Email As Donald Trump's impeachment trial begins, are Republicans headed for a split? The party's roots in Ripon could point the way forward Sharon Roznik, Fond du Lac Reporter Published 3:15 pm UTC Feb. 8, 2021 RIPON – The newly formed Republican Party spread like a prairie fire through rural Wisconsin in the 1800s. Fueling the movement was the unique character of people who settled in and around Ripon, a community whose first citizens were idealists who lived in a commune. Most of these settlers came from western New York, considered at the time to be a hotbed of "political turbulence," according to William Woolley, a retired Ripon College history professor who studied the party's origins in Wisconsin.