RAMSEY COUNTY In the Beginning: The Geological Forces

A Publication o f the Ramsey County Historical Society That Shaped Ramsey County Page 4 Spring, 1999 Volume 34, Number 1

Special 150th Anniversary Issue Ramsey County And Its Territorial Years —Page 8

“St. Paul in Minnesotta, ” watercolor, 1851, by Johann Baptist Wengler. Oberösterreichisches Landes Museum, Linz, Austria. Photo: F. GangI. Reproduced by permission of the museum. Two years after the establishment of Minnesota Territory, St. Paul as its capital was a boom town, “... its situation is as remarkable for beauty as healthiness as it is advantageous for trade, ” Fredrika Bremer wrote in 1853, and the rush to settlement was on. See “A Short History of Ramsey County” and its Territorial Years, beginning on page 8. RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY Executive Director Priscilla Famham An Exciting New Book Editor Virginia Brainard Kunz for Young Readers RAMSEY COUNTY Volume 34, Number 1 Spring, 1999 HISTORICAL SOCIETY BOARD OF DIRECTORS Laurie A. Zenner CONTENTS Chair Howard M. Guthmann President James Russell 3 Message from the President First Vice President Anne Cowie Wilson 4 In the Beginning Second Vice President The Geological Forces that Shaped Ramsey Richard A. Wilhoit Secretary County and the People Who Followed Ronald J. Zweber Scott F. Anfinson Treasurer W. Andrew Boss, Peter K. Butler, Charlotte H. 8 A Short History of Ramsey County— Drake, Mark G. Eisenschenk, Joanne A. Eng- lund, Robert F. Garland, Judith Frost Lewis, Its Territorial Years and the Rush to Settlement John M. Lindley, George A. Mairs, Marlene Marschall, Richard T. Murphy, Sr., Bob Olsen, 2 2 Ramsey County’s Heritage Trees Linda Owen, Fred Perez, Marvin J. Pertzik, Vicenta D. Scarlett, Glenn Wiessner, Charles H. 2 3 The Dakota Perspective Wilhams, Jr.. ‘We Have Been Cheated So Often’ EDITORIAL BOARD John M. Lindley, chair; Thomas H. Boyd, M ark D iedrich Thomas C. Buckley, Pat Hart, Virginia Brainard Kunz, Thomas J. Kelley, Tom Mega, Laurie 2 8 - 3 8 More About the County and Its People Murphy, Vicenta Scarlett, G. Richard Slade, Laurie Zenner. from the pages of Ramsey County History.

HONORARY ADVISORY BOARD Ramsey County History Preserved in Its Elmer L. Andersen, Olivia I. Dodge, Charlton Survey Office, page 27; Hardship and Struggle— Dietz, William Finney, Otis Godfrey, Jr., Robert S. Hess, Fred T. Lanners, Jr., D. W. The Pioneer Years of White Bear Lake and the “Don” Larson, George Latimer, Frank Township That Bears Its Name, page 28; Marzitelli, Joseph S. Micallef, Robert Mirick, Samuel Morgan, Marvin J. Pertzik, J. Jerome Little Canada—Heritage from the French Plunkett, James Reagan, Solly Robins, Ros­ alie E. Wahl, Donald D. Wozniak. Canadians, page 30; Handy With the Pistols—

RAMSEY COUNTY COMM1SIONERS Ramsey County’s Territorial Editors, page 32; Commissioner Rafael Ortega, chairman A Pioneer’s Memories—Farming with Flail and Commissioner Susan Haigh Commissioner Tony Bennett Cradle, page 33; Wolves and Bitter Cold— Commissioner Dino Guerin Commissioner Victoria Reinhardt A Fur Trader’s Perilous Journey, page 34; Commissioner Janice Rettman Cattlemen and Capitalists—The Founding of Commissioner Jan Wiessner Terry Schütten, manager, Ramsey County New Brighton, page 35; The Great Horse-Market

Ramsey County History is published quar­ Years at Prior and University, page 36; In North terly by the Ramsey County Historical St. Paul—Boom, Boom, Bust, Come-back, page 37. Society, 323 Landmark Center, 75 W. Fifth Street, St. Paul, Minn. 55102 (651-222- 0701). Printed in U.S.A. Copyright, 1999, 3 9 Book Review: Jane Gibbs— “Little Bird That Was Caught’ Ramsey County Historical Society. ISSN Number 0485-9758. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted Based on a true story about real people or otherwise reproduced without written permission from the publisher. The Soci­ Publication of Ramsey County History is supported in part by a gift from and events that happened. ety assumes no responsibility for statements Clara M. Claussen and Frieda H. Claussen in memory of Henry H.Cowie, Jr. made by contributors. Fax 651-223-8539; e-mail address [email protected].; web site and by a contribution from the late Reuel D. Hannon address www.rchs.com

P ublished by T h e Ramsey C ounty

2 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY H istorical So ciety A Short History of Ramsey County The Territorial Years and the Rush to Settlement

he ninth of April in 1849 was a signed a treaty with the Mdewakanton halting place for their war and hunting pleasant Monday, David Lambert bands of the Dakota nation, led by Little parties, a great “pantry” teeming with recalled for the Minnesota Pioneer Crow, who ceded 155,520 acres of land game and fish, a place to establish their T along the Mississippi and Minnesota summer villages. Their presence still some weeks later. Toward evening, how­ ever, clouds gathered and by dark a vio­ (then known as St. Peter’s River) to the marks the region around modem Ramsey lent storm swept into the small settlement United States government as a site for County. Mendota at the confluence of the perched on the bluffs above the Missis­ military posts. Minnesota and the Mississippi, and the sippi. Suddenly, during a lull in the wind, For the next forty and more years, the mysterious Red Rock at Newport, down a steamboat engine could be heard. A history of Ramsey County would go the Mississippi from St. Paul, are still flash of lightning illuminated the Dr. hand-in-hand with the history of St. Paul, known today as sacred gathering places Franklin No. 2 just rounding the bend of its county seat. Not until after the territo­ where the Dakotas held ceremonies and the river a mile below St. Paul. It was the rial years would the history of county and councils. They established five villages first boat of the season and it bore the city move along separate, even though in the region: Cloud Man’s village at news that the bill for the organization of similar, paths. Lake Calhoun, the Black Dog, Good Minnesota Territory had passed the Sen­ Pike knew he had not entered a unin­ Road and Shakopee communities along ate on March 3 and had become law. habited wilderness. Before he arrived, the Minnesota, and Kaposia, located first It had been a long wait, and the region the flags of other nations had flown over on the east bank of the Mississippi below that became Minnesota had a long history the region that became Ramsey County: Dayton’s Bluff and later on the west bank as part of both the Old Northwest Terri­ the Spanish, the French, the British each at today’s South St. Paul. tory and the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. had claimed the land through exploration An interesting picture has been left of Now the rush to explore and eventually or conquest. It was the Dakotas who for Kaposia as it was when Pike visited. The to settle it was on. centuries had lived in the region and had village numbered about 200 men, women, In 1805 Lieutenant Zebulon Pike had joined, first with the French, then with and children, including some seventy been sent north from St. Louis to explore the British, in the rich fur trade. As was warriors. Their homes were comfortable, the headwaters of the Mississippi. Late in their custom, the Dakota bands did not with palisaded walls of tamarack poles September of that year, he landed on the establish permanent settlements. The ter­ and roofs of brush covered with bark, its island at the mouth of the Minnesota ritory that included Ramsey County was lodges set up against the bluffs for protec­ River that is named for him. Here he for them a vast trading area, a frequent tion. Their chief, Little Crow, one of sev-

1803: Louisiana Purchase negotiated between the Dakota to farm using a plow They work with Chief Cloud 1840: After another survey of the military reserva­ United States and France under Napoleon, freeing land Man’s band at Lake Calhoun and develop a dictionary of tion, the settlers are expelled again. They take up claims west of the Mississippi to eventual settlement. the Dakota language. in present-day downtown Paul. Parrant opens another 1805: Lieutenant Zebulon Pike is sent to explore the 1835: Henry Hastings Sibley takes over the Ameri­ saloon at the Lower Landing at the foot of Jackson Street. headwaters of the Mississippi. He signs a treaty with the can Fur Company’s post at Mendota. The hamlet becomes known as Pig's Eye. Dakota ceding to the United States government 155,520 1836: Dred Scott is brought to Fort Snelling, free 1841: Father Lucien Galtier builds a small chapel acres of land surrounding the confluence of the St. Peter territory, from Missouri, a slave state. Wisconsin be­ on the bluff above the Lower Landing, names it for St. [Minnesota] and Mississippi rivers as a site for military comes a territory. Paul, and asks that the community be named for the posts. 1837: A treaty with the Dakota opens to settlement chapel. Pig’s Eye becomes St. Paul. 1819-1820: Fort Snelling is built on a bluff above lands in the triangle between the St. Croix and Missis­ 1843: Stephen Desnoyer claims land, establishes the meeting of the two rivers. sippi rivers. Halfway House on site today of Town and Country Club. 1823: Scottish, French, and Swiss settlers, forced 1839: The Selkirk refugees and other squatters Isaac Rose takes up adjacent land. Rose Township will by floods to leave the Selkirk Coloney in present-day around Fort Snelling are expelled from the military reser­ be named for him. Manitoba, arrive to live outside the fort. They will be­ vation. They move down the Mississippi and establish 1844: The first of the Red River ox carts, hauling come the first settlers of Ramsey County. new homes around Fountain Cave. Pierre “Pig’s Eye” Par- $1,400 in furs, complete their journey from Pembina to 1834: Gideon and Samuel Pond arrive to teach the rant sets up his whiskey hovel near the mouth of the cave. St. Paul. Benjamin Gervais founds Little Canada in what

8 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY eral generations of chiefs bearing that tory to white settlement and negotiated a name, lived in a large dwelling, thirty feet treaty in which the Dakotas ceded lands long, with two rooms. in the triangle formed by the Mississippi With the building of Fort Snelling in on the west, the St. Croix River on the 1819-1820 at the junction of the two east and extending north to present-day great rivers, the fur traders and trappers Aitken and Crow Wing counties. For the in the area, along with their Indian part­ Dakotas themselves, game was disap­ ners, were joined by the successive pearing under the pressure of population waves of white European explorers and growth and the “white men’s sick­ traders, but the great region beyond the nesses”—measles, smallpox, typhus— military reservation, stretching west to were visiting their villages. They were the “shining mountains,” remained in the promised annuities in money, goods and hands of the Indian bands. provisions, but even before payment Henry Hastings Sibley, who would began, cabins had sprouted on the bluffs play such an important part in the history across the Mississippi from Fort of the northwest, arrived at Mendota in Snelling. These were the homes of a few 1834 to take charge of the American Fur refugees from the Selkirk Colony and a Company’s post there. He became the handful of retired fur traders. These earli­ first civil officer in the region when he est of Ramsey County’s residents in­ was appointed justice of the peace in cluded Joseph and Amable Turpin, 1838. He built die stone house that still Joseph Rondo, Francis Desire, and stands at Mendota, played a leading role Donald McDonald, who claimed land in the congressional manuevering that between present-day Marshall Avenue lead to the creation of Minnesota Terri­ and Interstate 94. McDonald opened a tory, served as the state’s first governor, dram shop which he later sold to Stephen and led the state’s military forces during Desnoyer for “a barrel of whiskey and Henry H. Sibley in 1849, from an original pho­ the Dakota Conflict of 1862. two Indian guns.” tograph owned by the Sibley House Associa­ A survey in 1839 of the military reser­ By the 1830s, a growing colony of tion. Minnesota Historical Society collections. hangers-on had settled illegally in the vation and its expanding population shadow of the fort, established homes brought the expulsion of the squatters, and opened farms. Chief among them who were viewed as a drain on the reser­ were French Canadian, German and from the eastern seaboard to cross the Al- vation’s resources, including its scarce Swiss refugees from the Selkirk Colony, legenies and head for the vast lands that timber. The squatters’ protests were fu­ near present-day Winnipeg. They would spread to the Mississippi. tile. In the end, they moved down the become the first settiers of Ramsey Mississippi and resettled around Foun­ County* and they were the harbingers of Pressure for Territory tain Cave. Among them were Abraham an irresistible force, the surge of expan­ In 1837, the United States government Perry, a Swiss watchmaker, and Ben­ sion that was driving hopeful new settlers bowed to the pressure to open more terri­ jamin and Pierre Gervais, who were

later becomes Ramsey County. Louis Robert arrives and case before Congress. Joseph’s Hospital established. opens a warehouse. 1849: News reaches Minnesota on April 9: Min­ 1854: Reserve Township land sold at auction in 1845: New England Yankee entrepreneurs and nesota Territory created with St. Paul its capital and Stillwater. City charter granted to St. Paul. traders begin to join what has been a French community. Alexander Ramsey its governor; Ramsey County created 1855: 30,000 people pass through St. Paul, head 1846: Henry Jackson establishes a trading post and October 27 and interim officials appointed. Rice, Irvine, out into Ramsey County and lands to the west. Real es­ becomes St. Paul’s first postmaster, the post office a two- and Smith parks created. Heman Gibbs is one of several tate speculation rampant. foot-square box with pigeonholes. Iowa becomes a state. to take up land in rural Ramsey County. 1857: Real estate bubble bursts with Panic of 1857. .1847: "Saint Paul Proper" surveyed; land around 1850: First elected county board takes office; fed­ Speculators flee the territory; Ramsey County issues White Bear Lake surveyed, carved into lots. Harriet eral census lists Ramsey County population as 2,197; script. Minnesota prepares for statehood and Joe Rolette Bishop opens a log cabin school on the site today of the St. Paul’s as 1,294. County courthouse built on land do­ saves the capital for St. Paul downtown St. Paul Library. nated by Vetal Guerin. First term of court held. 1858: Word arrives on May 14 that Minnesota has 1848: Wisconsin becomes a state, its western 1851: Treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota become the nation’s thirty-second state. Henry Sibley boundary set at the St. Croix; the triangle between the St. open land west of the Mississippi to settlement. Dakota sworn in quietly as governor; J. M. Cavanaugh and W. Croix and Mississippi is left in political limbo; the push people begin move to reservations along Minnesota W. Phelps leave for Washington as representatives, for territorial status for Minnesota gathers steam. The River. The state Capitol is built on “Capitol Square.” Henry M. Rice and General James Shields as senators, Stillwater Convention sends Henry Sibley to argue the 1853: Cholera epidemic invades St. Paul. St. and the “disunion cloud” darkens the horizon.

RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY 9 French Canadians. Already in residence was Pierre “Pig’s Eye” Parrant, who would play a colorful role in Ramsey County’s history. Parrant was one of those interesting characters who adorn Western history. A voyageur who arrived in Mendota in 1832, he apparently caused the authorities there no end of trouble. He was about sixty years old at the time of his arrival, and his personal appearance did little to inspire confi­ dence. He was described as coarse look­ ing, low-browed, and possessor of a blind eye that, according to historian J. Fletcher Williams, was marble-hued and crooked, with a sinister white ring around the pupil, giving him a kind of piggish expression. Having been barred from the fur trade for unspecified misdeeds, he had set himself up in the whiskey busi­ ness, an occupation that caused grave problems for the frontier community. The lovely Fountain Cave was well- known to travelers of the region. Its stream flowed into the Mississippi near present-day Barton Street. Among the first to discover the cave was Major Stephen B. Long, of the newly-created United States Corps of Topographical Engineers, who was exploring along the Mississippi in 1817. His party seems to Fountain Cave, as it looked around 1875. Minnesota Historical Society collections.

have spotted the little creek as it flowed belief that they now were beyond the through a gap in the bluffs into the river. reservation boundaries, and they were Following the creek up a narrow ravine, wrong. Dismayed and frustrated when very likely carpeted with columbine and they learned that they were still within bluebells, Long and his men emerged the newly-surveyed reservation, they into a forty-foot amphitheater with walls abandoned their cabins, picked up their of dazzling white sandstone. Beyond the goods and chattels and made one final amphitheater lay a large hall about 150 move, to a point downstream where feet long that led into a circular room clefts in the bluffs above the river created A voyageur, back­ some fifty feet in diameter. Another pas­ two landing places at the water’s edge— bone of the fur sage led into more circular rooms. the Lower Landing (now called Lam­ trade. Farmers Long described the “chrystal stream” bert’s Landing) at the foot of the future and traders from the Selkirk Colony a stream of icy water that thirty years Jackson Street, and the Upper Landing at in Manitoba settled later would serve a more mundane, per­ the foot of today’s Chestnut Street. Here, outside Fort haps slightly sinister purpose. Here, in high on the bluff above the Mississippi, Snelling in the his whiskey hovel near the mouth of the they had by 1840 planted nine cabins and 1820s and 1830s, and became the cave, the wily Pierre Parrant, his one eye formed the small community that became first settlers of on the main chance, drew upon that crys­ St. Paul. Ramsey County. tal stream to water down his product, a The site would be unrecognizable to This sketch by F. potent drawing card for travelers up and county residents today. The river bottom, B. Mayer dates paved for years by railroad tracks, was from 1851. Min­ down the river. nesota Historical The squatters evicted from the land studded then with ancient trees. A dense Society collections. around Fort Snelling were secure in the forest surrounded the Upper Landing and

10 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY a bog extended from Ninth Street to village be named for the chapel. In 1844 tomed to its demands. Abraham Perry’s Seven Comers. A stream that closely fol­ Parrant sold his claim, took up another wife, Mary Ann, was an accomplished lowed today’s Chestnut Street flowed downstream and near a swampy area of midwife and much in demand among the into the Mississippi at the Upper Land­ the river known as the Grand Marais women at Fort Snelling. Soon they were ing. Another stream drained a sizeable (now Pig’s Eye Lake), lived there a few joined by other men and women who lake at what is now Eighth and Robert months. Then, he, too, disappeared dur­ were destined to become prominent in streets, created a small waterfall as it ing a journey to his home at Sault Ste. Ramsey County’s history. Vetal Guerin, tumbled over a ledge at Cedar and Tenth Marie. a native of San Remi, Canada, acquired streets, then flowed through a deep ravine The community’s first marriage intro­ Hays’s claim and erected a cabin near the along Jackson Street and into the river at duced an element of romance into this southeast comer of today’s intersection the Lower Landing. Back of the little outpost of what passed for civilization at of Kellogg Boulevard and Wabasha town’s site and stretching toward the that time. James R.Clewett, a young Eng­ Street. Benjamin Gervais bought Par- north, west, and east, were the broad lishman drawn to the west by a love of rant’s claim, paying $10 for land that is prairies, an almost treeless savannah, a adventure, married Rose Perry, the now in the heart of downtown St. Paul. magnet for the Ramsey County pioneers young daughter of Abraham Perry, on A year later, when Father Galtier was who would transform die prairie into fer­ April 9,1839. The following September, casting about for site for his chapel, “Mr. tile farmland. the settlement recorded its first birth of a B. Gervais and Mr. Vetal Guerin, two Even in those earliest years of the white child when Basil Gervais was bom good quiet farmers, had the only spot that county’s history, a few adventurous set­ to Benjamin Gervais and his wife, appeared likely to answer the purpose,” tlers had preceded the peaceful farmers Genevieve Larans. he remembered. “They consented to give from the Selkirk Colony. In 1839, John me jointly the ground necessary for a Hays, William Evans, and Edward Early Philanthropists church site, a garden and a small grave­ Phelan, discharged soldiers from Fort The newly-christened village was a yard. I accepted the extreme eastern part Snelling and natives of Ireland, took up French-speaking community in the of Mr. Vetal’s claim, and the extreme claims and built cabins on land that now 1840s. The men who built the cabins west of Mr. Gervais’.” is St. Paul—Evans on Dayton’s Bluff and were for the most part voyageurs who This wasn’t the only instance of Vetal Hays and Phelan together on a tract that spent part of the year working for Henry Guerin’s commitment to his community. extended from Eagle to Minnesota Street. Sibley at Mendota and the remaining In 1849 he donated the land between The two were an unlikely combination, months farming small plots in what is Wabasha, St. Peter, Fourth and Fifth Hays, apparently a decent man who had now downtown St. Paul. Their wives had streets where Ramsey County’s first and saved some money, Phelan, penniless grown up on the frontier and were accus- second courthouses were built. That year and with a reputation for cruelty. The two he built a finer house for himself and his soon had a falling out. Hays’s body, the family at Wabasha and Seventh Street, first recorded death in Ramsey County, and across Wabasha he erected the city’s was found floating in the river below first Market House. He provided the land Carver’s Cave. Phelan, the most likely known as “Cathedral Block,” bounded by suspect, was arrested, hauled off to Wabasha, St. Peter, Sixth and Seventh Prairie du Chien for trial, then released Streets. In a sketch published in the due to lack of evidence. He took up an­ Northwestern Chronicle in 1851, Father other claim on the creek that bears his Augustin Ravoux noted that “aware of name (now spelled “Phalen”), but disap­ the necessity of securing some lots for peared from history on his way to the the cathedral, I bought of Mr. Vetal gold fields of California. Parrant had ar­ Guerin twenty-one (21) lots for $800 and rived at the Lower Landing also and, for $100 the lot on which now stands the finding that the liquor trade continued to cathedral.” be lucrative, acquired a claim that ex­ In the winter of 1841, Guerin married tended from Minnesota to Robert streets. Adele Perry, another of Abraham Perry’s Near the foot of Robert, on a highly visi­ seven children. Their first home, unpre­ ble rise of land, he established yet an­ tentious, to say the least, was typical of other saloon as conveniently close to the those around them at that time. The 16- river as possible. Because of his pres­ by 20-foot cabin was built of oak and elm ence, the nameless hamlet took on the from the surrounding woods with a bark name of Pig’s Eye until a young Catholic roof and a floor of split and hewed heavy logs. Supplies for these families were priest, Father Lucien Galtier, arrived in Vetal Guerin, fur trader and community bene­ 1841, built a small chapel, named it for factor. Minnesota Historical Society collec­ hard to find. Pork, flour, tea and sugar St. Paul and, mercifully, asked that the tions. could be bought at Mendota but the set-

RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY 11 plies, in the tills of the town’s merchants. The Native Americans, the Ojibwe, but particularly the Dakota, were a continu­ ing presence in the region. They gravi­ tated in considerable numbers not only to St. Paul but also to Mendota, Kaposia, and Red Rock, and the furs, game, fish, and cranberries they sold or traded for supplies helped enliven the meager diets of the settlers. Trade in general was growing, spurred by the continuing pressure to push settle­ ment to the Mississippi. The region was becoming a powerful lure for adventur­ ous entrepreneurs, to the point where some of the earliest settlers, evidently feeling crowded, began moving out into the reaches of what would become mral Ramsey County. Following Indian trails from St. Paul to the north, Benjamin Ger- vais had come upon a lovely lake and in 1844, having sold the last portion of his claim to Louis Robert, he launched a new adventure at the relatively advanced age Red River ox carts on Third Street (now Kellogg Boulevard) in downtown St. Paul in 1859. of fifty-five. He took up a quarter-section Ramsey County Historical Society collections. of land north and west of die lake that is named for him. He built a large log cabin on the north side of a stream that flowed tiers relied on game, which was plentiful, character of the future Ramsey County and on their own garden plots. In the began to change. With a small stock of summer of 1841, Guerin enclosed a small goods, Jackson opened a trading post and field near his cabin and plowed it up for a prospered. He became the village’s first garden, using Red River oxen. His wife postmaster, the post office in his store, a joined him behind the plow. He raised two-foot-square wooden case with pi­ grain, but with no grist mill in the region, geonholes. Louis Robert came up die he was unable to grind it for sale. river from Missouri, opened a warehouse Joseph Rondo moved downstream in and built the first frame house in the 1840 and acquired land near Seven hamlet. Joseph R. Brown, fur trader, lum­ Comers. John R. Irvine followed in 1843, berman, land speculator, legislator, news­ bought Rondo’s claim, and logged off paper editor, joined the expanding com­ much of the dense forest that once filled munity and became another of the major the bottom land around the Upper Land­ players in the establishment of the terri­ ing. Richard W. Mortimer, usually tory. Henry M. Rice, fur trader, Indian known as “Sergeant Mortimer,” came to trader, sutler at a handful of military out­ Fort Snelling in 1835 as a quartermaster posts, including Fort Snelling, and one of sergeant, saved his money and in 1842 Minnesota’s eminent politicians, settled bought eighty acres of Rondo’s claim. finally in St. Paul and became one of the Bom in England into a family of some early town-site owners and donor of land wealth and educated at Eton, he ran away for civic purposes. By 1845, with thirty from home when he was nineteen and cabins scattered from Seven Comers to settled in Canada, where he married. Un­ Lake Phalen, Ramsey County’s first resi­ Mrs. James R. Ciewett and her son. Rose happily, he was unfitted for the rough dents had begun to buy, sell, and trade Ann Perry Clewitt, one of Abraham Perry’s daughters, starred in a pioneer romance frontier life and died soon after moving their claims with bewildering rapidity. when she married Ciewett, in the settlement’s to St. Paul. The first trains of Red River ox carts first wedding. Rose’s sister Adeie married However, with Mortimer’s arrival and arrived in 1844, carrying $1,400 in furs Vetal Guerin. Minnesota Historical Society that of Henry Jackson in 1846 the French and leaving some $12,000, spent for sup­ collections.

12 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY from Lake Gervais to Lake Vadnais, es­ tablished a grist mill and ground corn- meal, and other French-Canadians began to cluster around him. It’s not surprising, then, that the story of the establishment of Minnesota Terri­ tory and the creation of Ramsey County begins as early as 1846. The drive for ter­ ritorial status was being powered, in part, by advancing statehood on the east and south. Iowa had become a state in 1846; Wisconsin, a territory since 1836, was on the verge of statehood. The Minnesota re­ gion had been part of both territories. In setting its northern boundary, Iowa’s con­ stitutional convention had cast its collec­ tive eyes on two proposed lines that would have sliced off southern Min­ nesota—one line running through pre­ sent-day Brainerd, another through the Twin Cities, capturing St. Anthony Falls, with its “incalculable water power,” for St. Paulin 1851, still a ragged frontier settlement. This view toward the east shows First Baptist the “Hawkeye State.” Wisconsin Terri­ Church, left, on Baptist Hill, now Mears Park. Minnesota Historical Society collections. tory’s western boundary extended to the Mississippi, with Stillwater as the seat of St. Croix County, the land lying between to its juncture with the Mississippi, leav­ tion of the government-less region. He the St. Croix and the Mississippi. This ac­ ing in political limbo the land between stated that, cident of politics would figure hugely in the rivers. An intense debate began. It is clear to my mind that all the local offi­ the territorial manuevering that followed. Alarmed at the prospect of life in an un­ cers residing in the Counties [outside of] the organized region without law or govern­ Town Site Surveyed state line, such as judges of probate, sheriffs, ment, a delegation of eighteen met at justices of peace, and constables may exer­ Henry Jackson’s store. St. Paul historian In 1846 Wisconsin Territory’s dele­ cise their appropriate functions as hereto­ J. Fletcher Williams wrote later that “It gate to Congress introduced a bill to orga­ fore. Whether the general officers such as couldn’t have been a large group, for nize Minnesota as a territory. It failed, but governor, secretary, and judges appointed some historians see the fine hand of there were scarcely twenty English- for the whole of the former territory are au­ speaking men in St. Paul.” And an old Joseph R. Brown behind the attempt. A thorized to perform their duties within what justice of the peace for St. Croix County, settler recalled that most such meetings remains of [a territory] presents a question actually were held in the street where he had been a Wisconsin legislator but, of great difficulty, on which I can express no there was more room and plenty of logs resourceful and versatile, he was an ar­ opinion. dent worker for Minnesota Territory. The for seats. region was little more than forest and In any event, the men organized the The delegates decided to petition Con­ prairie and thinly populated—even in famous Stillwater convention, a gather­ gress to organize the Territory of Min­ 1849, the territorial census listed a popu­ ing of sixty-two delegates whose purpose nesota and to send Henry H. Sibley to lation of 4,000, with 910 of those living in was to examine the issue of just who was Washington as their unofficial delegate St. Paul. The town site of “Saint Paul now in charge of the “disenfranchised” to press their requests. Somewhat to his Proper” had been surveyed in 1847, but areas east and west of the Mississippi that surprise, it seems, Sibley, who lived at not until two years later would the ninety- had been part of the Iowa and Wisconsin Mendota in what had been Iowa Terri­ acre plat be entered and lots deeded to territories. A letter from John Catlin, sec­ tory, was in fact given a seat in the House each owner. However, the ambitious pio­ retary of state for Wisconsin, was read as a delegate from Wisconsin Territory. neers were undaunted, pinning their stating that, in his opinion, the Territory (An obscure representative from Illinois hopes on the possibilities of their future, of Wisconsin was still in existence and if named Lincoln voted to approve him.) rather than the realities of their present. a delegate to Congress were elected, he Sibley’s lobbying of the federal gov­ The drive picked up steam in 1848 would be permitted to take his seat. ernment proved effective. Senator when Wisconsin became a state, with its For what it was worth, James B. Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois intro­ western boundary beginning at the St. Buchanan, then United States secretary duced the Minnesota bill a few days after Louis River and following the St. Croix of state had responded, ducking the ques­ Sibley took his seat. It passed but en-

RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY 13 countered opposition in the House where what is now Anoka, Isanti, and Kanebec Whigs (who would become the Republi­ counties, as well as parts of Washington, can party in 1854) wanted to postpone Pine, Carlton, Aitkin, Mille Lacs, and enactment until the new Whig president, Hennepin counties. Zachary Taylor, took office. Sibley per­ Ramsey then appointed the county’s severed. The measure passed on March 3, interim officials, all of them already resi­ 1849, and the Territory of Minnesota was dents: Andre Godfrey and Louis Robert, created with St. Paul as its capital. Its both of whom had been delegates to the northern, eastern, and southern bound­ Stillwater Convention, county commis­ aries were established as identical to sioners; David Day, register of deeds; today’s but its western boundary C.P.V. Lull, sheriff; and Henry A. stretched to the Missouri and White Earth Lambert, judge of probate. They were to Rivers. Taylor, who had been comman­ serve until January 1,1850. In the mean­ dant at Fort Snelling in 1828 and 1829, time, they held their first meeting on No­ took office two days after the bill was vember 16, 1849. Ten days later, their signed and appointed the new territory’s first election was held. Louis Robert and governor He was thirty-four-year-old Benjamin Gervais were two of the first Alexander Ramsey of Philadelphia who, three elected county commissioners. as chairman of the Pennsylvania Whig Roswell P. Russell, who up to then had state central committee, had worked to Alexander Ramsey, first governor of Min­ played a virtually unknown role in the elect Taylor. nesota Territory and second governor of the county’s history, was the third elected Ramsey was well-suited for his as­ state. Minnesota Historical Society collec­ commissioner. Russell had been a sut­ signment—so well-suited, in fact, that he tions. ler’s clerk at Fort Snelling and it was he would live the rest of his life in Min­ who bestowed on Pierre Parrant the nick­ nesota. He had studied at Lafayette Col­ name of “Pig’s Eye.” (The French Cana­ lege, a Presbyterian liberal arts and engi­ dians called Parrant O’eil de Cochon.) neering school founded in 1826 at Ramsey County Created Immigrants to the newly-created terri­ Easton, Pennsylvania; practiced law and Organization of the territory was soon tory began to arrive. They were, St. Paul served two terms in Congress. A biogra­ under way as other territorial officers historian J. Fletcher Williams, noted, pher described him as “social, cool, cau­ drifted in, all of them from elsewhere: “principally professional men, politi­ tious and given to practical business.” Aaron Goodrich from Tennessee, chief cians, office seekers, speculators and Moreover, he possessed political saga­ justice; Charles Kilgore Smith from traders (mostly from Massachusetts and city, was willing to accept responsibility, Ohio, secretary of state; Colonel Alexan­ Pennsylvania), pursuing the opportunity and understood the possibilities inherent der M. Mitchell, also from Ohio, mar­ now afforded for the acquisition of in a frontier community and the vast, rich shal; Henry L. Moss from New York, wealth or political fame.” lands that lay before it. district attorney. Among them was James M. Goodhue, The news of the creation of the terri­ Seated on beds or trunks in a small who founded the Minnesota Pioneer, tory did not reach St. Paul for another room at the Saint Paul House on Third often regarded as the territory’s first month (after the worst winter in many Street, and using a washstand as a desk, newspaper. However, he was barely years) but when it did, the effect on the the men drew up the “First of June edged out by Dr. A. Randall and John P. settlement was profound. Within three Proclamation” announcing the territorial Owens who published the Minnesota weeks, the village doubled in size and al­ government organized. On September 3 Register in Ohio and distributed it in most a hundred new buildings went up, die legislature met for the first time in its St. Paul on April 27, 1849, a day in ad­ putting an end to its Arcadian period, first “capitol,” the Central House, a two- vance of the Pioneer. Goodhue became with its isolation and primitive simplic­ story frame inn on Bench Street near an ardent booster for Minnesota; Owens ity. Ramsey and his young wife stepped Minnesota. continued his newspaper career as editor off a steamboat at St. Paul on May 27. Ramsey County was created, on of the Minnesotian, and Randall, evi­ (Mrs. Ramsey had exclaimed: “Min­ October 27,1849, along with eight other dently a restless sort, headed out for the nesota! Where upon earth is it? In Den­ counties the legislature carved out of the California gold fields. The Reverend Ed­ mark?”) Ramsey proclaimed the admis­ new territory, with St. Paul as the county ward Duffield Neill came up the Missis­ sion of the territory, set up judicial and seat. Ramsey County was the largest of sippi from Galena, Illinois, to establish legislative districts and called for the the new counties with its northern the First Presbyterian Church. The election of a legislature (nine councillors boundary extending north of Lake Mille Methodists arrived and with the help of and eighteen representatives) and a dele­ Lacs and its southern boundary follow­ James Thompson, an African American gate to Congress. (Sibley received all of ing the Mississippi until it met with the who had been a servant at Fort Snelling, the 682 votes.) Minnesota River. It encompassed all of then freed from slavery, built the Market

14 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY 1838 and moved with him to Minnesota four years later. Martha Brunson, a daughter of the Reverend Alfred Brunson of Prairie du Chien, married Jacob W. Bass, also of Prairie du Chien, when she was fourteen and came with him to St. Paul in 1847. They opened the village’s first hotel, the St. Paul House, on the northeast comer of Third and Jackson streets, just up the street from the Lower Landing. Martha described it in her memoirs as a “log house about fifty feet square that had just been built and only just plastered be­ tween the logs, one story and a big loft.” They built partitions that created two bedrooms and a kitchen on the first floor and set up four beds in the attic. With groceries and other provisions they ac­ quired from Galena, they were open for a thriving business created by the influx of people who were anxious to gain a foothold in the territory-to-be. Jane DeBow Stevens and her husband, Heman Gibbs, stepped off the steamboat, War Eagle, in the spring of 1849. Be­ cause of her unusually colorful early life, Jane Gibbs was perhaps the most extraor­ dinary, as well as the earliest, of those

Ramsey County’s first courthouse at Wabasha and Fourth Street in 1857. The county’s first jail can barely be seen on the left behind the courthouse. Minnesota Historical Society collections.

Street Methodist Church. Thompson con­ building near the Upper Landing and tributed 15,000 shingles, 2,000 feet of taught there for several months. They lumber, some money, and much labor. were among a number of extraordinary Father Augustin Ravoux administered to women who shared the hardships of the his Catholic parishioners at the Chapel of frontier. Mary Turpin married Captain St. Paul. Louis Robert in St. Louis when she was Harriet Bishop had arrived in 1847 thirteen and came to St. Paul with him in and established a school in a log structure 1844. She often accompanied him on his near the present-day site of the down­ fur trading expeditions, camping out in a Jane DeBow Stevens Gibbs and her hus­ town St. Paul library. Harriet Island is tent or cabin. Mrs. Jeremiah Selby ar­ band, Heman. They arrived in St. Paul in 1849, a year after their marriage in 1848 and named for her. Widely recognized as St. rived with her husband in 1849 to open a more than ten years after she was brought to Paul’s first school teacher, she actually farm on the site today of the St. Paul the Minnesota region as a child by a mission­ was preceded briefly by Matilda Rumsey Cathedral. Angelina Bivens married ary family. Ramsey County Historical Society who established a small school in a log Henry Jackson in Buffalo, New York, in photo.

RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY IS vice entitled him to 160 acres of public vers paused to rest at Desnoyer’s farm land or $100 in script at 6 percent interest, home, halfway between St. Anthony and Because it was originally a war payment, St. Paul, he built the inn known as the Gibbs’s certificate was reportedly the Halfway House near the site today of the only land claim in Ramsey County that Town and Country Club. The ox cart trail was signed by President Millard Fillmore, became a stagecoach road and the The 160-acre tract of land Gibbs chose Halfway House a popular “place of pub- lay northwest of what is now the Univer- lie resort, especially for Sunday driving.” sity of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus. Desnoyer evidently prospered. When he Here he built a log-walled, sod-roofed, died in 1877, he left an estate of half-underground shanty, their home for $150,000. the next five years. Later he would com- Isaac Rose, for whom Rose Township plete the farmhouse that still stands as was named after its organization in 1858, part of the Gibbs Farm Museum. became Desnoyer’s neighbor shortly Jane and Heman Gibbs weren’t the after Desnoyer acquired his own land, only settlers in what then were the far Rose was bom in 1802 in New Jersey. He rural reaches of Ramsey County. Gibbs moved to the newly-christened hamlet of was among seven who claimed land in St. Paul in 1843, and built a log cabin on Rose Township: Stephen Desnoyer, the Mississippi River at Shadow Falls, Isaac Rose, Louis Bryson. S. B. Folson, about a block north of where Summit Lorenzo Hoyt (for whom Hoyt Avenue is Avenue now ends. Later that year, Rose’s Ramsey County in 1849, the largest of the named), and W. B. Quinn, and their sto- daughter married L. S. Fumell, who also new counties created by the territorial legisla­ lies help illumine early Ramsey County took up land in the area, ture and with a northern boundary that ex­ history. In 1847 Rose acquired 160 acres of tended beyond Lac Mille Lacs. This skeleton land at the intersection today of St. map was handdrawn for Ramsey County His­ tory by the late Edward J. Lettermann, former Halfway House Anthony Road and Fairview Avenue. He curator of the Ramsey County Historical So­ During the years following 1844 when sold it and bought for $1.25 an acre an- ciety’s Gibbs Farm Museum. the first Red River ox cart trains began other tract that today is the site of arriving, St. Paul was a collecting point Macalester College. Here he lived until for the lively trade in furs which ex- 1859 when he bought 160 acres at Cot- sturdy women who settled permanently tended throughout Minnesota and into tage Grove and another forty acres of in Ramsey County. She lived there for what is now North Dakota and Manitoba, timberland on Grey Cloud Island, but he the rest of her life, and when she died in Canada. The carts that reached St. eventually moved back to Marshall and 1910 she was thought to have been the Anthony ambled into St. Paul along a Western avenues in St. Paul. He died at oldest surviving pioneer settler. Bom route that followed—roughly—present- Ottawa, Minnesota, in 1871 when he was about 1828 near Batavia, New York, she day Interstate 94. The trail passed the sixty-nine, but he was one of those was taken from her family and brought to 320-acre claim that Stephen Desnoyer builders of Ramsey County and St. Paul, Fort Snelling in 1835 by a missionary, bought in 1843 from Canadian fur trader When the federal land survey was made the Reverend Jedediah Stevens, and his Donald McDonald. When the ox cart dri- in 1850, he helped map the area. He sent family. Stevens, along with Gideon and Samuel Pond, worked with Chief Cloud Man’s Dakota people at their village be­ tween Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun in what is now south Minneapolis, and Jane grew up playing and attending school with the children of Cloud Man’s band. She moved later with the Stevens family to Illinois where, in 1848, she married Heman Gibbs, a native of Jericho, Ver­ mont, and a teacher for the lead miners around Galena. The next year they joined the throngs of immigrants crowding into the new ter­ ritory. Gibbs purchased the land rights of Steven Desnoyer’s Halfway House, opened in 1843 and photographed in 1894 by B. J. Sturde- a Mexican War veteran, Henry Cosmitz, vant. The site is now part of the Town and Country Club golf course. Minnesota Historical Soci­ whose payment for volunteering for ser­ ety collections.

16 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY his two sons to the first school built in Donald McDonald’s dram shop and the particularly during the earliest years in Rose Township, a one-room structure availability of illicit liquor that caused so Ramsey County’s history. Most people, near St. Anthony and Fairvew, perhaps many problems for the Fort Snelling sometimes with the help of neighbors, on his own land. When Reserve Town­ commandants. built their own cabins, usually of bark- ship was organized, also in 1858, he In 1848, Willliam Finn became the covered tamarac logs from nearby served as an elected judge and was later first permanent settler of the area. A na­ swamps. Some had little more than the elected a town supervisor. tive of Ireland and a veteran of the Mexi­ most rudimentary of shelters. Heman Simeon P. Folson, who was bom near can War who arrived in Minnesota in Gibbs’s claim shanty, a half-under- Quebec, came west in 1839 and settled at 1844, Finn had been stationed at Fort ground sod-house, was unusual for the Prairie du Chien before landing in St. Snelling. When he retired from the army, St. Paul area but was common farther Paul in July, 1847. He promptly acquired he was granted a section of land extend­ west where the prairie replaced the land, filed a claim in Rose Township, be­ ing from present-day Marshall south to forests. Soddys were said to be warm in came a Ramsey County surveyer and, in St. Clair, east to Fairview and west to the winter, cool in summer but heavy rain­ 1854, the first city surveyer for St. Paul; river—now the University of St. Thomas storms would send dirt and water from he worked for the St. Paul and Pacific campus. the roof onto the dwellers below. Railroad and served on the St. Paul Although Reserve Township was not Besides creating a shelter, these pio­ school board from 1858 to 1860. officially named until its organization in neers were kept busy clearing land, grub­ Lorenzo Hoyt, the twenty-year-old el­ 1858, the land was surveyed in 1849 and bing out stumps and bmsh, and raising a dest son of Benjamin F. Hoyt, was sent to would-be settlers began staking illegal crop that would feed their families and “the then much talked about region of St. claims. In September, 1854, the land fi­ perhaps provide a little extra produce to Paul” by his father in 1848 “to spy out the nally was sold at auction in Stillwater. In sell in St. Paul. Francis Larpenteur sold land.” The reports must have been glow­ one of those engineered feats of history fmit, com, peas, potatoes, wheat and beef ing. The entire Hoyt family promptly set that was typical of the frontier, the at Vetal Guerin’s Market House. A Mrs. off for Minnesota, arriving in St. Paul the claimants gathered two months earlier to Kessler, who lived in Little Canada, following August. Benjamin Hoyt, a de­ decide who should bid on what property drove an ox cart laden with produce to vout Methodist, and Sunday School and set a minimum price of $1.25 an acre. sell at the Market House, thereby becom­ teacher who helped found the Market J. Fletcher Williams described the scene: ing the town’s first market woman. Street Methodist Church, soon began to Heman Gibbs found a ready market for The claimants dressed in red shirts, all acquire huge tracts of land in “Saint Paul his vegetables at Fort Snelling. armed, and having clubs in their hands, were Proper,” in Ramsey County and in Red In a memoir in the Minnesota Histori­ arranged in a circle so large as almost to pre­ Wing and Cannon Falls. The claim cal Society’s collections, Amelia Ull- vent outsiders from being heard, even if dis­ man, whose husband, Joseph, was a Lorenzo Hoyt filed extended from what is posed to bid. One outsider only made an at­ now the Minnesota State Fairgrounds east liquor merchant, has left a poignant ac­ tempt to bid, and he was soon disposed of. to Como Lake. He would serve as a Ram­ count of life in St. Paul in the early sey County commissioner from 1871 to Approximately 5,000 acres were sold in 1850s. It was a time when immigrants 1873, and be elected to several terms in only forty-five minutes. Among the buy­ were pouring into the territory, when ho­ the state House of Representatives. ers were men whose names would remain tels and boarding houses were so Not much is known about W. B. on the city streets of today’s Highland crowded that people camped in the Quinn, the last of the seven to file claims Park. John Ayd bought a quarter section streets, and food supplies were scant: of land between Lexington, Victoria, St. in Rose Township in 1849. However, in Only a conscientious housewife, only a de­ Clair, and Randolph and built the town­ 1859 he was a candidate for the House of voted mother who had lived in St. Paul in Representatives on the Independent ship’s only mill near the street named for those days knows all the inconveniences and him in Highland Park. William Brimhall ticket in an election that never was held. miseries I was forced to endure. Every drop established a farm with twenty-five acres South of Rose Township, Reserve of water used had to be carried across the of apple trees near St. Clair and Snelling. Township’s boundaries extended from prairie from a well in a livery stable___My William Davem claimed 160 acres near Marshall Avenue on the north, Dale child was ill much of the time from lack of St. Paul Avenue and Davem. Friedrich Street on the east and the Mississippi proper nourishment, for good wholesome Rudolph Knapheide, a progressive River on the west and south. Its name is a food was difficult to obtain. Fresh vegeta­ farmer, settled near Randolph and Cleve­ reference to its origin as part of the mili­ bles and fruit were unknown. Things being land, then sold some of his land to one of tary reservation surrounding Fort brought up from St. Louis by the boats, they his farm workers, Frederick Spangen- Snelling. Early maps show a number of were often in such a condition upon their ar­ berg. The Davems raised hay and grew cabins strung along the river opposite the rival in St. Paul that their use would have grain, among other crops; others opened fort. They belonged to Selkirk Colony been deleterious to health. refugees and retired fur traders. Several dairy farms or grew fruit and vegetables. clustered together were labeled “Old Shelter and food were necessities the While most of Ramsey County was farm­ Rum Town,” perhaps a reference to pioneers had to provide for themselves, land, and much of northern Ramsey

RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY 17 four years. The jail was replaced in 1857 by a new jail constructed for $75,000 by “Messrs. Day & George.” (Three years later, Annie Bilansky, convicted of mur­ dering her husband and the only woman to be executed in Ramsey County, was hanged there in 1860.) The territorial legislature plunged al­ most immediately into a spirited contro­ versy over the capital’s permanent loca­ tion. The act creating the territory made St. Paul its temporary capital only and provided that the legislature choose a permanent location. William R. Marshall, a future governor but then representing St. Anthony, pushed through a bill estab­ lishing the capital there, but the bill failed. It was the first of several debates over moving the capital that would arise in coming years. In 1851, the eager legis­ A steel engraving of St. Paul’s bustling Lower Landing as it looked in 1853 when steamboat lators compromised. The capital was travel on the Upper Mississippi was beginning to boom. Minnesota Historical Society collec­ fixed at St. Paul, the state university at St. tions. Anthony, and the state penitentiary at Stillwater. The legislators then drafted plans for County would remain farmland until who was clerk of the county board, in ad­ the building that was erected on 1851 as after World War II, “Saint Paul Proper” dition to being register of deeds, pro­ the first of two capitols on the site that was filling up so rapidly it either was not duced the most acceptable plan and was even today is sometimes referred to as farmed at all or only briefly, except for paid $10 for a design that resembled a “Capitol Square.” Bounded by Tenth and individual garden plots residents planted Greek temple. Bonds in the amount of Exchange streets, Wabasha and St. Peter, in their yards. $5,000 were offered on the Boston mar­ the land was donated by Charles Bazille, In 1850, when the first elected county ket to finance the buildings. Construction another civic-minded citizen and brother- board took office, the federal census began in November of 1850, with in-law of the equally generous Vetal listed Ramsey County’s population as Freeman & Daniels as contractors. The Guerin. 2,197 people— 1,337 men, 860 women, dignified little brick courthouse cost St. Paul in 1851 was still a cluster of 834 homes, 257 families and 458 acres of $9,000 to build and played an important log and frame structures, its baffling improved land. Of the 1,294 residents of role in the early history of Ramsey street grid platted in 1847 by surveyers St. Paul Proper, about ninety listed County. Political conventions, public Ira and Benjamin Brunson who laid it out Canada as their birthplace, more than meetings, even religious services were along the Lower Landing in Lowertown. sixty listed Ireland, and twenty each held there until the 1880s when it was Several years later Henry Rice and John listed England and Germany. Most of the tom down to make way for a massive Irvine developed a plat for Upper Town county’s early settlers were from the East castle-like structure that would combine that followed the bend in the river. Coast or New England, but there was the functions of the county courthouse “Isabelle Edes,” who was bom in Nor­ with those of the city hall, erected in A Labyrinth of Trails way, and “Mary Leolter,” who was bom 1857 on the site of Landmark Center. “The two plats appear to have taken a in Spain and her husband, Charles, in The county jail, the first prison in running jump at each other,” James M. Ireland. Minnesota except for the lock-up at Fort Goodhue complained in an 1852 issue of The first term of court was held on Snelling, was another matter. Completed the Minnesota Pioneer. Historian David April 28, 1850, with forty-nine cases a few years after the courthouse, it was a Lanegran has observed that the early sur­ scheduled for hearing. Prisoners were miserable huddle, a small log building, veyors’ maps reveal “a labyrinth of old held at Fort Snelling because Ramsey weather-boarded, “about fit for a pig­ Indian trails.” Some of these became ox County had no jail. With Vetal Guerin’s pen” and “about as secure as if made of cart trails, fur trade trails, wagon trails, gift of land on which to build a court­ pasteboard,” as one writer described it. then stagecoach lines, before they house, the county commissioners adver­ For a time, some of its inhabitants were emerged as city streets. The now almost- tised, on January 16, 1850, for plans for imprisoned there for debt, a curious vanished Territorial Road that for a few both a courthouse and a jail. David Day, phase of territorial law that lasted only blocks still runs parallel to University

18 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY Avenue followed the major ox cart trail from St. Anthony to St. Paul. The old military road that ran almost due north from Fort Snelling became Snelling Avenue and these old roads, two of Ram­ sey County’s earliest routes of overland travel, met near what is today Snelling Avenue and 1-94. r With their early trails, the Dakota had left an inerasible mark on the county. Snelling Avenue might well have origi- 1 nated as an Indian trail that led from Fort Snelling north to the lakes where they gathered wild rice. Another trail that par­ alleled it closely ran from a Dakota cross­ ing of the Mississippi at Marshall St. Paul in 1857. The territory’s first state Capitol is the domed structure, center top of the pho­ Avenue through present-day St. Anthony tograph. The long building, upper left with the row of windows, was the Market House built by Park to the farm of Heman and Jane Vetal Guerin at Seventh and Wabasha. Guerin’s own home is the low, dark structure across Gibbs. There the Indians would pause for Wabasha from the Market House. This view is from B. F. Upton’s 1857panorama of St. Paul a rest and a visit with Jane, their child­ photographed from the roof of the courthouse. Minnesota Historical Society collections. hood friend from Cloud Man’s village, before heading north again for the rice lakes. For more than a century the marks H. H. Smith American Circus exhibited failed in procuring a class” must have of their travois could be seen in the back there. Neighborhood women beat their been the grateful recipient of the pro­ yards of neighborhood homes. rugs there until prohibited by law. Even ceeds. A pity, since the Mississippi was For the Dakota, however, their days as though a fence was installed, cows got frozen solid that winter and Ramsey familiar visitors to St. Paul and Ramsey into the park despite turnstiles at the en­ County and St. Paul were isolated, proba­ County were numbered. Without ques­ trances so spikes were placed on the arms bly with not much to do and little news tion, the rush to settlement was on and in of the turnstiles. At the same time, Smith from the outside world, despite the four the 1851 Treaties of Traverse des Sioux (now Mears) Park was established in the newspapers now being published in the and Mendota, the Dakota gave up most of center of Lowertown, the village’s ware­ county. their land, and slowly began leaving the house, trading and transportation center, Prospects looked up with the coming Ramsey County region for two narrow and Irvine Park in Upper Town in the of spring. The Daily Minnesotian reas­ reservations, the Upper and Lower reser­ midst of what would become one of the sured its readers that, vations which stretched along the upper city’s elegant residential neighborhoods. Minnesota River in western Minnesota. In 1854, David Day notified his leg­ The capital of Minnesota Territory, although In the meantime, the people of Ram­ islative colleagues that he intended to in­ unheard and unknown of six years ago, is sey County began to organize their com­ troduce a bill granting a city charter to now attracting the attention of the merchant, munities. Land for three public parks— the town of St. Paul. The community was the manufacturer, the capitalist, and the Rice Park, Irvine Park and Smith prospering. Its population stood at 4,000, speculator. . . The future of St. Paul can be Park—had been given to St. Paul in with new settlers arriving weekly and easily foretold, situated as it is at the head of 1849. When Henry M. Rice and John R. flooding out into the environs of Ramsey navigation on the Mississippi, [it] must Irvine filed the plat for their addition, County. New county officers soon would command the trade of the whole country which was bounded by Washington, be added. north and northwest of it. The Minnesota Main, West Fourth and West Ninth Vestiges of civilization began to ap­ River flowing into the Mississippi six miles streets, they designated one block pear. One of the newspapers announced above St. Paul is navigable one hundred and as a “public square,” now Rice Park. that a Public Eentertainment held the fifty miles, but not for the large class of It was scarcely the leafy oasis it is today. evening of January 5, 1854, at the City boats that reach St. Paul. St. Paul must then The square was almost barren. The Hall, was “comfortably filled by an intel­ be the point of transshipment for the future Minnesotian commented ruefully that “It ligent and appreciative audience” gath­ thousands who are to people the magnificent is a fact, ascertained by actual observa­ ered to hear the amateur musicians who valley of the Minnesota. Is it difficult then to tion, that at least one, if not two, of the composed the Philharmonic Society. The predict that in ten years it will be the largest shade trees in the City park are alive.” concert was a benefit for a Professor city on the Mississippi north of St. Louis? Sometime in the early years, a florist was Collins who “having been at great ex­ permitted to raise flowers and vegetables pense in preparing to give musical in­ The arrival of the stemwheeler, the in return for caring for the square. The struction during the winter and having Galena with nine of its passengers

RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY 19 deathly ill with the much-dreaded cholera, did little to dampen such bound­ less optimism. A cholera epidemic in 1853 had dramatized the need for a hos­ pital, which Bishop Joseph Cretin, St. Paul’s first Catholic bishop, decided to build on land donated by Henry M. Rice. It opened the following year and still stands at its original location. Steamboats nosing in at the landing were disgorging thousands of immigrants seeking land in Ramsey County and be­ yond. A train of 187 Red River ox carts laden with furs arrived late in July of 1853. The drivers, loading up their carts with supplies for the coming year, found that St. Paul markets had livestock for sale: “Beef on foot, 8 cents per lb. Cows, $30 & $50. Work oxen from $90 & $150 per yoke.” “On foot” was literal. Live an­ imals were purchased, driven back along the trail and butchered as needed. So much for refrigeration. Fresh meat was advertised: “Retail Beef, 8c & 12c. Mutton, 10c & 12. Pork, 17i4 Veal, 12Vi Chickens $3.20 per dozen.” General grocery provisions also The Fuller House, where Joe Rolette was living during the 1857 territorial legislative session and where he “hid” the bill that would have moved the state capital from St. Paul to St. Peter. could be had: Lard, 1 2 * /2 C ., Flour Su­ Actually, the story goes, Rolette locked up the bill in the safe of Truman M. Smith’s bank, con­ perfine, $6.25 extra, $7.00 per barrel, veniently located on the Fuller House’s first floor. From Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing Room Com­ Com Meal 75c. Potatoes 30 & 35 [cents panion, Vol. X11, No. 15, October 120, 1857, Minnesota Historical Society collections. per] bushel. Butter, 15c. & 25 c. per lb. Cheese 1 2 !/2 C . lb. Eggs, 15c. doz. Oats 45c. Com 70c. Barley 65c.” rived at the Lower Landing a day early, It was a season of unprecedented creating chaos among the unsuspecting prosperity for the city, the county, and Glitch in the Gala and unprepared citizens. Rallying the territory, with such heavy immigra­ In the midst of such mundane matters, bravely, however, they managed to enter­ tion pouring in, J. Fletcher Williams considerable excitement was generated tain the visitors at a supper in the hall of wrote years later. The enormity of the immigration problem, however, can be by “the most notable event” of the year, the House of Representatives, followed seen in newspaper accounts of 1,500 “the Great Railroad Excursion” that cele­ by speeches in the Senate chamber by passengers arriving within one week. brated the completion of the Chicago and Fillmore, territorial Governor A. Gorman, The Galena alone carried 500. The Pio­ Rock Island Railroad, the first line in the and historian George Bancroft. After neer noted that Northwest to reach the Mississippi. Al­ music and dancing in the Supreme Court most 1,000 guests, mostly Easterners, chamber until close to midnight, the We are pleased to see that most of the pas­ traveled west from Chicago to Rock happy celebrants climbed back on their sengers arriving.in the Territory are good Island, Illinois, where they piled aboard steamboats to return to Rock Island. substantial farmers. Already those who have steamboats to complete the journey up When Ramsey County held its elec­ arrived this season more than double the the river to St. Paul. One of the guests tion on October 10,1854, the Democrats number of any preceding year, and the rush was former President Millard Fillmore, elected Reuben Haus, D. F. Brawley, C. is unabated. There is room and land for all. who was completing a tour of the South S. Cave, Joseph Lemay and William But there wasn’t. The Pioneer also re­ and Northwest and whose brother, Davis to the House of Representatives; ported that, Charles DeWitt Fillmore, was a real es­ the Whigs elected Abraham Bennett and tate speculator in St. Paul. Richard Fewer. Allen Pierse, a Whig, re­ Yesterday morning six steamers lay at our There was a slight glitch in the gala. placed Louis Robert as county treasurer, levees, all having arrived on Sunday or Sat­ Five or more steamboats laden with up­ and William H. Jarvis, a Democrat, was urday night—bringing with them upwards ward of a thousand celebrating guests ar­ elected county coroner. of ten hundred passengers besides an im-

20 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY mense amount of freight___ Among the things now most needed... are a few more good hotels and boarding houses. New arrivals were compelled to sleep on their boats. Lumber was scarce, with “twenty or thirty buildings that are stopped for want of it.” The wild speculation in real estate that characterized the middle 1850s was the inevitable result. In 1854 speculator Henry McKenty bought several thousand acres of prairie in Ramsey County for $1.25 an acre and sold it a year later for $5 an acre. (Two years later he was bank­ rupt.) In 1855, 30,000 people were re­ ported to have passed through Ramsey The “William Crooks,” shortly after its arrival in Minnesota in 1861. From a postcard in the col­ County. St. Paul’s population in 1857 lections of the Ramsey County Historical Society. was close to 10,000 and the real estate mania was at its height. The cost of money stood at 42 percent interest for their taxes on time, and county officials His father, the first Joseph Rolette, a suc­ working capital. Some real estate dealers promptly turned the money over to the cessful and also well-educated fur trader, were mere shysters, with the sidewalks new state government. Robert A. Smith, was head of the American Fur Com­ their offices and no capital except for a who served twelve years as county trea­ roll of town-site maps and a package of surer from 1856 to 1868, noted in a letter pany’s operations in the upper Missis- blank deeds. that described the county board’s action: A railroad was chartered when Henry M. Rice, Minnesota territory’s delegate In 1858 the board of commissioners of Ram­ to Congress, secured a 4.5-million-acre sey County purchased state orders and paid land grant which would have permitted into the state treasury the full amount of the construction of six rail lines. One of them state tax of 1857 and prior years, and at that was a ten-mile stretch of road between St. time there was a large amount of delinquent Paul and St. Anthony. taxes for those years. In 1862 the legislature In 1857 the bubble burst. The bank­ enacted a law giving the state auditor and ruptcy on August 24 of the Ohio Life In­ county commissioners the power to abate a surance and Trust Company, a financial portion of all of [the] taxes of 1861, and institution in far-off New York, precipi­ prior years. The result was that the taxes of tated a financial debacle that was nation­ 1859 and prior years were abated in no in­ wide. In Ramsey County, cash dried up, stance less than 50 percent and in many banks closed, real estate speculators and cases 75 percent, and the taxes of 1860 and merchants were ruined, people were 1861,33 percent. thrown out of work, and St. Paul lost half State treasurer Charles Scheffer com­ its population as people fled back East. mented later that he didn’t know what The Ramsey County government issued would have been done had it not been for script. Work on the railroad between St. the taxes paid in by Ramsey County. Paul and St. Anthony was halted, not to Trauma of another sort might have di­ be resumed until 1861 when the first lo­ verted the residents of Ramsey County in comotive, “William Crooks,” named for 1857. A bill to move the capital from St. its chief engineer, arrived by steamboat. Paul to St. Peter had, to the dismay of the The first rails in Minnesota would be laid county’s residents, passed the legislature. the following year and the railroad It was on its way to enrollment and signa­ named the St. Paul and Pacific. ture by the governor when Joe Rolette, Meanwhile, the Panic of 1857 had Jr., the representative from Pembina, in­ Joe Rolette in Indian garb, a pastel on paper begun to subside as the territory achieved tervened. by an unknown artist and dating from around statehood. County officials approved a Rolette was a popular, intelligent, well- 1900, long after Rolette’s death. Minnesota substantial discount for people who paid educated, full-blooded French Canadian. Historical Society collections.

RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY 21 sippi region in the 1820s, operating out of state’s first governor. J. M. Cavanaugh identified and described in a guidebook, Prairie du Chien. His mother, Jane, had and W. W. Phelps prepared to leave for Heritage Trees o f St. Paul, MN, devel­ married Hercules Dousman, Rolette’s Washington as representatives and Henry oped in 1998 by thirteen-year-old Joe partner and another major figure in the fur M. Rice and General James Shields as Quick, a member of Boy Scout Troup 85, trade of the Northwest, after the elder Ro­ senators. Within the year, prosperity Indianhead Council, as an Eagle Scout lette’s death. made a tentative effort to return, but J. community service project. Joe Rolette, the younger, was edu­ Fletcher Williams described a certain It is startling to learn from Joe’s guide­ cated in a private school in New York sense of forboding: book that even before Father Louis Hen­ City, then journeyed west to work for “The disunion cloud was darkening nepin passed through the region in 1680, Henry. Sibley in the vital northern plains the southern horizon,” he wrote, “and the two Eastern Cottonwood trees had put boundary area around Pembina. His ties utterings of war were heard in the down their roots on Harriet Island; that to the Pembina community stemmed distance.” around 1700 another Eastern Cottonwood from his marriage to Angélique Jerome, was growing in the garden of a row house who was a métis, A successful trader SOURCES on St. Paul’s West Side and that sixty himself, Rolette helped initiate the Red This short history of Ramsey County years later a Black Willow had estab­ River ox cart trade between the Red has been adapted from a number of lished itself northeast of the south parking River region and St. Paul. The story of sources. The Ramsey County Historical lot at Como Lake. his capture of the bill transferring the Society’s Editorial Board wishes to Joe Quick began his research with a state capital from St. Paul to St. Peter has thank, in particular, County Commis­ questionnaire he distributed to branch li­ lost nothing and probably gained much in sioner Victoria Reinhardt for sharing braries in St. Paul and Ramsey County. its passage into legend. with us her paper on county history and Residents were asked to nominate Her­ Rolette, a colorful man who wore In­ Paul A. Verret, president of The Saint itage Trees. dian garb at home, possessed a well- Paul Foundation, for allowing us to adapt The result is some fascinating and lit­ known sense of humor but, most impor­ material from the first two chapters of tle known facets of history. For instance, tantly, he was sympathetic to St. Paul’s Saint Paul—The First 150 Years, written the description of the 1835 White Oak on cause. To put the story simply, Rolette is by Virginia Brainard Kunz and published Goodhue Street, nominated by Sean Ker­ said to have tucked the troublesome bill by the Foundation in 1991. shaw, notes that “In the mid-1880s, this into his pocket, walked over to Truman Other sources have included Min­ White Oak grew at the western edge of and Smith’s bank, locked it in the vault nesota—A History o f the State by what then was the city limits. It grew near and hid out in a room in the Fuller House Theodore C. Blegen published in 1963 Grove Street, which was later renamed in Lowertown. Reportedly, he whiled and reprinted in 1975 by the University Goodhue Street. The tree was spared dur­ away the hours playing cards while of Minnesota, and A History of the City of ing construction of a home which was friends helpfully reported him heading Saint Paul to 1875 by J. Fletcher built in the Greek Revival style of archi­ north on his dog sled. When the time Williams, published by the Minnesota tecture. The home is believed to have came for the bill to become law, Rolette Historical Society in 1876 and reprinted been built by John Hassell.” appeared with it, setting off a storm of in 1983. In addition, much of the material Then there is the story of Don and the legal wrangling over whether or not the in this article and elsewhere in this issue 118-year-old burr oak nominated by Jack bill had or had not passed. Eventually, has come from the Ramsey County and Linda Brewer. Don was a war horse cooler heads prevailed and St. Paul re­ Historical Society’s own publication, owned by William R. Marshall, Min­ mained the capital of Minnesota. There Ramsey County History, and the several nesota’s fifth governor. Marshall, a brigi- was one last gasp. During an adjourned hundred articles on the county’s history dier general during the Civil War, ac­ session of the legislature in July, 1858, an which the magazine has published quired Don in 1864 in Missouri and attempt was made to move the capital to throughout the thirty-five years of its ex­ brought him home with him at the end of Nicollet Island in Minneapolis. Probably istence. the war. When Don died in 1886 at the weary of the controversy, legislators dis­ age of twenty-nine, Marshall buried him played little enthusiasm and nothing on the “sunny side of an oak”—the burr came of it. oak—on his country estate north of St. By this time Minnesota had become a Ramsey County’s Paul, the site today of Roselawn Ceme­ state. When word arrived in St. Paul on Heritage Trees tery in Roseville. May 14, 1858, that Minnesota had been admitted to the Union as its thirty-second t least sixteen stately reminders Joe Quick’s guidebook has now been state, there were no celebrations. Perhaps of St. Paul’s and Ramsey printed by the St Paul Pioneer Press with the heavy hand of the recent Panic still ACounty’s past are scattered about the help of the Ramsey County Extension lay upon the populace. Henry Hastings the region and they are not bridges and Service and the Ramsey County Histori­ Sibley was quietly sworn in as the new buildings. They are trees, and they are cal Society.

22 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY Map of Minnesota Territory showing the original counties as they existed from 1849 to 1851. Minnesota Historical So­ ciety collections. See “ A Short History of Ramsey County, ” beginning on page 8

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