Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

The Fuller family, three brothers and three sisters, arrived in St. Paul in 1850. Alpheus, David, and George were merchants. They owned a store in St. Paul, trading posts in the territory, and real estate business. Lizzie, Sarah, and Abby lived with their brothers and ran the household with the help of a servant and a gardener.

David Fuller arrived in Shakopee for a short time in the summer of 1851, and the next spring came back and secured from Thomas A. Holmes a half interest in the township, which they platted as the town of Shakopee City. He also purchased Shaska Township (Chaska) from Holmes in 1852.

Fuller Street in Shakopee is named after David L. Fuller.

David was born Sept. 2, 1826, in Windham, Connecticut. His parents were David Luce Fuller and Hadassah Gay. David had ten siblings, including Abert C., Jane Gay, Alpheus G., George R., Sarah Comins Abbe, Elizabeth, Abby Ann Abbe, Jared, William, Franklin Aaron, and Issac L. Fuller.

David and Thomas donated block 56 as the site for county buildings, which is now known as the Court House Block in Shakopee. (A few years later, Thomas tried to get the block back, but the court stopped him from getting the block or the money).

In 1856, the Fuller family built a hotel in St. Paul. David was owner of the Fuller House in St. Paul. It was later named the International Hotel. The hotel was operated by Alpheus G. Fuller,. The hotel stood on the northeast corner of Jackson and Seventh Streets. The land was given to the brothers and $12 thousand was raised as a bonus. The hotel was a five-story brick building and cost $110 thousand. It opened Sept. 25, 1856.

Slaveholders and other southerners spent vacation at the hotel. The hotel owners (Fullers) accumulated wealth by giving slaveholders lodging (about $6,000 a month). So even though the Fullers were not from the south, but from Connecticut, they still supported slavery by benefiting from the money collected by southern slave owners, according to Dr. Christopher P. Lehman in a book in 2011 called Slavery in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1787-1865: A History of Human Bondage in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Southerners were able to travel with their slaves to Minnesota because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision which declared that, as property, slaves weren’t citizens and couldn’t sue to win their freedom – even in non-slaveholding states. “So that led to a big rush of people who would vacation here in the north and bring their slaves from the south, and just dare people to do anything about it. So even though you had the Northwest Ordinances, you had the Missouri Compromise, none of these laws amounted to a hill of beans because they weren’t being enforced,” said Dr. Cristopher P. Lehman.

In 1857, an economic crash caused the population of St. Paul to drop from 10,000 to 5,000. But before that, the city withstood an attempt to move the territorial capital from St. Paul to St. Peter.

The bill to move the capital had passed the territorial legislature when Joe Rolette, the legislator from Pembina, intervened. Rolette was French Canadian Métis, known for wearing Native American clothing and adornment. “To attend this session of 1857 he walked the whole distance, about 400 miles, as the snow was too light to permit riding in his dog sled,” said an article in the Wahpeton and Breckenridge Daily News, Sept. 10, 2010.

“Rolette’s arrival in St. Paul in his gaily decorated dog sled in the winter was one event that marked the opening of the legislative session. On occasion, he made the journey on snowshoes, all 385 miles.” More importantly for the city, he was the chairman of the enrollment committee of the legislature, and a partisan of St. Paul’s claim to the capital.

Rolette put the bill in his pocket after passage and secretly secured it at Truman and Smith’s Bank. He then sequestered himself at the Fuller House, playing cards and lying low, while others reported that he was on his way back to Pembina by dog sled. When the time limit for the capital relocation bill had expired, he reappeared and produced the bill. Since it had never been enrolled, it did not become law, and the capital remained in St. Paul, said Neoma Laken in an article, “‘Jolly Joe’ Rolette Jr. a Character, Merry-Maker,” in the Wahpeton and Breckenridge Daily News, Sept. 10, 2010.

On Oct. 13, 1857, a state constitution was ratified. On May 11, 1858, Minnesota was admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state. The capital stayed in St. Paul, according to Collections of the Minnesota History Society, Volume 1, Part 2, Volume 10, St. Paul, Minnesota MHS, February 1905.

The Fuller/International Hotel was destroyed by fire on Feb. 3, 1869.

David was a large and lymphatic man. He returned to Connecticut, where he died Dec. 1, 1856.

David was buried at Fuller Cemetery, in Scotland, Connecticut.