From Ireland to America: The First Wisconsin Ducklows
[Updated 10/14/2008]

Thomas and Elizabeth Ducklow are the ancestral immigrants to which nearly all Ducklows living in Wisconsin and Minnesota today can trace their family roots. Up to seven generations of descendant children can point to them as distant great grandparents. Many other families surnames of Wisconsin link to Thomas and Elizabeth. These names include the Good, Hanson, and Ostenson familes.

Thomas Ducklow / Dukelow Circa 1890
Elizabeth nee Nicholson Ducklow / Dukelow Circa 1890

Thomas and Elizabeth were both born in County Cork, Ireland. On separate voyages their families immigrated to America seeking a better lives. Thomas came in October of 1841, arriving at the Port of Rochester, New York. Elizabeth's family also arrived in Rochester, coming in 1840.

Rochester was where Thomas married Elizabeth Nicholson. They wed in Saint Luke's Episcopal Church in 1842 and shortly after began a family. Six years after their wedding they, along with their first four children, moved from Rochester to Dodge County of Southern Wisconsin. There they had found government land in Ashippun Township and made a homestead claim.

As pioneers in the untamed wilderness, they cleared and worked the land transforming it into a productive farm. To help succeed in farming, Thomas and Elizabeth raised a large family. In all, “Betsey” bore thirteen [or maybe fourteen] children over a period of twenty-three years. Of these, eleven children lived into adulthood, nine married, and eight raised their own families. Today the number of descendants from Thomas and Elizabeth number more than 700.