Fifty Years In The Northwest Part 70

This county, a rich farming district, lies on the west bank of the Mississippi between Ramsey and Goodhue counties. It was originally well diversified with timber and prairie lands, and is well watered by the tributaries of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. Vermillion river, which flows through this county, has near its junction with the Mississippi a picturesque waterfall, now somewhat marred by the erection of mills and manufactories.

HASTINGS,

Lying near the mouth of the Vermillion river, is a wide-awake, thriving city, beautifully located on the banks of the Mississippi. It has a fine court house, good hotels, manufactories and business blocks. The Hastings & Dakota railroad has its eastern terminus here.

The St. Paul & Milwaukee, Burlington & Northern railroads pa.s.s through the city. The river is bridged at this place.

FARMINGTON,

Near the centre of the county, on the Chicago, St. Paul & Minneapolis railroad, is a thriving business village. West St. Paul has encroached largely upon the north part of the county.

BIOGRAPHICAL.

IGNATIUS DONNELLY.--The parents of Ignatius Donnelly came from the Green Isle in 1817, settling in Philadelphia, where Ignatius was born, Nov. 3, 1831. He was educated in the graded and high schools of his native city, graduating at the latter in 1849, and taking his degree of master of arts three years later. He read law with Benjamin Harris Brewster, and was admitted to the bar in Philadelphia in 1852, and practiced there until 1856, when he came to Minnesota and located at Ninninger, and purchasing from time to time nearly 1,000 acres of land, devoted himself to farming, not so busily, however, as to prevent him from taking a prominent part in public affairs. A captivating and fluent speaker, and besides a man of far more than ordinary native ability and acquirements, he was not suffered to remain on his Dakota farm. In 1859 he was elected lieutenant governor of the newly admitted state, and was re-elected in 1861, serving four years. He served his district in the thirty-seventh, thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth congresses. During his congressional term he advocated many important measures, taking an advanced position in regard to popular education, and the cultivation and preservation of timber on the public lands. For his advocacy of the last named measure he was much ridiculed at the time, but has lived to see his views generally understood, and his measures to a great extent adopted in many of the Western States. He advocated amending the law relating to railroad land grants, so as to require their sale, within a reasonable period, at low prices.

When he entered Congress, he gave up his law practice, and since his last term he has devoted himself chiefly to farming, journalism and general literature. In July, 1874, he became editor and proprietor of the _Anti-Monopolist_, which he conducted several years. Within the last decade he has published several works that have given him both national and transatlantic fame. His works on the fabled "Atlantis"

and "Ragnarok" prove him to be not only a thinker and scientist, but a writer, the charms of whose style are equal to the profundity of his thought. His last work on the authors.h.i.+p of the Shakespearean plays has attracted universal attention, not only for the boldness of his speculations, but for the consummate ingenuity he has shown in detecting the alleged cipher by which he a.s.sumes to prove Lord Bacon to be the author of the plays in question. The book has excited much controversy, and, as was to be expected, much adverse criticism. Mr.

Donnelly was married in Philadelphia, Sept. 10, 1855, to Miss Catherine McCaffrey of that city. They have three children living.

FRANCIS M. CROSBY.--The ancestors of Mr. Crosby were of Revolutionary fame. He was born in Wilmington, Windham county, Vermont, Nov. 13, 1830. He received a common and high school education and spent one year at Mount Caesar Seminary, at Swansea, New Hamps.h.i.+re. He studied law and was admitted to practice at Bennington, Vermont, in 1855. He served in the Vermont house of representatives in 1855-56. He continued the practice of law until 1858, when he came to Hastings and engaged in the practice of law. He served as judge of probate court in 1860-61, acted as school commissioner several years in Dakota county, and was elected, in 1871, judge of the First Judicial district comprising the counties of Goodhue, Dakota, Was.h.i.+ngton, Chisago, Pine, and Kanabec. He held the first courts in Pine and Kanabec counties.

Judge Crosby is held in high esteem, not only by the bar, but by the people at large. He is gentlemanly in his manners, yet prompt and decisive in action.

He was married to Helen A. Sprague, in New York, May 13, 1866. Mrs.

Crosby died in 1869. He married a second wife, Helen M. Bates, in New York, in 1872. They have two sons and three daughters.

HON. G. W. LE DUC was born at Wilkesville, Gallia county, Ohio, March 29, 1823. His father, Henry Savary Duc, was the son of Henri Duc, an officer of the French Army, who came over with D'Estaing to a.s.sist the colonies in the Revolutionary struggle. The grandfather, after some stirring adventures in Guadaloupe, where he came near being murdered in a negro insurrection, escaped and came to Middletown, Connecticut, in 1796, where he was married to Lucy, daughter of Col. John Sumner, of Duryea's Brigade, Continental Troops, and a member of the Sumner family which came to Ma.s.sachusetts in 1637. The father was married to Mary Stewell, of Braintree, New York, in 1803. The family name, originally written Duc, was changed to Le Duc in 1845. The grandfather removed to Ohio and founded the town of Wilkesville. G. W. Le Duc, the grandson, spent his early life at this place, but was educated at Lancaster Academy, a school that numbered amongst its scholars Gen. W.

T. and Senator John Sherman, the Ewing brothers, and others prominent in the history of the country. He entered Kenyon College in 1844, graduated in 1848, and was employed for awhile by the firms of H. W.

Derby & Co., of Cincinnati, and A. S. Barnes & Co., of New York.

Meanwhile he studied law, and in 1850 was admitted to practice in the supreme court of Ohio. July 5, 1850, he came to St. Paul and engaged in selling books, supplying the legislature and the government officers at the Fort, but gradually turned his attention to practice in land office courts. At the breaking out of the Rebellion he enlisted, and was a.s.signed to duty as captain A. Z. in the Army of the Potomac. During his term of service he was promoted to the grades of lieutenant colonel, colonel and brigadier general by brevet. Since the war his most important official position has been that of commissioner of agriculture through the administration of President Hayes. In 1856 he removed to Hastings, and has ever since been identified with the progress and prosperity of that city, and is the owner of large property interests there.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HON. G. W. LE DUC.]

GOODHUE COUNTY.

This county lies on the west bank of the Mississippi river, between the counties of Dakota and Wabasha. It derived its name from James M.

Goodhue, pioneer editor and publisher in St. Paul. It is a rich and populous county. The county seat is Red Wing, a thriving city of 7,000 inhabitants, located on the banks of the Mississippi a short distance below the mouth of Cannon river, and at the outlet of several valleys forming a larger valley, well adapted to become the site of a city.

The hills surrounding the city are high, bold and many of them precipitous. Mount La Grange, commonly known as Barn Bluff, a large isolated bluff, a half mile in length and three hundred and twenty feet in height, stands between the lower part of the city and the river. Part of the county lies upon the sh.o.r.e of Lake Pepin, and includes the famous Point no Point, a bold promontory extending far out into the lake, with a curve so gradual that the eye of the person ascending or descending the lake is unable to define the Point, which appears to recede before him as he approaches, till at last it disappears, when looking backward he sees it in the part of the lake already traversed. Cannon river, a considerable stream, pa.s.ses through the county from west to east.

Cannon Falls, on this river, once a picturesque and wild waterfall, is now surrounded by the mills, manufactories and dwellings of a flouris.h.i.+ng village, named after the falls. Goodhue county was organized under territorial law. In 1845 the princ.i.p.al point was Red Wing. There we found a Swiss missionary named Galvin, an Indian farmer name Bush and the noted Jack Frazer, a half-breed trader, all living in log buildings. Mr. Galvin had a school of Indian children. Near by was an Indian cemetery--burying ground it could not be called, as the bodies of the dead were elevated upon the branches of trees and upon stakes to be out of reach of animals. The bodies were wrapped in blankets and exposed until the flesh had decayed, when the bones were taken and buried. Red Wing's band of Sioux Indians had their encampment here. It is said that Red Wing, the chief for whom the village and city was afterward named, chose for his burial place the summit of Barn Bluff, and that when he died he was buried there, seated upon his horse, with his face turned to the Happy Hunting Ground, the Indians heaping the earth around him till a huge mound was formed. The legend may need confirmation, but a mound is there to this day, on the highest part of the bluff, and the high spirited chief could certainly have wished no n.o.bler grave.

Red Wing city bears few traces of its humble origin. It is a fine, compactly built city, with handsome public and private buildings. It was for some years the seat of Hamline University, now removed to St.

Paul.

BIOGRAPHICAL.

HANS MATTSON.--Col. Mattson is a native of Onestad, Sweden. He was born Dec. 23, 1832. His parents were Matts and Ilgena (Larson) Mattson, both now residents of Vasa, Minnesota. The son was educated at a high cla.s.sical school in Christianstad, and in his seventeenth year entered the military service as a cadet and served one year.

Disliking its monotony, and having an adventurous spirit he embarked for America, where he found himself abjectly poor, and worked as a cabin boy on a coasting vessel, as a farm hand, and afterward with a shovel on an Illinois railroad until 1853, when he secured a position as an emigrant agent, whose business it was to select homes for Swedish colonists. He, with others, came to Vasa, Goodhue county, Minnesota, where he dealt in real estate, studying law meanwhile with Warren Bristol. He was admitted to the bar in 1858. He was elected county auditor the same year and served till 1860, when he entered the army as captain of Company D, Third Minnesota Infantry. At the end of four years he left the service with the rank of colonel. After his return from the war he formed a law partners.h.i.+p with C. C. Webster, and a year later he accepted the position of editor of a Swedish newspaper in Chicago. In 1867 Gov. Marshall appointed him secretary of the state board of immigration, which position he held several years, doing the State excellent service. In 1869 he was elected secretary of state, but before his term of office expired resigned to accept the appointment of land agent of railway corporations, which enabled him to spend four years abroad.

[Ill.u.s.tration: L. F. Hubbard]

Col. Mattson was for some time editor of the _Staats Tidning_, a Swedish paper in Minneapolis, and a large owner and general manager of the _Swedish Tribune_ published in Chicago. He was a presidential elector in 1876. He was again elected secretary of state for 1887-88.

He is a versatile writer and a fluent speaker, a frank, outspoken and honorable man. He was married Nov. 23, 1855, to Cherstin Peterson, a native of Bullingslof, Sweden. They have five children living.

LUCIUS FREDERICK HUBBARD was born Jan. 26, 1836, at Troy, New York. He was the oldest son of Charles F. and Margaret (Van Valkenburg) Hubbard, his father being a descendant of the Hubbard family that emigrated from the mother country and settled in New England in 1595; his mother coming from the Holland Dutch stock that has occupied the valley of the Hudson river since its earliest history.

The father dying early, the son found a home with an aunt at Chester, Vermont, until he was twelve years old, when he was sent for three years to the academy at Granville, New York. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to a tinner at Poultney, Vermont, and completed his trade at Salem, New York, in 1854, when he removed to Chicago for three years. He then removed to Red Wing, Minnesota, and started the Red Wing _Republican_. In 1858 he was elected register of deeds of Goodhue county. In 1861 he sold out his interest in the _Republican_ and ran for the state senate, but was defeated by the small majority of seven votes. In December, 1861, he enlisted in Company A, Fifth Minnesota Volunteers, and was elected captain. In March, 1862, he became lieutenant colonel; in August, colonel; and for conspicuous gallantry at the battle of Nashville was promoted to the position of brigadier general. He partic.i.p.ated in the battles of Farmington; of Corinth, where he was severely wounded; of Iuka, the second battle of Corinth; of Jackson and Mississippi Springs; in the siege of Vicksburg; in the battle of Richmond, Louisiana; of Greenfield, Louisiana; of Nashville, where he was wounded and had two horses killed under him, and at the siege of Spanish Fort. He was mustered out in October, 1865, at Mobile, Alabama. He was engaged in twenty-four battles and minor engagements and won an enviable record for his intrepidity and coolness. He returned to Red Wing with broken health, the result of fatigue and exposure.

In 1866 he engaged in the grain business at Red Wing, and soon thereafter in milling operations on a large scale in Wabasha county.

In 1872 he purchased an interest in the Forest mill, at Zumbrota, Goodhue county, and in 1875, with others, bought the mills and water power at Mazeppa, in Wabasha county, the mills soon after being rebuilt and enlarged.

In 1868 he raised, through his personal influence, the money necessary for the completion of the Midland railway, a line extending from Wabasha to Zumbrota.

He subsequently projected and organized the Minnesota Central railway (Cannon Valley), to run from Red Wing to Mankato. As president of the company he secured the building of the road from Red Wing to Waterville, about sixty-six miles.

In 1878 Gen. Hubbard was nominated for Congress in the Second district of Minnesota, but declined. In 1872 he was elected to the state senate, and again in 1874, declining a re-election in 1876. In the senate he was regarded as one of the best informed, painstaking and influential members. He was on the committee to investigate the state treasurer's and state auditor's offices, and was largely instrumental in recommending and shaping legislation that brought about the substantial and much needed reform in the management of those offices.

He was also one of the three arbitrators selected to settle the difficulties between the State and the prison contractors at Stillwater. He was appointed commissioner, with John Nichols and Gen.

Tourtelotte, in 1866, to investigate the status of the state railroad bond, levied in 1858, and finally settled in 1881.

On Sept. 28, 1881, Gen. Hubbard was nominated for governor of Minnesota, and was elected by a majority of 27,857, the largest majority ever received by any governor elected in the State. In 1883 he was renominated and re-elected by a very large majority.

Gov. Hubbard is an affable, genial, courteous gentleman, whose integrity has never been questioned; a man of the people, and in sympathy with them and the best interests and general prosperity of the State.

Gov. Hubbard was married in May, 1868, at Red Wing, to Amelia, daughter of Charles Thomas, a merchant of that place. He has three children, two boys, aged seventeen and eleven respectively, and a girl.

WILLIAM COLVILLE is of Scotch descent on his father's side. The ancient homestead of the family at Ochiltree is mentioned by Sir Walter Scott in his novel, "The Antiquary." On his mother's side he is of Irish descent. His ancestors partic.i.p.ated in the American Revolution. He was born in Chautauqua county, New York, April 5, 1830; was educated at the Fredonia Academy, taught school one winter, read law in the office of Millard Fillmore and Solomon L. Haven, of Buffalo, and was admitted to the bar in 1851. He practiced law at Forestville three years, and then removed to Red Wing, Minnesota. His first winter he spent in St. Paul as enrolling clerk of the territorial council, and the winter following was secretary of the council. In the spring of 1855 he established the Red Wing _Sentinel_, a Democratic paper, and conducted it until the Civil War broke out. In 1861 he entered the service as captain of Company F, First Minnesota Infantry, and served with that regiment three years, conducting himself with such gallantry as to win promotion. He was wounded at the first battle of Bull Run, at Nelson's Farm and at Gettysburg, the last wounds received maiming him for life, and necessitating a close of his military career. At the end of three years he left the service with the rank of colonel, and edited the _Sentinel_ until January, 1865, when he took his seat as representative in the legislature. At its adjournment he was appointed colonel of the First Minnesota Heavy Artillery which was stationed at Chattanooga till the close of the war. Col. Colville was mustered out of the service with the brevet rank of brigadier general. In the autumn of 1865 he was elected attorney general of the State on the Union ticket and served two years. In 1866 he ran for Congress in opposition to the Republican nominee. In 1877 he was elected as a Democrat to the lower house of the state legislature in the strongest Republican county in the State.

The same year he was appointed by President Cleveland register of the land office at Duluth, to which place he has removed his residence. He was married to Miss Jane E. Morgan, of Oneida, New York, in 1867, a descendant of Elder Brewster, who came over in the Mayflower.

MARTIN S. CHANDLER, for twenty-two years sheriff of Goodhue county, Minnesota, was born in Jamestown, New York, Feb. 14, 1827. He came to Goodhue county in 1856 and engaged for awhile farming at Pine Island.

He was elected county commissioner in 1856, and served until 1858, removing meanwhile to Red Wing, which has since been his home. In 1859 he was elected sheriff of Goodhue county, and held the office for eleven consecutive terms, until 1882, when he was elected to the state senate. He was presidential elector in 1872. He was appointed surveyor general in 1883, which office he held until 1887. He was married to Fannie F. Caldwell, of Jamestown, New York, in 1848. His only daughter, Florence C., is the wife of Ira S. Kellogg, of Red Wing, one of the oldest druggists in the State.

CHARLES MCCLURE was born in Virginia in 1810; was graduated at Lewisburg, Virginia, in 1827; studied law and was admitted to practice in 1829. He came to Minnesota and located at Red Wing in 1856, where he opened a law office. In 1857 he was a member of the const.i.tutional convention, presidential elector in 1861, state senator in 1862-63 and in 1864, judge of the First district, filling the vacancy caused by the retirement of Judge McMillan. At the fall election of the same year he was elected judge of the First district and served seven years. This district embraced Was.h.i.+ngton, Chisago, Goodhue and Dakota counties. Judge McClure is a man of unquestionable ability and integrity.

HORACE B. WILSON was born in Bingham; Somerset county, Maine, March 30, 1821. His grandfather settled in Maine twenty years prior to the Revolution. He had a fair common school education until sixteen years old, when he attended the Maine Wesleyan Seminary, graduating four years later. He devoted himself chiefly to teaching, and studied law meanwhile, but never practiced. He taught in Cincinnati, Ohio, Lawrenceburg and New Albany, Indiana, until 1850, when he was elected city civil engineer, which position he filled six years. In 1858 he removed to Red Wing, Minnesota, and taught, as professor of mathematics, natural science and civil engineering in Hamline University four years. In 1862 he enlisted in Company F, Sixth Minnesota Infantry, was elected captain, and mustered out at the close of the war. His military service was quite arduous, including campaigning against the Sioux until 1864, when the regiment was ordered South and attached to the Sixteenth Army Corps.

In 1866 he was appointed superintendent of schools for Goodhue county.

In 1870 he was appointed state superintendent of schools, which position he held five years. He was elected representative in the state legislature in 1877, and subsequently he served four terms as senator, and was president _pro tem._ of that body during the trial of E. St. Julien c.o.x, and in the absence of the lieutenant governor presided during the trial. For the past few years he has devoted himself to civil engineering, and has had charge of the public improvements of Red Wing. In 1844 he was married to Mary J. Chandler, who died in 1887.

Among the prominent early settlers of Red Wing not mentioned in our biographical notices were William Freeborn, for whom Freeborn county was named, and who was a senator in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth legislatures. Judges Welch and Wilder, W. C. Williston and Warren Bristol, lawyers, both state senators from Goodhue, and the latter a judge in Arizona. Rev. Chauncey Hobart, D.D., a Methodist pioneer preacher, and author of a history of Methodism in Minnesota and an autobiography; Rev. Peter Akers, D.D., an eminent educator; Rev. M. Sorin, D.D., an eloquent preacher, and Rev. Samuel Spates and J. W. Hanc.o.c.k, prominent as missionaries, the latter the first pastor located in the village. Andrew S. Durant, first hotel keeper; Calvin F. Potter, first merchant. W. W. Phelps and Christopher Graham were appointed to the land office in 1855.

WABASHA COUNTY.

This county, named in honor of a Sioux chief, lies on the west sh.o.r.e of the Mississippi river and Lake Pepin, between Goodhue and Winona counties. It has a majestic frontage of bold bluffs on the lake and river. From the summit of these bluffs stretch away broad undulating prairie lands, with occasional depressions, or valleys, caused by the streams tributary to the river.

Wabasha village is the county seat. The county is traversed by the St.