road to spring green

The Road to Spring Green - Day trip from Galena

On the Road to Spring Green

One of the things that Tim and I planned to do while attending the Ryan family reunion was drive to Spring Green, Wisconsin, and see where our Smith ancestors had lived. Beforehand, Tim and I had tentatively laid out our plans for this day trip – stop off at the library, drive up to Loreto to see the cemetery and from there drive down Highway N to find the homestead that our family had begun farming over 150 years ago.

Early on Monday (July 21), we left for Spring Green. By this time our agenda was a little more solid – we would also stop at the House on the Rock and visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s home, both just outside of Spring Green. So off we went, beginning our journey around 9 that morning. Elizabeth and I enjoyed the sights while the boys slept most of the way.

Fortunately we installed a GPS system in the car, so it could give us directions…of course based on the fastest route. Surprisingly, it took us less than an hour and a half to get to the Spring Green area, but because we took the “fastest route”, we also found ourselves taking a lot of back roads. At first you think your GPS unit is going haywire, until you see other cars on these isolated roads with GPS units as well. In a way, we would not have seen the Wisconsin country side as intimately as we did by traveling these now-paved country roads.

What you learn while driving in Wisconsin is that the roads have been alphabetized...Highway A, Highway E...and so on. We traveled on Highway X and at some point we turned onto Highway XX. I looked over to Elizabeth and said, "if we have to turn onto Highway XXX, we'll just have to find a different route." To which my nephew said, "speak for yourself!" Ah...youth.

Our first stop was to visit the House on the Rocks. It was an odd and quirky place but artistically fascinating. Of course my 15 year old nephew was unimpressed. The only salvation he had was his cell phone, which he managed to send and receive many text messages during “his ordeal.” We took the shorter tour, but certainly is someplace that you could spend all day as it also includes gardens, other buildings and private art collections.

Our tour took probably an hour, and afterwards decided to go to Spring Green to find some place to eat. There aren’t any fast food places that we could see, so we ended up eating downtown in one of the local cafes. The food was good and the price was even better. During lunch we decided to go to the library and see if there was any information that we could gather…we set a time of 60 minutes for research…and afterwards we would go onto Frank Lloyd Wright’s home.

After about 30 minutes we realized that there wasn’t a lot of information that we would be able to gather. They had little information about the history or residents of the Bear Creek area, so we packed up and left for the architect’s home. Once there we nearly choked when we saw the ticket prices: $16 per person for a one hour tour but only to drive around the area; $47 if we wanted to take a tour of the home, and $80 if we wanted to also have tea on the Wright’s veranda. We would have chosen the $16 tour but would have had to wait an hour and a half. We decided not to wait, and instead made our way to Loreto.

One of the things you notice as you go north of Spring Green – the land gets hillier and more dense with trees and brush. As we climbed further into the hill country, you try to wonder what our ancestors must have felt as they came closer to Bear Creek. One of the things that I had read was that the Irish liked the area because it reminded them of Ireland. It must have been a difficult trip For Catherine 150 years ago... I also wonder if young John Smith, on his way to Bear Creek in the 1850s, asked his mother, "are we there yet?"

Our first stop was the Catholic cemetery in Loreto. After spending some time looking for "dead" family members, we decided to make our way west along Highway N to find the Smith lands. Eventually we parked our cars, at a site where Mayme Carroll owned property in 1947. As she was a daughter of Irish John Smith, we believe that she may have been holding onto the original homestead. We took some pictures of the landscape, and since we had time, we decided to go further west to Keyesville.

This was the unplanned part of our trip. We really had no plans to go to Keysville as it was in the neighboring county…and since we already had received photographs of the Greenan and Smyth graves, it was not something that was high on our list of things to accomplish. However, our trip to Keyesville proved to be the most rewarding thing we did on this trip, from a genealogical point of view. The placement of the graves presented questions, and unfortunately there was no one there to ask questions. Not all the graves could we find, particularly Susan McPhillips’s mother’ grave. But we did find something by accident that proved to be the evidence we needed to connect the Smyth and Greenau families buried in the cemetery. See story.

After spending an hour scouring the cemetery for family members, we decided to make our way back to Galena for dinner. We went to an Italian restaurant that one of the local folks recommended, and talked about what we did that day.

THE PHOTOS ON YOUR RIGHT WERE TAKEN AT HOUSE ON THE ROCKS WHICH IS SEVERAL MILES SOUTH OF SPRING GREEN WISCONSIN.

Most photos were taken in the garden area
Below are the four of us at the end of the "point" of the house.