USA > Minnesota > Goodhue County > History of Goodhue county, including a sketch of the territory and state of Minnesota > Part 10
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In 1855, when Winona was a village of a few houses, Mr. Olmsted removed there and devoted his energies to building up that city, now one of the handsomest on the Mississippi River. Many of its under-
Hugh Adams RED WING
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takings and achievements are due to the enterprise and foresight of the subject of this memoir.
In the fall of 1855 Mr. Olmsted was a candidate for delegate to Con- gress, but was defeated. There were three candidates before the people during that contest-Henry M. Rice, the regular Democratic candidate; William R. Marshall, the nominee of the first regular Republican Convention held in the Territory ; and David Olmsted, the candidate of the adherents of a wing of the Democratic Convention that had split off in consequence of the tenor of certain resolutions adopted by the convention. The contest was spirited. Each of the candidates was supported by ably-conducted journals, but the Olmsted party was too weak to afford him any chance of success, " although he came out of the contest with his popularity unimpaired and his honor untarnished."
In the fall of 1856 his health became so impaired that his physicians advised him to spend the winter in Cuba. He followed the advice, but the change of climate failed to afford him the desired relief, and he returned to the scenes of his early struggles and final triumphs. After visiting friends at Monona, Iowa, and at Winona, he went to St. Paul, to see his friends there. It was his last visit to the capital of Minne- sota, but it afforded his friends an opportunity to secure his portrait, which now adorns the City Hall. In October, 1857, he went to the old home, in Franklin county, Vermont, to remain at his mother's house until the final summons should come, and where he died on the 2d day of February, 1861. " The news of his death was received with sincere regret by his friends in Minnesota, and the press paid generous and warm tributes to his worth and integrity. St. Paul Lodge No. 2, I. O. O. F., and Ancient Landmark Lodge No. 5, A. F. A. M., of which he was a valued member, passed heartfelt resolutions of regret, and the 'Old Settlers' Association' of Minnesota, at their next annual reunion, placed on their records an appropriate eulogy. On the map of the State, whose ends he helped to shape, his name is well bestowed on one of the most flourishing and populous counties."
One of his friends, and one who knew him well, thus sketched the character of David Olmsted in a communication to the St. Paul Pioneer, soon after his death :
"" David Olmsted had a mind of a peculiar order. His leading characteristics were firm integrity, honesty of. purpose, adhesion to friends, charity for opponents, a reten- tive memory, good common sense and sound judgment. He was brave, but never rash; and was as modest as brave. No man ever saw him excited. Grateful for favors, he would rather grant than receive them. Originally a Democrat, then a conservative Republican, firm in his own principles, always respecting the views of others, he was 7.
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never a partisan, but always a patriot. Often absorbed in deep thought, even to absent- mindedness, and without a polished address, he nevertheless won the hearts of all by his kind, straightforward and manly conduct."
FRANKLIN STEELE
Was another enterprising pioneer, and one the people of the territory delighted to honor. He was born in Chester county, Pennsylvania, and, when a mere youth, was advised by Andrew Jackson to identify himself with the West. John H. Stevens, Esq., of Glencoe, (formerly a clerk of Mr. Steele's,) in a lecture delivered before the Hennepin County Lyceum, furnished the following brief sketch of Mr. Steele's operations in the land of his adoption :
"The day he landed at Fort Snelling, the Indians had concluded a treaty with the whites by which the St. Croix Fails were ceded to the latter. Mr. Steele went over; liked the place much ; made a claim; hired a large crew of men, put Calvin A. Tuttle, Esq., now of St. Anthony, at their head, and commenced in earnest to build mills. Upon being appointed sutler to the army at Fort Snelling, he disposed of the St. Croix prop- erty, and became interested in the east side of St. Anthony Falls. He has continued to make this county his home ever since his first arrival in the territory. Mr. Steele has been a good friend to Hennepin, and as most of the citizens came here poor, they never had to ask Mr. Steele a second time for a favor. Fortune has favored him, and while many a family has reason to be thankful for his generosity, he has constantly made money."
JAMES M. GOODHUE, THE PIONEER JOURNALIST.
Minnesota Territory was organized March 3, 1849, and nine days thereafter, James M. Goodhue (after whom Goodhue county was named ) arrived in St. Paul, with press, type, etc., to commence the publication of a newspaper. Mr. Goodhue was a graduate of Amherst College, and a lawyer by profession, and like many another man before and since his day and generation, became a newspaper editor by accident. Says Mr. Neill : " He had been invited to take the oversight of a press, in the lead region of Wisconsin, during the temporary absence of its con- ductor, and soon discovered that he increased the interest of the readers in the paper. From that time he began to pay less attention to the legal profession, and was soon known among the citizens of the mines, as the editor of the Grant County Herald, published at Lancaster, Wisconsin."
While residing at Lancaster he became interested in the territory of sky-tinted waters (Minnesota.) With the independence and temerity of one Benjamin Franklin, he left Lancaster as suddenly as the osten- sible editor of the New England Courant left Boston, and he arrived at the landing of what is now the capital of Minnesota, with little more money and few more friends than the young printer who landed at
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Market Street wharf, in the capital of the then youthful territory of Pennsylvania.
" In April, 1849, he found St. Paul nothing more than a frontier Indian trading settlement, known by the savages as the place where they could obtain Minne Wakan, or whisky, and wholly unknown to the civilized world."
It was Mr. Goodhue's intention to call his paper The Epistle of St. Paul, and he had so announced in a prospectus published in February preceding. In the first issue of his paper, however, which was made on the 28th day of April, he announced a change of title, in the words following: "The paper was to be called the Epistle of St. Paul,
* *
* but we found so many little saints in the territory, jealous of St. Paul, that we determined to call our paper the Minnesota Pioneer."
"The editor of the Pioneer" (says Minnesota's historian, Neill,) "was unlike other men. Every action, and every line he wrote, marked great individuality. He could imitate no man in his manners, nor in his style; neither could any man imitate him. Attempts were sometimes made, but the failure was always very great. Impetuous as the whirlwind, with perceptive powers that gave to his mind the eye of a lynx, with a vivid imagination that made the very stones of Minnesota speak her praise; with an intellect as vigorous and elastic as a Damascus blade, he penned editorials which the people of this territory can never blot out from memory.
" His wit, when it was chastened, caused ascetics to laugh. His sarcasm upon the foibles of society was paralyzing and unequalled by Macauley in his review of the life of Barrere.
" When in the heat of partizan warfare, all the qualities of his mind were combined to defeat certain measures ; the columns of his paper were like a terrific storm in mid- summer amid the Alps. One sentence would be like the dazzling arrowy lightning, peeling in a moment the mountain oak, and riving it from the topmost branch to the deepest root ; the next, like a crash of awful thunder; and the next, like the stunning roar of a torrent of many waters. To employ a remark made at his funeral, ' With the ingenuity of Vulcan, he would hammer out thunder bolts on the anvil of his mind, and hurl them with the power and dexterity of Jove.'
" As a paragraphist, he was equaled by few living men. His sentences so leaped with life, that when the distant reader perused his sheet, he seemed to hear the purling brooks and see the agate pavements and crystal waters of the lakes of Minnesota, and he longed to leave the slugglish stream, the deadly malaria, and worn-out farms, and begin life anew in the territory of the sky-tinted waters. When the immigrant from week to week was disposed to despond, and give way to the distress of home-sickness, the hope- ful sentences of his paper in relation to the prosperous future, chased that dismal feeling away."
Such were the characteristics of James M. Goodhue, the pioneer edi- tor of Minnesota, who was born at Hebron, New Hampshire, March 21, 1810, and who died at St. Paul, on Friday evening, August 27, 1852, at half-past eight o'clock. His usefulness had just commenced. At the beginning of his manhood's glory, he was called to the brighter shores of the Eternal Beyond. Minnesota never had, and never will have, a truer, more ardent or enthusiastic friend than James M. Goodhue.
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EARLY STEAMBOATING.
When Colonel LEAVENWORTH arrived at the site of Fort Snelling, in September, 1819, steamboats had never disturbed the water of the Upper Mississippi River. His journey from Prairie du Chien to St. Peters, was made by keelboats, and was considerably delayed and im- peded by the low stage of water which prevailed at that time. Previ- ous to the spring of 1823, it was generally believed that the rapids at Rock Island, offered an impossible barrier to the steamboat navigation of the " Father of Waters " above that point. In the month of April of that year, however, it was publically announced in the city of St. Louis, that, on the 2d day of May, the Virginia, a steamboat one hundred and eighteen feet in length, twenty-two feet in width, and drawing six feet of water, would leave her moorings in that city for Fort Snelling. There was no delay in the departure of the Virginia, and the trip was safely accomplished, and the vessel arrived at her point of destination not far from the middle of May. Mr. Neill says, " the arrival of the Vir- ginia at Mendota, is an era in the history of the Dakota nation, and will probably be transmitted to their posterity as long as they exist as a people. They say that some of their sacred men, the night before, dreamed of seeing some monster of the waters, which frightened them very much."
In his published " Reminiscences ; Historical and Personal," General Sibley relates the following incident concerning the arrival of the Vir- ginia at Mendota or Fort Snelling: " A sentinel on duty first heard the sound made by the escaping steam, before the boat was discernible. He cried out most vociferously, and when officers and men crowded around him for information, it happened that the sounds were no longer audible. The poor fellow was in imminent danger of being put under guard, when the ' Virginia ' made her appearance, and her arrival was greeted by the booming of cannon, and by shouts of welcome from the whole command."
Among the passengers on this trial trip of the Upper Mississippi were Major Taliaferro, the agent of the Dahkotahs ; Beltrami, an Italian count, once a judge of the Royal Court, then a political refugee; Great Eagle, a Sauk chief, returning to his village from a conference with Governor Clark; and a family from Kentucky, with their children, guns, chests, cats, dogs and chickens, emigrating to Galena, then the extreme frontier, and just beginning to be a center of great attraction by reason of the lead mines of that section.
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One of the passengers, probably Count Beltrami, although Mr. Neill does not give the name, in writing of the incident of the trip, tells the following:
" After the steamer had passed the mouth of the Upper Iowa, a grand illumination greeted the appearance of the ' great fire canoe.' It was perfectly dark, and we were at the mouth of the river Iowa, when we saw at a great distance all the combined images of the infernal regions in full perfection. I was on the point of exclaiming with Michael Angelo, ' How terrible ! but yet how beautiful l'
" The venerable trees of these eternal forests were on fire, which had communicated to the grass and brushwood, and these had been borne by a violent northwest wind to the adjacent plains and valleys. The flames towering above the tops of the hills where the wind raged with most violence, gave them the appearance of volcanoes at the moment of their most terrific eruptions, and the fire, winding its descent through places covered with grass, exhibited an exact resemblance to the undulating lava of Etna or Vesuvius. Almost all night we traveled by the light of this superb torch."
When the Virginia neared the shore at Mendota, writes Mr. Neill, "men, women and children beheld it with silent astonishment, sup- posing that it was some enormous water spirit coughing, puffing out hot breath, and splashing water in every direction. When it touched the landing their fears prevailed, and they retreated some distance, but when the blowing off steam commenced they were completely un- nerved; mothers forgetting their children, with streaming hair, sought hiding places ; chiefs, renouncing their stoicism, scampered away like affrighted animals."
Previous to this time, keelboats were used exclusively for the trans- portation of troops and supplies. Sixty days time from St. Louis to Fort Snelling was considered a good average trip.
Commencing with the Virginia the following is a complete list of steamboat arrivals at Fort Snelling up to May 26, 1826.
1. Virginia, May 10, 1823.
2. Neiville. 10. Fulton.
3. Putnam, April 2, 1825.
4. Mandan.
5. Indiana.
6. Lawrence, May 2, 1826. 14. Enterprise.
7. Sciota.
8. Eclipse.
9. Josephine.
11. Red Rover.
12. Black Rover.
13. Warrior.
15. Volant.
The Palmyra, Captain Holland, was the first steamboat to plow the water of the St. Croix, and reached the Fall of St. Croix on the 17th of July, 1838. She carried men and machinery for the projected mills at that place.
Neill says the navigation of the Minnesota River by steamboats com- menced in the summer of 1850. With the exception of a steamer that
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made a pleasure excursion as far as Shakopee, in 1842, no large vessels had ever disturbed the waters of the stream. In June the " Anthony Wayne," which a month previously had ascended to the Falls of St. Anthony, made a trip. On the 18th of July, she made a second trip, going almost to Mankato. The " Nominee" also navigated the stream for some distance.
On the 22d of July, the officers of the " Yankee," taking advantage of the high water which prevailed at that time, determined to navigate the stream as far as the size of the boat would allow. The whole coun- try west of the Mississippi was then in the possession of the people " native to the manor born," and the capacity of the stream, for pur- poses of navigation, were comparatively unknown. This was an exper- imental trip, and at night of the first day out from the fort (Snelling) the " Yankee " had only made about twenty-five miles, and when dark- ness began to cover the face of the country and hide the riffles and shoals, and rocks, and sand-bars, and snags from the eyes of the pilot, the officers of the boat conceived it to be the " better part of valor" to " tie up " for the night.
Wednesday morning after the " Yankee" left Fort Snelling, they passed the mouth of Blue Earth River, and from a south-easterly course, the boat bore to the northwest. When night came on the boat had reached the near vicinity of the mouth of the Cottonwood River, two hundred miles distant from Fort Snelling. The day had been intensely hot, the mercury having reached one hundred and four degrees in the shade ; and as soon as the sun went down, a cloud of musquitoes envel- oped the excursionists. Mr. Neill, who formed one of the party, says they looked upon the excursionists as intruders, and seemed deter- mined to make them smart and to leave their impressions. The ice, too, had given out, and the ladies of the party began to feel there was more of reality than of poetry in an exploring expedition into an uncivilized country. A meeting was called to see if the captain should go on or turn back. A majority were in favor of continuing the trip. But few of the male members of the party entered their state rooms that night, but wrapped in musquito bars, sought rest and sleep upon the hurricane deck. When Thursday's sun arose, the boat was not in motion. The crew, worn out by excessive heat and extra labor, and even those of the passengers who had been anxious the night before to continue the trip, were ready to come to terms and take the back track, and while at breakfast, to the satisfaction of all parties, the prow of the boat turned towards the land of civilization. Twenty-seven years before, Major Long, at the same place, suffered a similar annoyance from
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the musquitoes. He said in his narrative : " We never were tormented at any period of our journey more than when traveling in the vicinity of St. Peters. The musquitoes rose all of a sudden. We have fre- quently been so much annoved by these insects as to be obliged to relinquish an unfinished supper, or to throw away a cup of tea which we could not enjoy. To protect our feet and legs, we were obliged to lie with our boots on."
On Friday evening the " Yankee " touched the wharf and discharged the exploring excursionists at St. Paul. Few large boats have since ascended the Minnesota as far as the Cottonwood, and only then in stages of high water; but it was demonstrated by the " Yankee " excur- sion that steamboats of light draught could navigate that stream at all stages of water, if a few obstructions were removed, as far as Traverse des Sioux and Blue Earth River. Since that trip, the country, then wild and untamed, and the home of savages, has passed into the occu- pancy of white people, and is now a garden spot of cultivated beauty and a rich grain-producing region.
PIONEER LUMBERMEN.
Messrs. Orange Walker and his associates at Marine, and John and Jonathan McKusick, at Stillwater, have the honor of being the pioneers in the lumber business, which has since assumed such gigantic propor- tions, although Joseph R. Brown is believed to have been the first to descend the St. Croix with a raft of lumber.
TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION.
CRAWFORD AND ST. CROIX COUNTIES-ADMISSION OF THE STATE OF WISCONSIN- AN ANOMALOUS CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.
As already stated, Crawford county, Wisconsin, was organized under the jurisdiction of Michigan Territory, in the winter of 1818-19, and its machinery put in motion under direction of Col. Leavenworth, in the summer of 1819, as he was en route, with the Fifth Regiment U. S. Infantry, to garrison Prairie du Chien and Rock Island, and to estab- lish a military post, etc., at Mendota.
As originally defined, the jurisdiction of Crawford county extended over the larger part of the western half of the present State of Wis- consin, and included all that part of Minnesota lying between the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers. For a period of twenty one years, or until January, 1840, the county lines remained unchanged. At that
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time, however, the influence of Joseph R. Brown, who was interested in the development of the country around the present city of Stillwater, secured the passage of a bill by the territorial legislature of Wisconsin, in November, 1841, creating St. Croix county. The boundaries of the new county included all that part of Crawford lying west of a line run- ning northward from the mouth of Porcupine River, on Lake Pepin, to Lake Superior. The county seat was fixed at " Brown's town-site of Dakota," at the upper part of the present city of Stillwater. "In the fall of this year," says Mr. Williams, " Mr. Brown was elected a member of the Assembly of Wisconsin for two years. This region then began to have a voice in the affairs of the territory, to which it had been hitherto a mere unnoticed backwoods settlement."
Notwithstanding St. Croix county was created in the late fall of 1841, it remained connected with Crawford county for judicial purposes until 1847. Stillwater had been commenced in October (the 10th,) 1843, by Messrs. John McKusick, Calvin Leach, Elam Greeley and Elias McKeon ; and when St. Croix county was reorganized for judicial purposes in 1847, Stillwater, which had overshadowed Dakotah, was named as the county seat, and in June of that year a session of the United States District Court, Judge Charles Dunn presiding, was held in McKusick's store room.
On the 6th of August, 1846, Congress passed an act by which the citizens of Wisconsin were authorized to frame a constitution and form a State government. Says Mr. Neill: "The act fixed the St. Louis River to the rapids, from thence south to the St. Croix, and thence down that river to its junction with the Mississippi, as the western boundary.
" On the twenty-third of December, 1846, the delegate from Wiscon- sin, Morgan L. Martin, introduced a bill in Congress for the organization of a territory of Minnesota. This bill made its western boundary the Sioux and Red River of the North. On the 3d of March, 1847, permis- sion was granted to Wisconsin to change her boundary, so that the western limit would proceed due south from the rapids of the St. Louis River, and fifteen miles east of the most easterly point of Lake St. Croix, thence to the Mississippi.
"A number in the constitutional convention of Wisconsin were anxious that Rum River should be a part of her western boundary, while citizens of the valley of the St. Croix were desirous that the Chippewa River should be the limit of Wisconsin. The citizens of Wisconsin Territory, in the valley of the St. Croix, and about Fort Snelling, wished to be included in the projected new territory, and on the 28th of March, 1848, a memorial, signed by H. H. Sibley, Henry M. Rice, Franklin Steele,
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William R. Marshall, and others, was presented to Congress, remon- strating against the proposition before the convention to make Rum River a portion of the boundary line of the contemplated State of Wis- consin." The petitioners remark :
"Your memorialists conceive it to be the intention of your honorable bodies to so divide the present territory of Wisconsin as to form two states nearly equal in size as well as in other respects. A line drawn due south from Shagwamigan Bay, on Lake Superior, to the intersection of the main Chippewa River, and from thence down the middle of said stream to its debouchure into the Mississippi, would seem to your mem- orialists a very proper and equitable division, which, while it would secure to Wisconsin a portion of the Lake Superior shore, would also afford Minnesota some countervailing advantages. But if the northern line should be changed, as suggested by the convention, Minnesota would not have a single point on the Mississippi below the Falls of St. Athony, which is the limit of steamboat navigation. This alone, to the appre- hension of your memorialists, would be a good and sufficient reason why the mouth of Rum River should not be the boundary, as that stream pours its waters into the Missis- sippi nearly twenty miles above the falls. Besides this, the Chippewa and St. Croix valleys are closely connected in geographical position with the Upper Mississippi; while they are widely separated from the settled parts of Wisconsin, not only by hun- dreds of miles of mostly waste and barren lands, which must remain uncultivated for ages, but equally so by a diversity of interests and character in the population."
"On the twenty-ninth of May, 1848, [continues Mr. NEILL,] " the act to admit Wis- consin, changed their boundary line to the present, and as first defined in the enabling act of 1846. After the bill of Mr. Martin was introduced into the House of Representa- tives in 1846, it was referred to the Committee on Territories, of which Mr. Douglas was chairman. On the twentieth of January, 1847, he reported in favor of the proposed territory with the name of Itasca. On the seventeenth of February, before the bill passed the House, a discussion arose in relation to the proposed names. Mr. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, proposed Chippewa as a substitute name, alleging that this tribe was the principal one in the proposed territory, which was not correct. Mr. J. Thomson, of Mississippi, disliked all Indian names, and hoped the territory would be called Jackson. Mr. Houston, of Delaware, thought that there ought to be one territory named after the ' Father of his country,' aud proposed Washington. All of the names proposed were rejected, and the name in the original bill inserted. On the last day of the session, March third, the bill was called up in the Senate and laid on the table."
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