Grafton is a village in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, United States. Located about north of Milwaukee and in close proximity to Interstate 43, it is a suburban community in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. The village incorporated in 1896, and at the time of the 2010 census the population was 11,459.
Like many of Ozaukee County's cities and villages, the Village of Grafton has rural roots and began as a mill town. The German and Irish immigrants who settled in Grafton in the 1840s utilized the Milwaukee River as a source of hydropower for gristmills and woolen mills. Manufacturing grew and prospered in the village in the 20th century, including the Paramount Records studio and plant, which was in Grafton from 1929 to 1935. Paramount was one of the first and largest producers of blues and jazz records marketed to African-American consumers. Paramount's role in Grafton's history and Blues music history earned the village a spot on the historic Mississippi Blues Trail.
Grafton changed significantly during the period of post-World War II suburbanization. Even though the last woolen mill closed in 1980, the village experienced rapid population growth and the development of new commercial properties and housing subdivisions. The construction of Interstate 43 in the mid-1960s eased travel to neighboring communities. In the 21st century, Grafton is home to many big-box stores as well as an Aurora hospital.
History
The first Europeans to visit the area were the Jesuit missionaries Claude-Jean Allouez and Claude Bablon, who visited a Native American village on the Milwaukee River near the future site of Grafton around 1670.
Timothy Wooden, who arrived in 1839 from the eastern United States, is considered Grafton's first permanent white resident. The majority of the early residents were immigrants from Germany and Ireland. In the early 1840s, the village was called Hamburg, because Jacob Eichler, one of the village founders, was an immigrant from Hamburg, Germany. A post office for "Hamburgh" was established in 1844.
The Wisconsin territorial legislature officially created the town of Grafton in 1846. The village of Grafton was officially incorporated from some of the town's land on March 30, 1896.
The village's early settlers utilized the Milwaukee River as a source of power for milling. In 1846, a group farmers built the Grafton Flour Mill. In 1880, the owner of Cedarburg's woolen mill opened a mill in Grafton to make worsted yarn. At its height, Grafton's woolen mill employed 100 people.
Grafton was also the site of the Milwaukee Falls Lime Company, which quarried limestone in the village and operated lime kilns to manufacture slaked lime. The kilns are preserved in Grafton's Lime Kiln Park, on the west bank of the Milwaukee River. Lime production played an important part in the village economy until the 1920s.
In the early 20th century, the Wisconsin Chair Company of Port Washington operated a furniture factory in the village, which manufactured phonographs among other things. The company originally manufactured phonographs exclusively for Edison Records, but in 1917 it started its own Paramount Records subsidiary, which became famous for producing some of the first blues and jazz records, called race records because they were by African-American artists and were marketed to African-American consumers. It is estimated that a quarter of all race records released between 1922 and 1932 were on the Paramount label. Music was originally recorded in Chicago, until the Paramount headquarters and studio moved to the Grafton factory in 1929. Artists including Charley Patton, Son House, Willie Brown, and Louise Johnson journeyed from the American South to record in Grafton. The studio stopped recording music in 1932, due to the Great Depression, and Paramount Records closed in 1935 and the building was razed in 1938. Today, Grafton is one of the few sites on the Mississippi Blues Trail outside of the American South.
In the late 1930s, a group of pro-Nazi German-Americans affiliated with the German American Bund purchased land on the Milwaukee River in the Town of Grafton. They ran a private camp called Camp Hindenburg and came into the village to march with Nazi flags and meet at the Grafton Hotel. The group hosted a speech by Nazi-supporter Fritz Julius Kuhn in 1939. The camp closed during World War II in 1941.