Joshua Pierce house at 2800 Taylor Ave, Racine, Wisconsin

Racine, Wisconsin history: House on Taylor Avenue near Durand

August 4, 2011 11:50 AM

More posts like this: Racine, animals, history.

We were talking gardening with our neighbor Katie last month when she mentioned that her daughter, Mary, has an interest in local history and has been researching our neighborhood’s past online. I handed Katie my business card and told her I would be very interested if Mary could pass along any links.

One of the most striking buildings in our area is the house pictured above and below, at 2800 Taylor Avenue (Taylor Avenue & Pierce Boulevard) with the name “Highland” in leaded glass above the front door. I always hear “Ashokan Farewell” in my head when I pass that house, and imagine its master gazing out over his estate in Civil War days. According to Katie, Mary was interested in the house’s history too.

Not long after, Mary emailed me with a detailed overview of her findings, beginning with the “Treaty with the Chippewa, etc.” of 1833 and the “X” signatures of tribal leaders purportedly ceding “to the United States all their land, along the western shore of Lake Michigan … about five millions of acres.”

Searching through the Bureau of Land Management’s General Land Office Records website by town, range, sections, and quarter sections, Mary was able to find out who first bought the land we now live on.

In the case of 2800 Taylor, Daniel Slawson bought the parcel for Joshua Pierce (born September 15, 1814) of Steuben County, New York. Pierce came to Racine in 1840, acquired 160 acres and later another 80, and built his “large and beautiful home” in 1860-1861, according to the Commemorative Biographical Record of Prominent and Representative Men of Racine and Kenosha Counties, Wisconsin published by J.H. Beers & Co. of Chicago in 1906, which also notes:

Joshua Pierce was a thrifty farmer, and had one of the finest residences and farms in Racine county. At an early day he helped to lay out nearly all of the roads in Mt. Pleasant township and was road commissioner for many years. He died on the farm on which he had settled Dec. 20, 1904, aged ninety years, three months, five days.

An 1899 map of Mount Pleasant that Mary found at Historic Map Works shows J. Pierce’s land just outside the southwest corner of the City of Racine. Another map of Mt. Pleasant Township from 1908 shows his land divided up among his children.

Another book, the History of Racine and Kenosha Counties, Wisconsin, published in 1879 by Western Historical Company of Chicago, lists Joshua Pierce among the “old settlers” and says he “used to raise 40 bushels of wheat to the acre” and “is the owner of some fine race horse stock,” including one named Gov. Hayes, “a horse that will have a good record.”

Mary writes that racehorses were extremely popular back then, and an 1887 map of Mount Pleasant shows a race track near Lake Michigan, east of Pierce’s land on property owned by J. I. Case, the founder of Case Corporation and a breeder of champion race horses — including “Jay-Eye-See,” a black gelding that broke the mile trotting record of 2:10 at Narragansett Park in 1884, then three years later set a pacing record of 2:06.25 at Independence, Iowa, making him a national celebrity immortalized via trading cards, product promotions, and a series of Currier and Ives prints.

Jay-Eye-See outlived J. I. Case, and in 1909 the horse’s obituary ran in newspapers everywhere, including the New York Times. Jay-Eye-See died and was buried on a Mount Pleasant farm. Eiighty-eight years later in 1997, the horse’s bones were exhumed when construction began on the Sturtevant Menards store. In 1998, there was a plan to add the horse’s bones to the Case family mausoleum in Mound Cemetery, but as of 2003 they were still in a Rubbermaid container at the home of local historian (and Voice of Elvis?) John Van Thiel, awaiting a $10,000 investment.

Returning to Joshua Pierce — and specifically to Taylor Avenue, the street in front of his house — Mary writes,

Back in 1835 when the first survey was done, there was an old Indian trail that became a wagon trail that angled toward the northeast through sections 19, 20 & 21. It can be seen on the field notes and maps marked “Road NE” on the Bureau of Land Management website. That location is what’s now Taylor Ave! I’ve seen it referred to “The Road to Racine” on other maps. In July of 1911 when this area was bought from William Pierce, the son of Joshua Pierce, by Wolff Realty company and surveyed into lots, Taylor Ave. was called “Asylum Ave” after the Taylor Orphan Asylum that was just to the south of Durand Ave. then.

Budget cuts curtailed operations at the Taylor Home and Education Center, 3131 Taylor Ave., back in 2005, but the Taylor Orphans’ home cared for hundreds of children from the early 1870s onward. The orphanage and Taylor Avenue were both named for Isaac Taylor, an early lumber merchant who spent his own childhood in an orphanage in England, then founded and endowed the Taylor Home after establishing his fortune in Kewaunee.

This stuff is absolutely fascinating, and I just wanted to pass some of it along for readers thinking about researching their own local history, or for those interested in this particular area.

A few more links that Mary sent my way: