Hazelwood and the Wisconsin Constitution

On a hillside overlooking the Fox River in what was then called Fort Howard, a Greek Revival house went up in eighteen thirty-seven. Morgan Lewis Martin had it built for himself and his new wife Elizabeth. He was thirty-two years old, a New York-born attorney who had moved west to make his name in a territory that was still becoming itself.

Martin made it. Over the next decade he served in the legislature of Wisconsin Territory, then as a Congressional delegate. In eighteen forty-seven he was elected president of the state convention charged with drafting Wisconsin's constitution.

Much of his work on the document was done at Hazelwood. Wisconsin entered the Union in eighteen forty-eight. The territory that had existed as a fur-trade corridor for over a century was, in a single generation, becoming a state with a constitution and a governor.

Hazelwood was added to the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy. In nineteen eighty-nine the Brown County Historical Society took ownership and began a restoration project without government funding. The house now serves as a museum.

It is easy to overlook in a city better known for touchdowns. But the building where Wisconsin's founding civic document was written is still standing, still open, still on the same bluff above the same river bend where Martin had it built. Some things in Green Bay are older than the Packers.