow enough food to feed her family. “I am really very sorry that you have yet so much hardship, so many to feed … it is very discouraging to be so burdened,” Sarah wrote in 1860.
Between 1859 and 1863, John Walker Candy wrote 2 letters to Electa. We don’t know what he wrote or the dates that the letters were written. But we do know a little bit about what happened to him in those years.
John was living in Arkansas, just outside of Indian Territory. He doesn’t seem to have been working as a printer. His name doesn’t appear on anything printed in Indian Territory after 1855.
Indian Territory was a terrible place to live at this time. During the Civil War, which began in 1861, there were many battles in and near Indian Territory. One famous battle, in Maysville, Arkansas, in October 1862, was near John’s home. Mary Ann Watie’s brother, Stand, was a Confederate general, and he led troops in this battle.
The Civil War was a difficult time in Indian Territory.
Throughout the Civil War, the Cherokee Indians disagreed over whether to support the Union or the Confederacy. We don’t know which side John agreed with. But we do know that the Civil War years were hard for him in Indian Territory. Two of his daughters, Susan and Elizabeth, died within a few weeks of each other in 1862. In 1863, John’s son-in-law died of pneumonia while fighting in the war. And several of his grandchildren died in the 1860s.
In Wisconsin, Electa was having a hard time, too. On October 16, 1861, her son Daniel signed up to fight for the Union. The next year he left for Missouri with the Second Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry.
A soldier from the Second Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry
The Second Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry in St. Louis, Missouri
Daniel believed in what he was doing. “I will try and come home when peace is declared, if health and life is spared, and not before,” he wrote to Electa in August 1862.
Daniel wrote many letters to Electa. Some of the letters were funny. Once, Daniel joked about a photo that had been taken of him in which he didn’t look very handsome. Another time, he wrote about some Stockbridge-Munsee tribal leaders who he said were not very well educated. They were running in a tribal election, hoping to become chief. “I believe in a chief knowing how to read and write, don’t you think so too?” he asked Electa.
Many Native Americans from Wisconsin signed up to fight in the Civil War, including these 2 Stockbridge.
Daniel often asked Electa about her farm and their friends in Wisconsin. He also sent Electa some of his pay. He worried that it wasn’t enough. “If you are in need of more money just tell me and I will send you all that I [have] got,” Daniel wrote in August 1862.
A Civil War military hospital
Daniel also said in this letter that he was sick. “I don’t feel very well. There are a great many of our boys getting sick,” he wrote. “I don’t think that the hospital doctors know any too much… . All that he gave me was powders, powders. Do you know what would be good [to take]?”
“I wish you all were down here,” he added.
But Daniel would not see his family again. On February 21, 1863, he died of pneumonia. He was buried in Springfield, Missouri. Around this time, Electa’s son Alex also died. Alex was buried in the town of Stockbridge.
These were, indeed, sad years for Electa.
In 1862, her niece Sarah went through a tough time. Someone in Sarah’s family had died. She thanked Electa for thinking about her troubles “when you have a wounded heart of your own to bear. I deeply feel for you,” she wrote.