Living in Beloit

A personal update about me

This page has never been about real estate sales, it never will be. It has always been about celebrating Beloit. I share this because I believe in being completely upfront about who I am and what I do.

As many of you know, I am also a Realtor, and I wanted to share a professional update. I have joined ReThink Realty, a new brokerage founded by lifelong Beloit resident Colin Schindler. Many of you already know Colin through his involvement in our community.

What attracted me to ReThink wasn't just a new logo or a new office. It was the opportunity to be part of something being built from the ground up right here in Beloit. There is an energy that comes with creating something new, and I'm excited to be part of that journey.

What isn't changing is Living in Beloit.

The mission remains the same: sharing the homes, history, neighborhoods, hidden gems, and stories that make Beloit unique. This page will continue to be a place where we celebrate our community and preserve stories that might otherwise be forgotten.

Thank you for following along, sharing posts, commenting, sending story ideas, and helping make this page what it is today.

As always, if you know of a hidden piece of Beloit history, an interesting home, or a story that deserves to be told, send it my way.

The best stories are often the ones we discover together.

Beloit's Long and Unfortunate History with Cannons

For more than a century, Beloit seemed to have a strange relationship with cannons.

It began with a cannon named Silio.

Cast in Seville, Spain, on May 24, 1792, Silio was already 44 years old when Beloit was founded. Somehow the bronze Spanish cannon found its way to Beloit and became the city's preferred way to celebrate.

Fourth of July?
Fire the cannon.

Election victory?
Fire the cannon.

Big community event?
Fire the cannon.

What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a bit.

In 1863, a cannon accident during Independence Day festivities seriously injured a man.

Then came an even more dramatic incident. Civil War veteran Hugh Riley lost an arm and the sight in one eye when Silio discharged with the ramrod still inside the barrel. The ramrod reportedly flew across the Rock River and through a sign at the Thompson Plow Works.

Remarkably, Silio survived.

In 1884, Beloit's Democrats loaded the cannon onto a railroad car and took it to Clinton to celebrate Grover Cleveland's presidential victory. The goal was to pack enough powder into the cannon so the boom could be heard all the way back in Beloit.

And who was put in charge?

Hugh Riley.

The same Hugh Riley who had already lost an arm and an eye in a previous cannon accident.

This time Silio had enough.

When the charge was ignited, the Spanish cannon exploded into pieces. No one was injured, but Beloit's most famous cannon was gone forever. The fragments were later sold as scrap.

That should have been the end of Beloit's cannon stories.

But it wasn't.

In 1910, the federal government provided Beloit with a Civil War cannon to honor veterans of the 4th Wisconsin Battery. The cannon was dedicated in Horace White Park near the Soldiers Monument before a crowd of about 1,000 people.

For decades it stood as a memorial to local veterans.

Then, in 1969, the cannon was removed from Horace White Park and transferred to a private citizen who reportedly intended to restore it.

And then...
It disappeared.

Researchers have spent years trying to determine exactly what became of the 884-pound cannon. Despite numerous leads, its final fate remains uncertain.
So somewhere in Beloit's history are two lost cannons.

One exploded during a political celebration.

The other vanished.

For a city of Beloit's size, that's a surprisingly large number of missing cannons.

Have you ever heard either of these stories?

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