Settlement

The settlement of the village was not delayed beyond the close of the war, when its ravines and uplands were covered with unbroken forests of oak trees, interspersed here and there with groves of the stately elm on the bottoms and along the margin of the streams, spreading out their huge branches, affording a delicious shade to the sturdy pioneer and his war-worn family. A few sporadic members of the birch, maple, cottonwood, and other deciduous trees were found scattered here and there, while upon the summits and steep acclivities of the bluffs were to be seen a few stray wanderers from the perennial tribes, waving their dark green cones above the castellated rocks like the plumes of giant sentinels upon the battlements of Nature's walls. Beneath these solitary shades, and guarded by these lone naiad sentinels of the wood and stream, slept in tumuli and grassy mounds a strange and long-forgotten race of warriors. Here in the gray dawn of the world's existence, possessed of a knowledge of the arts and sciences, played their brief part in the drama of human life, then laid them down in their last sleep, slumbering on 'til the wave of oblivion had passed over them, and blotted from the records of earth every evidence of their existence, save these green mounds and moldering bones beneath. But the Mound Builders who, though the earliest settlers, are left quietly reposing in the bosom if mother earth "to dumb forgetfulness a prey."

Next "in the course of human events" comes the red man of the forest, who is passed by, however, as a thief and a wanderer, and finally came into the country the progenitors of those who are here today. In the summer of 1832, days after peace followed in the wake of the victory at Bad Ax, Willis St. John and Isaac Whitaker, the latter accompanied by his wife, the first white woman in Potosi village or township. Two adventurous pioneersmen made their way hither, and discovering the mineral cave in Snake Hollow, whence the latter took its name, decided to remain:and pursue their way to glory and to fortune.

It should, however, be observed that mineral had been discovered by hunters in 1829, when "float" was found in the roots of a tree that had been blown down by the wind on the hill opposite the new Catholic church; also that a hut had been erected in the same year at the mouth of the hollow by Tom Hymer. But owing to Indian troubles and other exigencies, no permanent establishment was here in the vicinity of Potosi village until the advent of St. John and Whitaker.