A few illustrations selected almost at random, will give a concrete idea of the process just described. Two townships in Fillmore County, Minnesota, were organized in 1860, and received the familiar Old World names, Norway and Arendahl; at the first election, all the officers chosen in both townships were Norwegians, and for twenty years and more, the Norwegians continued to fill nearly all the offices.[346] Another and later example is found in Nicollet County, Minnesota, farther west than Fillmore County, where the township of New Sweden was formed in 1864. Thirty votes were cast at the first election, and at the first town-meeting, held three months later, all the offices were filled by the election of six Swedes and four Norwegians.[347] Five years later this township was divided and the name Bernadotte was given to the new township; by the first election, all ten offices were filled by Swedes.[348] Other Minnesota towns, Johnsonville in Redwood County (1879), Wang in Renville County (1875), and Stockholm in Wright County (1868), were similarly organized and officered by Norwegians and Swedes.[349] [346] _History of Fillmore County, Minnesota_, 346, 378. [347] _History of the Minnesota Valley_, 688, 690, 693. [348] _Ibid._, 688. [349] _Ibid._, 790, 837; _History of the Upper Mississippi Valley_, 572. As the townships developed, and the villages grew into cities with large foreign-born elements, the familiar and characteristic Northern names continue to fill the official records. Stoughton, Wisconsin, the capital, so to speak, of the solid old Dane County settlement, is a case in point. So late as 1901 the roster of the city ran as follows: Mayor, O. K. Roe, born in Dane County of Norwegian parents President of the Council, J. S. Liebe, born in Laurvik, Norway Aldermen, four born in different parts of Norway, two born in Dane County of Norwegian parents.[350] Much of the business in these new communities in their first years was carried on in a foreign tongue. Certainly election notices and documents of that sort were issued in Norwegian or Swedish, and sometimes orders, ordinances, and laws. No evidence, however, has come to hand to prove that any official records were ever kept in any other language than English, even in villages composed almost exclusively of Norwegians or Swedes.[351] [350] _Amerika_, May 20, 1901. [351] "The Norwegians of Wisconsin", _Phillips Times_ (Wis.), April 22, 1905. One of the first offices that had to be filled in the growing settlement was that of postmaster; for no considerable number of people, educated and intelligent, will long be content with a postoffice twenty miles away.[352] In 1856 there were five Scandinavian postmasters in Minnesota alone.[353] Thus the immigrant settlers came in contact with the national government at the postoffice more directly and frequently than they did at the land-office.