C. K. Orton, the founder of Ortonville took a homestead adjoining Big Stone Lake. In the spring he returned for his family consisting then of his wife and child, Clara, together with several neighbors. They started in the month of July, following the old trail via New Ulm, thence to Montevideo. When they reached Montevideo they discovered the bridges had washed away, so they were obliged to ford the Chippewa river which was very deep and rapid. Mr. and Mrs. Orton rode side by side, he carrying a sack of flour which he lost while endeavoring to hold her, but which he afterward recovered. It took the party several days to get their belongings, which consisted of cattle, horses, oxen, etc., on the west side of the river. They were badly frightened a few months later, which was after they had settled in their new home, by a Mr. Movius, of Big Stone City, who came to them with a report that the Indians, five hundred in number, from the Sisseton reservation were on the war path and were headed their way. Mrs. Orton and another woman, being alone with the children, say that they had a flat bottomed boat which they had planned to get in and get out into the middle of the lake and that if overtaken by the Indians, rather than be tortured as they had seen other people near New Ulm and other towns, would drown themselves and children, but luckily it was a false report. Mr. Orton was the first postmaster of this place, the mail being brought once a week from Appleton, twenty-five miles east, by Mr. Lathrop, who had a wagon train hauled by oxen by which he carried flour and provisions to the settlers along the lake shore. There is a log cabin still standing in Big Stone City, which was built in the year 1857. A. B. Kaercher has in his possession the Government Patent given in 1855 and signed by Franklin Pierce to his father, John Kaercher, for 160 acres of land in Fillmore County, Minnesota, where John Kaercher founded the Village of Preston, and erected the second flouring mill in the Territory of Minnesota. Lyman R. Jones of Ortonville has a stove door taken from the ruins of the Presbyterian mission, built in 1838 and which was destroyed by fire March 3, 1854. Mr. Roberts, an old timer here, has the powder horn which Little Crow carried through the Sioux massacre. DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY CHAPTER Duluth FRANCES ANGELINE POOLE WOODBRIDGE (Mrs. W. S. Woodbridge) Mrs. Nettleton. My husband and I came to this region in 1854. At first we lived in Superior, Wis., but in September of that year we went down to Madeline Island to the Indian payment when the government bought the Duluth property from the Indians. My husband got title to the best of Minnesota Point. This was the same payment where they gave Chief Buffalo his four square miles of land in Duluth.