Old Rail Fence Corners Part 30

The first political machine in the State was organized in Faribault the year Minnesota became a State. Five or six of us young men decided to put a little new life into politics and we prepared a slate. It was five or six against a hundred unorganized voters and we carried the caucus and were all sent as delegates to the Convention. Here also our modern method produced a revolution, but such a fight resulted that the Convention split and some of them went over to vote the Democratic ticket. However, we elected a fair proportion of our candidates and defeated those who had been holding the offices by force of habit.

Mrs. Rodney A. Mott--1857.

We came to Faribault, I think, the nicest and easiest way. We drove from Illinois in a covered immigrant wagon. At first we tried to find lodgings at night, but the poor accommodations and the unwillingness to take us in, led us at last to sleep in the wagon, and we came to prefer that way. After we got away from the really settled country, everyone welcomed us with open arms and gladly shared with us everything they had.

We came up through Medford. I begged to stay there, but Mr. Mott insisted on going to Faribault as they had planned. Our first house was a little cabin on the site of the present cathedral and later we lived in a house where the hay market now stands, but this was lost on a mortgage during the hard times in 1857.

Mrs. Kate Davis Batchelder--1858.

As Kate Davis, a girl of ten, I came with my brother, a lad of eighteen and a sister fourteen, from New York to Wisconsin. Our father was in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where his business as a millwright had called him, and it was thought best to have us go out to be with him. We came in a wagon drawn by a team of spirited horses. We came over the thousand miles between New York and Wisconsin, fording unfamiliar rivers, stopping in strange cities, through prairie and forest, with only rough wild roads at best, never doubting our ability to find our father at our journey's end and perhaps because of that unquestioning faith, we did find him. What a journey to remember. We camped in Chicago when it was no larger than Faribault is now, on the spot near the Lake front where the Congress Hotel now houses the most exclusive of Chicago's mob of humanity. Milwaukee as we pa.s.sed through it was a tiny hamlet.

When I went to visit my brother who had taken the farm on the east sh.o.r.e of Cannon Lake, I made the trip to Hastings in a boat, and from there in a wagon. As we were driving along, I saw coming towards us, three figures which instinct told me were Indians. On coming nearer, I saw each of them had scalps dripping with blood, hanging to his belt. They rea.s.sured me by telling me they were only Indian scalps.

Mr. Berry, afterward a Judge on the Supreme Bench, started out on foot from Janesville, Wisconsin with Mr. Batchelder and after prospecting around and visiting St. Paul, Shakopee, Mankato, Cannon Falls and Zumbrota, they finally walked in here. Fifty years afterwards Mr.

Batchelder went out to Cannon Lake and walked into town over the same road that he had come over as a young man, and he said that while, of course, the buildings had changed things somewhat, on the whole it looked surprisingly as it had the first time he pa.s.sed over it. Mr.

Berry and Mr. Batchelder opened a law office in a little one story frame building in the back of which they slept. While coming into town, they had met O. F. Perkins, who had opened a law office, and business not being very brisk, he had turned a rather unskillful hand to raising potatoes. At $2.50 a bushel he managed to do well enough and eked out his scanty income from the law. It was while he was carrying the potatoes to plant that he met Mr. Berry and Mr. Batchelder and having become friends, they all, together with Mr. Randall and Mr. Perkins'

brother, started bachelor's hall back of Mr. Perkins' office, where they took turns cooking and was.h.i.+ng dishes. I have heard Mr. Batchelder say that "hasty pudding" or what we call corn meal mush, was his specialty and I believe, partly in recollection of those old days when lack of materials as well as unskillful cooks compelled the frequent appearance of this questionable dainty, partly perhaps, because he had learned to like it, "hasty pudding" was served Monday on his table for all the later years of his life.

During one winter I attended several dances in a rude hall whose walls were lined with benches of rough boards with the result that my black satin dress was so full of slivers that it took all my time to pick the slivers out.

We always wore hoops and mine were of black whalebone, covered with white cloth. One day, when at my brother's house, my hoop skirt had been washed and was hanging to dry behind the stove and I was in the little bedroom in the loft. My sister called to me that some young men were coming to call and I was forced to come down the ladder from the loft, to my great mortification without my hoops. There they hung in plain sight all during that call.

At Cannon Lake, near my brother's cabin was a place where the Indians had their war dances. One night after we had gone to bed in the little loft over the one down stairs room, I was awakened by my brother's voice in altercation with some Indians. It seemed the latch-string, the primitive lock of the log cabin had been left out and these Indians came in. They wanted my brother to hide them as they had quarreled with the other Indians. This he refused to do and drove them out. The next morning the tribe came by dragging the bodies of those two Indians. They had been caught just after leaving the house. The bodies were tied over poles with the heads, arms and legs trailing in the dust.

Mrs. John C. Turner.

The Nutting Hotel was the scene of many a dance when settlers came from miles around to take part in quadrilles and reels to the music of violin. We used to bring an extra gown so that after midnight we might change to a fresh one, for these dances lasted till daylight.

When sliding down the hill where St. James School now stands, it was rather exciting to be upset by barricades erected near the foot by mischievous Indian boys, who greeted the accident with hoots of joy.

JOSIAH EDSON CHAPTER

Northfield

EMILY SARGENT BIERMAN

(Mrs. C. A. Bierman)

Mr. C. H. Watson--1855.

One hundred and fifty soldiers were sent out from Fort Ridgely in 1862 to bury those in the country around who had been ma.s.sacred by the Indians. I was acting as picket out of Fort Ridgely and was first to hear the firing sixteen miles distant at Birch Coolie. It was the Indians attacking the burial party. I notified those at the fort and a party was sent out for relief. As they neared Birch Coolie they found they were outnumbered by the savages and Lieut. Sheehan returned to Fort Ridgely for the rest of the regiment. Then I accompanied them. They finally came to the small band of soldiers, who had been attacked by the Indians, to find twenty-three dead, and forty-five wounded out of the one hundred and fifty-three men. The soldiers horses had been tied close together to a rope to feed. There many of them had been shot, and being so close together many were still standing, or had fallen down on their knees--dead, but they served as a breast-work for the men. The twenty-three soldiers were buried on the spot and the wounded taken to Fort Ridgely.

I was also at Camp Release, under command of Gen. Sibley, where a great many Indians were taken prisoners. These Indians had killed many whites, and had some sixty women and children, prisoners. The soldiers managed to secure the Indians' guns and then released the women and children, finally taking the Indians prisoners, placing them in a log house, where they were carefully guarded. These, together with others secured at Yellow Medicine were chained together and taken to Mankato, where, in December, thirty-eight were hanged.

The Old Trail afterward Stage Coach road, known as the Hastings-Faribault Trail, pa.s.sed through Northfield along what is now Division Street. Going north it followed the Stanton road. At the entrance of Mr. Olin's farm it pa.s.sed along in front of the house--and along through his pasture--east of the pond--on down onto Mr.

Alexander's land--following between two rows of trees, still standing, and crossed the Cannon river just above where the Waterford dam now stands. Thence along what is still known as the Hastings road. Through Mr. Olin's pasture there is still about fifteen or twenty rods of the Old Trail and road left.

Mrs. Augusta Prehn Bierman.

In the spring of '55 several of us German families, consisting of the Prehn's, Bierman's, Drentlaws and Sumner's, came to Minnesota from a settlement fifteen miles west of Chicago. We settled on claims near the present city of Northfield. We were on the way eleven and one-half weeks. We came by way of Joliet, forded the river at La Crosse and came up here by way of Rochester and Kenyon. We carried enough provisions with us to last most of the trip. We had some sixteen yoke of oxen, many cows, calves, and six colts. We slept in the wagons and we baked bread in iron kettles by burying them in hot ashes.

Our first home and the Prehn's was built in this way: We dug down in the earth four feet, very much as we would today for a cellar, but into a side hill. Above these four feet, logs were built up, plastered together with mud. For a roof, logs and branches of trees were placed across the side walls and then plastered together with mud.

Coming up through Kenyon we saw many Indians camping along the road. The colts and oxen were deathly afraid of them and would turn way out of the road when pa.s.sing, keeping just as far away as possible.

Among the earliest marriages recorded in Rice county is that of William Bierman and Augusta Prehn 1857.

Mrs. Ann Alexander.

My husband with his father and a brother, Jonas, came in '54 and took up claims adjoining the present site of Northfield. They drove two ox teams and brought cattle, a couple of sheep and some pigs.

My husband's parents kept boarders and had some sixteen or eighteen all of the time and each day brought many extra from the stage coaches plying between here and Hastings and here and St. Paul.

Every mouthful of food consumed that first year was brought from Hastings, twenty-eight miles away, and it kept one man and an ox team on the road all the time.

Pork was purchased by the barrel and it would seldom last a week.

By the following spring, '55, when I was married and came to Minnesota some of the land had been broken, so small gardens were planted and potatoes and other vegetables raised. I believe it was about the time of the civil war that b.u.t.ter sold as low as 5c a pound and eggs 3c a dozen.

In these early days the Indians received annuities at Red Wing and on their yearly pilgrimages they would often camp in this vicinity as long as five or six weeks. The chiefs spent their time in hunting and fis.h.i.+ng. The west side of the river was then not settled at all and there they had their camps. The squaws would come to the settler's homes, set their papooses up against the side of the house and walk into the house to beg. I have seen the large living room of mother's boarding house lined with Indians, smoking one pipe--each man taking a few puffs and then pa.s.sing the pipe along. In those days the mosquitoes were very thick and if anyone was out doors they would literally be eaten alive.

Mother's boarding house would be filled and people would be begging to be allowed to come and sleep under the tables--anything to get in away from the pests.

Mr. J. W. Huckins.

I enlisted from Minneapolis in Captain Strout's company which was sent to guard the frontier at the time of the Indian outbreak. We went up the Mississippi, then west to Litchfield, then to Glencoe and Hutchinson and were finally at Acton, where the first blow fell. The place was thirty-five miles northwest of the Lower Sioux agency, in Meeker county.

We soldiers found that our cartridges were not the right calibre. Some of the men had personal rifles, and one was found who had a pair of bullet molds of the right size. We took the bullets from the cartridges and busied ourselves, making them over the right size, using the powder and b.a.l.l.s separately. During the engagement near Acton, the Indians managed to completely surround the soldiers. The captain ordered his men to dash through the Indian lines. The men ran for their lives, and those on horseback were ordered, at point of guns, to wait for men on foot.

This sudden action took the Indians unawares and they were so surprised they forgot to keep up the fire. Most of us effected an escape. Out of sixty men but three were killed, though some twenty were wounded. We fell back to Hutchinson where there was a stockade. The Indians were getting quite fearless and would come in closer and closer to the stockade. One man had a very rare, long range gun and killed an Indian at the distance of a mile, after which the Indians kept a better distance.

Mrs. C. W. Gress--1855.

We landed in St. Paul in April '55, making the trip in about three weeks. We started on the boat, Minnesota Belle, but because of low water our household effects had to be transferred at Davenport, Iowa, to a small boat. There was a siege of cholera on the first boat, and two bodies were taken ash.o.r.e and buried in the sand.

During the time of transferring the baggage, I had to carry the money for safe keeping. I made a wide belt with pockets of different lengths suspended from it. Here, and in the pockets of my skirt was gold of all denominations and some silver, of such weight that for three days I was ill from carrying it. After spending a few days in St. Paul we moved to Minnetonka Mills where we bought a relinquishment for $600 and paid $200 to prove up--making $800 for one hundred and sixty acres or $5 an acre; that land fifty years later was well worth $100 an acre. For three years we were eaten out by gra.s.shoppers.

While here at Minnetonka Mills I often had Indians come to my house. On one occasion I stood churning when an Indian stepped in and took the dasher from me indicating that he wanted some of it. I was not afraid of him and took the dasher from him and pushed him aside with my elbow. I had just finished baking and so gave him a large slice of bread, spreading it generously with b.u.t.ter. He dug the center out of the piece crowding it into his mouth, throwing the crust on the hearth. This angered me as my crust was soft and tender and I picked up a broom and started toward him yelling "puck-a-chee" (get out) and he rushed for the door and disappeared.