Fifty Years In The Northwest Part 33

MORA,

A village, platted in 1882, is located in section 11, towns.h.i.+p 39, range 24, on the Hinckley branch of the Manitoba railroad. Myron R.

Kent, owner of the town plat, made the first improvements, building a hotel and post office, of which he became postmaster. Alvah J. Conger opened the first store in 1882. The village now contains a court house, school house, two hotels, five stores, three saloons, and many fine residences. Lake Mora, a lovely sheet of deep, blue water, about one hundred and fifty acres in extent, is located within the village limits. The village is beautifully situated on a plateau on the east side of Kanabec river.

STEPHEN L. DANFORTH lived in the county of Kanabec during the '70s.

His occupation was that of a farmer or lumberman. He died in Stillwater in 1884.

N. H. DANFORTH, brother of S. L., also settled here in the '70s, and still resides here, an active business man.

ALVAH J. AND IRA CONGER are cousins. They came from Maine to Minnesota in 1850. Alvah J. kept the Tombler House in Wyoming. Subsequently he removed to Cambridge, where he kept a hotel and store, and thence removed to Pine City, where he kept a store until 1882, when he moved to Mora. He was married to Charlotte Pennington. They have no children. Ira Conger has been actively engaged in business at Cambridge and other places, and moved to Mora in 1883, where he is proprietor of a hotel and store. His oldest son, John, has charge of his business interests.

BRONSON.

This village is yet unplatted. It is located in section 21, range 24, on the line of the Manitoba railroad. A post office was established here in 1884, of which Frank P. Burleigh is postmaster. Adjoining and including this village is the large farm of Isaac Staples, including 2,000 acres, of which six hundred and fifty acres are under cultivation. The improvements on the farm are two large barns, one store, one blacksmith shop, one wood working shop, and commodious dwellings for employes. This farm is headquarters for the lumbering interests of Mr. Staples in Kanabec county.

BRUNSWICK

Includes towns.h.i.+p 38, ranges 24 and 25. The town was organized in 1883. The first supervisors were Eric Hokansen, John Rines and Haquin Ekman. The first school was taught by Charlotte Pennington, in 1856.

The first death was that of ---- Cowan, killed accidentally, in 1857.

There are two church organizations, Swedish Baptist and Swedish Lutheran. Stephen E. Tallman built a saw mill in 1870, and a flour mill in 1879. The village of Brunswick is located in the southwest quarter of section 1, towns.h.i.+p 38; range 24. It was platted in 1856, by Isaac and George Staples. It was originally designated as the county seat.

GROUND HOUSE CITY

Was platted by Isaac Staples for Hersey, Staples & Co., Jan 17, 1857, in section 7, towns.h.i.+p 38, range 24.

JAMES PENNINGTON was born in Queensborough, New Brunswick, in 1799. He lived in Houlton, Maine, fifteen years, and came to Kanabec county in 1854 with his family, who were the first permanent settlers in the county. Mr. Pennington farmed and lumbered. He died in December, 1887.

Mrs. Pennington died in 1878. Six sons and three daughters are living.

The sons are residents of Minnesota. The daughters are married as follows: Elisabeth to ---- Grant, of Detroit, Minnesota; Charlotte to A. J. Conger, of Mora, Minnesota; Augusta to B. C. Newport, of Pipestone, Minnesota.

GEORGE L. STAPLES settled in section 1, towns.h.i.+p 38, range 24, in 1855. He lived there eight years and filled various responsible offices. He was an upright, conscientious man, much respected by all who knew him. In 1863 he removed to Monticello, Minnesota, and died in 1877, leaving a widow, five sons and a daughter. Mr. Staples raised the first crop in the county, opened the first store, and gave the name of Brunswick to the town. Isaac Edwin Staples, son of George, was the first white child born in the county. He was clerk of court in Morrison county in 1887.

DANIEL GORDON was born in Readfield, Maine, in 1809. In 1856 he settled in the southeast quarter of section 1, towns.h.i.+p 38, range 24.

He was married to widow Tallman in Brunswick. This was the first marriage in the town. Mrs. Gordon died in June, 1885.

GRa.s.s LAKE

Includes towns.h.i.+p 38, range 23. It was organized in 1883. It is thickly settled, mostly by Swedes. They have good farms, roads and schools. The first settler was Solomon Anderson; the second, Benjamin Norton; both were farmers. There are in this town three houses of wors.h.i.+p, two belonging to the Swedish mission, and one to the Baptists. There are five school houses.

The remainder of the county, consisting mostly of pine lands, and including nine towns.h.i.+ps, is without organization or towns.h.i.+p government. It is divided into three a.s.sessment districts over which the county exercises jurisdiction, making levies and collecting taxes.

ISANTI COUNTY.

Isanti county lies directly west of Chisago and south of Kanabec. It is bounded on the west and south by Sherburne, Mille Lacs and Anoka counties, and contains about fourteen towns. The soil is well adapted for agriculture. The county has no large lakes, but is well watered by tributaries of Rum and Sunrise rivers. It is well timbered in the north with sugar maple. The settlers are chiefly Scandinavians, who, by their industry, have made the plains and oak ridges to blossom with clover and the cereals. The county was organized Feb. 13, 1857. It took its name from a tribe of Indians who some time ago occupied the country about Mille Lacs. The first board of county commissioners consisted of Oscar Smith, Hugh Wylie and Elbridge G. Clough. The first county officers were: William Tubbs, auditor; F. H. Moon, treasurer; G. G. Griswold, register of deeds; Stephen Hewson, judge of probate; H. M. Davis, clerk; George L. Henderson, sheriff. The first court was held by Judge C. E. Vanderburgh in October, 1871. Prior to this time Isanti had been attached to Auoka county for judicial purposes.

CAMBRIDGE,

The county seat of Isanti, was incorporated as a village in 1876. It is pleasantly located on the west side of Rum river. It has one flouring mill, a newspaper office, and several stores, shops, dwellings and churches. The county buildings are neat and convenient.

The new court house cost $7,000. It is worthy of mention that B. A.

Latta, as county treasurer, paid the first money into the hands of the state treasurer for war purposes. The first postmasters in the county were Van Vliet Ainsley, of Spencer Brook, and G. G. Griswold, in 1858.

NORTH BRANCH TOWN

Lies on the headwaters of the Sunrise river. It was settled, as early as 1855, by John P. Owens, W. A. Hobbs, B. T. Huntley, and John Schinler. It was organized as a town in 1858, John P. Owens being chairman of the first board of supervisors. John Schinler raised the first crop, in 1857. Schools were established in 1860.

OXFORD.

Rensselaer Grant, M. Hurley and Stephen Hewson settled within the present limits of this town in 1855. At that time the town was not organized. In 1865 it was included within the limits of North Branch, but in 1878 the town of Oxford was set off as now defined. The first supervisors were John Bachelor, P. Lillygrin and P. Berg. Stephen Hewson was town clerk, and has retained the office ever since. A post office was established in 1863. Stephen Hewson was postmaster, and has held the office continuously ever since. The town is well settled by farmers. In 1870 a cyclone pa.s.sed through the town, destroying everything in its track, which was about twenty rods wide. Not a building was left on the homestead of Mr. Hewson. His fine large barn was torn to pieces and the fragments scattered for the distance of a mile.

STEPHEN HEWSON is a native of England, which he left in 1844. He resided in Canada a few years, then came to Chicago, and later to Minnesota. He was for awhile a partner in the publis.h.i.+ng firm of E. S.

Goodrich & Co., then proprietors of the St. Paul _Pioneer_. He made his present home in Oxford in 1855, and has since that time been intimately identified with its history and that of the county of Isanti. He was a representative from the Fourth district in the legislature of 1865. He has filled the offices of county auditor, county commissioner and judge of probate court. As an ordained minister of the Methodist church he takes an active interest in religious matters, serving as superintendent of the Sunday-school, and occasionally filling the pulpit. Five of his daughters are school teachers, one of whom, Mary, in 1870, taught the first school in Oxford. He remains hale and hearty in his seventy-seventh year.

GEORGE W. NESBIT was born in 1828, in Delaware county, New York. He received an academic education. He came in 1856 to St. Francis, Anoka county, Minnesota, and in 1863 to Isanti county. He has been engaged in farming and selling goods, and is an energetic, busy man. He made the first pre-emption timber claim on the Mille Lacs reservation, which was rejected. Mr. Nesbit was married in New York and has a family of six children.

RENSSELAER GRANT was born in New York in 1816. His father was a native of Scotland but emigrated to the United States and took part in the war of 1812. Mr. Grant was married in Saratoga county, New York, in 1837, to Libiah Mitch.e.l.l. The Grants moved to Illinois in 1850, and to Isanti county in 1856. Mr. and Mrs. Grant died at North Branch, in 1886, leaving, three married sons, two living in Isanti county, and one at Rush City, and three daughters, the eldest married to J. W.

Delamater, the second to W. H. Hobbs, the third living in St. Paul.

MILLE LACS COUNTY.

This county is bounded on the north by Mille Lacs lake and Aitkin county, on the east by Isanti, Kanabec and Aitkin, on the south by Sherburne and on the west by Morrison and Benton counties, and includes about 17 towns.h.i.+ps extending from south to north a distance of 48 miles, and having a breadth of 12 miles, excepting the two upper series of towns, which have a width of 18 miles. It is, excepting two agricultural towns in the south, heavily timbered, chiefly with pine.

It is well watered by Rum river and its tributaries, and by the body of water known as Mille Lacs, a large picturesque lake, which covers over one hundred and five sections of Aitkin, Crow Wing and Mille Lacs counties. The tributaries of the St. Croix also drain the northeastern part of the county. The southern towns.h.i.+ps consist of prairies and oak openings, the northern and central parts being covered with hardwood and pine. Immense quant.i.ties have been already marketed. The hardwood ridges and flats offer good farming lands, and the wild meadows, scattered over the county, excellent hay and pasturage.

Mille Lacs lake, the largest inland lake in Minnesota, is a beautiful and picturesque sheet of water, with receding wooded sh.o.r.es, with but little low land adjoining. The waters are deep and clear and abundantly supplied with fish. This lake, when reached by railways, will be one of the most pleasant summer resorts in the Northwest. It already attracts the attention of the tourist. A steamer built in 1885 floats upon its waters. The lake is about eighteen miles long by from twelve to fifteen wide, and covers about six towns.h.i.+ps. Three small islands gem its surface, one of which, from its columnar appearance, seems to be of volcanic or igneous formation.

The Mille Lacs reservation covers about four fractional towns, bordering the southern sh.o.r.e of the lake. Since the treaty these lands have been covered by pre-emptions, soldiers' warrants and half-breed scrip, but are held by a doubtful tenure owing to the uncertain and various rulings of the land department. Under the provisions of the treaty, the Indians, a band of Chippewas, were allowed to retain possession until ordered to remove. In antic.i.p.ation of this order settlements have been made at various periods, and patents have been issued to the pre emptors in a few cases, but in many cases refused.

Half-breed scrip has been laid upon thousands of acres under one administration at Was.h.i.+ngton, the permission to be countermanded by another. Meanwhile the Indians, not having received the order for removal, claim to be the owners of the land, and with some show of justice. In 1882 the Manitoba Railroad Company built a road through the county from east to west, through towns.h.i.+p 40, ranges 26 and 27.

In the early divisions of Minnesota into counties, the territory of Mille Lacs was included in Ramsey and Benton counties. Prior to its present organization, a county called Monroe, covering the territory of Mille Lacs, was established but never organized. By legislative enactment in 1857 Mille Lacs county was established and organized by the people in 1860, the counties of which its territory was originally a part concurring, and Princeton was made the county seat. In 1859 there had been effected the organization of one town in the county, known as Princeton. This has since been subdivided into Princeton Greenbush, and Milo. The officers of the town organization in 1859 were: Supervisors, C. W. Houston, Charles Pratt, Joseph L. Cater. The first county election, held April, 1860, resulted in the election of the following officers: County commissioners, Joseph L. Cater, chairman; Samuel Orton, C. S. Moses; auditor and register of deeds, W.

W. Payne; clerk of court, S. M. Byers; treasurer, E. J. Whitney; sheriff, Wm. McCauley; probate judge, Samuel Ross. The first term of court was held June 3, 1861, E. C. Vanderburgh, presiding judge. The first recorded deed was from E. J. Whitney to Isaac Staples, and bears date Aug. 4, 1854.

MILACCA

Has a pleasant site on the Manitoba railroad, on the banks of Rum river at the crossing of the Manitoba & Superior and the junction of the Elk River & Princeton railroad. The Manitoba Company have a good saw mill here, with a capacity of 125,000 feet per day, built at a cost of $50,000. A planing mill is attached. There is a good three story hotel, well kept, here.

The village was surveyed and platted March 24, 1886; Chas. Keith, surveyor; James J. Hill, president of the Mille Lacs Lumber Company, proprietor. It is located in the town of Greenbush.

BRIDGMAN VILLAGE,