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Soon after Captain Knapp founded his settlement on Lake Michigan, other pioneers weresettling areas to the west. Lemuel Smith, who arrived in 1835, was said to have been the firstsettler in Burlington. David Bushnell and Herman and Elizabeth Loomis arrived the followingyear. In 1836, Levi Godfrey and John Wade built a log house in what is now Rochester. S.E.Chapman and Levi Barnes came to Waterford the same year.In 1805, Congress created the Michigan Territory, which subsequently included all the land thatis now in the State of Wisconsin. In 1834, the land west of Lake Michigan was divided into threecounties. As settlers moved in, new counties were split off from those original three. MilwaukeeCounty was founded in 1834, the year Captain Knapp arrived, and extended southward alongthe lake all the way to Illinois. In 1836, the Wisconsin Territory was organized. That same year,this area was sufficiently inhabited to warrant separation from Milwaukee County, and RacineCounty was formed. It did not take on its present borders, however, until 1850.In the years preceding the Civil War, Racine was known for its strong opposition to slavery.Many slaves escaping to freedom via the “Underground Railroad” passed through RacineCounty. When Joshua Glover, an escaped slave who had made a home in Racine, wasarrested as a fugitive and taken to jail in Milwaukee, a band of citizens from Racine were amongthose who broke into the jail and freed him.During the Civil War, over 2,000 Racine County men served in the Union Army, including in the“Belle City Rifles” company of the 2 nd Wisconsin Regiment, part of the legendary Iron Brigade.More than 275 county residents perished in that conflict, including Colonel Hans Christian Heg,a founder of the Town of Norway and the highest-ranking Wisconsin officer to die in that war.Statues honoring him are located in the County’s Heg Park and on the State Capitol grounds.Racine County holds the distinction of having erected, in 1853, the first high school building inthe State of Wisconsin. The present County Courthouse grounds include the former sites ofboth Racine High School and the county’s first public school.Racine County land has been farmed for nearly 2,000 years. The first Racine County farmers,members of the Hopewell Culture that inhabited the area some 1,300 to 1,900 years ago, grewcorn, beans, squash and tobacco. Later, the Potawatomi added melons and pumpkins andintroduced the harvesting of maple sap and sugar.The primary crop for the first European settlers was wheat. The Perkins flouring mill ofBurlington sent the first Wisconsin wheat back east in the 1840’s. After the Civil War, however,dairy farming became more important, and remains so today. In 2007, Racine County had 652farms, totaling 120,459 acres. In 2002, there were 631 farms, totaling a little over 124,000acres.The first industry in Racine County was agriculture-related and included the manufacture offanning mills, machines that separated grain from chaff. In 1842, 24-year old Jerome IncreaseCase came from New York State with a combined thresher-separator that he had invented. Hestarted production of his machine in Rochester, but moved his factory to the City of Racine a fewyears later. The company he founded, originally J.I. Case Threshing Machine Co., is now part ofCNH Global. A world leader in the manufacture and sale of agricultural and constructionequipment, it still produces tractors in Racine County, primarily under the CaseIH brand.PAGE 47 - 10