Old Rail Fence Corners: The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History
History
Old Rail Fence Corners: The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History
Frontier and pioneer life -- Minnesota; Minnesota -- Biography; Minnesota -- History, Local; Pioneers -- Minnesota -- Biography
Once some eastern people came to see us and we took them for a long
drive. The bridges were not built, so we had to cross the Mississippi on
a ferry. We went first to Fort Snelling which seemed to be abandoned. In
one of the rooms we found some peculiar high caps which had belonged to
the soldiers. My father took one and amused the children much when he
went under Minnehaha Falls by leaving his own hat and wearing that funny
cap.
Mr. L. L. Lapham.
When we were coming to Houston County, if we couldn't get game we
breakfasted on codfish. I think it was the biggest slab of codfish I
ever saw when we started. It made us thirsty. The fish called for water
and many's the time mother and I knelt down and drank from stagnant
pools that would furnish fever germs enough to kill a whole city
nowadays, but I suppose we had so much fresh air that the germs couldn't
thrive in our systems.
Speaking of codfish, reminds me that one day we met a man and his family
making their way to the river. I halted him and asked him what he was
going back for. You see we met few "turnouts" on the road for all were
going the same way.
"Well," said he, "I'm homesick--homesick as a dog and I'm going back
east if I live to get there." "Why what's the matter with the west?" I
asked. "Oh nothing, only it's too blamed fur from God's country and I
got to hankering fer codfish--and I'm agoin' where it is. Go lang!" and
he moved on. I guess he was homesick. He looked, and he talked it and
the whole outfit said it plain enough. You can't argue with
homesickness--never.
Arnold Stone and his good wife lived up there on the hill. One day in
the early 60's an Indian appeared in Mrs. Stone's kitchen and asked for
something to eat. They were just sitting down to dinner and he was
invited to join the family. The butter was passed to him, and he said,
"Me no butter knife." "I told Arnold," said Mrs. Stone, "that when it
gets so the Injuns ask for butter knives it's high time we had one."
ANTHONY WAYNE CHAPTER
Mankato
LILLIAN BUTLER MOREHART
(Mrs. William J. Morehart)
Mrs. Margaret Rathbun Funk--1853.
I came to Mankato in the year 1853 on the Steamer Clarion from St. Paul.
I was eleven years old. My father, Hoxey Rathbun, had left us at St.
Paul while he looked for a place to locate. He went first to Stillwater
and St. Anthony, but finally decided to locate at the Great Bend of the
Minnesota River. We landed about four o'clock in the morning, and father
took us to a little shack he had built on the brow of the hill west of
Front Street near the place where the old Tourtelotte Hospital used to
be. Back of this shack, at a distance of a couple of blocks were twenty
Indian tepees, which were known as Wauqaucauthah's Band. As nearly as I
can remember there were nine families here at that time and their names
were as follows: Maxfield, Hanna, Van Brunt, Warren, Howe, Mills,
Jackson and Johnson, our own family being the ninth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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