History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 121

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1198

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keeper. Opposite the telegraph office is the tent of General Russer, of Confederate wir fame, who is division engineer of the Dakota Division of the Northern Pacific, and his private secretary. F. G. Winston. Adjoming Rosser's is the tent occupied by W. E Welch, acting division engineer, and a corps of draughtsmen. Another neares tent was occupied by M. H. Smith, his wife and daughter ; and opposite the Smith domicile is the storeto ise in charge of Mr. Davis. There are here a number of tents and smatt buildings orcup ed by employees of the engineer department ; and south a few rods, the general of 1 . 01 Pashley & Martin in a frame building, and a little further a hotel kept by Af on & Mann. And this terminated the visible Fargo of that day; but with the coming of spring every vestige of domicile described, will have disappeared; for if not reminved, Die waters of the Red, which submerge these bottoms with the spring break-up, will sweep them all away. and the occupants so understand it. This is not the site of the Fargo that is to be built. This place is now called Centralia, and Gordon J. Keeney is postmaster. The new town will be above high-water mark, and will be named Fargo in memory of W. G. Fargo, pre- - dent of the great express company of Wells, Fargo & Company.

Religious services were held with much regularity at Fargo, during the carly months of 1872. Rev. Mr. Ehmer, a Methodist clergyman, conducted services at the Fargo Hotel, and also organized a Bible class. Rev. Father Ginness, a Catholic clergyman, held occasional services. The latter's work had been largely among the Chippewa Indians for a number of years.

CASS COUNTY ORGANIZED

When the Northern Pacific Railroad was graded across Northern Dakota which began late in the fall of 1871, possibly as late as December the line ran through Pembina County to the James River : thence through Buffalo County to the Missouri. This first grading which was prosecuted that winter was between the crossing of the Red River and the first Crossing of the Cheyenne, seven miles distant. There was no settlement on the Dakota side at the crossing of the Red when this grading was started. During the winter following. 1872-73. by an act approved January 15. 1873. the Legislature carved Cass County from Pembina County, with the following boundaries :

Beginning at the southeast corner of Grand Forks County on the Red River of the North, at the point where the eleventh standard parallel intersects the river, thene west on the eleventhi standard parallel; to its intersection with the west hne of range fifty-five; thence south on said range line to its intersection with the ninth standard parallel : thence east on said ninth standard parallel to the western boundary line of Minnesota; and thence north on said Minnesota boundary line to the place of beginning, shall be, and the same hereby constituted and made the County of Cass; the county seat of which shall, and is hereby located at Fargo, on the west bank of the Red River of the North, where sad river is crossed by the Northern Pacific Railroad, and so soon as it shall be known att the Indian title to the lands in said county shall have been liquidate 1. then the law ful voters of said county, not less than fifty in number, may petition the governor of the territory for an organization of said county, whereupon the governor shall be authorized, and it is hereby made his duty to appoint from the lawful voters of said county, three comty em- missioners, a register of deeds, a sheriff, a judge of pr bate, a county attorney, a county surveyor, a county assessor, a county superintendent of public schools and a coroner; 1 such officers, after receiving their appointment shall qualliv and file bord a new braside by law in case of such officers; and they shall hold their respective offices unut their sie cessors shall be elected and qualified. The county commissioners shall appoint two justice of the peace, and two constables each, for one or more chefen precincts, to be bv sa'd commissioners established; and the justices and constables when so appointed shall qualifs and give bond as provided by law in case of such officers: and they shall beM their rest tive offices until their successors shall be elected ar I qualified

Cass County subsequently lost its northern tier of townships which were given to Traill and Steele counties. The county was organized in October. 19-3. Governor Burbank appointing the first officers on the 6th of that month, to wit : County commissioners, William II. Leverett, Jacob Lowell, Sr., and N. Whitmen : register of deeds, Terrence Martin; sheriff. I. H. Pashley: judge of probate. Henry S. Back : county attorney. Jacob Lowell, Ir. ; county assessor. Ole \ ter- son : superintendent of public instruction. Mex. Mellench ; coroner. Alex. (ml ) .

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The president of the Northern Pacific Railroad at that time, George W. Cass, gave the name to the county.

The first actual settlements made in this county, were at Fargo, or Centralia, as it was first known, in 1872. This was prior to the establishment of Cass County, and while the country was under the jurisdiction of Pembina ; and during the same year a large number of homestead and pre-emption claims were taken up in the county, chiefly along the line of the Northern Pacific and in the immediate vicinity of Red River.

CHAPTER LVII THE COMING OF THE GERMAN-RUSSIANS 1873

LAKE KAMPESKA AND RAILROAD GRANT-THE GERMAN-RUSSIAN EMIGRATION-ONLY A FRACTION OF EMIGRANTS WERE MENNONITES, BUT THE MENNONITES WERE BEST KNOWN-ORIGIN OF THE SECT AND THE BROTHERHOOD-EXPLAINING THE EMIGRATION OF THE GERMANS TO RUSSIA IN 1770 AND LONG AFTER-IN 1870 CZAR ABROGATES ORIGINAL AGREEMENT AND THOUSANDS OF GERMANS EMIGRATE TO AMERICA-ARE CALLED GERMAN-RUSSIANS-SEVERAL THOUSAND EMIGRATE AND SETTLE IN DAKOTA TERRITORY AND ELSEWHERE IN 1873 AND LATER-RE- CEIVE A CORDIAL WELCOME-BROUGHT LARGE AMOUNT OF GOLD COIN-WERE A VALUABLE FACTOR IN DEVELOPING DAKOTA'S AGRICULTURAL. RESOURCES EFFORT TO OBTAIN FROM CONGRESS SPECIAL LAND PRIVILEGE-NAMES OF A NUMBER OF THE PIONEER EMIGRANTS-AMERICA, THE ASYLUM OF THE OPPRESSED OF ALL NATIONS.

The winter of 1872-73 was unusually severe and caused many fatalities in the newer sections of the Northwest where immigration had been active during the previous summer and fall, and improvements meager. A letter from Fort Aber- crombie, on the Red River, written by Ben F. Estes, a well known and reliable citizen of Charles Mix County, who had been required to go there on business. told a sorrowful story. The letter was dated January 28, 1873:

I was fifteen days on the road from Bon Homme to this point. The snow in Northern Iowa and Minnesota, 1 was told by men who had lived there for thirty years, was the worst they had ever known, and they had never seen a storm as severe as the one on the 7th of this month ( January ). They never knew so much suffering among the people, and live stock, as there was in that storm. I saw enough to satisfy me that there is a great many worse places to live in than Southern Dakota. There is not as much snow here a> in Northern Iowa and Minnesota, but there is much more than is demanded by comfort. When I was at Waterloo, lowa, I commenced keeping an account of all the deaths by freezing that I could get from persons, who were personally acquainted with the circum- stances, and when I got to this place I had 253, besides a great many that are missing. I saw a carpenter from a small town called Beaver Falls, and he said he had made coffins for twenty-five persons who had frozen to death. I have not seen anything of the country and I don't believe I will before the ist of May. It is very cold here, from twenty to thirty degrees below zero all the time and a good heavy north wind with it The mails are very irregular, caused by snow blowing into the cuts on the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad, and stopping trains for two weeks at a time. The mail from here to Fort Totten is carried by Indians on foot. They say the snow is so deep a horse cannot get through. They use here, for traveling on foot, what they call "Norway Snow Shoes," a board about five feet long, three to four inches wide, and in the shape of a sleigh runner. A man that under- stands them can make good headway over deep snow.

Mr. Estes was a well-known frontiersman, and his statements are entitled to the utmost credit.

The only fatality resulting from the blizzard of January 7th occurred in the settled portion of Clay County, fifteen miles north of Vermillion. Mr. Hemstock and his wife with two young children resided there, and observing the approach- ing storm, Mrs. Hemstock left the house and went out into a cornfield Io duive

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the cattle into the stable but before she had time to do this the storm burst upon the place with much fury. Mr. Hemstock, who was working near, is supposed to have gone to his wife's assistance. He evidently found her, for both perished in the storm, their dead bodies being discovered not far apart after the storm ceased, both frozen to the ground. They were a young couple.

LAKE KAMPESKA AND THE LAND GRANT

Lake Kampeska, in Codington County, formerly Deuel County, is one of the famous lakes of Dakota. A railroad was built to this point by the Winona & St. Peter's Railroad Company, of Minnesota, which was completed to the lake in July, 1873. The company was a subordinate organization of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad Company, and left the main line of that road at Mar- shall, Minnesota, forty-eight miles east of the western boundary line of Minne- sota, and eighty miles distant from Lake Kampeska and nearly due east. There were very few, if any settlers along the line in Dakota or in the country adjacent for some time following the completion of the road.

Congress passed a land grant bill March 3, 1857, which gave a certain amount of land for a railroad from Winona, Minnesota via St. Peter to a point on the Big Sioux River south of the 45th parallel of north latitude. At this time Minne- sota was a territory and all of Dakota east of the Missouri River was a part of that territory. This act required the completion of the road to the Big Sioux River within ten years, which time expired March 3. 1867 ; but by a subsequent act of Congress, approved July 13, 1866, the time was extended seven years from the passage of the act. The seven years would expire on the 13th of July, 1873, which explains the motive of the Northwestern Company, which owned the franchise for building the road through Deuel County to Lake Kampeska, completing it in that year.

This grant of land extended no farther than the Big Sioux River which the railroad crossed three miles south of the lake, and built their road up to Kam- peska on the west side of the Big Sioux. The company claimed that its land grant covered this three miles, but the land department of the Government held that as the grant extended to the river, and not across it, it had no franchise or grant on the west side. The matter was in litigation several years. In the meantime the Government, pending the suit, had withdrawn all the disputed land from market. About this time, in the fall of 1873, a party of young men of an ad- venturous and enterprising disposition from Yankton, some of whom had been employed on the public surveys of land made a journey overland to Lake Kampeska, and took up land immediately surrounding a portion of the lake prior to its withdrawal from entry, and were enabled ic hold it. The names of these parties were Calvin J. B. Harris, David B. Keeler, Joel B. Montgomery, D. C. Thomas, Ben Stafford or,Stoddard, and James C. Blanding, and probably others. At the time these parties settled in proximity to the lake it was the presumed if not the announced design of the company to locate one of its principal towns there, but subsequently, about 1873 the company reconsidered the matter of town location, and fixed upon a section of their own, three miles east of the lake as the terminus of the line, upon which the new metropolis of Codington County was located and named Watertown.

The lake and adjacent streams were found populated with a variety of the finest food fishes in surprising abundance. It had been a favorite resort for the Sioux Indians for scores of years, and a fruitful field thereabouts for valuable fur bearing animals ; but the Indians had, previous to this time, destroyed the beaver, which had been abundant, and had stripped the country of its other varieties of game : but these would have recuperated in a few seasons had not the settlement of the country by the whites prevented.

It was claimed by these carly settlers that the inlet and outlet of the lake was at the same point : where it furnished the Big Sioux River with its head

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waters, and in time of low water in the lake received the waters from the head of the Sioux, which at times were much higher than those in the lake.

For serene beauty, Lake Kampeska compares favorably with any of the small lakes of the Northwest. It is 6 miles long by 2 miles in width. The water is clear and cold. The shore, generally low, but in places bold, had but little timber. At one or two promontories the waves break against the low walls of rock ; everywhere else they roll in upon a clean shingle of six rods width. There is no sand. The pebbles near the water's edge are quite uniformly the size of white beans. Further back they are larger, but nowhere larger than walnuts. The absence of sand is a peculiarity of this drift, as also is the presence of numer- ous specimens of petrified wood, which were discovered by Keeler and Montgom- ery, who remained in their cabins at the waterside for a number of years, and until Watertown was established. Then low ground at the head of the lake was thickly overgrown with a small shrub bearing a palatable fruit called sand cherry. The Big Sioux River, here a sluggish stream, twenty-five feet wide, is at once the inlet and outlet of the lake. A bend of the river came within a hundred yards of the lake, and floods wrought a channel about one hundred feet in width between the two. Or it might be considered possible, since the lake is deeper than the river that the latter formed the lake, breaking through the slight barrier and filling the low ground. The lake is now the reservoir of the stream. The lake was in Deuel County at this time.

GERMAN-RUSSIAN IMMIGRATION

Among the most important historical incidents connected with Dakota under its territorial organization was the immigration of thousands of people from the Empire of Russia, known as German-Russians. Though classed under this gen- eral title they were essentially Germans though emigrating from the soil of Russia where as a rule they were born, reared and educated; and cultivated thousands of farms for generations, and participated in the general industries of their colonies as merchants and manufacturers. But all this occurred in a section of Russia which during the many years of its occupation by these people was to them, and their language, and their schools, their religious instittitions and their domestic and social life, another Germany. They left Russia as thoroughly German in every particular as were their ancestors when they occupied, under an agreement with the Russian sovereign, a fraction of Russian territory. And while, for some reason, this sketch will be tinable to explain, the American people among whom their lot in this country was first cast, classed them as Mennonites ; they were not members of that peculiar religious sect except as a small minority who then and afterward settled in small communities called brotherhoods and were segregated not only from their own countrymen but from their neighbors of all nativities.

The appended historical account of these most excellent people will inform the reader regarding the origin of the colonies which emigrated to Russia and the reasons or causes which actuated them in removing from their fatherland. Also the causes which led them to abandon Russia for America. This account, substantially, is accredited to Mr. Lathrop Motley, historian of the Netherlands.

The founder of the religious sect now called Mennonites was lohn Hutter, an Aus- trian. It has a religious history reaching back more than three hundred and fifty years, or some time about A. D., 1535. It was based on communiste fines. ft- founder suffered much from the persecutions of the parent church and was hnathy burned at the stake at Tyrol, Austria. His followers in time grew in numbers and spread through Switzerland and Germany, notwithstanding they were subjected to most every description of pers cu tion including ostracism, but they remained steadfast to the tenets and practices of ther martyred leader, and in memory of him we have the Huttrische Brotherhoods among German Russian Colonists who emigrated to America. These people appear to Fix 10 Austria about the year 1775, and emigrated to Russia under the reign of Queen a devout adherent of the Greek Church, who gave them freedom of religious wirs. Vol. 1-17

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exemption from military duty, and a home on the fertile wastes bordering the Black Sea in the vicinity of the Germans, who had gone into the same country a century earlier under a like promise of immunity from the military duties of Russian citizenship assured by Czar Nicholas. About that year Menno Simons, of the Northern Netherlands ( Ilolland), con- cerning whom and the colonies or religious sect which are called in his name, appears to have begun his important ministry a century later than Hutter, and it is not improbable that he had become acquainted with Hutter's cult, which would account for the blending of the name of Hutter and Menno, as is frequently done in this country when referring to a Huttrische Brotherhood as a colony of Mennonites. The tenets and religious creed of Hutter and Menno Simons seem to be closely related, and may be substantially the same. But the marked distinction between them was that the Huttrische followers all practised associating together in community settlement numbering a score or two of families, hold- ing their land and products of their labor in common, while the followers of Menno Simons are found in individual families, adhering to the Baptist faith, with the additional articles engrafted thereon by the founder of the sect, and are not communists.

Menno Simons was a Baptist minister, a native of Friesland. He became prominent about the year 1683.

Friesland is now one of the provinces contained in the present Kingdom of the Nether- lands. It was then one of the provinces constituting the Republic of the United Nether- lands. That republic was formed by a union of the northern Netherlands, commonly called Holland, of which Friesland was one. All the Netherlands, southern as well as northern. were at one time separate independent principalities, unconnected with each other. Through inheritance and by conquest did all the crowns of these various principalities ( duchies and earldoms) become united on one and the same head: and in the year 1568, that head also wore the crown of Spain, Spain at that time was the strongest power in Europe. With extensive possessions in both the Indies, and great wealth pouring in from these outlying dominions, it was claimed that the sun never set within its limits.

The Netherlands are situate between France, Germany and the North Sea. The north- ern Netlierlands were chiefly commercial: the southern Netherlands, manufacturing or industrial, and so it is now. The geographical area covered by the Netherlands is small : but the population was even then dense, very industrious, frugal, thrifty and wealthy. Two elements constitute it, the Saxon in the northern, and the Frandok, a species of Celtic, in the southern Netherlands, which elements are blended together, or found in juxtaposition, in the south of the north and in the north of the south.

The reformation took hold of the Netherlands, especially in the north. They became the principal battleground between the papacy and modern society. The sovereign, usually called the King of Spain, after his most important crown, was a zealous champion of Rome. From hatred of the reformation he undertook to destroy the political rights, privileges and liberties of his subjects in the Netherlands, and to force them back under the papal yoke. They refused to submit, whereupon, with the aid of his Spanish forces, he commenced a crusade of extermination, scarcely paralleled in history by any former or subsequent war as to blood-thirstiness, cruelty and devastation. The southern Netherlands were forced back into obedience. The northern Netherlands formed a confederacy; maintained the war during eighty years, and, after having been more than once on the verge of destruction, came out victorious with their independence acknowledged.

The war commenced in 1569. It closed in 1649, with the peace of Westphalen con- cluded. That war left the small young republic not only one of the first powers of Europe, hut first among the first, and Spain financially ruined and demoralized; reduced from a leading and commanding position unto that of a second rate power, soon to rank lower yet.

During that eighty years' war there was an armistice of twelve years, from 1612 to 1624. At the commencement of this armistice the scales had already turned in favor of the United Netherlands. Unfortunately it was a period of continual strife. The reformation assumed a sectarian character, strongly Calvinistic. Domestic politics became mixed up with religion. There remained more liberty of conscience and worship than was enjoyed else -- where; but a state or dominant church was established, and dissenters or nonconformists were subjected to political disabilities, and not only disfranchised, but also-in the humbler walks of life -- struck with a social ban, though their life and property was not put in jeopardy.

This is now all past. Since the close of the eighteenth century there is no longer any established church in the Netherlands; and the formerly established church is now far more Arminian than Calvinistic. In northern Germany also these last years political disabilities have been removed.

Baptists were of the number of the dissenters or nonconformists. Menno Simons grafted upon the Baptist creed the tenets of the nonjuror and nonresistant. lle made many converts in the Netherlands, especially in Friesland. though Baptists were never very numer- ous there at any time: and he also labored successfully in Germany.

The Mennonites in the Netherlands, surrounded by Calvinistic Presbyterian influences, strongly opposed to anything approaching the prelacy, never had an episcopate or higher order of clergy. But those in Germany, surrounded by Lutherans, adopted a system of supervision, approaching to what our Methodists have under the name of presiding elders. As the Lutherans in Germany were even less tolerant than the Calvinists in the Nether-

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lands, the Mennonites were, in the first named country, even less conformable than in the latter.

About the close of the seventeenth century and the commencement of the eighteenth, the Emperor Paul of Russia was struck by the backwardness of agriculture among his Muscovite subjects between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. He became anxious that German farmers should settle in that region, hoping that the better cultivation of the soil expected from them should be followed as a stimulating example. lle therefore offered liberal inducements in the shape of grants of lands from the crown and exemption from military service to such as might be willing to come and settle. Among the German farmers inclined to accept the emperor's invitation were quite a proportion of Mennonites. Naturally so. In addition to the usual motive for emigration, the desire to improve one's material prospects, they had the wish to secure a home in a country which might prove more of a fatherland to them than that where they were born. For the special benefit of the Men nonites another privilege, that of exemption from the necessity of swearing any oath, was granted. They came in considerable numbers. They settled in large bodies, scattered all the way between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, which bodies were called "colonies," a name they still wear. To each of these colonies a large tract of public land was granted. The grant was to the colony as a corporation. The members were tenants in common. and the property was administered and portioned out by trustees or stewards elected by them. The first colonies settled as early as 1783, when a number of thousands of Prussian Mennonites emigrated from Prussia because Frederick the Great would not give them relig- ious privileges, and they were further liable to be drafted into the military service. These first emigrants settled on the east bank of the River Dneiper.

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History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 121

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920 Publication date: 1915 Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company Number of Pages: 1198

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1198