USA > Minnesota > Olmsted County > History of Olmsted County, Minnesota > Part 18
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Harold J. Richardson is a son of Henry M. Richardson, of Roch- ester. He was born in Haverhill in 1872. He was educated in the Rochester High School and the Minnesota University, and grad- uated in the law department of the university in 1900, and engaged in the practice of law in Rochester in partnership with his brother, William B. Richardson, and is successful in the profession.
Charles H. Armstrong is a son of Edward G. Armstrong, one of the early settlers of High Forest. He was born in Mower county in 1872 and located at High Forest village in 1880. He became a surveyor and assisted in surveying the state line between North and South Dakota and in the subdivision of government lands in South Dakota, was appointed United States deputy sur- veyor in 1898 and has been since 1900 engaged at times in the survey of government lands in northern Minnesota. He has been city engineer of Rochester since 1904, and is a member of the Min- nesota Surveyors and Engineers Society.
George F. Howard was born in New York State in 1858 and came to Viola township with the family of his father, Thomas . Howard, in 1868. He was reared a farmer and became a teacher in the public schools of the county. In 1896 he established a com- mercial college in Rochester. He has shown much energy in the superintendency, is an advocate of agricultural education in the district schools and has given much attention to developing public interest in that subject.
He has held annual spelling contests at Rochester every year since 1903, in which the rural schools have competed for prizes, each school being allowed to send a representative. In 1904 he inaugurated the Boys' and Girls' Club to encourage the rural scholars in farming. Exhibits were made of grains, vegetables and apples raised by boys and sewing and baking by girls and prizes awarded. It has been kept up every year and has grown into the County School Fair, held at Rochester, at which prizes are given for the best product of the farm and the best sewing and cooking by the girls, and the best three exhibits of each class are entered in a State exhibit in competition with other counties. At the contest of 1907 there were forty-two prize winners, the prizes awarded ranging from $5 to 50 cents.
About a third of the schools of the county were represented. Superintendent Howard was the first in the State to establish these
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fairs. There are now twenty or thirty counties holding them. He has also established a system of county graduation, holding the graduation exercises for the whole county yearly at Rochester. Diplomas are awarded to all scholars who have secured high-school certificates of examination in three out of four common branches. In July, 1908, sixty-six scholars were graduated. Diplomas of honor for perfect attendance have also been awarded.
The diplomas for 95 per cent of attendance have been nearly 300 a year. The number of first-class schools receiving special State aid has grown from twenty-five to fifty in six years.
Superintendent Howard was appointed by Governor Johnson in 1908 a member of the State high school board.
Nels Magneson is a son of Magnus Magneson, who came from Wisconsin and settled on a farm in Rock Dell township in 1856, where Nels was born the same year. He was reared on the farm and engaged in storekeeping in the village, which he continued till 1870. He was postmaster during all that time. He was appointed county commissioner to fill a vacancy caused by the resignation of A. E. Aaby, and after filling out that term was elected and served five years in all.
The Olmsted county legislators elected for the session of 1903 were: Senator, H. H. Witherstine, of Rochester, Democrat, and Wm. C. Fraser, of Rochester, and Andrew C. McCoy, of Salem, representatives-both Republicans. Representative Fraser served two terms.
Dr. Horace H. Witherstine was born in New York State in 1852. He is a graduate of Fairfield Seminary. He came to Roch -. ester in 1872. He taught for ten years in the schools of the county and graduated from the Rush Medical College of Chicago in 1886 and has been and still is engaged in his profession at Roch- ester, having a large practice. He has served five years as mayor of Rochester, and was twelve years a member of the city school board. His personal popularity has insured his election to any local office that he cared to run for.
The legislature of 1903 changed the election and term of office of township supervisors. A board of three supervisors had pre- viously been elected every year, but by the new law only one of the three is elected at a time, and serves three years.
The term of justices of the peace was also changed from one year to two years.
More than five hundred dollars was collected by subscription throughout the county for the famine sufferers in Finland, Sweden and Norway, and sent to Minneapolis in March, 1903.
A most destructive cyclone struck St. Charles Saturday after- noon, October 3, 1903, destroying the center of the little city and killing seven and injuring about thirty persons. Most of the places of business were literally blown to pieces and piled on each other
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in a mass of wreckage. The property loss was estimated at three hundred thousand dollars.
St. Charles is in Winona county, only three-quarters of a mile east of the line of Olmsted county, and the disastrous effects of the storm, which came from the southwest, were severely felt on farms in the townships of Orion, Elmira and Dover. In Orion, Floyd Buck, Lester Matheusy and George. L. Knight lost barns, horses and grain. In Elmira the list of losers included Charles Chermak, John Jackson, E. A. Williams, John Patterson, M. F. Farrell. Ed. 'Spitzer, Fred Seigel, Louis Seigel, R. Richter. Charles Farrier, Gust. Gierse and Carl Schwock. The damages included, on different farms, the killing of horses and destruction of barns, houses, outbuildings, farm machinery, wind mills and trees. On the farm of John Patterson everything was swept clean and the house was lifted in the air and came down with a boy and girl under it and the building had to be lifted to extricate them. The girl had a leg broken and the boy was badly hurt. In Dover the greatest losers were William Hinkley, who lost everything but his house, which was badly wrecked; Herman Richter, barn and out- buildings damaged; J. B. Holm, house moved from foundation, barn unroofed and granary and wind mill wrecked. Mr. Holm was struck by a limb and thought to be dead, but recovered after being sent to the Eyota Hospital. A trail of lesser damages was left along the entire route of the storm.
W. O. Crittendon, of Dover, was in St. Charles to consult a physician, who told him that he had but a short time to live. He started home as the cyclone began, and fell dead in his wagon; it was believed from heart disease.
Abundant aid was sent to. St. Charles, among which were contri- butions of $500 by the city council of Rochester and $900 by the commissioners of Olmsted county. Three hundred dollars were appropriated by the village council of Chatfield and $500 by pri- vate subscriptions, and $250 in Dover by subscriptions.
The total of losses in Olmsted county was reported by a commit- tee. consisting of County Commissioner Robert Hall and Messrs. Joseph Underleak and O. P. Krause, to amount to $13,392.
The new county officers elected . in November, 1904, were : Auditor. T. L. Phelps, of Chester; treasurer, J. J. Fulkerson, of Rochester; county commissioners, J. W. Flathers, of Rochester, and William H. Mitchell, of Eyota-all Republicans.
The county attorney, surveyor, coroner, superintendent and Com- missioners Case and Mitchell had no opposition.
All of the foregoing newly elected officers were still holding the offices in 1907.
Joseph Preston removing from the county, had resigned as
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county commissioner in 1904; the board appointed Mr. Mitchell to fill the vacancy, and the people elected him to the office.
Thomas L. Phelps is a son of Thomas W. Phelps, who was a pioneer settler of Marion township. He was born in the village of Marion in 1868, was educated in the Rochester High School and at Hamline University, taught in the public schools of the county, and was a farmer, living adjoining the village of Chester. He was clerk of Marion township ten years, and several years clerk of the school board. He is an efficient auditor.
John J. Fulkerson is a son of Rev. John W. Fulkerson, probably the oldest surviving settler of Marion township. He was born in Virginia and came with his father's family to Marion in 1856, when only two years old. He attended the schools in Rochester, was a clerk in the grocery store of Daniel H. Moon, formed a partnership in the grocery business with Norton C. Younglove, and bought him out and conducted the business till, in 1884, he became proprietor of the flouring mill in North Rochester, which he car- ried on five years. He again engaged in the grocery business in 1889, buying out Henry C. Gerry. He was clerk of the board of education of Rochester six years. He is one of the most popular citizens of the county.
William H. Mitchell was born in Winona in 1861 and while an infant came to Olmsted county with his parents, who located on a farm near Potsdam in 1862. They moved to Dover township in 1866. He lived eight years in Quincy township and moved to Eyota township in 1895, and is now living there. He has been a supervisor of Eyota township a number of years, and is promi- nent in his community. He is now chairman of the board of commissioners.
Edward Fanning, of Stewartville, was elected representative for the legislative session of 1905.
Albert H. Spring was elected postmaster of the legislature for the session of 1905 and elected again in 1907. He was born at Potsdam in 1876 and is the son of Christopher Spring, who set- tled in Farmington township in 1856. Albert went to Darling's Commercial College in Rochester and to the St. Paul Commer- cial College and came to Rochester in 1893, and has since been a bookkeeper and salesman in the Boston and the Model clothing stores. He is now a resident of Moorhead in this State.
Rural free mail delivery was established in the county in 1900, and on May 15, 1905, the postoffices were discontinued at Laird, Marion, Horton, Genoa, Rock Dell, Pleasant Grove and Potsdam. And the process of substituting the rural carrier for the rural post- master is still going on, to the convenience of most of the people, but to the destruction of centers of news and social intercourse for the farmers.
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The new county officers elected in the fall of 1906 were: Clerk of the district court, George S. Hannon; register of deeds, Wal- ter A. Eckholdt, and county commissioner, A. E. Hanson-all Republicans.
George S. Hannon is a native of the county, being born in 1875 on the farm of his father, Leander H. Hannon, who settled in Oronoco township in 1858, and died in Rochester in 1904. George finished his education by two years' study at Macallister College. He came to Rochester in 1898 and was seven years deputy clerk of the district court. He is now filling the office of clerk very satisfactorily.
Walter A. Eckholdt is a son of H. A. Eckholdt, the well-known lawyer of Rochester, where Walter was born in 1873. He was educated in the Rochester schools, attended the law department of the Minnesota University and graduated in 1896. He began the practice of law in Rochester, but abandoned it for merchandising, at Douglass and Byron, and was a salesman in Rochester.
Anton E. Hanson was born in Norway in 1857 and came to America in 1882, coming directly to Byron, where he lived three years and then located on a farm in Salem township. In 1887 he moved to a farm in Kalmar township, where he is now living. He was four years one of the supervisors of Kalmar township.
For the legislative session of 1907, Andrew C. McCoy, of Salem, and James F. Spencer, of High Forest township, were elected rep- resentatives-both Republicans.
County Commissioner A. O. Cowles having died, the chairmen of supervisors of the townships in the Fifth district met on the 13th of April, 1908, and elected George Olson, a substantial farmer, who was chairman of the town board of Oronoco, to fill the vacancy, which ended January 1, 1909.
The representatives elected for the legislative session of 1909 were Kerry Conley, of Rochester, Republican, and Matt Fitzpat- rick, of Stewartville, Democrat.
The new county officers elected in November, 1908, were: Sheriff, William H. Mitchell. of Eyota township; county attorney, George J. Allen, of Rochester ; county commissioners, S. H. Brown, of Simpson; F. W. Schmidt, of Viola; James A. Clason, of Cas- cade-all Republicans except Commissioner Schmidt, a Democrat; Henry O. Christensen, judge of probate; George F. Howard, superintendent of schools; John J. Fulkerson, treasurer; Thomas L. Phelps. auditor; Walter Eckholdt, register of deeds; Charles H. Armstrong, surveyor; F. R. Mosse, coroner, and J. Wesley Flathers, county commissioner. The incumbents of those offices were re-elected without opposition.
Matt Fitzpatrick is a junior pioneer of Olmsted county. having been born in 1872, in the log house in High Forest township, near
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Stewartville, that was built on his settlement in 1856 by his father, who is still living at the age of eighty-six years. Matt lived on the farm till twenty-three years old, when he engaged in selling farm machinery in Minnesota and North Dakota, and afterward for five years dealt in machinery and grain at Stewartville, and for the last few years has been selling lands in Texas, Montana and North Dakota, and is now dealing in Olmsted county lands. He has served as treasurer of High Forest township and as a member of the Stewartville village council.
William Frederick Schmidt was born in Germany in 1851 and came. as one of his father's family, in 1857. to Dodge county, Wisconsin. In 1874 he moved to the farm in Viola township where he is still living. He is one of the most successful farmers of the township, and has been clerk of the school district two terms, director one term and three years a township supervisor.
At the November session of the board of county commissioners in 1908. Commissioner Anton E. Hanson, of Rock Dell, resigned. William G. Roeder, a farmer of High Forest township, was ap- pointed to fill the vacancy. Mr. Hanson was chairman of the board at the time of his resignation.
According to the State census, the population of the county in 1905 was 22.409, and there are in the county 135 rural schools, two high schools, with four others in joint districts with other counties, nine graded schools, five parochial schools and no private school, and forty-six churches. It is a county of well improved and well managed farms and pretty villages, and a population of more than average intelligence, that during the more than fifty years chronicled in these pages has progressed in wealth, pros- perity and refinement, and, as a district of comfortable homes, will compare favorably with any other in the State.
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THE CITY OF ROCHESTER.
T HE first known discovery of the site of Rochester was by a party of United States surveyors, under charge of Thomas Simpson, a well-known resident, for years, of Winona, who were running the line and setting the stakes marking the townships, but not subdividing them into sections. Mr. Simpson says :
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"I first saw the location of Rochester, or, rather, a fog or the spray arising from the falls there, from a point where the village of Simpson is now located, one bright morning early in the spring of 1854. The next day I visited the falls with members of my sur- veying party. White men had evidently been there, but we saw none.
"We made a claim here at what we called 'the Falls of Wazi- onja.' We took this claim in the name of General Warner Lewis, surveyor general at Dubuque, Iowa; Maj. Michael Carrick, also of Dubuque, who held the contract for running the section lines of the townships, and myself, who had charge of the work of survey- ing under Major Carrick's contract. To establish our claim and retain it, we constructed a house-a very small house of rock and sod laid up irregularly, without very much regard to artistic or architectural skill or beauty. We cut some stakes and drove them down in front of the house, portico-like, and wrote thereon the date and owners of the claim. We left an axe and two old worn- out spades in the house. I made a memorandum of the event in my field notebook and then went about our work. Next day, upon examination of the instructions furnished from the surveyor gen- eral's office, I discovered that our claim was illegal and void, as all persons employed in survey of the public land for the government were prohibited from making and holding such claims.
"However, returning a few days after, we found that some parties from Winona (just like them) had 'jumped' our claim. Among them I recall M. W. Sargent and Edward Smith. They had taken possession, confiscated axe and spades, and obliterated every vestige of our rights (if we had any). We were greatly incensed and angered, but could do nothing, as we knew we had no legal rights there."
That same spring, but probably later than the discovery by the surveying party, Robert H. McReady, with his family. and Thomas C. Cummings, both from Herkimer county, New York, looking for new homes on the frontier, located farms of a quarter section
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each on what is now the western edge of the city of Rochester, McReady's being outside the city, afterward the home of M. W. Leland, and recently of Philip D. Manley. Cummings' claim was south of McReady's, and part of it was, later, platted as Cum- mings' addition to the city, and includes the district extending from the court house to the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad and west to the city limits.
McReady is said to have had a part of his claim surveyed and platted as a townsite, but, if so, he did not have it recorded, while Head was nurturing his embryo city.
Silas McReady, a brother of Robert, came about a year later and settled in the same neighborhood. He was a quaint individual and in the office of deputy sheriff, which he held for a short time, is credited with displaying much more zeal than judgment. Among other things, it is told of him that in administering an oath he would gravely recite, reading from the statutes, "You do solemnly swear, or affirm, as the case may be, that you will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God. You owe me a quarter," all in one breath. The McReadys returned East in 1867.
In that same summer of 1854, Henry Woodward and Fred- erick Prodger settled, each of them on a quarter section which have since become North Rochester.
In those days the townsite speculator was abroad in the land and at home in Winona. Some of the enterprising settlers of that town made journeys of discovery into the back country in search of the best localities for founding future cities and making present for- tunes. Such a party started from Winona in the summer of 1854, with the idea of locating a townsite somewhere in the valley of the Zumbro. The party consisted of Edward S. Smith, M. Wheeler Sargeant, Charles Eaton, and others whose names have not been preserved. In passing through St. Charles, which was already a settlement of at least one house, the party seems to have been joined by L. H. Springer, who was one of the town proprietors, and a hotel-keeper there, and who afterward was for years one of the best known residents of Rochester. The late Elder Ely, of Winona, in a reminiscence, says: "They first made a claim where they struck the river and intended to lay out a town, but Smith, in traveling down the river, heard the roar of the falls, and continued his journey until he came in sight of the present site of the stone mill. They abandoned the place they had fixed upon up the river and made a claim, fixing a site for a log shanty at the head of Main street. They immediately returned to Winona and hired George Wiltsee to go out and build the shanty. Smith & Co. held the claim without anybody to disturb them until about the 12th of July following, when George and Jonathan Head and their
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father came from Wisconsin and made their claim. They disre- garded the claim and improvements of Smith & Co .; indeed, they began to tear down the log shanty built by the first claimants. Smith, however, was on hand before the destruction was com- pleted, and with revolver in hand drove away the intruders. Sub- sequently the matter was settled by the payment of money. Smith and Eaton each received $1,800, but Springer and Sargeant got nothing. Smith and Eaton showed fight."
How far this account is accurate and how far apocryphal, I cannot say, not having learned Head's version of the affair, but it is probably like the old-fashioned Sunday-school story books, "founded on fact," and as true as most history. James W. Smith, a reliable authority, who came here in September, 1854, and entered the southwest quarter section in what is now the city, says the non- resident Winona speculators built no house or cabin, but only laid four logs together, as if to commence a house, and, being all non- residents, they evidently had no rights as occupants under the town- site law.
George Head proceeded to build a log house of the usual style of frontier architecture. It was located on College street, directly at the south end of Broadway, right in front of the present location of the central fire station.
I have been told that the initiation of the town was the mark- ing out of the main street, Broadway, by the dragging, probably by ox team, of a log through the brush the length of the street, and that Mrs. Head dedicated the main thoroughfare of the future city by riding along it on horseback.
George Head told me that he named the town Rochester because the falls, or, rather, rapids, reminded him of the water power at Rochester. New York, where he once lived. No one who knew him would suspect George of being of a poetic temperament; but what an imagination must have been his to find any resemblance between the gentle purling rapids below College street bridge, mere ripples on the surface of a quiet little stream, and the majestic cataracts, with their falls of twenty, seventy and ninety-five feet. that furnish the unlimited power of New York's great manufac- turing city! Its common. second-hand name, so lacking in indi- viduality or local appropriateness, amounts to a handicap of our little city. There is a Rochester in each of eighteen States of the Union, and the name is a cause of certainly occasional if not fre- quent inconvenience, especially in the miscarriage of both mail and freight. One of the greatest improvements that could be made in the city would be a change in its name.
The Head family comprised John Head, an elderly gentleman, a typical sailor in appearance. who had served in the British navy, and carried a dent in his skull made by a French saber; George
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Head, his son, a middle-aged man; Jonathan, a younger son, and Mrs. George Head and her sister, Sophie Nelson. John Head died in Dakota in 1864.
George Head, who may well be considered the founder of Roch- ester, was a baker by trade and had been in that business in Wau- kesha and Watertown, Wisconsin, coming here from Watertown. He was a man of more than ordinary enterprise. In Rochester he engaged in various business ventures, among them dealing in real estate. building houses, and keeping a grocery store, but finally met with financial disaster as a merchant, and in 1873 removed to the new town of Fergus Falls, where he again achieved success as a dealer in town property, and again was unfortunate. He died in 1883. in Bermuda, where he had gone in search of health. He and his wife are buried in our Oakland Cemetery.
Jonathan Head moved to South Dakota, where he died in Octo- ber. 1891.
On the 15th of July. 1854, M. O. Walker established a stage line from Dubuque to St. Paul, running through Pleasant Grove and Rochester. McReady's was the Rochester station and McReady was also appointed postmaster and his house became a tavern. Tra- dition said he carried the postoffice in his hat, but maybe that was only a Western adaptation of the old, old story that Benjamin Franklin, when made the first postmaster of Philadelphia, used that receptacle for the mail. The same story was told of Elder Ely, Winona's first postmaster.
Robert Proudfoot started a store, west of McReady's on the Oronoco road, on what was afterward the pasture of W. H. Dodge. He soon moved to the Head settlement, built the first frame store on Broadway, and then drowned himself in the Zumbro.
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