Fifty Years In The Northwest
is thoroughly well informed, clear-sighted and impartial.
THOMAS H. ARMSTRONG was born in Milan, Ohio, Feb. 6, 1829. He
graduated from Western Reserve College in 1854, commenced the practice
of law at La Crosse, Wisconsin, in 1856, practiced at High Forest,
Minnesota, until 1870, when he discontinued practice. Three years
later he moved to Albert Lea, Minnesota, and established the Freeborn
County Bank.
Mr. Armstrong has acted a prominent part in the legislation of the
State, having been a representative in the legislatures of 1864 and
1865, and, as lieutenant governor, president of the senate for the
four succeeding terms. He was elected speaker of the house in the
legislature of 1865. As a presiding officer he was courteous,
dignified, and fair in his rulings, and an excellent parliamentarian.
April 1, 1868, he was married to Mrs. Elisabeth M. Butman, daughter of
John Burgess, of Cleveland, Ohio.
AUGUSTAS ARMSTRONG, a younger brother of the foregoing, and a
prominent citizen of Albert Lea, died in 1873.
MOSES K. ARMSTRONG, another brother, has represented Dakota in
Congress.
JAMES B. WAKEFIELD was born at Winstead, Litchfield county,
Connecticut, March 21, 1828. He graduated at Trinity College,
Hartford, in 1846; studied law, and was admitted to practice in 1851;
came to Shakopee, Minnesota; practiced law two years and removed to
Blue Earth City. He has been called to fill various and responsible
public positions. He was a member of the legislature several terms,
serving as representative in 1858, 63 and 66, and as senator in
1867-68-69. He served as deputy Indian agent at the Lower Sioux agency
from 1856 to the Indian outbreak, and in 1869 was appointed receiver
of the Winnebago land office, which position he held six years. From
1875 to 1879 he served as lieutenant governor of Minnesota, and from
1884 to 1886 as member of Congress. He served as a delegate to the
Republican convention which nominated President Grant in 1868, and to
the convention which nominated President Hayes in 1876. Mr. Wakefield
was married in August, 1864, to Miss Nannette Reinhart, of Blue Earth
City.
WILLIAM WALLACE BRADEN was born in Iberia, Ohio, Dec. 3, 1837. He was
educated in the district schools and reared as a farmer. In November
he came to Fillmore county with his father, and engaged in farming. He
was a member of the legislature in 1866-67, and has served three
terms as county treasurer. During the Civil War he served three years
with the rank of lieutenant, and then of captain in Company K, Sixth
Minnesota Volunteers, and was for some time detached from his command
as provost marshal of Southern Missouri, with headquarters at
Springfield. Capt. Braden is prominent as a Mason, and as a Republican
takes an active interest in the politics of the State and nation. He
was elected state auditor in 1881, and re-elected in 1885. He was
married March 7, 1866, to Addie Griswold, of Pennsylvania.
REUBEN BUTTERS was born in Union, Lincoln county, Maine, May 26, 1816.
He received such education as could be obtained at winter schools, and
employed himself chiefly in clerking and mercantile pursuits until
1851, when he came to Minnesota and became the first permanent settler
in the Minnesota valley above Shakopee. He made the first claim at Le
Sueur, having, in connection with Messrs. Thompson and Lindsey, a
station at that place, also at Kasota. He has been engaged chiefly in
farming. He has also a stone quarry and store in Kasota, and does a
fair amount of trading. Mr. Butters was a member of the first state
legislature, and has served seven or eight sessions since. He was
county commissioner many years. In politics he is a Democrat.
Mr. Butters has been twice married, first in November, 1847, to
Elizabeth Hill, of Cleveland, Ohio, and second in May, 1861, to Mrs.
Mary E. Rogers, of Maine. He died March 29, 1888.
MICHAEL DORAN, a most successful business man and prominent in
political affairs, having served six terms in the state senate, was
born in the county of Meath, Ireland, Nov. 1, 1829. He received but
little education before coming to this country in 1850, when, although
over twenty-one years of age, he obtained two years' schooling. He
landed in New York City, remained in the State about a year and
removed to Norwalk, Ohio, where he farmed and kept a grocery store. In
1856 he came westward and located at Le Sueur, where he engaged in
farming. In 1860 he was elected county treasurer and served and held
the office eight years. Since 1870 he has been engaged in banking,
farming and real estate operations. He is also one of the owners of
the elevator and flouring mill at Le Sueur.
In politics he is a Democrat and was an elector on the McClellan
ticket. His senatorial terms were from 1872 to 1875 and 1877 and
1879. He has been twice married. His first wife was Ellen Brady, of
Norwalk, Ohio, married in May, 1855. His second wife was Catherine J.
Grady, of Le Sueur, married Feb. 10, 1864.
ANDREW MCCREA was born in New Brunswick in 1830, received a common
school education and learned the business of farming and lumbering.
His father having died early, the support of a mother and crippled
brother devolved upon him. He was married to Jane Murphy, in New
Brunswick, when he was twenty-one years of age. Mrs. McCrea died in
1878. He married a second wife in 1880. His family consists of eight
sons and one daughter. He came to Minnesota in 1854, removed to
Stearns county in 1858, and to Otter Tail county in 1872, where he now
resides in the town of Perham. He was a member of the legislature of
1876-77, and of the senate of 1878 to 1882, inclusive. In 1885 he was
appointed one of the commissioners to locate the second state prison.
JOHN W. BLAKE was born in Foxcroft, Maine, in 1839. His parents moved
to Wisconsin in 1840. He received a good education in the common
schools, in Milton Academy, and Wisconsin State University, and became
a civil engineer. He served as a soldier during the war of the
Rebellion. In 1872 he came to Minnesota, located at Marshall, Lyon
county, and the same year was elected a representative in the
legislature. He was a member of the senate during the years 1875,
1876, 1882, and 1884.
KNUTE NELSON, born in Norway, came to America, studied law at
Wisconsin University, and was admitted to the bar. He came to
Alexandria in 1870, where he practiced law. He was a senator in the
seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth legislatures, and
was elected representative to Congress from the Fifth Minnesota
district in 1884 and 1886. Mr. Nelson is a man of unquestioned ability
and force, a strong Republican, and an enthusiastic advocate of a
modified tariff.
W. R. DENNY was born at Keene, New Hampshire, in 1839; received an
academic education, and after spending eight years in Wisconsin, came
to Carver, Minnesota, in 1867. He served in the state legislatures of
1874, 1876, 1879, and 1881. He was appointed United States marshal
from 1882 to 1886. He was Grand Master of the Masonic fraternity in
1884-5. He was married in Wisconsin in 1863, and has a family of four
children.
APPENDIX.
MISCELLANEOUS INCIDENTS, ITEMS AND STATISTICS, INCLUDING AN
ACCURATE ACCOUNT OF THE VARIOUS TREATIES BETWEEN THE UNITED
STATES GOVERNMENT AND THE INDIAN TRIBES INHABITING THE
TERRITORIES OF WISCONSIN AND MINNESOTA.
BRIEF HISTORY OF THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY UNTIL THE CREATION OF
WISCONSIN TERRITORY IN 1836.
SPANISH CLAIMS.
The Spaniards have made persistent claims to territory lying along the
Atlantic coast, the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and up the valley of
the Mississippi, basing their claims on discovery and conquest.
In 1512 Juan Ponce de Leon, a companion of Columbus, discovered
Florida, and planted on its shores the standard of Spain.
In 1539 Hernando de Soto visited Florida and having strengthened the
Spanish claim adventured west to the Mississippi, on which river he
died and in which he was stealthily buried by his surviving followers,
who returned to Florida broken and dispirited with the loss of half
their number. By virtue of De Soto's discovery of the Mississippi, the
Spaniards now laid claim to the land along that river and its
tributaries. They also claimed land lying along the Atlantic coast,
without limit, northward. This large and somewhat indefinite empire
was by them styled Florida, after the name of the peninsula on which
they gained their first foothold. Unable to defend or enforce their
claims, they gradually relinquished them, giving up tract after tract,
until the peninsula of Florida alone remained to them. This was ceded
to the United States in 1819.
The government of the Territory was vested in the discoverers. Ponce
de Leon was governor from 1512 until 1521. De Soto was governor of
Florida and Cuba until 1541. Melendez, by compact with King Philip,
succeeded him, his commission giving him a life tenure. The history of
the Spanish possessions is by no means interesting, and illustrates
chiefly the Spanish greed for gold.
FRENCH CLAIMS.
The French early disputed the claims of the Spaniards and Portuguese
to the possession of the New World, and accordingly in 1524 sent a
Florentine, Jean Verrazzani, who explored the coast from Carolina to
Nova Scotia, took possession of it, and called it New France. Ten
years later Cartea continued the work, sailing around New Foundland
and ascending the St. Lawrence as far as the site of Montreal. In 1564
a French colony located in Florida, but were almost immediately
exterminated by the Spaniards. During the following century the French
pushed their explorations to the regions of the Mississippi and the
great lakes. In the year 1603 Champlain was engaged in the exploration
of the St. Lawrence, and in 1609, he, with two other Frenchmen,
explored Lake Champlain and the country of the Iroquois and took
possession of it in the name of Henry IV of France. In 1611 and 1612
he explored Lake Huron, entered Saginaw bay, passed down Detroit
river, exploring Lake Erie, and laid the foundation of French
sovereignty in the valley of the St. Lawrence. Champlain for many
years prosecuted the fur trade where Boston now stands, prior to the
landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock.
We have not space for a complete account of the conflicting claims of
the French and English, but will give the boundaries of New France as
defined by French and English authorities at different times: 1609--L'
Escartot, in his "Histoire de la Nouvelle France," defines the French
boundaries as extending "on the west to the Pacific ocean, on the
south to the Spanish West Indies, on the east to the North Atlantic,
and on the north to the Frozen Sea." 1683--Baron La Honton says, "All
the world knows that Canada reaches from the 39th to the 65th degrees
of north latitude and from the 284th to the 336th degrees of
longitude." [More accurately from about 45 to 90 degrees west, or from
Cape Race to the Mississippi.] The French government persistently
denied the right of the English to any territory west of the
Alleghanies. The great Northwest, therefore, was for a long time under
French rule and influence. We must accord to France the credit of
making the first progress in civil government in the Northwest. They
made many permanent settlements and by a wise and pacific policy so
conciliating the Indian tribes that they were able to hold their
positions on the frontier at will. They were early and persistent
explorers, and, under the guidance of pious and devoted Jesuit
missionaries, planted settlements in the most desirable places. They
made a cordon of posts reaching from Louisiana to the Gulf of St.