USA > Minnesota > Wabasha County > History of Wabasha County : together with biographical matter, statistics, etc. : gathered from matter furnished by interviews with old settlers, county, township, and other records, and extracts from files of papers, pamphlets, and such other sources > Part 51
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The Hon. John VanDyke, of Wabasha, was appointed district judge to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of the Hon. C. N. Waterman, and held the position until the next general election, when the Hon. William Mitchell was unanimously chosen by the people to fill the position and held the same until 1881, when he was appointed to the supreme bench of the State of Minnesota, and the Hon. C. N. Start, of Rochester, was appointed in his place, and now performs the duties of the office to the entire satisfaction of the bar and people, having been unanimously elected in November, 1881, for a full term.
Wabasha and the village of Reads are both situated near the
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mouth of the Chippewa river, where its waters help to swell the tide of the "Father of Waters." Large quantities of lumber are annually floated in small rafts down the Chippewa river and along the banks of the Mississippi, near the mouth of the Chippewa are coupled or joined into larger rafts for floating down the Mississippi to St. Louis and other points. Consequently a large number of "floating population " congregated at these points in former years seeking employment in transporting lumber, as heretofore desig- nated. Very many of this class of men were persons of bad repute- thieves, gamblers and drunkards ; hence there has been a vast amount of criminal business in the county, and only a few years years ago Wabasha had the unenviable reputation of having had more murders committed within its borders than any other county in the state ; but of late years the lumber has been towed by tugs or steamboats and required but few raftsmen, that class having greatly diminished, and in fact have almost entirely disappeared, and with them the criminal calendar.
Another source of litigation in former years was caused by the fact that nearly the entire Sioux half-breed reservation is located within the county and located with Sioux half-breed scrip, much of which belonged to minors. Titles to land could in such cases only be obtained through the uncertainties of a probate court, the prac- tice in which was formerly quite unsettled ; but while there has been frequent and persistent atttempts to disturb the titles to such lands in the county, courts and juries have almost invariably ignored technicalities and sustained the titles.
For a number of years quite a strife existed between Lake City and Wabasha for the county seat of Wabasha county. In the winter of 1860 an act was passed to remove the county seat from Wabasha to Lake City, provided such removal should be sustained by a vote of the people. A vote was taken and the returns showed a majority against such removal. Lake City not being satisfied with the returns commenced proceedings to test the legality of the vote in the courts. Hon. Thomas Wilson, then district judge, declared the law under which it was taken to be unconstitutional, and this ended the matter for that time.
Lake City still being dissatisfied, a bill was introduced and passed the legislature in 1868, again submitting the same question to a vote of the people. This time the blood of both places was up (as one may say) and they used their utmost endeavors to win.
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HISTORY OF WABASHA COUNTY.
Every town in the county was thoroughly canvassed pro and con, and rivalry was at white heat. The returns again showed a majority in favor of Wabasha. Lake City again appealed to the courts, and after a protracted investigation in the district court, before the Hon. Lloyd Barbour, he rendered a decision in favor of Lake City. Wabasha appealed to the supreme court and the decision of the dis- trict court was reversed wholly on technical grounds. One remark- able feature of this investigation was, that while the census showed that Lake City and Wabasha each had a population of about two thousand people, the returns showed that Lake City had cast two thousand and thirteen votes ; the City of Wabasha, four thousand and fifty-two votes. Judge Barbour, at the next term of the district court for this county, instructed the grand jury that the statutes made it their duty to inquire into all irregularities and violations in and of the election laws, and if there was fraudulent voting it was their duty to indict all parties guilty thereof. For, said he, "On the purity of the ballot-box rests the foundation of our republic." The grand jury failed to bring indictments, and on his admon- ishing them that they must have failed in their duty, was coolly informed by the foreman that Wabasha county could not afford to send half of her best citizens to the penitentiary.
S. L. Campbell was appointed in January, 1856, the first clerk of the district court of Wabasha county, and held the office until the admission of the state into the Union. In October, 1857, S. A. Kemp was elected clerk under the new organization, and held the office till 1861. N. F. Webb was his successor, and held the office for one term. Charles J. Stauff was elected in 1869, and is the present efficient clerk, and likely to hold the position so long as he may desire to do so, as he has been twice re-elected by the almost unanimous vote of the people, and discharges his duties to the entire satisfaction of bench and bar.
JUDGES OF PROBATE.
H. P. Wilson was elected probate judge in 1856 ; his successor was George F. Childs, elected in 1857, and held the office one year, when B. C. Baldwin, of Lake City, was elected and held the office for two years. A. Z. Putnam was his successor, elected in the fall of 1859, and held the office for four years. G. C. Dawley filled the office in 1864-5. E. Lathrop was elected in 1866. M. A. Fuller was his successor, and held the office for four years. A. Z. Putnam was again elected as his successor, and held the office one term. J. F.
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Pope was elected in 1874, and held for two terms ; he was succeeded by F. J. Collier, of Wabasha, who held the office for one term and was succeeded by A. Z. Putnam. who was for the fourth time elected to the office in 1879. F. J. Collier was again elected in the fall of 1883, and is now the present incumbent.
DISTRICT AND COUNTY ATTORNEYS.
The Hon. Thomas Wilson was district attorney in 1856, suc- ceeded by Samuel Cole, of Winona county, who held the office until the organization of the state. In the fall of 1857 John W. Tyson was elected county attorney, and was succeeded by S. L. Campbell, who held the office one term and resigned ; he was succeeded by John B. Davis, who held the office for two years and was again elected in 1865. J. D. Jacquith was elected in 1863, holding the office till 1865. W. W. Scott was elected county attorney in the fall of 1866, and held the position for one term. John B. Davis was again elected in 1870, holding the office for one term, and was succeeded by J. H. Hahn ; elected in the fall of 1872, holding the office three terms. George H. Matchin was elected in 1878, C. H. Benedict in 1880, and John McGovern in 1882, and is the present incumbent.
SHERIFFS.
At the first election held in Wabasha county, at the residence of Augustine Rocque, in what is now the city of Wabasha, on the 11th day of October, 1853, Levi Murphy was elected sheriff. He having failed to qualify, the board of county commissioners, on the 13th of March, 1854, appointed Dr. F. H. Milligan sheriff of the county, and he gave bonds and entered upon the duties of his office. In the fall of that year Amos Wheeler was elected sheriff of the county ; he was succeeded in 1856 by Blois S. Hurd, who resigned his office and R. M. Piner was appointed to fill the vacancy, and was elected at the next general election and held the office till Jann- ary, 1860. H. W. Butts was his successor, holding the office for one terin. Wm. B. Lutz was sheriff in 1862-3; his successor was H. H. Slayton, who held the office for two terms. S. H. Smith succeeded him and held the office two terms. William Box was elected in the fall of 1867, his successor was L. M. Gregg, who held the office for two terms, and was succeeded by the present incum- bent, Henry Burkhardt, who was elected in 1881 and re-elected in the fall of 1883.
CHAPTER LXI.
THE MEDICAL FRATERNITY.
THE history of the medical profession of any county in any state bordering on the Mississippi river will refer us to a time antedating the occupation of any land by the white inhabitant. The various tribes of American Indians were advised by their medicine- men, from whom they expected relief no less signal than that required by their white successors. The lower the tribes remained in the scale of intelligence, as a tribe, the more they looked for cures from some irrational source, and so the medicine-man entered upon his duties with the flourish of trumpets and the beating of gongs, and continued the orgies until the disease had been driven out from the patient or the patient had died. The early citizens of the city of Wabasha will all remember the latter days of March, 1858, when for three long nights the wakeful ones could hear the assembled medicine-men on the opposite bank of the river, from dusk until daylight, curing a poor So, who for two years had been the victim of consumption. The poor fellow was shrouded and the trees bore his body before they bore leaves in that spring, even if the consump- tives did flock to Minnesota from all parts of the Union to escape death from that dreaded disease. But howling over the prostrate form of the sick or wounded to drive away some evil spirit which they imagined the cause of the disease, was not the only claim which the native medicine-man had to entitle him to the degree of doctor in medicine.
There can be no valid denial to the claim that the Indians of North America possessed a knowledge of what roots were edible, before contacts either with the pilgrims or with the John Smith colony ; then why not go one step further and accord them some skill in selection of roots and bark that were medicinal ? There is a precedent in Wabasha for this acknowledgment, in that after the horsepower and threshing-machine had been domiciled in this county, an Indian, not knowing that it was loaded, put his foot so far into the gearing, that a consultation of graduates of Jefferson Medical College decided and informed him of the result of their council, which was that amputation was the only hope to save his
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life. The Indian declined the amputation and called another physician, who gave him every encouragement that he might still have a useful foot, with good treatment and care. He permitted the physician to dress the foot by the method which, previous to the date of "Listerism," gave promise of the best results attainable. Three days afterward the physician found his dressings all removed and the foot enveloped in about a peck of pounded barks and roots, from which the foot emerged to chase the deer before midwinter. The Indian surgeons of Wabasha county were not unskilled in the "lost art" of venisection, as the median basilic of many an Indian witnesses to this day. They were also skilled in the art of "cupping," or drawing blood by scarifying, and producing a vacuum with a cup of horn, and the mark of that on the temple or other parts of the body is a testimony to that claim. But the day will come when the medicine-man must give way to his more ambitious white brother ; and so the first man who announced himself as a practitioner of the healing art in the county of Wabasha took up his abode in the city of Wabasha and announced himself as Dr. M'Thurston. What medical lore he was master of he brought with him from the "Green Isle." His stay was short, for though he was temperate, law-abiding and kindhearted, he was a descendant of Adam, and the woman tempted him, and he, like the Arab, folded his tent and gave place to a successor, and in the autumn of 1853 the first physician upon whom had been conferred the degree of M.D. located in Wabasha to practice his profession in the person of Dr. F. H. Milligan. For two or three years he enjoyed the field alone, not only the whole of Wabasha county, but the whole region on both sides of the river, a territory almost equal to a New England State. In 1857 he left the county and located at Hastings, Dakota county, but returned to Wabasha in 1858, and has continued to practice his profession to the present time.
In the winter of 1855-6 Dr. J. P. Bowen arrived on the ground and soon formed a copartnership with Dr. Milligan, which continued for a year. Dr. Bowen remained at Wabasha until the spring of 1859, when he left for a less severe climate.
In the year 1855 Dr. Geo. F. Childs and Dr. N. S. Teft located in the flourishing village of Minneiska, and continued in the practice of medicine, both in town and country, until 1860, when Dr. Childs went to Washington, D. C .; and Dr. Teft removed to Plainview, where he has led an active and laborious life
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in his profession, except when he has been called by his constituents to sit in the councils of the lawmakers of the state.
In the early spring of 1856 Dr. O. S. Lont took up a residence in Mazeppa. Of modest demeanor, genial and kindhearted, he did not claim to his compeers to be a graduate of any school ; his leaning was to the non-heroic in practice, and by a conservative practice he won many friends. The writer will never forget a case of fracture, maltreated in such a manner and degree that a loss of the limb was the result, which case might have been his but for his retiring mod- esty. The doctor told the parties interested that he did not profess to be much of a surgeon, and so the case fell into the hands of those who did profess, but whose services resulted in the loss of the leg. We have always held the opinion that if Dr. Lont had taken charge of the leg his usual modesty would have prevented him from spoiling it.
In the summer of 1857 Dr. W. L. Lincoln commenced the prac- tice of medicine in the city of Wabasha, and has devoted his life to his professional duties at the same place during the years as they have passed.
In 1857 Dr. Chauncy Gibbs, of Painesville, Ohio, worn out by the practice of his profession, to renew his failing health and if possible to prolong his life, removed to a farm on the beautiful prairie where now is Plainview. He did not contemplate the practice of his pro- fession, but a noble sonl can never know of suffering without offer- ing relief, so he was again in the harness for a few short months, and the "wheel was broken at the cistern." The exact date is not obtained, but not far removed in point of time, Dr. C. C. Vilas located at Lake City remaining a few years, and then removing to Michigan to return again to Lake City after the close of the war, which field he has constantly occupied to the present date.
In 1860 Dr. Sheldon Brooks removed from Winona county to Minneiska ; and while he gave a large share of his time to business, he practiced his profession as the occasion demanded his services, and so he may be well among the men who have contributed their share to give honor to the profession of Wabasha county. At this stage of our citation the war of the rebellion was precipitated upon our nation, and young physicians went to the field of strife from all parts of the land, and young men neglecting the halls of learning do not so fast obtain the title of doctor, save here and there a hospital steward who acquired the title by brevet. After the restoration of
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THE MEDICAL FRATERNITY.
peace and prosperity the profession of medicine began to take on new life, and as the number of physicians in the county seemed to warrant, there was a movement toward the formation of a medical society, and a tacit understanding was indulged in by those who had been in the practice of medicine in Wabasha and Plainview as to the status of a county medical society ; but this arrangement did not carry. Dr. Vilas had left Lake City and it was not known that there was a graduate in medicine in active practice there at that time. The initiatory steps were, however, taken at Lake City, but no clue to the date is at hand or any official record of the society. The first tangible point as found in the records is that an informal meeting was held at Lake City on the 25th ult., when the permanent organi- zation of a county medical society was established. Dr. F. H. Milligan, president ; Dr. E. C. Spaulding, of Lake City, secretary. The slip cut from the local weekly newspaper was clipped of its date. Dr. Spaulding was not engaged in the practice of medicine, but a newspaper man of Lake City, which may account for the manner of the records. Dr. R. N. Murray, who was at this time engaged in the milling business, soon after this meeting entered upon a practice at Lake City. Dr. W. H. Spafford, of the same place, belonged to this organization until his death. Dr. Isaac J. Wells was also one of the charter members, as was Dr. P. C. Remondino, a graduate of Jefferson College, Philadelphia, but a convert to the tenets of Hahnemann, and his advertisement was yet in the paper that pub- lished the organic transactions of the society. An important item of business at this meeting was a bid for medical attendance on the county poor, and it was resolved to propose to the county com- missioners to perform the duties of county physician and surgeon for one year for eight hundred dollars, and, if the proposition be accepted, to purchase with the same instruments and books for the benefit of the members. The proposition was accepted by the commissioners. but so far as can be ascertained there are now no books or instru- ments in possession of the society.
In December, 1869, is a record of a meeting at Lake City, when a motion was carried to elect Dr. J. P. Waste and Dr. N. S. Teft, of Plainview, members, when they shall have signed the constitution and paid the membership fee. Who were present at the meeting does not appear there, and a future record would lead us to infer that Dr. Waste and Teft were not present, for we next find note of a
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meeting January 7, 1870, at the office of Dr. Teft in Plainview, at which meeting the two were unanimously elected members.
On December 8, 1870, is a record of a meeting at the office of Dr. Milligan, and a more methodical secretary appears in the field. A list of the members present is recorded, among which we find the name of Dr. F. Lessing, a young man who went to the war from Wabasha. He served as hospital steward ; at the expiration of his term he went to Philadelphia and graduated from the university of Pennsylvania, after which he located at Wabasha. The other name new in the record was the recording secretary. How or when these two joined does not appear, nor when Dr. B. F. La Rue, of Lake City, was chosen secretary, but they entered at the "strait gate," for they were not the kind of men to "climb up some other way.
June 20, 1871, records a meeting at Lake City with Dr. G. R. Patton's name added to the list of members, with no intimation when he became a member. Dr. Patten removed from Cincinnati, Ohio, and located at Lake City in 1871 ; and it is to be presumed he was elected a member then and there at the same meeting. Dr. J. C. Adams was elected an honorary member. Dr. Adams was at this time rector of the Episcopal church at Lake City, which accounts for the designation honorary member. The record here reads : "The second annual meeting of the Wabasha County Medical Society con- vened at Dr. Teft's office at Plainview, January 16, 1872. By vote of the society, Dr. Wm. L. Lincoln, of Wabasha, and Dr. Bacon, of Mazeppa, were elected members. Dr. Spafford was chosen presi- dent ; Dr. Lincoln, vice-president, and Dr. La Rue, secretary. On June 4, 1872, the society convened at the house of Dr. Lincoln, at Wabasha, with all the members present, and the records are com- plete ; papers and discussions on subjects of interest to the profession occupied the time until dinner was announced. Immediately after the repast, the following resolutions were passed :
" Resolved, That we, the members of the Wabasha County Medical Society, would request the county authorities to procure a more suitable and central position for a county poor farm, the present building being totally unfit for such a purpose, and the distance from medical aid being too great."
Another item of the records of this meeting is worthy of note, as follows : "Upon request the society then visited the county jail to examine it in reference to ventilation. They found upon the plans of the architect a complete system for ventilating the cells, which had not been carried out in the building. Alas for 'post prandial'
WM L. LINCOLN.
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THE MEDICAL FRATERNITY.
judgment in that matter, for the sanitarian knows that with such a constructed jail there never could be a decently healthy condition of the cells by any system of ventilation." A break in the records brings ns to June 7, 1875, when the meeting convened at the office of Drs. Milligan and Tupper at Wabasha. In the absence of the secretary Dr. Stone was chosen secretary pro tem. When he became a member does not appear, but there are good precedents for his membership without such record. At the meeting Dr. J. P. Davis, of Kellogg, and Dr. E. A. Tupper, a partner of Dr. Milligan, and Dr. W. F. Adams, now of Elgin, were voted members of the society.
On June 1, 1876, the society met at the office of Dr. J. C. Adams, of Lake City, who, at some time since he was elected an honorary member, had retired from the pulpit and entered the no less important profession of medicine, and he was now the honored president at this meeting. Dr. F. W. Van Dyke was elected a member and was made treasurer of the society.
The next record informs us that the society met at the office of Drs. Lincoln & Van Dyke, at Wabasha, when Dr. Low, of Wabasha, was elected a member and made treasurer. One of the trophies of the surgeon's art exhibited at this meeting was a codfish rib, two inches long, removed from the "recto ischiatic fossa," and yet the patient never remembered to have swallowed a whole cod- fish. Another important item in the report of this meeting was the treatment, by the secretary, of a surgical disease "by instrumenta- tion." Whether the disease was cured does not appear from the newspaper slip containing the report of the meeting, but the secre- tary has the honor of seeing his case reported in print, and his word, which appeared in print for the first time, there to await the coming lexicographer, to gather it into the spoken language of the future. Fortunately the disease is one which is as likely to fall under the observation of the "tyro " in surgery as into the hands of the grey-beard, and so will lead to no confusion.
On the 10th of June, 1878, the report shows that the meeting was held at Alma, Wisconsin, and as neither president or vice- president were present, Dr. N. S. Teft was elected president pro tem. Dr. Charles W. Tinker, of Wabasha, now of Stewart, was elected a member of the society. A vote was carried to expel all members who were in arrears for dues. On October 1 a motion was carried that an order for eleven dollars be drawn on the
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HISTORY OF WABASHA COUNTY.
treasurer to pay the fare of the eleven who came to the meeting on the steamboat Sien ; but even then doctors, leaders in humanitarian measures, forgot to vote a half-peck of oats to the horses of those who came by that method of transportation. A motion was carried requesting the newspapers of the county "to publish those sections of the national code of ethics relating to quackish advertisements and handbills." Whether the press honored the request, the writer is not advised, but if such was the case, it must have had much the same effect as the pope's bull did on Martin Luther. The quack will reveal himself in or out of the profession, and the truehearted physician will labor for the love of humanity and the love of that God "in whose hands our very breath is," and both receive their coveted reward.
In 1879, on June 12, at which meeting no new members were elected and the membership was reduced by the expulsion of Dr. Seiler, of Alma, and Dr. Tupper, now of Zumbrota, Goodhue county, for neglecting to pay dues, the record of expulsion appears to be more methodical than most records.
On September 14, 1880, the record shows the annual meeting to have convened at Wabasha, at the office of Dr. Milligan, where the first item reads as follows : "Dr. Patton's resignation read and accepted ;" and next in order Drs. E. C. Davis, of Plainview, and H. N. Rogers, of Zumbro Falls, were elected members. Dr. Davis was a citizen of Plainview, a student with Drs. Teft & Waste. After graduating in medicine he remained in the town where he had been reared, and entered upon a successful practice, in which he continued for two years, until removed by death.
The annual meeting of the society was held June 14, 1881, at the office of Dr. Lont, at Mazeppa, and a motion prevailed to pay the expenses of those coming from abroad out of the current funds of the society, and so by implication, and is in accordance with memory. that at some former period the society voted to receive into membership physicians living in the near towns in Wisconsin. Just why the physicians of Wisconsin should be paid for attending the meetings is not apparent. Dr. Boyd, of Millville, was elected member at this meeting.
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