Contact Information

History

Town of Dover: Created as a separate town in the late 1840’s, Dover in 1850 had a population of 838. Most of the 455 Europeans among them were from the British Isles, including 270 English and 120 Irish.

Various types of land characterized the area when the first settlers arrived. Some of it was prairie, some woodland and in the center around Eagle Lake some swampy lowland. Most of the town’s land became productive when farmed. The initial pioneers made their claims in 1836 and by 1845 farmers had bought most of the land in the Town.

Dover’s first settler may have been Captain John Todd Trowbridge, a Yankee whose career before becoming a frontier farmer had been mostly in shipping. In 1836 he, his wife Mary and two of their sons, Stewart and Henry, moved to the wilderness of Racine County. They claimed farmland in what would become the Town of Dover and built a two story log house that became a landmark in the area. From their new farm home, the Trowbridge family watched the sad westward procession of the Potawatomi Indians, whose children were the Yankee boys' early playmates. Captain Trowbridge became a leader in the Town, serving as Justice of the Peace, Postmaster and a member of the Territorial House of Representatives in 1843 and 1844.