Memoirs of Waukesha County. From the earliest historical times to the present with chapters on various subjects, including each of the different towns, and a genealogical and biographical record of representative families in the county, prepared from data obtained from original sources of information.

              /
230 MEMOIRS  OF WAUKESHA  COUNTY
reform which was inaugurated at this pretty, sparkling lake, forty-six years ago. In place of the rude dwellings of the Socialists which greeted the eye of the visitor in 1846-7, the large, hospitable-looking farmhouse of Mr. William Addenbrooke stands, overlooking the waters, surrounded by numerous barns and granaries, all speaking plainly of the bountiful harvests of the Spring Lake fields, and of the supremacy of individual effort in the general results over the combinations of a socialistic character."
The years have demonstrated the weaknesses of these efforts, but the immediate cause of failure in this instance seemed to be the fact that the colonists were all mechanics, and had no practical knowledge of agricultural life, and especially under the hardships that accompanied it in the forties.
The latest communistic settlement is scarcely withiri the province of this chapter since it is distinguished by national lines. It is called the Metropolitan Church Association and is briefly considered in the introduction to this history.
The Swedish settlement in the town of Merton, while not a social¬ istic community, differed from the ordinary group in that the mem¬ bers were more closely bound both by the incident of birth, their com¬ mon misfortunes, and their hope of building an ideal city in which the founding of a university was a part of the plan. A more detailed ac¬ count of this settlement is found in the chapter treating of the devel¬ opment of the town of Merton.
""'^"The Welsh were among the very early setders of Waukesha county. It was only six years after Morris D. Cutler, the first white settler, had built his cabin here, and at a date, 1840, when the white popula¬ tion of the county was very scanty, that John Hughes with his wife and family of six children crossed the ocean from Wales and found their way to what is now the township of Genesee, this county. The / next year four more Welshmen, two of them with families, appeared
and became Mr. Hughes' neighbors. These were Thomas Jones and the three Jar mon brothers, Richard, Daniel and John. The year fol¬ lowing seven more families were added to the colony, which grew steadily and rapidly, not only because of the large families which were, and still are, fashionable among the Welsh farmers, but also because of the constant and ever increasing immigration from Wales. George R. Rice, of Genesee, states that when the family of his father, the late Roderick Rice, arrived here in 1846, there were already over seventy Welsh families located in the vicinity.
"Through the kindness of John J. Hughes, of Spring Water, Wis., eldest son of John Hughes, the first Welsh settler, I have secured some particulars of the beginnings of this immigration which has been of so much importance to Waukesha county. Mr. Hughes and family ar¬ rived in Milwaukee in August of 1840. On Lake Erie they had met Rev. Moses Ordway who had recommended Waukesha county, where he resided, as a desirable place for settlement, and so Mr, Hughes left his family in Milwaukee and accompanied Mr. Ordway to the home of the latter, three miles southwest of the present city of Wau¬ kesha.  There he fell ill and after waiting for two weeks Mrs. Hughes
/
/