The first European to settle at what is now known as Beloit, Joseph Thibault (also spelled Tebo, Thiebeau, Thiebau, Thebalt, Thebolt, Thiebault, Thebeau and Thibeaut) built a one-room cabin near what is now the southwest inter-section of Shirland Avenue and State Street, probably in the fall of 1835.

He was a French-Canadian trapper who had worked in the Rock River valley for some time and after the Winnebago Indians vacated the area in the wake of the Black Hawk War, he settled here with his two Indian wives and three or four children. It was Thibault that Caleb Blodgett met when he came looking for a place to start a community.

He and Thibault negotiated the well-known “three looks’ of land and after selling his cabin in April of 1837, Thibault moved to Lake Koshkonong. Within a couple of years he had disappeared from Koshkonong, possibly the victim of a murder, but the truth is lost to history.