East Steele Farm

The following account tells the story of the Treleven family who were tenant farmers at East Steel Farm in the years up to 1832. It is a tale of the heartbreak, hardship, strength and determination of a family desperate to make a better life for themselves in a far away and wild country where self reliance was the key to survival.

John Dennis Treleven married Ann Trewin in June 1806 in Poughill and they had seven children between 1806 and 1818:

1. Michael bapt. 1806 d. Jan 1878

2. Elizabeth b. Aug 1808 d. Apr 1895

3. Ann b. Jul 1810 d. Mar 1896

4. John b. Aug 1812 d. Feb 1892

5. Joseph Dennis b. Aug 1814 d. Sep 1906

6 .Thomas bapt. Oct 1816

7. Daniel Dennis b. Sep 1818 d. Apr 1897

Unfortunately the father John Dennis died in 1832 and the family were left as tenants running the farm at East Steel in Week St Mary, Cornwall with the eldest son Michael holding the tenancy.

In Cornwall between 1824 and 1830, rural crime rates increased by 30% - mainly poaching and food thefts. Pauperism, desperation and discontent were almost universal in agricultural areas.

There was a shift from the self sufficient, open field villages to farms rented by tenant farmers employing labourers. Hiring was on a casual basis and no payment was given if no work was done. After enclosure it became more common for labourers to be paid by the day or week or by results, and to be employed for short periods for harvesting, hedging, ditching, threshing, and so on.

Farmhands were transformed into casual labourers with no guarantee of work and pay declined because of the surplus of labour. There was a permanent surplus of agricultural labour following changes in agriculture, the boom during the French wars and deflation after 1815. Productivity fell, so poor relief was cut as a deterrent - the attempt to cut it further was one of the causes of the so called Swing Riots of 1830. The price of corn was held artificially high by dominant landowners.

The rioters used a range of methods including machine breaking; arson; threatening letters; attacks on Justices of the Peace and overseers of the poor; riotous assembly; publishing and distributing handbills and posters; and 'robbery'. The riots began in Kent and persisted there the longest but spread throughout the south east and south west of England.

With this political and social turmoil as a background, the Treleven family faced a future of poverty trying to sustain a living for them all from this one farm. If the men were lucky enough to find work at other farms as labourers they faced the same poor prospects.

During this period leading up to 1840, newspapers were full of accounts of those who had emigrated to America, Canada and Australia to seek their fortune. Adverts were frequently placed seeking emigrants to take up assisted passage to these new lands with the promise of cheap or free land.

The American government needed to get lands into private hands for two reasons, one financial and one strategic. Following the Revolutionary War, the new Continental Congress was heavily in debt. It had no power to tax, so selling off their “western lands” to settlers became an important income source. The strategic reason for moving the public lands to private ownership was to encourage

settlement of those lands, thereby increasing the territorial legitimacy of the settled areas which in turn would support application to statehood.

The Land Act of 1820 set the price of land at $1.25 per acre and the standard minimal sale at 80 acres. Federal land offices were established in local areas to handle the sales.

It was with these factors in mind, John, the second son of John Dennis Treleven and Ann Trewin, left his young new wife Mary Catherine and travelled alone to New York on April 8th 1835 and returned later that same year.

What exactly John found we do not know but it is believed after investigating the possibilities for emigration for his family he returned with a plan after mapping out destinations, routes and costs.

One year later John and his wife Mary Catherine, Joseph Dennis Treleven and Thomas Treleven left Plymouth on the sail ship Cosmopolite and arrived in New York on May 16th 1836. Then over 4 years later on June 29th 1840, Daniel Dennis Treleven arrived in New York City on the ship David sailing from Bristol, England. This left the eldest son Michael Treleven, his wife Sarah and sisters Elizabeth and Ann remaining in Cornwall. Elizabeth had married Richard Miller in 1829 however Richard died in February 1839 (grave is in Week St Mary churchyard) leaving Elizabeth with four children, Edward, Elizabeth Ann, Robert and Julia to support. Her mother Ann had been a widow since 1832 and they must have both thought their fortunes would be better in the new lands of the Americas and so Ann Trewin (aged 67 !) , Elizabeth and three of her children Edward (11), Elizabeth Ann (8) and Robert (6) sailed from Liverpool on the sail ship Carroll of Carrollton to arrive in New York on August 4th 1841. Daughter Julia was not in the ships manifest and we believe must have died before the party left for America which may well have been a further catalyst for Elizabeth's emigration.

By June 1842 Elizabeth's sister Ann with her husband James Balson and their children James, John and William had joined the rest of the family in New York.

It is a sobering thought that travelling on a sail ship across the Atlantic at this time would have taken five or six weeks, possibly longer if the weather was bad. They are certain to have encountered bad seas at some point in their voyage and with the possibility of illness this was a risky venture, particularly for the old and the young. We know that after arriving at New York they all travelled to Poughkeepsie to stay before moving to their final destination. Why Poughkeepsie we cannot be sure except it was a much smaller town on the east bank of the Hudson River about 80 miles north of New York and may have presented more amenable and safe accommodation than the hustle and bustle of the city of New York. Their journey there would almost certainly have been by river steamboat up the Hudson. The Trelevens stayed there until the fall of 1842 during which period they will have worked to accumulate money to fund their onward journey. They had decided at some point that their final destination was to be Wisconsin where patents for land were being offered in parcels of 40 and 80 acres to settlers.

Wisconsin was part of the Northwest Territories becoming Wisconsin Territory in 1836 and achieving statehood in 1848. Tensions with the indigenous native tribes had culminated with the Winnebago War of 1827 and the Blackhawk War of 1832 and the forced removal of native Americans from most parts of the state. Those that remained were friendly and traded with the early settlers and the land was largely unpopulated and very fertile. It must have looked like a wonderful opportunity to start anew from the poor subsistence farming from Cornwall. However, Fond Du Lac County in Wisconsin which was to be their final destination still lay 1,000 miles to the west across wild open country with few trails and the perils of storms, accidents, illness and outlaws to be negotiated.

In the autumn of 1842, Ann and James Balson with their three young children, John and Catherine Treleven, Thomas Treleven and Ann Trewin all made the journey from Poughkeepsie to Fond du Lac County by way of Green Bay on the south shore of Lake Michegan. In the following May of 1843, Elizabeth Miller and Catherine Galsworthy, Joseph Dennis Treleven and Daniel Dennis Treleven made their way to Fond du Lac County via Milwaukee on the west shore of Lake Michegan. Elizabeth's three children were not with her and it is assumed they unfortunately died when in Poughkeepsie.

The journey from Poughkeepsie for either group was not easy. Fortunately geography and the building of the Eerie Canal in 1825 had made a route west via waterway a viable alternative to a thousand miles in an open wagon train. The Eerie Canal opened a route west from Albany on the Hudson river for 363 miles through the Mohawk Gap in the Appalachian Mountains to Buffalo on Lake Eerie of the Great Lakes. The families were able to get passage on steamboat up the Hudson River to Albany, then by barge to Buffalo and then by lake steamboat to Green Bay or Milwaukee.

When finally completed on October 26, 1825, the Eerie Canal was the engineering marvel of its day. It was 363 miles long and included 18 aqueducts to carry the canal over ravines and rivers, and 83 locks, with a rise of 568 feet from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. It was 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide, and floated boats carrying 30 tons of freight.

The journey through the Great Lakes was no picnic. At around 800 miles one was at the mercy of storms which could rise very quickly due to the influence of the adjacent land masses. Sailing ships often foundered in sudden storms or on sandbanks and accounts of steamboats whose boilers exploded together with collisions between boats were not uncommon. In August 1841, the paddlewheel steamer Erie left Buffalo for Detroit with about two hundred and forty passengers and had sailed only thirty-three miles when an explosion and fire, fuelled by containers of paint and varnish stored on deck, consumed the ship in fifteen minutes. More than two hundred died, mostly German and Swiss immigrants.

These Treleven migrants like many Cornish agricultural labourers had almost certainly never left the county of Cornwall before they set off on this great adventure. The trip to the ports of Plymouth, Bristol and Liverpool alone must surely have been very significant events for them and how they must have looked forward with some trepidation to the journey ahead as they stood on the docks and surveyed the sailing ships that would take them to their new lives. Ann Treleven (Trewin) will almost certainly have wondered whether she would ever see Cornwall, Week St Mary and her son Michael and her grandchildren again.

After such a long and gruelling journey to Fond du Lac County then what might their first impressions have been of their prospective new home ?. We may gain an insight from the journal of a young woman who arrived at exactly the same destination in June 1844 just after the Trelevens had arrived:

Extract from “Pioneer Life in Fond du Lac, 1844” by Mrs S B Higbec

Upon leaving Milwaukee and heading west by ox-pulled wagon:

“................through a dense wide forest almost totally uninhabited we were obliged to wend our way, drawn by sure footed beasts,...............”

“ The road through these dreary forests were almost impassable for the Spring had been very backward and rainy and in the woods the mud was - I dare not say how deep. Often during the weary days we were obliged to halt for an hour at a time, in a perfect sea of mud to extricate a wheel of our burdened wagon, which generally as soon was out, was spinning on top of a neighbouring stump or log.”

“Here and there in those dim old woods we frequently hailed little opening oases, radiant with thousands of beautiful flowers – the very air was fragrant – such flowers are only found in the west.

Upon nearing their destination:

“Yonder is a wide-rolling piece of prairie land, almost red with the wild pink, and overgrown with its mass of waving green. On the other side sweeps a rushing river, and sending forth a loud murmur through the silent air. Skirting another side of our prairie plain, in a strip of openings, tall maples mingle their shades with the hickory and elm. Not a habitation meets the eye; the deer bounds through the tall grass unmolested, and is at home in his undisturbed retreat. The Menomonees fish in lake and river peacefully alone.“

“Only those who in like manner have emigrated to the West in early days, can realize the feelings experienced as we gazed upon our wild home. Indian wigwams met our view in different directions, curious savages crept stealthily around, scrutinizing our persons and baggage.”

“The indians kept up the trading traffic of venison, maple-sugar, fish, berries, etc., which, indeed, furnished the table in rich style. Strawberries, raspberries and wild plums were abundant; the prairies were red (so to speak) with the large, wild strawberry—rare delicacies that “Yankeedom” cannot boast of in such abundance, if at all.”

“From the indians we could procure said produce for a mere trifle. Brass buttons and similar trinkets were far better than money in some instances, they esteem such highly. They were peaceable, kind and friendly worthy of the Menomonee and Pottawattimee tribes. Their extreme curiosity is sometimes misconstrued by strangers for secret animosity, but further acquaintance show them to posses no hostile designs.”

“….............towards the sugar camp of a group of Pottawattimees. Here we are, amid the dusky shades of mingling oaks, and fair leafed maple and the tasseled undergrowth. Not a foot-fall rustles the limbs and dry leaves around us; not a sign of humanity greets us. Still

farther into the green wood and we've fallen upon a little clearing of underbrush, a perfect township of wigwams, all huddled in one perfect circle, over quite an area of ground with a blazing fire here and there within the enclosure.”

“In all, this little camp covers about an acre. Over the fires hang numerous kettles of boiling sap, suspended from long poles supported by crotchets. Squaws with their nicely fashioned wooden spoons stir and skim the syrup, while the half nude papooses feed the fire with bark and chips. It is cheerful spot, as well as romantic.”

“Twas wild and new, yet strange and beautiful.”

“ If any portion of our globe, earth has been graced with rare and beautiful scenery, 'tis the western part of America”

The various branches of the Treleven and Balson families flourished in what was to become the State of Wisconsin. After registering patent for land the settlers were given 12 months to pay the due fee which gave them breathing space to gather the funds. Between 1846 and 1849, John, Daniel, Thomas and Joseph both individually and jointly bought a total of 400 acres of prime farming land. They built houses, established farms and businesses and became important members of the community.

John Treleven and his wife Catherine had three sons and six daughters after settling in Wisconsin. Their first born son, Daniel W Treleven born in 1834 joined the 32nd Regiment Infantry of the Wisconsin Volunteers during the American Civil War in September 1862. He served in General Ulysses S Grant's Central Mississippi Campaign where they moved initially to Memphis, Tenessee.

Unfortunately he died of “disease” in September 1863 in Memphis. The regiment lost 27 men killed and mortally wounded in battle and 254 men by disease during the war. By disease this was usually fever caused by malaria. His father travelled to Memphis following his death and brought his body back to Wisconsin to be buried in Rienzi Cemetery in Fond du Lac. Today this would be a journey of 685 miles by road but although we cannot be certain it is likely he found passage on a steamboat up-river on the Mississippi to within 170 miles of Fond du Lac. The remainder of the journey would have taken him five or six days by covered wagon.

Joseph married and had two daughters, Thomas married and had two sons and Daniel married and had three daughters and five sons. Elizabeth Miller (nee Treleven) married again to a Richard Tanner in Wisconsin in May 1844 and they had four sons and a daughter. Their daughter Elizabeth Ann Treleven married her cousin Joseph Dennis Treleven (bapt.1838) in July 1865. Joseph Dennis had also emigrated to Wisconsin with his brother John Dennis Treleven (b.1845) some years after the first of the Trelevens.

By 1920, all of the original Treleven immigrants, except for the very youngest, had passed away. Ann Treleven (nee Trewin) died in 1860 at the ripe age of 92. Their descendants organised a family reunion to encourage the maintenance of close family ties and preserve family history. The first Treleven Family Reunion was held Sunday, June 28, 1925, at Lakeside Park in Fond du Lac and a reunion has been held annually thereafter until the 100th and final reunion was held in 2025.

The writers attended the 2004 reunion and met many members of the Treleven/Balson families and in the subsequent years at least two branches of the Treleven family have visited Cornwall and Week St Mary.

This account has been constructed through the many hours of research of the writers together with the research and documents of many members of the Treleven and Balson families in the USA, without which the story of these pioneers would never have been told.

In June 2026 the Treleven Family Archives were officially transferred to the ARC (Area Research Center) located in the Polk Library on the campus of the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh.

The catalog record (where items can be requested) is: https://search.library.wisc.edu/catalog/9914605367402121

Philip & Hazel Wadsworth 2026

The American Pioneers of East Steele Farm