Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Peter Rudolph Geyermann was born December 13, 1825, in Waldesh, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany, son of Henrich and Christine Nell Geyermann. He and his mother arrived in the United States in early 1851, and in Shakopee in 1857. He married Emilia Berreau, daughter of Frederick and Antonette Hacke Berreau, in Shakopee. They had six children.

Peter and Emilia operated Geyermann’s General Store between First and Second Avenue and Lewis Street in downtown Shakopee, which included groceries, dry goods, boots and shoes, hats and caps, dress goods, clothing, and crockery. The store opened in 1857.

A board of trade was organized in March 1878, with Peter Geyermann as president, William Willson as vice-president, Eli Southworth as secretary, and H.H. Strunk as treasurer. An editorial in the Shakopee Argus noted that:

“Shakopee is now a metropolitan city. It has twelve street lamps, each with the illuminating power of ten lightning bugs. On a dark night the flickering rays of light are cast fully twenty feet around and on a clear night with a full moon, the city is brilliantly lighted up.”

Another editorial noted that, “There is not a licensed saloon in Shakopee; but we have one mayor, one chief, one city attorney, two justices and twenty-seven saloons selling liquor without a license and three hundred unlicensed dogs on our dogs.”

Peter also became mayor of Shakopee. He was mayor from 1873-1876, and again in 1878.

While he was mayor in 1878, Peter was involved in controversy. The town needed a bridge over the Minnesota River. After lots of discussion over several years, the legislature voted in favor of building a bridge in Shakopee. According to Shakopee Scrapbook by Michael, Patricia, and Joseph Huber, the controversy was over the location of the crossing. Two locations were proposed. One was on Fuller Street, and the other one was on Lewis Street. The surveyor, hired by the city, felt the Fuller Street site would be less expensive. It would only require one center pier. The bridge was to be built on Fuller Street.

The mayor, Peter Geyermann, owned a store on Lewis Street, so he vetoed the resolution for building the bridge on Fuller Street.

He wanted it on Lewis Street, so that people arriving over the bridge would go directly to his store.

Another resolution, putting the bridge on Holmes Street, was also vetoed by the mayor. They tried other sites, including one near Murphy’s Landing, and later the Shakopee Argus editor looked out from the third floor of his building, and saw a huge cottonwood tree across the river. He suggested that they could lasso the tree and build the river crossing at that part. Obviously, that did not win, either.

After many more meetings, the mayor won out, and the bridge was built on Lewis Street in 1880.

Many people were upset, though, and Geyermann’s General Store was boycotted by many of the residents, especially the people in the First Ward, who wanted the Fuller Street site.

So effective was the action that Peter and Emilia were forced out of business, and after 24 years in business, they left Shakopee.

Peter and Emelia moved to the little town of Hersey (now called Brewster) where they started a new general merchandise store.

After several years, the family established stores in Pipestone, Worthington, and Storm Lake, Iowa. In the 1920s, Peter and Emelia’s sons opened stores in Huron, Mitchell, Madison, and Brookings, South Dakota. In the 1940s they added stores in Sioux Falls and Rapid City, as well as Beatrice and Hastings, Nebraska.

Record books of the old Brewster, Minnesota store noted that a man’s suit cost $9.50, a boy’s boots cost $2.13, eight yards of printed goods cost 66 cents, a gallon of oil was $0.25, butter was just 20 cents a pound, and Rock and Rye was $1.00 a bottle.

Emilia Berreau Geyermann died on January 25, 1907, in Brewster, Minnesota.

Peter Rudolph Geyermann died at his home in Brewster from pneumonia on November 25, 1911. He arrived in America on July 7, 1851, and located in Milwaukee, where he stayed only a few weeks. For a short time, he worked for the Michigan Central Railway, in Indiana, and there secured a position chopping wood near Aurora, Illinois. He saved enough money to buy a tract of timber land in 1853, and during the next two years was in the mercantile business in Aurora.

His mother died in 1854, and Peter came to Minnesota Territory and took preemption claim in Carver County, which allowed squatters to purchase up to 160 acres. He became a settler-colonist, according to the November 30, 1911 Worthington Globe. Two years later he sold out and moved to Shakopee, where for twenty-five years he was in the mercantile business, before moving to Brewster.

Meanwhile, the Lewis Street Swing Bridge in Shakopee opened for river boat traffic heading further west in 1880.

On July 15, 1896, the boat the Daisy was heading up the Minnesota River when it hit the bridge and knocked over the smokestacks. It seems that the boat didn’t wait until the Lewis Street Swing Bridge was open before it crashed.

When the Holmes Street Bridge was built in 1927, the Lewis Street Swing Bridge was open for foot traffic.

In 1942, with the war effort, the scrap metal was requisitioned by the government, and the Lewis Street Swing Bridge supplied the metal.

It was estimated that it contained 100 tons of needed metal for bombs, jeeps, and ships.

Bibliography

Huber, Michael, Patricia, and Joseph. Shakopee Scrapbook.