USA > Minnesota > Waseca County > Child's history of Waseca County, Minnesota : from its first settlement in 1854 to the close of the year 1904, a record of fifty years : the story of the pioneers > Part 58
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WILLIAM HENRY GRAY
known as Henry, was born July 22, 1840, in the state of Illinois. He came to Minnesota with his father and participated in all the labor and
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hardships incident to pioneer life. At the age of twenty-one he enlisted in Company F., Fifth Minnesota infantry, and served his country faith- fully for over three years. He participated in many battles and was always found at his post. On the fifth of June, 1865, he married Miss Rosalia Ketchum, who was born in Ohio, May 24, 1846, and who came to Minnesota with her parents in 1856.
This worthy citizen, after years of suffering, passed to the "Great Beyond" Monday morning, Feb. 27, 1905. 'He left surviving him his widow, one son, Fred W., and four daughters, Mrs. E. R. Stevens, Mrs. D. M. Tanner, Mrs. W. R. Ellis, and Miss Isora, to mourn his departure. He was an honored and prominent member of Comee lodge, No. 25, I. O. O. F., of Waseca, and of McKune Post G. A. R. He owned a farm ot one hundred and sixty acres, a mile northwest of Waseca, and left his family in comfortable circumstances.
MR. H. P. CHAMBERLAIN.
Some years ago, when the writer was considered a pretty fair repub- lican, he had a chat about "ye olden times," with Mr. Chamberlain, who gave substantially the following account of himself:
"I was born in Sparta, Livingston county, New York, April 13, 1833. My parents emigrated from there to Florence, Erie county, Ohio, when I was a year old. My father, being the victim of the saloon traffic like thousands of others, made it necessary for me, at the age of nine years, to shift for myself. I worked out by the month and day, in Ohio, until I was about twenty years of age when I went to Grand Island, Lake Superior, and worked about a year. I was also employed in the Mich- igan pineries one winter. Early in the spring of 1855, I started for Min- nesota, coming through from Michigan, accompanied by my brother, Or- lando, and arriving at what is now the city of Rochester, Olmsted county, April 13. My personal property consisted of one horse and a small amount of money for expenses. After looking the country over, I made a claim south of Rochester, near Root river, put up a small cabin, and eight days afterwards sold my improvements for $200 to a man named Wilson. Then, in company with Messrs. Tuttle, Keys, Roberts, and 'Thomas, I came to LeSueur county, about a mile north of Okaman, and took another claim. The next June, 1855, Fred Roberts, George Johnson, Chas. Christenson, Eph. Davis, Frank and John Conway, came in and settled near by. George Johnson was the first proprietor of Okaman village site. I held my claim in LeSueur county until March, 1856, when I sold to Patrick Kelly and removed to Tosco, on section 28. But before I sold out in LeSueur county, late in the fall of 1855, I was employed by George Johnson to take my oxen and sleighs and go with Jim Johnson, the hired man, to Iowa for provisions. We started about the 17th of December, with two sleighs and four pair of oxen, with instructions to bring back 8,000 pounds of flour, pork, etc. We arrived at Auburn, Iowa, about the first of January, 1856, and while purchasing our loads, there
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came a heavy snow storm blockading all the roads. We bought the pork in West Union, and the flour in Auburn, putting 4,000 pounds on each sleigh. We started on the return trip about January 6. It was one of those undertakings which tried a man's pluck and powers of endurance.
"In many localities the stopping places were from eighteen to twenty- five miles apart. The roads were very little traveled and badly drifted. In many places we were compelled to shovel through the drifts, and some- times had to unload and reload to get through. At two places we stayed at the same house three nights. The first night, we left our loads on the prairie, five miles away, in order to get to the house. We went back the next day and brought in the loads, again staying over night. The third day we went on five or six miles, and returned to stay the third night. The next morning at break of day we were again on the road.
"Jim Johnson was a peculiar fellow. He was a large muscular man, would swear like a trooper, and was full of brag and bluster, pretending not to believe in any hereafter, and apt to ridicule all religious belief. The day we started to cross the large prairie, between the two Cedars, near the lowa line, the weather was cold and stormy. Night came on be- fore we got in sight of any house; the lead cattle were tired out and re- fused to face the storm, so we were obliged to stay all night without shelter or protection from the cold blasts, and nothing to eat but frozen bread. As soon as all hope of getting to a house was lost, Johnson's brag and bluster and profanity turned in the opposite direction, and he commenced to weep like a child, and pray like a lunatic. He was so beside himself with fear of perishing, that it was some time before he could be induced to secure his teams or take any precautions against freezing. All night, at intervals, he would cry and pray, exhibiting the most abject fear. He was considerably frost bitten before we reached the settlement next morning, where we found food and shelter.
"The fact is that this state has never seen colder weather than during the winter of 1855-6.
"Between Austin aud Owatonna we were again caught out all night, but it was not so bad as the night between the Cedars, as we found a grove which afforded some protection. From Owatonna we went north- west and reached a house in Blooming Grove. The next day we reached Okaman under the sheltering wing of the Big Woods, thankful for a chance to rest a little."
Mr. Chamberlain was married to Sarah Hatch, February 22, 1857. She was the daughter of Curtis Hatch, who settled in Blooming Grove in 1855. He was a blind man and died in Moody county, D. T., in 1884. Mrs Chamberlain was born in the state of Ohio. She resides on the old farm at this writing, (1904) while Mr. Chamberlain does business in the city of Waseca.
Mr. Chamberlain was elected to the office of justice of the peace. soon after the organization of the township, and held the office for ten con- secutive years by reelection. Before the railroads were built into this
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section, he did his share of marketing grain, at points on the Mississippi river-camping out on the green-carpeted prairie, under the broad can- opy of infinite space, with prairie wolves as watch dogs and prairie chickens to sound the reveille.
MR. ANTHONY GORMAN.
This gentleman, for many years justice of the peace in St. Mary, was born in the county of Donegal, in the north of Ireland, in 1825. He came to America in 1848, and landed in New York. ile was employed in Orange county, New York, where he remained some ten months. He afterwards went to Duchess county, the same state, where he lived three years. He then came west to Aurora, Ill., where he remained thirteen months. He next came to St. Mary, Waseca county, where he arrived in the month of June, 1856, and settled on section 28, which has since been his home. He had at one time two hundred forty acres of land, but now, has only two hundred, one hundred thirty-five acres of which are culti- vated. He was elected justice of the peace in 1859 or 1860, and held that office for nine or ten years. He has been chairman of the board of town supervisors, and for some years was town treasurer. He brought with him to the county some $400 or $500 in money. His first house was made of sod. He afterwards built a small farm house, and some years ago he built his present residence. He is a bachelor and rents his land. One season during the early years of his settlement he made ten trips to Hastings with wheat. He says he distinctly remembers the "Johnny cake and cold water" times when he had to pay twenty-two cents a pound for pork and fifty-five cents per hundred for corn meal, and only got three pounds of sugar for a dollar. At this writing (1904) he is hale and hearty for a man of eighty years.
MR. ROSCOE A. PHILBROOK.
About 1895 Mr. Philbrook gave the following story of his life:
"I was born in the town of Palmyra, Somerset county, Maine, June 16, 1839. My parents came to Wisconsin in the year 1844, and lived first in Jefferson county, afterwards in Marquette county.
"In the spring of 1856 we covered two wagons and started for Min- nesota. We first lived in Olmsted county. In the spring of 1857 we again started west, arriving, about the first of June, in the town of By- ron, in this county. We had four yoke of oxen, two covered wagons, very little money, and no stock. Our family numbered six in all, William and Sarah Philbrook, and their four boys.
"After locating our claims, the first thing we did was to start the break- ing plow, and that summer we turned over ninety-five acres of the prairie sod. We planted a few potatoes, some corn, etc. We did considerable breaking that season for others at $5 and $6 per acre. We lived in our covered wagons five months before we huilt our house. We raised very little the first year, and experienced many hardships the first few years
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of our settlement. I remember that almost every one went barefoot summers, and wore bag pants and other coarse clothing. We often paid as high as $6 per hundred for flour, which had to be hauled from Has- tings, eighty miles distant. At one time we lived two weeks on potatoes and salt and no bread.
"The first public school was taught in our district in 1863-kept in a vacated house. Several terms were taught in this house, but in 1866 we built a school house.
"The first death that occurred in the neighborhood was that of the infant daughter of Asa Francis on the 17th of June, 1858.
"William Philbrook, my father, died in 1864, and was buried in the Freeborn cemetery, and Sarah Philbrook, his wife, died in June, 1890, aged eighty-three years. Lyman and George, the two youngest sons, are both dead. Byron lives in California."
"One of the first settlers in Otisco was Zachariah Holbrook, who was born in Courtland county, N. Y., in 1820. He went to Chautauqua county N. Y., when a young man, and married Mary Jane Bumpus, who was born in Cataraugus county in 1824. They came west as far as Wisconsin, where they lived a few years, and then came to Otisco early in May, 1856, settling near the LeSueur. Their first house was built of bark and poles. In August, 1858, their oldest son, Marvin, was drowned. Mr. Hol- brook died April, 1887, and was buried in the Wilton cemetery.
"David Beavins, Wm. Beavins and Isaac Lyng settled in Byron town- ship in June, 1857, where they resided for many years. David Beavins now lives near Alma City, this county. Mr. Lyng died in the service of his country. Wm. Beavins served as a soldier during the Sioux out- break under Gen. Sibley, and also with the Fifth regiment in the south. He died some time ago, and was buried in the Wilton cemetery."
Roscoe was a modest, retiring man and held no office except that of supervisor for one term. He was ill for a long time and died some years ago.
MR. SAMUEL W. FRANKLIN,
one of the early school teachers of the county, a number of years ago wrote the following characteristic letter to the author:
"I received a circular from you asking for my biography. At least, it amounts to 'something like a biography to answer your questions. Now I have some objections to having my biography published. My principal objection is that I have sometimes been very foolish and have done things that I don't like to talk about. Besides I have not been a success- ful man in making and saving money. By the way, I have been studying to find something that I can tell of with a feeling of complacency; and I can think of only one thing and that is, that I have paid out in Waseca county between four and five thousand dollars in Interest money.
"Now, I am not sure that this is a matter to feel complacent about. It is true that I had only the handling of this money, but then, what more
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do the successful moneyed men have? Surely, I have been of some use. The foxes would not fare well if there were no geese! But I confess that this is not much satisfaction to me.
"But now for the autobiography: In the autumn of 1845, a youth of twenty-one was slowly plodding his way from the northern part of Penn- sylvania to Illinois. He was driving a pair of very poor old horses, which required the almost constant use of the whip to keep up a slow motion. He does not own the team but is working his passage and camping out. There is nothing striking in his appearance except verdancy. Except for this, he is very common place in his appearance. You can see nothing very smart or heroic. But he is bound for the land of promise and is in dead earnest. He is full of wild and extravagant notions, and nothing but a severe discipline in the school of experience can dispel his illu- sions and make him reasonable. He is going to get rich, to make money ; but he has no reasonable, well-defined plan of action. His first idea is to teach school. His education is very limited and he has not the quickness of eye necessary to a teacher. But he is full of hope and expectation. Difficulties are nothing, and, at last, the sight of Illinois and its prairies, its immense stretch of unoccupied land, so rich, so beautiful of promise for the future, dawns upon his vision. Is it to be wondered that he was full of enthusiasm for Illinois, and of contempt for the comparatively rough and poor soil of northern Pennsylvania? An extract from a letter he wrote home at the time of his arrival at the then new town of Dixon, Ill., will illustrate. Speaking of the land he had left, he apostrophizes:
"Land of stones and cradle-knolls, Land of hard-pan and hemlocks, Land of stumps and broomsticks, Is there nothing amid all thy pleasant scenes To call forth one long-drawn sigh of regret At leaving thy peaceful shores?"
"He engaged a school, the first district school taught in the now city of Dixon, but after a month's trial became satisfied that he had under- taken more than he could do and he gave it up.
"This was failure No. 1. Could he have been moderate and reasonable, and engaged in some country school he might, no doubt, have succeeded passably well. But he now gave up all thoughts of that kind and hired out to work on a farm. It was a time of depression in business. Farmers bad to draw their wheat one hundred and ten miles to Chicago and sell it for sixty or seventy cents per bushel; pork was $3 per cwt .; beef was not much better; butter six to eight cents per pound; eggs three to four cents per dozen; corn fifteen cents per hushel; oats about the same. He hired out for $12 per month by the year and worked three years for the same man. There was but little of the country occupied. There was as good land as ever was seen in market at government price, but no buyers. "His next extravagant idea was to keep stock-be a kind of cow-boy.
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I don c think the plan was necessarily altogether extravagant; but his plans were very extravagant. There was a very good, unoccupied house several miles from inhabitants and in the timber. Around and near the house was a beautiful stretch of natural meadow and pasture. His plan was to occupy the house entirely alone and keep his stock. It was a kind of hermit plan, very wild and extravagant, and ended very disas- trously. He found himself alone in the world without means, almost with- out friends- for his wild notions had alienated those who would have been his friends. But he was not disheartened.
Among some poetic effusions which he contributed at this time to a Chicago literary paper, was this:
Though all the powers of fate combine To hlast my prospects, and consign My hope unto the dust: My spirit proud will never yield; Nor shun the fight, nor quit the field; But still the future trust.
This was failure No. 2.
"He next went to Dupage county, Ill., and hired to the same man for whom he had formerly worked.
"When the time came for winter school, he with some difficulty engaged a school which, they said, was hadly run down. There would not be more than eight or ten scholars and they would give him $14 per month and board. He asked them if they would agree to give him $20 per month if he would make the school average twenty scholars. They agreed that they would. He went to work and succeeded in filling the house with scholars. He taught three winters in the same district at $20 and board. He had now considerable popularity as a teacher; more than his abili- ties warranted.
"He came to New Richland the spring Buchanan was inaugurated, in the montn of March. He came from Illinois the fall before, and staid at Willow Creek, twelve miles this side of Red Wing, through the winter. He kept a hotel there, and O. Powell and likely some others in the county were his customers.
"He had been looking over the state considerably and was well satis- fied with it. He found here when he came A. G. Sutliet, E. B. Stearns, Z. Holbrook, N. Lincoln, the Northups, Grovers, Scotts, and Jenkinses. Be- sides, in his neighborhood, there were several town proprietors trying to start a town near the Holbrook place, called Otisco. The only wholesale drygoods store ever built in that city is now a part of Wm. Iver's baru. There was a saw mill and some hoards were sawed there. A school house was built the next year costing about one hundred dollars. Miss Rachel Dodge, who afterwards married Dr. Gove, was the first teacher, and Mrs. G. R. Buckman the next. The house was used for religious meetings,
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political and other debates, etc. Few of our more costly, modern school houses do as well.
"A. G. Sutlief was the only wealthy man in the settlement, and he had some enemies as well as a good many friends. At one time a party of his enemies were coming from Wilton in the evening by a very lonely place which had the reputation of being haunted. Sutlief managed to occupy the haunted place when they were passing, and acted the ghost to his own satisfaction. The fright caused a stampede of the ox-teams, when Sutlief slipped back by a short way, and when they came by in some excitement he asked all about the trouble.
"He ought to have told you that he brought with him, when he came, four yoke of oxen, a span of horses, and three cows. But he left some debts behind which he had to pay, and he puts that in as a partial excuse for not being rich now."
Mr. Franklin was one of our best and most conscientious citizens. He owned a good farm in New Richland township, and died Aug. 21, 1898, of erysipelas, highly respected by all who knew him.
MR. THOMAS MALONEY,
of Iosco, was born in Ireland, in 1834. He came to America in 1852, and lived in the state of New York about two years. He then went to Penn- sylvania where he lived ten years, and then came to Minnesota in 1863, and settled in Iosco. He married Miss Catharine Gorman, in 1861, in Pennsylvania. She came from Ireland in 1852. They have eight chil- dren; four boys and four girls. They have a valuable farm. In the first years of his settlement in this county he, like others, hauled his wheat to Hastings, that being our nearest market. One year he obtained fifty cents a bushel for his wheat. In the year 1871 he lost all his crop by hail. He is one of our most public spirited citizens, and honorable in all matters.
MR. SAMUEL LAMBERT.
Among the pioneers who earned their daily bread by honest toil, few are more entitled to honorable mention than Mr. Samuel Lambert, of St. Mary. In an interview with him in 1897 he said:
"I was born in Three Rivers, Canada, May 15, 1836. When nineteen years of age I went to New Hampshire. I lived there until 1863 and was married Jan. 15, 1863, to Miss Catharine Sullivan. She was a native of waterford, Ireland. In March, 1863, we came to Minnesota and stopped in Hastings for a time. We opened a boarding house on the railroad then being constructed near Hastings, for one G. W. Cummins, a con- tractor, and ran it some four months. Cummins then left without paying anyone, and we lost $450 by the deal. I followed the rascal as far as Crow River, and then lost track of him. I then worked in a stave factory for some time. I bought my land in St. Mary in 1864, but did not move onto it until 1868. In that year we built a shanty. I remember when the
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shanty was completed I got of Tom White a dollar's worth of sugar, a sack of flour and a pound of tea, and had only sixty cents in money left. When we got the flour home we found that it was so injured by kerosene oil we could not use it, and I hired a man to take it back, as I had no team of my own then. Soon after I got a yoke of cattle of Matt Keeley for which I agreed to pay $130. Our first crop was that of 1868-had twenty acres broken in 1867. I paid for seed wheat $1.25 per bushel to John Baldwin, and raised one hundred eighty bushels. We put one hun- dred bushels into the house and eighty bushels into a crib outside. Late in the fall, Tom White, having a grading contract on the W. & St. P. R. R. set a prairie fire, which burned the eighty bushels of wheat and nearly hurned the house. I was absent from home at the time, working for $3 a day in the Faribault stave factory. Tom refused to pay for the burned wheat and other damage, and for some years after we had a tough time trying to make a living and pay debts. After a while we got along better and have managed to make a living. I now have the old home eighty and we have eighty acres more for the boys."
Mr. Lambert died of paralysis April 17, 1899, aged sixty-two years, eleven months and two days.
MR. WILLIAM LEE
of Iosco, is one of the prominent pioneers of Waseca county. In his notes, turnished by request in 1897, he said:
"I was born Oct. 10, 1831, on a farm, in county Wexford, Ireland, at a place called Killcotty, midway between the town of Enniscorthy and the village of Oulart. The last named places are ten miles apart. I emi- grated to America and landed in New York on St. Patrick's day 1851. I had a cold reception from the elements as it was snowing when I landed from the vessel, and it continued to snow and blow all day. I hired to a. farmer on Long Island, a few miles from Brooklyn, and worked for him until navigation opened in the rivers and lakes and then I started for Milwaukee, Wis. I went to Albany by steamboat, thence to Buffalo by freight train, and by steamboat from Buffalo to Milwaukee. The journey took ten days and the weather was cold for April. I lived on the poorest and roughest kind of food and did not see a bed during the whole jour- ney.
On the 25th of April, I went to work for a farmer twelve miles from Milwaukee, for eight dollars a month. The next June, I went to work on the Prairie du Chien railroad. My pay was seventy-five cents a day in script, worth seventy-five cents on the dollar at the hank in cash. At that time there were but twenty miles of railroad in all Wisconsin, from Milwaukee to Waukesha.
After remaining a little more than a year in the state. I went to Chi- cago and worked unloading lumber from vessels in the harbor. May 4, 1852, I commenced working on the Rock Island railroad, near Ottawa, Ill. That scourge of the human race, cholera, broke out among the men,
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and I shouldered my "turkey" and went to Elgin, Ill., where I worked for the C. & G. railroad company and was with the track layers when the track was built into Rockford. I was on the first train that ever crossed the railroad bridge at that place; this was the first railroad bridge across Rock river. After a time I was fireman on a locomotive that hauled the construction train. This was the first train that ran to Beloit, Wis. Next I was night watch in the round house at Turner Junction.
I went South in the winter 1853-4, to Memphis, worked on a levee in. Arkansas, returned to Chicago in the spring and worked in a livery barn for a month, and then worked as a section hand on the Dixon Air Line railway, at Lodi, Ill.
I was united in marriage with Catharine Behan at Freeport, Ill., Ang. 10, 1854. She came from Ireland to America in 1853. We went to the same school in Ireland. In the summer of 1855 I ran a stationary engine in a machine shop and foundry, at Rockford, 111.
We came to Minnesota, Hastings, Nov. 15, 1855. It was a small place at that time; the population was made up of whites, half-breeds, Indians, and one black man. Red Owl's band of Sioux Indians camped near the village all winter.
That winter I cut cord wood and scored timbers for a mill that was being built in the Vermillion river, near town.
While there I saw a glowing account in the Boston Pilot about the Lake Elysian country, so I came to look for a claim and arrived at Lake Elysian March 26, 1856. I traveled in parts of Waterville, Janesville, Elysian and Iosco. I selected the claim I now live on in Iosco.
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