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Waukesha

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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a city and the county-seat of Waukesha county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., about 19 m. W. of Milwaukee on the Little Fox river. Pop. (1890) 6321; (1900) 7419, including 1408 foreign-born; (1905 state census) 6949; (1910) 8740. Waukesha is served by the Minneapolis, St Paul && Sault Ste, Marie, the Chicago & North-Western and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways, and by interurban electric railways connecting it with Milwaukee, Oconomowoc and Madison. The medicinal mineral springs (Bethesda, White Rock, &c.) are widely known. Among the public buildings are the county court house and the public library. Waukesha is the seat of the State Industrial School for Boys (established as a house of refuge in 1860) and of Carroll College (Presbyterian, co-educational, 1846). Waukesha was first settled in 1834, was named Prairieville in 1839, was incorporated as a village under its present name (said to be a Pottawatomi word meaning "fox") in 1852, and chartered as a city in 1896. In 1851 the first railway in the state was com - pleted between Milwaukee and Waukesha, but the village re - mained only a farming community until the exploitation of the mineral springs was begun about 1868. About 15 m. S. of Waukesha, near Mukwonago (pop. in 1905, 483), in 1844-1845, there was an unsuccessful communistic agricultural settle - ment, the Utilitarian Association, composed largely of London mechanics led by Campbell Smith, a London bookbinder.