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Wednesday, October 5, 2011

(Not So) Wordless Wednesday - Post 173: Hunting for Natvig Land in Cottage Grove WI

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I've been posting old family photographs from my collection on Wednesdays, but now I want to post some current photographs. This is not a wordless posts like others do - I simply am incapable of having a wordless post.

On Day 12 of the Seaver Family History Mystery Tour three weeks ago, we stopped in Cottage Grove, Dane County, Wisconsin in search of the land and houses owned by Linda's great-great-grandfather, Elling Erikson and Anna (Ellingsdatter) Natvig.  They resided in the Town of Cottage Grove (Township 7N, Range 11E)  off Natvig Road, which intersects County Road N just north of US Highway 12/18.  I found several land parcels in Section 28 on the 1873, 1890, 1899 and 1911 plat maps on Ancestry.com, and at one time the Natvig family owned almost the entire Section.

We took some pictures:

1)  Here is Linda beside the Natvig Rd. street sign:


2)  We drove along Natvig Road several times, and the oldest house we saw was this one near the southern end of the road, right where it jogs:



This house looks too modern, but it's on the Natvig land.

3)  The 1890 and 1899 plat maps showed Natvig land on the very west side of the Section 28, which is now along Vilas Rd (runs north-south and intersects US 12/18).  There was a house on the east side of the road right about where one of the Natvig properties was in the plat maps:


The house above looks too modern, but it may enclose parts of an earlier house.

4)  On the above property, there was an older, smaller building north of the house above, set well back from the road alongside a metal barn:



I wonder if that was the site of the original Elling Erikson Natvig home?

We did not go up to any of the houses and knock on doors.  We probably should have. 

After this frustrating adventure, we moved on to the Town of Deerfield (the town just east of Cottage Grove) and stopped at the gas station, and saw the public library next door.  I copied the Cottage Grove and Deerfield pages from the 2005 Dane County Government Book which has an atlas of current land ownership in each Town in Dane County. 

While I was refreshing my memory about the pictures above with the Cottage Grove page, I noticed that the land where photos 3 and 4 above are owned by G. & C. Natvig.  It is actually in Section 29 of Cottage Grove on the east side of Vilas Road.  Now I'm really bummed that we didn't knock on the door of that house on Vilas Road!  I sure wish that I had found the Dane County book before we rode around the area.  There are several lessons here painfully learned. 

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