James Babb

In 1845 James Wilson Babb became the first white settler to make a permanent home in the Reedsburg area. He built a double log house, Southern style, and returned to Ohio to get his wife and children.

On the eighth day of December the party came with their worldly goods, cattle, etc. For years Mr. Babb and his family were constantly surrounded by Native Americans, who for some time were their only neighbors. Because of his justice and generosity, he was always on friendly terms with the Native Americans. Throughout a period of thirty years, neither he nor his family ever lost anything by the depredations of their neighbors.

He died in 1875 and is buried in a private cemetery on Old Ironton Rd, on Babb's Prairie.

Excerpted from the book,
Reedsburg Remembers 100th Anniversary