Hazelwood

Hazelwood was home to the Morgan L. Martin family for one hundred years from 1837 to 1937. Morgan L. Martin, originally from upstate New York, was a prominent Green Bay attorney, civic leader, Indian agent, and entrepreneur who helped lay the foundation for Wisconsin's statehood. In 1848, he was elected president of the state convention that drafted Wisconsin's constitution, and on May 29, 1848, President Polk signed the Act of Admission, making Wisconsin the 30th state to enter the union. Martin later risked much of his fortune in an unsuccessful effort to build a system of locks on the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers that would allow ships to travel from the Fox through the Wisconsin to the Mississippi, but although the project became a reality in the 1870s, the arrival of the railroad in Green Bay had made the water route less necessary, and he lost nearly his entire investment. Deborah Beaumont Martin, the youngest child of Morgan and Elizabeth Martin, served as head librarian of the Kellogg Public Library for 30 years. With her sister Sarah Greene Martin and Ella Hoes Neville, she wrote Historic Green Bay, one of the first written accounts of the settlement of the area once called La Baye Verte, or The Green Bay. Deborah Martin was also a civic leader and ardent preservationist, and when she died in 1931, the entire community mourned.

Green Bay, Wisconsin · United States