Old Rail Fence Corners. Various
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Dr. Lysander P. Foster—1849.
I came to Minneapolis on the Ben Franklin. She was a wood burner and every time that her captain would see a pile of wood that some new settler had cut, he would run ashore, tie up and buy it. A passenger was considered very haughty if he did not take hold and help.
My father built his house partly of lumber hauled from Stillwater, but finished with lumber from here, as the first mill at the foot of First Avenue Southeast was then completed. It had one saw only and so anxious were the settlers for the lumber, that each board was grabbed and walked off with as soon as it came from the saw.
The first school I went to as a boy of fourteen, was on Marshall Street Northeast, between Fourth and Sixth Avenues. It was taught by Miss Backus. There were two white boys and seven half breed Bottineaus. It was taught much like kindergarten of today—object lessons, as the seven half breeds spoke only French and Miss Backus only English. McGuffy's Reader was the only text book.
The Indians were much like white people. The Sioux boys at their camp at the mouth of Bassett's Creek were always my playfellows. I spent many happy days hunting, fishing and playing games with them. They were always fair in their play. The games they enjoyed most were "Shinny" and a game played on the ice in the winter. A stick with a long handle and heavy smooth curved end was thrown with all the strength possible. Some could throw it over a block. The one throwing it farthest beat. I suppose what I call "shinny" was really La Crosse.
What is now Elwell's Addition was a swamp. I have run a twelve foot pole down in many parts of it without touching bottom.
Mr. Secomb, the father of Methodism in Minneapolis, was going to St. Paul to preach. He took a dugout canoe from the old board landing. His friend, Mr. Draper, was with him. It was below the Falls where the river had rapids and rocks. They tipped over and were so soaked that St. Paul had to get along that day without them. It was considered a great joke to ask the dominie if he was converted to immersion, now that he practiced it.
The peculiarity of the swamp land in St. Paul was that it was all on a ledge and was only about two feet deep. You could touch rock bottom anywhere there, but here a swamp was a swamp and could be any depth.
In 1848 half breeds had gardens and raised famous vegetables up in what is now Northeast Minneapolis.
I once took my sister over on the logs to pick strawberries on the end of what is now Eastman Island. They were large, very plentiful and sweet. Almost every tree that grew anywhere in the new territory grew there. Black walnut grew there and on Nicollet Island.
Mrs. Silas Farnham—1849.
Mrs. Silas Farnham says: I came to St. Anthony in 1849. My husband had a little storehouse for supplies for the woods, across from our home on the corner of Third Avenue and Second Street, Southeast. A school house was much needed so they cleared this out and Miss Backus taught the first school there. It was also used for Methodist preachin'. Our first aid society was held there in '49.
I well remember the first Fourth of July celebration in 1849. The women found there was no flag so knew one must be made. They procured the materials from Fort Snelling and the flag was made in Mrs. Godfrey's house. Those working on it were Mrs. Caleb Dorr, Mrs. Lucien Parker, Misses Julia and Margaret Farnham, Mrs. Godfrey and myself. I cut all the stars. Mr. William Marshall who had a small general store was orator and no one could do better. That reminds me of that little store. I just thought I'd laugh out loud the first time I went in there. There were packs of furs, all kinds of Indian work, hats and caps, tallow dips and more elegant candles, a beautiful piece of delaine for white women and shoddy bright stuff for the squaws, a barrel of rounds of pork most used up, but no flour, that was all gone. There was a man's shawl, too, kind of draped up. You know men wore shawls in them days; some hulled corn the Indians done, too, I saw. But to return to that first Fourth—it seemed a good deal like a Farnham Fourth, for the music which was just soul stirrin' was sung by them and the Gould boys. When the Farnhams all got out, it made a pretty big crowd for them days. Perhaps their voices wan't what you call trained, but they had melody. Seems to me nowadays some of the trained high-falutin' voices has just got that left out. Seems so to me—seems so. All the Farnhams just sung natural, just like birds. Old Doctor Kingsley played the bass viol so it was soul stirrin' too. Margaret Farnham, the president of our first aid society married a Hildreth—Julia a Dickerson.
In '49 my husband paid a ten cent shin plaster for three little apples no bigger than crabs. I tried to make these last a long time by just taking a bite now and then, but of course, they couldn't hold out forever.
The Indians was always around, but we never minded them—always lookin' in the windows.
General William G. Le Duc—1850, Ninety-two years old.
I arrived at St. Paul on the steamboat Dr. Franklin. Among the travelers on board the boat were Mr. and Mrs. Lyman Dayton and a brother of Goodhue, the Editor of the Pioneer Weekly Newspaper. The principal, if not the only hotel at that time, was the Central, a frame building about twenty-four by sixty feet, two stories kept by Robert Kenedy. It was used as a meeting place for the legislature, court, and public offices, until something better could be built. Here I found quarters, as did Mr. and Mrs. Dayton.
A few days after my arrival, I was walking along the high bank of the river in front of the Central House in conversation with a large robust lumberman who had come out of the woods where he had been all winter logging and was feeling very happy over his prospects. Suddenly he stopped and looking down on the flowing waters of the Mississippi, he exclaimed, "See those logs." A number of logs were coming down with the current. "What mark is on them? My God, that is my mark!—the logs are mine! My boom has broken! I am a ruined man." He went direct to the hotel and died before sun down of cholera, the Doctor said. He was hurriedly buried and there was a cholera panic in St. Paul. The next day while walking in front of the hotel, Mrs. Dayton called from an open window excitedly to me, "Come and help me quick. Mr. Baker has the cholera!" (Mr. Baker was a boarder at the Central and a school teacher at that time.) Mrs. Dayton was frightened and said she had given him all the brandy she had and must have some more. I got more brandy and she insisted on his taking it, altho' he was then drunk. He recovered next day and I have never heard of a case of cholera in Minnesota since that time.
I hired a little board shack about twelve by sixteen feet at the Northeast corner of Third and Roberts Streets, St. Paul, and put out my sign as Attorney and Counselor at Law, but soon discovered there was little law business in St. Paul, not enough to sustain the lawyers already there and more coming with every boat. My business did not pay the monthly rent, $9.00, so I rented a large house on the southwest corner and started a shop selling books and stationery, and in this succeeded in making a living.
On the 22nd day of July '50, a number of citizens of St. Paul and some travelers chartered a little stern wheel steamboat, the Yankee, and intended to explore the St. Peter River, now the Minnesota, if possible to its source, Big Stone Lake. We invited the ladies who wished to go, promising them music and dancing. A merry time was anticipated and we were eager to see the fertile valley, knowing it was to be purchased of the Indians and opened for settlement to the frontier settlers. The passengers were men mostly, but enough women went to form three or four cotillion sets. The clergy was represented by Rev. Edward Duffield Neill; the medical fraternity by Dr. Potts; statesmen by one who had been an Aide to General Harrison and later Ambassador to Russia; another was a graduate of Yale Law School and of West Point Military Academy; another, one of the Renvilles, had been interpreter for Nicollet; another was an Indian Trader, Joe La Framboise, who was returning to his post at the mouth of Little Cottonwood. He was noted for his linguistic ability and attainments and could acquire a talking acquaintance with an Indian language if given a day or two opportunity; another was a noted Winnebago half breed, Baptiste, whose Indian dress and habits attracted much attention.
As we entered the sluggish current of the St. Peters at Mendota, the stream was nearly bank full and it seemed like navigating a crooked canal. The first stop was at an Indian village, fifteen or twenty miles from the Mississippi, called Shakopee,