1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Appleton

APPLETON, a city and the county-seat of Outagamie county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., on the lower Fox river, about 90 m. N. of Milwaukee. Pop. (1890) 11,869; (1900) 15,085, of whom 3605 were foreign-born; (1910, census) 16,773. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western, and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways, and by steamboats on the Fox river, by means of which it meets lake transportation at De Pere and Green Bay. Appleton was one of the first cities in the United States to have an electric street railway line in operation; and electric street railways now traverse the entire Fox river valley as far as Fond du Lac on the south and Green Bay on the north. The city is attractively laid out on high bluffs above the river. It has several beautiful parks, two hospitals, a number of fine churches and school buildings, and a public library. The city is the seat of Lawrence college (changed from university in 1908), an interdenominational (originally a Methodist Episcopal) co-educational institution, founded in 1847 as the Lawrence Institute of Wisconsin and named in honour of Amos Adams Lawrence (1814–1886) of Boston, son of Amos Lawrence, and giver of $10,000 for the founding of the Institute. The college comprises an academy, a college of liberal arts, a school of expression, a school of commerce, schools of music and of art, and a school of correspondence; and in 1907–1908 had 33 instructors, 575 students and a library of 24,400 volumes. The Fox river furnishes about 10,000 h.p., which is largely utilized for the manufacture of paper (of which Appleton is one of the largest producers in the United States), wood-pulp, sulphite fibre, machinery, wire screens, woollen goods, knit goods, furniture, dyes and flour. The total value of factory products in 1905 was $6,672,457, an increase of 72.8% over the product value of 1900. Appleton was first permanently settled in 1833, and was named in honour of Samuel Appleton of Massachusetts, who owned part of the original town plot. It was incorporated as a village in 1853, and received in 1857 a city charter, which was revised in 1887 and in 1905.