Or, like Julius McCabe, both.

Before arriving in Milwaukee in 1840, McCabe published guides to several American cities. He intended to compile a gazetteer of Wisconsin, and traveled 4,000 miles gathering data on towns and villages.

Along the way, he collected $1 from more than 2,000 subscribers — but the book never appeared.

McCabe was recalled as a charming rogue with "the kindest temper, the most inexhaustible loquacity, the most rollicking humor, and the most inappeasable thirst" in frontier Milwaukee.

That trait undermined his dreams and his reputation. When he ran for office in 1844, the press called him "too lazy to work, too proud to beg, and afraid to steal (there is some doubt about the latter)." His own party denounced him as "a fitter subject for a jail," not a legislature.

But two years later, McCabe compiled Milwaukee's first city directory, a 240-page volume listing 2,030 residents and containing 92 pages of merchants' advertisements. Unfortunately, creating it cost more than he made in sales and all the revenue went to his creditors.

McCabe spent the last months of his short life wandering Milwaukee streets in search of free drinks. He died on the morning of July 26, 1849, after a night-long binge.

"His sudden death is not so much surprising," reported the Daily Wisconsin, "as that he should have lived so long."

Still, he gave Milwaukee its first street addresses and left posterity a rich account of the infant metropolis.

— Wisconsin Historical Society
www.wisconsinhistory.org

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