Two Wisconsin pioneer women, mother and daughter.

Ann Augusta Jaquins Hurd (generally referred to as “Augusta”) was born February 28, 1834, at Bainbridge, New York, the descendant of New York and New England families. As several of her siblings moved westward into Wisconsin, she followed, and though she was trained to teach school she married Asa Hurd of Brandon, Wisconsin in 1859. The young Hurds bought land in Minnesota and attempted to become successful farmers.

Augusta and Asa Hurd had one daughter born in 1862, whom they named Mary Olivia. Six and a half months later Asa joined the Union Army as a wagoner of Company E, 10th Minnesota Infantry and Augusta and her baby rejoined her sister in the more settled and stable town of Brandon, Wisconsin. Asa never returned from the war, having apparently been killed in April, 1865, outside Montgomery, Alabama, while foraging for his company, although there is some possibility he simply disappeared west as veterans sometimes did. Augusta never remarried. She supported herself and her daughter Mary by land speculation in Minnesota and South Dakota at a time when settlers were pouring into the Territories. She had the skill to buy and rent houses and land, while she also traveled back to Bainbridge New York to be with her father. When he died, Augusta became active in the Suffrage Movement.

Mary Olivia Hurd married Daniel Clark Arno in 1884 and a long and difficult relationship began, as Mary Olivia’s letters to her mother reveal. Dan Arno was quick-tempered and sometimes abusive. He was a skilled carpenter and builder of houses, often away from home, leaving Mary to cope with the hardships of rural life and isolated motherhood in or near Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Mary followed her mother’s example of dealing in westward speculation, but a severe financial and agricultural depression kept profits low and farming was arduous. Mary’s letters to her mother between 1886 and 1897 refer to her longing to be near her, and in 1898 Ann Augusta Hurd permanently left New York and settled with her daughter in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, in a home built by her son-in-law, Dan Arno. Augusta Hurd died in 1921 and Mary Hurd Arno died in 1925.