Janesville

In 1837, Henry Janes applied for a post office called Black Hawk for the southern Wisconsin settlement where he ran a ferry across the Rock River. The postmaster general, however, noticed a town already by that name in the Iowa part of Wisconsin Territory, and he assigned the name Janesville, with Janes as postmaster. Two years later, Janes moved his family west, but the community grew to become the Rock County seat, and by 1860 it was Wisconsin's second-largest city. Today more than 62,000...