Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

In the 1800s St. Paul served as the head of navigation on the Mississippi River. The lower landing provided entry for most people and goods coming north. Like many early groups to the region, African Americans settled near the riverbanks to ensure steady work and food. The river was also a route along the Underground Railroad, providing passage to slaves escaping to Canada, according to CultureBrokers Foundation, Inc.’s Points of Entry: The African American Heritage Guide to Saint Paul and “Lower (Lambert’s) Landing” from St. Paul Historical.

Minnesota was created as a free territory in 1849, a year before Joseph Farr arrived in St. Paul from Galena, Illinois. Although slavery was not allowed in Minnesota Territory, many vacationing southerners traveled north up the Mississippi River with enslaved people during the summers, staying at hotels including the Fuller Hotel (later called the International Hotel), which was located on the northeast corner of Jackson and Seventh Street in St. Paul, and built by David L. Fuller. Later his brother, Alpheus G. Fuller, ran the hotel. The land was given to the brothers, and $12,000 was raised as a bonus. It was opened on September 25, 1856.

The 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 Slavery in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1787-1865: A History of Human Bondage in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The national Fugitive Slave Law, passed in 1850, required that escaped slaves be returned to their owners. This gave a measure of federal protection to owners who either visited the territory with the slaves or that human property that managed to come within its boundaries by other means, according to the CultureBrokers Foundation.

During the 1850s, St. Paul was a way station on the Underground Railroad. Many African American men and women found the way to freedom on the Canadian side through the people who came to their rescue at St. Paul. William Taylor, a barber, James Hywadin, David Edwards, and William Taylor’s nephew, Joseph Farr, who helped at the barber shop, participated in rescuing many of the enslaved people.

Joseph Farr told his story in 1895, according to editor Deborah Swanson in an article, “Joseph Farr remembers the underground railroad in St. Paul,” in the fall 2000 edition of Minnesota History.

Joseph was involved in the Underground Railroad in St. Paul when he arrived here in 1850. “There was no society or anything of that kind, but we were doing whatever we could,” said Joseph. Eugene Berry used to take care of the escaped slaves out of Galena. Another agent in Galena used to get up all kinds of schemes to get the slaves away from their masters. “He would disguise them was well as he could and get them aboard the Dr. Franklin, and then Berry would take care of them and stow them away among the freight.” Then Joseph remembered “When the boat came into St. Paul my uncle, or one of the others…would be at the wharf and the fugitives would be brought to my uncle’s house, where I lived,” according to St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1895.

In one instance, an enslaved man left the Fuller/International Hotel to Mr. Taylor’s place. “We got him right out into the county, and the next day there was a great ado made about it. He was a valuable man and his master offered a big reward for his capture. We sent him to Point Prescott, Wisconsin, and thought he was safe enough there.” An African American, who was supposed to help, heard of the reward and came into town and “gave the poor wretch up.”

A young mulatto girl who escaped from her master in Galena, was secreted on the boat coming this way with the help of Eugene Berry. “The girl was a handsome, robust creature, and her features were almost masculine. She adopted the familiar disguise of a man, and arrived in St. Paul clad in a suit of finest broadcloth. She was light enough to pass for a white person, and had no difficulty on the boat,” said Joseph in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, 1895. “She was young and fine looking and would probably be worth a couple of thousand dollars in the South, so it was a sure thing that there would be a great effort made to find her.” The southerner came to Taylor’s barber shop and offered $30 to find her. While he talked, the woman escaped with the help of Hywadin, who disguised her and sent to Chicago, and then to Canada. A few months later, Joseph’s uncle got a letter from her, saying that she was safe.

At David and Alpheus Fuller’s hotel, many southern people including a planter who stopped there with his family and an enslaved woman, arrived in St. Paul. After talking to her, she said she wanted to escape. “We fixed everything to get her out of town but it took a couple of days to do it, and before we got all the arrangements made the girl got homesick for her master’s family and insisted on going back.” Joseph thought if she did not want to escape, it wouldn’t happen, and after promising to say nothing about the people who tried to rescue her.

According to Joseph, the Dr. Franklin, the steamboat, collided with another boat at McCartney, Wisconsin in May of 1854, and Joseph remembered his clandestine activities ended about 1855. Newspapers and the Winslow House register indicated that many parties of southerners and their “servants” (enslaved people) visited the area and stayed at hotels including the Winslow House as late as 1860, according to Swanson.

Joseph Farr and his wife, Sarah, had four children in St. Paul. He died in St. Paul on December 29, 1910 at the age of 78, according to the December 31, 1910 St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Bibliography

CultureBrokers Foundation, Inc. “Lower (Lambert’s) Landing.” Saint Paul Historical, accessed 23 Aug. 2026. https://saintpaulhistorical.com/index.php/items/show/253.

CultureBrokers Foundation, Inc. Points of Entry: The African American Heritage Guide to Saint Paul, 2008.

Lehman, Christopher P. Slavery in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1787-1865: A History of Human Bondage in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, 2011.

St. Paul Pioneer Press, 1895.

St. Paul Pioneer Press, 31 Dec. 1910.

Swanson, Deborah. “Joseph Farr remembers the underground railroad in St. Paul.” Minnesota History, Fall 2000.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Joseph Daniel Fischer was born on March 26, 1869, in Carlsruhe, in Carrick Township, Bruce County, Ontario, Canada. His parents were Paul Joseph Fischer (1842-1938) and Julianna Boppre Fischer (1847-1910.). They occupied a farm in Canada. When Joseph was two years old, the family moved to Shakopee.

Joseph grew up in Shakopee and attended school here. In 1898, he moved to St. Louis, but two years later Joseph moved back to Shakopee.

In St. Paul, Joseph married Annie Christine Kreger at the Church of St. Agnes on July 25, 1900. Annie Christine Kreger was born June 28, 1871, in Waconia, and died in Shakopee in 1951. Her parents were Andrew Ferdinand Kreger (1839-1916) and Mary Ann Moormann Kreger (1845-1916).

Joseph and Annie took up residence in Shakopee, where they had four children: Evelyn Margaret Fischer Strunk, Beaty Anna Beatrice Fischer, Cyrus Joseph Fischer, and Joseph Daniel Fischer.

Joseph opened the Shakopee Stone Works. In an article in the Scott County Argus on August 4, 1898, Joe, along with John Ring, worked to turn out blocks of cement at the rate of a hundred a day. “Everything at the works has been arranged to give the greatest convenience, and the way that the cement blocks are turning out from the mould show that the firm knows its business.” The Shakopee Stone Works was in what is now the library block in downtown Shakopee. “Out in the drying lot are rows of several hundred blocks now going through the ‘sweat’ while on the drying racks within are those of later manufacture. In another place is a section of walk laid to show the appearance of the finished pavement.

“The blocks are made square, 18 inches in size, and in octagons. The colors are white and slate.”

While in St. Louis, Joseph learned the science of the work from people in the cement stone works. The firm let people know that they could put down the walk for ninety cents a yard, or furnish the blocks for sixty cents a yard.

In another article in the Shakopee Tribune on November 18, 1904, Joseph and his brother-in-law L.G. Hoffmann of St. Paul leased the building belong to the Conter estate on Lewis Street (formerly occupied by Joseph Spindler) and were in the process of opening a meat market. Hoffmann was an experienced butcher and would be in charge of the shop.

Joseph was an industrious man who loved his work. In fact, this love of work, an admirable quality of character, brought on his untimely death, according to the Scott County Argus on November 28, 1929. He recently had some health problems and so was not permitted to carry on the labor. But Joseph did not give in to the demands of health. Ten days before he died, Joseph was engaged in the construction of a chimney on a residence in Shakopee.

“It was while he was making an examination of the work which had risen about a foot above the roof of the dwelling, that he fell about sixteen feet from the roof to the ground,” said the newspaper. “His limbs were severely injured and he sustained a fractured skull. The latter proved fatal and death occurred on November 25 at 5:45 a.m.”

Joseph Daniel Fischer’s service was at St. Mark’s Catholic Church, with Father Savs officiating. He was interred at the Catholic Cemetery on Tenth Avenue.

Bibliography

Scott County Argus, 4 Aug. 1898.

Scott County Argus, 28 Nov. 1929.

Shakopee Tribune, 18 Nov. 1904.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Joseph Bernard Schleper was born on April 11, 1928, outside of Farming, Minnesota, at a farm! He was the youngest of nine children of Herman and Mary Dingmann Schleper. After chores, Joe used to practice baseball with his six brothers and his father.

He graduated from Albany High School in 1946 and enrolled at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota.

Joe was drafted as a pitcher by the Detroit Tigers and played minor league baseball for one year before returning to finish his college education at St. Cloud State University where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1951. He was drafted into the US Marines and served his country during the Korean War from January 18, 1952, until January 17, 1954.

He married Rose Marie Weidner on August 16, 1954, in Regal, Minnesota. Together they had eight children: Joseph Herman, Linda Marie, Jeanne Patrice, David Robert, William John, Gary Michael, Thomas Patrick, and Jennifer Anne.

Joe began his teaching career in Belgrade. After eight years he accepted a teaching and coaching position at the Shakopee High School in Shakopee in 1962. In 1966 Joe became the high school’s athletic director while continuing to teach sophomore history and coach varsity baseball. He served as president of the Minnesota State Baseball Coaches Association from 1972 to 1973. Joe retired as the Shakopee High School baseball coach in 1976, and as a teacher in 1989.

Joe became a member of the Shakopee High School Hall of Fame in 1986. He also was a member of the Albany High School Athletic Hall of Fame, the Minnesota Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame, and was past president of the Minnesota State High School Baseball Coaches Association.

He received the Dick Siebert Award in appreciation for contributions toward high school baseball in 1980. In 1990 he retired as the Shakopee High School athletic director, was elected into the Minnesota Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame, and became the executive secretary of the Missota Conference, a position he held until his death. Joe was a charter member of the Albany High School Athletic Hall of Fame in 1996, and he received the Jim Dimmick Retired Baseball Coach Award in 1997.

He was inducted into the Shakopee High School Athletic Hall of Fame on May 31, 1998, just a few weeks after he died. Also after his death, the baseball stadium at Tahpah Park in Shakopee was named Joe Schleper Stadium. A few years ago, a second ballpark was named after Joe and his brothers in Farming, Minnesota. The Schleper Brothers Field was named in 2017 and has been the home of the Stearns County League Farming Flames since 1946. Herman Schleper convinced the church in Farming to build a baseball field. Joe’s father, Herman, brought in loads of dirt for the original field in Farming!

Joseph Bernard Schleper died on May 8, 1998, and was buried at Fort Snelling National Cemetery in Minneapolis.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Helen McCann White in the book Ho! For the Gold Fields: Northern Overland Wagon Trains of the 1860s mentioned the first African American arrived back when Helena, Montana was still the Last Chance gold camp. Joseph Allen, a hack driver from Saratoga Springs, New York, arrived there with the Holmes wagon train in 1864.

Pre-dating Uber drivers by about 160 years, the hackmen used to provide transportation to locals and visitors alike. Hackmen used to rule the streets of the city, taking people wherever they wanted to go. Joseph Allen was a hackman from Saratoga Springs when he, along with several other people, headed to Shakopee, Minnesota in 1864 to join the Holmes wagon train to the gold fields out west.

The Shakopee Argus, on April 30, 1864, announced that Thomas A. Holmes would again go west. On May 7, 1864, Holmes called a meeting with prospective travelers at the National Hotel in Shakopee.

“By the middle of May, Shakopee’s main street was thronged with emigrants and cluttered with their wagons. Most of the group came from towns and farms in southern Minnesota.” Others who joined the Holmes train came from Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The emigrants left Shakopee on May 19, 1864, and they straggled up the Minnesota River Valley.

The size of the train can only be approximated, but a guess would range from 113 to 175 wagons, and 200 to 300 people. Fourteen women also joined the train.

Less than half of the emigrants are known today. A few of the members included John Brounworth (farmer), James Hair, Trume Henry, John H. Jurgens (blacksmith, merchant, and miner), and Frank Kennedy (livery business) of Shakopee. John C. Sommerville and his wife, Sophronia along with Trume Strait (farmer), John H Tibbetts (jeweler), George W. White (bricklayer and miner), Paul Weydert (wagonmaker, farmer, and rancher), his wife, Mary A. Geyermann Weydert, and their baby, Peter also headed out. And Joseph Allen, a hack driver who was African American, also joined the train.

In Shakopee, merchants were thrilled to be supplying many of the emigrants’ supplies.

The wagon trains included food supplies, which were stowed near the front, within easy reach. It took about three or four months to get to the gold fields, though the emigrants were advised to take enough provisions for a year. “Flour, dry beans and peas, corn meal, oatmeal, hominy, rice, and other cereals were commonly included in the food stocks, as were crackers, zwieback, sugar, salt, pepper, saleratus (baking soda), lard tea, and coffee. Bacon ham, salt pork, and cheese were popular,” wrote McCann White.

A few emigrants took chickens and a few pigs to butcher on the trail. Root vegetables like onions, potatoes, turnips, as well as dried apples, peaches, raisins, pumpkins, and sweet corn were also added. Some jars of preserved fruits and vegetables were put into barrels of flour to keep them from breaking.

Besides food, the family wagon contained furnishings for life on the trail and in their new homes at the mines, wrote McCann White. Lanterns, candles, frying pans, a Dutch oven, a wash tub, and a clothesline, along with a ten-gallon pail or barrel for water, and a bucket of tar to grease the wagon wheels were added. Picks, shovels, pans, and mining implements were also added to the wagon, and a tent, trunks of clothes and bedding, along with tobacco, ammunition, or boots were included. Medicine, soap, herbs, and whiskey would be tucked away in odd corners of the wagon.

Most accounts of the African American men and women, free and slave, who came by overland routes were members of companies organized by whites. The African American generally remained nameless or known only by their first names. The common relationships of the African Americans were servant, laborer, or enslaved person. However, at least three men of African ancestry were guides for overland parties, including James Beckwourth, a black scout, fur trapper, Indian chief, and guide, and an unnamed Black interpreter who spoke several Indian languages, and well as French.

Sometimes the diaries had occasional commentary who observed African Americans in companies nearby or passing through. Those who did write about the African Americans in their diaries used the designations Negro, black, or colored interchangeable. They did not distinguish between enslaved people from free men or women.

In 1864, Chinese Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, and Jewish people were living in Helena.

Joseph Allen arrived in September of 1864, but according to Ellen Baumler, moved on afterwards. No more information about Joseph Allen has been found.

Bibliography

Shakopee Argus, 30 April 1864.

McCann White, Helen. Ho! For the Gold Fields: Northern Overland Wagon Trains of the 1860s. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2004.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Joleen Marie Benoit was born in February of 1950, daughter of Jerome Leonard Benoit (1921-2012) and Elizabeth “Betty” Scroggins Benoit (1925-2006). She was the third oldest of six children in the family.

The Shakopee Jaycees sponsored her in the pageant, which took place on June 10, 1972. Joleen had just graduated from Shakopee High School in 1972.

Joleen had played guitar for four years and always enjoyed music. She sang in choral and folk groups, according to the June 20, 1973 Shakopee Valley News.

Joleen was also involved in high school productions, including a lead in Guys and Dolls and The King and I.

When she participated in the Shakopee pageant, she sang “Killing Me Softly With His Song” by Roberta Flack.

Patty Kelzer won, but then was named the Queen of the Lakes, and Joleen ended up in Austin, Minnesota, where she sang again, and won the Miss Minnesota pageant.

So, she represented the city of Shakopee in the Miss America Pageant in September in Atlantic City.

Although she did not win, they expressed her hope for a career in entertainment. She added that she hoped she would fulfill her dream of preforming on Broadway or singing with a big band.

On February 3, 1980, she married Michael J. Crosby, also known as Michael Joseph Krzyzaniak. In was not a good marriage, and she later divorced him. He ended up orchestrating a $20 million investment scam, where he persuaded 6,000 people, including veterans, to buy a medallion honoring the people of the Vietnam War. In 1993 he was guilty. He escaped, but finally was found in Florida. He served time in a federal prison, and then was caught again, and at age 64 was sent to prison for 151 months in 2013. He died there.

Joleen, after the pageant, went on a Miss America USO Troops tour, and recorded some songs. A few of them were popular for a time.

“I was a singer in our tour group – played a twelve-string guitar. I went on to perform in Brazil and Japan, and eventually had a number one record in Japan in 1990,” said Joleen Benoit.

Joleen remembered, “Simply happy to connect with others who have experienced the ‘magic’ of this tiny little island dropped in the middle of the most beautiful ocean in the world…the Indian Ocean…!”

In 1982 Jolen was named host of PBS’s Nighttimes Variety and was part of the show’s all female band, “Women Who Cook.” They became quite the rage in the Twin Cities in the early 1980s and she and the other ladies performed a sold-out concert with the band at the historic Guthrie Theater.

She was also an entertainment reporter and co-host of the Good Company variety show at KSTP-TV in Minneapolis from 1989-1991.

In 2000, Joleen also released a holiday album called Another Year.

She has had a very successful music career and currently runs her own production company.

Bibliography

Shakopee Valley News, 20 June 1973.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

According to The Diary of Daniel M. Storer, “The night of the 20th, Blind Boone gave a concert here. He is a splendid pianist, the best I have ever heard.”

John William “Blind” Boone was an American pianist and composer of ragtime music. He was born near Miami, Missouri on May 17, 1864, to a contraband slave, Rachel Carpenter, who had been owned by descendants of Daniel Boone. His father, Private William S. Belcher, was a bugler in the Seventh Missouri State Militia Cavalry.

Doctors removed both of Boone’s eyes when he was six months old, attempting to cure his brain fever.

Boone’s mother, Rachel Carpenter Hendricks, worried that her son would find life too difficult without some education, so the hometown of Warrenburg, Missouri decided to pay for Boone to go to the St. Louis School for the Blind. It was here that he played the piano for the first time.

When Blind Boone returned to school after a break, he found a new superintendent who did not believe African American students should have the same privileges as white students. The superintendent would not allow Black students to play piano at school. Unable to bear the new rules, Boone started skipping class to go to the Tenderloin District near the school. The area was poor and densely populated. Boone listened and played music with other African American musicians who worked in the saloons. Once the principal found out, Boone was dismissed from the school!

Returning to Warrenburg, Blind Boone was discovered by John B. Lange, Jr., who put Boone on the road in 1879.

Blind Boone was one of the first musicians to bring Black folk music to the concert stage. When the audience would become bogged down by his impeccable renditions of lofty classical standards, Boone would sense this, and break into a rollicking rag, a practice he affectionately referred to as “puttin’ the cookies on the lower shelf.”

It turns out Blind Boone was one of the first musical composers to blend European classical styles with folk music. He took African American and Afro Caribbean folk styles such as plantationmelodies and minstrel tunes, and put them in classical forms, then performed the pieces in concert halls.

And, he’s perhaps not so much a ragtime musician – his music really didn’t fall into the ragtime genre during his era – as he was an early innovator that created some of the musical building blocks that led to not only ragtime, but blues and jazz.

Boone was generous to those around him. He supported churches and other organizations. Once, in Kansas, he was denied a room at the only local hotel. An elderly relative offered Boone and his group to use her home. When Boone learned she had $360 remaining on her mortgage, a large amount in those days, he paid off her loan. Lange often said, “Boone is charitable, and I have been authorized by him, whenever I see a deserving person in need of assistance to assist such person in his name.”

Boone could tell a child’s age by putting his hand upon a child’s head. He had a very happy and warm personality and children loved him.

John William “Blind” Boone died of acute deflation of the heart on October 4, 1927.

Bibliography

The Diary of Daniel M. Storer from 1849 to 1905: A Pioneer Builder and Merchant-His Personal History of Shakopee, Minnesota from August 1853 to January 1905. Shakopee Heritage Society, 2003.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

John Tudantoiciya Bluestone was born in 1835 in the territorial era of Minnesota, the son of Candeskamani and Blue Eyes Anptuokiyewiŋ.

John Tudantoiciya Bluestone married Haliestone Anna Josephine Makahdegawiŋ Allen. John moved to Eagle Creek (now part of Shakopee) in 1856. The Federal Census and the Minnesota Census show that they lived in Eagle Creek, and the Scott County Plat Map of 1898 show that they were farming in Eagle Creek area.

John spent a lot of time hunting, trapping, and fishing, often with a neighbor, Ed Gilkey. They both enjoyed the fun, and both enjoyed telling stories.

An article in the Minneapolis Journal on May 20, 1901 discusses Ed, who was a storyteller and fisherman in the area. According to the article, “Ed’s versatility is only equaled by his disdain for one who would sacrifice a good story for the sake of veracity.” Ed was a hunter, trapper, fisherman, carpenter, farmer, and woodcutter. He was found by the author of this article in 1901. Ed was fishing from an exposed rock, surrounded by water, off Clark’s point.

“How are they biting, Ed?” the author asked.

“Middlin’ well, considerin’ I ain’t took a drink in a month.” Ed’s philosophy was to drink every time a fish is landed.

“Say, Ed,” the author said, as his boat grated against the rock, “you spin that yarn you’ve be telling about the snake skin, and I’ll let you wet your whistle with some sure-’nough moonshine from old Kentuck.”

“Well, mister, jes’ let me sample that air moonshine – I ken tell it by the small, all right – and I’ll tell you ‘bout the truest and strangest thing that ever was.”

As Ed put a fresh shiner on the hook and contaminated the clear water with a streak of tobacco juice, he said, “You’ve heard of that old Injun, John Bluestone, who used to be ‘bout these parts, I reckon?” Ed was talking about John Tudantoiciya Bluestone, who was living and farming in Eagle Creek. “Wa’al, old John and me used to do a pile of huntin’, trappin’, and fishin’ together away back in the sixties (1860s), and I reckon we was ‘bout as chummy as a white man and an Injun ever got.” Of course, the use of “Injun” is not very nice, and should not be used, but this was written in 1901.

“We had a cabin out in the brush about a mile west of the old Injun reservation.” (This would be the “Shakopee Sioux Reservation” often shown in post cards. But the place was not a reservation (the Otherday family bought the land), and is actually not in Shakopee, but across the river, in East Shakopee near Memorial Park, on the north side of the river in Eden Prairie, at least it showed the location.

”One night – I disremember the month ‘cept it wuz late fall – arter I had stowed the supper things away and was settin’ afore the fire, sorter softenin’ up one a full belly and a pipe of good terbac, old John comes in with a pack of bacon and flour on his back. He’d been into Shakopee, and wuz chuck full of firewater and fight. He rummaged around and got some grub; then he lit his pipe and laid down on his bunk.”

John told Ed that some Anishinaabe (sometimes called Ojibwa) had been to Shakopee and there was a fight. One Anishinaabe had stolen a Dakota woman. Then John mentioned that he had a woman, who was Catholic, and was a sweetheart with John. “Guess me get married,” he said.

“I didn’t give a hang if the Injun did get married, so I says: ‘Go ahead, John, jes’ the thing yer want to do.’ Wa-al, the next mornin’ he went back to Shakopee and I moved up to Fish Lake, leavin’ the cabin empty.

“‘Bout a week afterwards, I wuz fishin’ at the lower end of this lake and I caught a corkin’ big pickerel. I toted him over to my Fish lake shack and cut him open, and darned if he didn’t have small-sized prairie bull-snake inside of him – that’s what I thought it wuz, anyway, until I examined it and discovered that it wuz a snakeskin purse, jes’ like old Bluestone had, and inside that air purse wuz one of these hitching certificates – yer know one of them papers a feller gits when he gets hitched to a gal. I made out the names, John Bluestone and Annie Iron Toe (Haliestone Anna Josephine Makahdegawiŋ Allen), and the next day I struck out fer the shanty and found John and wife livin’ together.

“I shoved the paper under his nose, and I never seen an Injun get so goldarned crazy. Annie, too, she spluttered around in Sioux and white folks’ lingo (Dakota and English), fit to kill.

“After everyone quieted down, and John said, ‘Blackcoat marry me en Annie; much talk good medicine; me put paper me get from paleface chief in skin of snake and make big walk for tepee, take canoe cross lake, Annie she hold skin of snake, drop it in water. Heep big pickle swallow mighty quick; me no thing get back.’”

It is a great story, though it may have been exaggerated!

By 1900, John and Haliestone moved to Paxton, in Redwood County, Minnesota, where John Tudantoiciya Bluestone died in 1904 in Morton. He was 69 years old.

Haliestone ended up in Flandreau, South Dakota, where Annie enjoyed being around friends and family.

Haliestone Anna Josephine Makahdegawiŋ Allen Bluestone died on April 24, 1910, in Flandreau, South Dakota, having lived a long life of eighty years.

Bibliography

Minneapolis Journal, 20 May 1901.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

John C. Sommerville was born in Vermont in 1803. He was in the lumber business in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

He came to Shakopee in the spring of 1851, and was a pioneer associate of Thomas A. Holmes in Scott County. John located on a section of land where he built a house in Helena Township, in Scott County. Later he lived on the southern extremity of the street named after him: Sommerville!

John was elected Scott County commissioner in 1863, and he continued as a commissioner until 1864. He was farming there when he and his wife, Sophronia Perry Sommerville, joined the 1864 Holmes Wagon Train to Idaho to look for gold, though they ended up stopping in Montana.

In 1805, members of the Lewis and Clark expedition were the first white men to visit the valley. While investigating the area on foot, William Clark stepped on and had to remove 17 cactus spines from his feet. This caused him to name the nearby creek and valley Prickly Pear. In the early nineteenth century trappers came to the area, later to be pushed aside by groups of white settlers.

In 1862 a group of immigrants in a wagon train decided to build houses for the winter in Prickly Pear Valley, but this settlement proved temporary. In 1864, four ex-Confederate soldiers from Georgia discovered placer gold in Last Chance Gulch, the heart of Helena’s present-day downtown. The gold strike attracted hundreds of miners eager to find riches.

Other miners joined the Georgians to pitch tents and mine claims during the summer of 1864. Some stayed but most moved on, discouraged by the scant supply of water. In mid-September, the first group of emigrants arrived with the Thomas A. Holmes wagon train from Shakopee. They arrived at Last Chance Gulch on September 29, 1864.

The train included several hundred men and fourteen women. Only half of their names were recorded. Many hailed from Minnesota, but emigrants also came from Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and some were European-born immigrants. The incomplete roster includes several pioneers who stayed and became citizens of Helena, Montana Territory. Among them were long-time Helena attorneys John H. Shober, his partner Thomas J. Lowry, and pioneer rancher Nicholas Hilger. John Sommerville, who would soon play a key role in naming Helena, was also part of the group.

Most of the emigrants had no experience as miners, and the Montana Post poked fun at them, noting that they used blunt picks and worked “like chickens on a grain pile.” But some had good luck. John Marvin Blake of Wisconsin found one of the largest gold nuggets in the area, worth $2,300.

In the fall of 1864, the miners decided that the camp at Last Chance needed a proper name. They gathered and elected John Sommerville chairman. By October 30, 1864, the town’s official christening took place, according to several historic reports from eyewitnesses.

“(S)ome 30 miners crowded into the cabin of George J. Wood,” wrote Ellen Baumler. Chairing the meeting was Sommerville, a towering man who had arrived with the recent Holmes wagon train that had been on its way to Idaho, but had changed its destination to Helena.

The miners jokingly offered names such as Squashtown and Pumpkinville, along with the names of Winona, Rochester, and Tomah.

Sommerville proposed Helena. Since it was a Union mining camp, the miners balked at the name. Many of the mostly Union camp were reminded of Helena, Arkansas; Sommerville offered a different reason.

Sommerville stood up and rose to his full height. He said, “I propose we name it Helena after Helena, Minnesota, in Scott County. That’s where I’m from and that’s the best town in the best county in the best state in the union.”

Helena (pronounced he-LEE-na) won by two votes.

By the time Reginald Stanley returned to visit Helena in 1883, he was surprised to find the city’s name was being pronounced HEL-i-na, apparently based on a hack driver misspelling it “Hellena,” on the door of his hacks.

Over the next 20 years 3.5 billion dollars worth of gold was discovered in the gulch. By 1888 Helena was home to more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the world.

Sommerville made rich claims in a gulch near Helena, but lost part of his fortune in expensive litigation over the ownership of one of his holdings. John and Sophronia returned to Minnesota in 1867.

After returning from the gold fields, John used the money he made in mining to carry out his long-cherished idea of manufacturing a harvester to supersede the old platform reaper. He spent most of his money on this, but before he got it completed, Marsh, Steward & Company beat him to it.

The Marsh brothers believed two men riding and binding could do the work of four men walking and binding. John thought the same thing…but he was just a bit too late to cash in!

Sophronia Perry Sommerville died on September 8, 1872, and was buried in the Valley Cemetery in Shakopee.

Becoming disappointed and restless, John decided to start out for the mining country again, hoping to regain his lost fortune. But he did not reach there.

John Sommerville died penniless in St. Paul on March 7, 1889, at the Home of the Little Sisters of the Poor, aged 79 years old.

He died from a large wart that he had on the back of his right hand. He used all sorts of remedies to remove it, but without success. It finally turned into cancer, which extended up his arm and into his body. If he had consented to have his hand amputated way back in October when he was in St. Paul, his life may have been saved.

John’s remains were brought back to Shakopee and interred in the Valley Cemetery.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

A lone, nervous, unmasked man walked into the First National Bank in Shakopee on January 25, 1937. He had a dark overcoat and a light hat. The tall, thin bandit, the muscles of his emaciated face twitching nervously, approached the cashier’s cage and asked Lucille Schwartz, the teller, for change, according to the January 28, 1937 Shakopee Argus-Tribune.

Then the burglar suddenly pulled out an automatic pistol and demanded money.

Lucille Schwartz, E.J. Huber, the assistant cashier, and Fred Weiland, the clerk, were told to lie on the floor while the man entered the cage and gathered up the currency on the counter and the money drawer. The man then jabbed his gun into the back of Lucille’s neck and ordered her to open the inner vault.

She couldn’t. It had an automatic time lock. Upset, the man asked E.J. Huber to do it. Again, he explained that he couldn’t. The man waved his gun and shouted, “I’ll shoot! I’ll shoot!”

C.T. Weiland, cashier, stepped into view. With a menacing swing the gunman aimed his pistol and again shouted, “I’ll shoot!”

While the victims stood motionless, the bandit slipped from the bank, ran to his waiting car, scarily 100 feet away on the corner of First and Lewis Street. He jumped into the car with $4671 and sped north over the Lewis Street Bridge.

The people in the bank called the police, while others grabbed a car and pursued the fleeing car. No luck.

That would have been it…except for an article half a year later, in the Shakopee Argus-Tribune on June 27, 1938.

As it turned out, John Henry Seadlund was the bandit. In fact, according to J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, John was “America’s most cold-blooded and atrocious criminal.” Yup. The nervous man who stole money from the First National Bank in Shakopee was, besides a bandit, a kidnapper and slayer, according to the FBI’s Cases and Criminals’ article, “Charles Ross Kidnapping.”

John Henry Seadlund was born on July 27, 1910, at Fenco, Wisconsin, and his family moved to Ironton, Minnesota, when he was an infant.

Seadlund was interested in outdoor life and obtained his first gun, a .22 rifle, when he was ten years of age, and often went into the woods with other boys to hunt. As he grew older, he became interested in buying a larger rifle. Seadlund would often go into the Minnesota woods near Ironton and remain for several days on hunting trips. After he turned 14 there was very seldom a season passed that he didn’t kill at least one deer. He was apparently fond of hunting ducks and on his hunting expeditions would kill as many as forty ducks, although the law limited the possession of ducks for one hunter to eight.

He graduated from the local grade school in Ironton and graduated from Crosby Ironton High School in 1928. Following graduation, he went to work in the iron mines, working particularly in the blacksmith shops and machine shops under the supervision of his father. He appeared to be content with this type of work and worked regularly until July 1929, when, because of the Depression, he was laid off. In July 1929, he left home and worked various jobs in Chicago, Illinois.

Seadlund remained at home from September 25, 1930 until May 30, 1934 and tried unsuccessfully to secure employment in the iron mines, which, during the Great Depression, were practically shut down.

Meanwhile, John’s father, Peter Seadlund, died on March 23, 1933, at age of 51. His body was found in the family car, having died from carbon monoxide poisoning. It was speculated that his father’s death, the Great Depression, and a chance meeting with an infamous gangster (Tommy Carroll, gangster of the Dillinger Gang) pushed Seadlund towards committing crimes.

“When his father died, John tried to get work in the iron mines, but they told him there was nothing for him,” his mother, Delia Seadlund, later said. “He sat around home for two years. He was desperate for money,” according to Wikipedia.

Seadlund and James Atwood Gray kidnapped Charles Sherman Ross and hid in a shack a dozen miles north of Emily, Minnesota, while Ross was imprisoned in a nearby dugout. Then a scuffle broke out. Seadlund claimed Gray pointed a gun, hoping to get all the ransom money according to Curt Brown in the Minneapolis Star Tribune article, “Son of Ironton miner morphed into ‘nation’s cruelest criminal’ in the 1930s.” They fell into the pit, fighting for the gun. In the process, Seadlund wounded his accomplice and then shot him another eight times to finish him off. Ross suffered three skull fractures, according to an autopsy. To ensure his captive was dead, Seadlund shot Ross once in the head.

He threw their bodies in the pit, according to Brown, and covered them with brush. Three months later, after his racetrack arrest, Seadlund led the FBI to their frozen bodies and the hidden money near Walker, Minnesota.

John Henry Seadlund, characterized as a cold-blooded and ruthless kidnapper and murderer, as well as a lone bank bandit in Shakopee, was executed in the electric chair for the abduction and murder of Charles Sherman Ross on July 14, 1938. The date of his electrocution was exactly thirteen days prior to the day upon which he would have celebrated his twenty-eighth birthday according to Find a Grave. He was laid to rest on July 17, 1938, in the Woodland Cemetery, two miles south of Ironton, Minnesota, beside the grave of his father.

Bibliography

BMC. “John Henry Seadlund.” Find a Grave, 21 April 2006. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14017335/john-henry-seadlund.

Brown, Curt. “Son of Ironton miner morphed into ‘nation’s cruelest criminal’ in the 1930s.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, 12 Dec. 2017.

“Charles Ross Kidnapping.” Federal Bureau of Investigation. https://www.fbi.gov/history/cases-and-criminals/charles-ross-kidnapping.

“John Henry Seadlund.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Seadlund.

Shakopee Argus-Tribune, 28 Jan. 1937.

Shakopee Argus-Tribune, 27 June 1938.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

Thomas A. Holmes was stricken with “town-site fever.” When the Dakota were forced to leave the Minnesota River Valley area, Holmes and others knew that it was profitable to foresee towns. Holmes and others tried to be on the ground floor on their development.

The Shakopee Story noted that “(t)his was the first building in the original town site of Shakopee. It was a sort of block house, build with the help of John McKenzie, Emerson Shumway, and Daniel Apgar, who came with Holmes.”

John McKenzie was actually John Hamilton Mackenzie.

He was born on June 12, 1831 at Hoag’s Hollow, near Montreal, Canada. He descended from Scottish ancestry. His father took part in the Canadian rebellion, forcing him to flee to the United States in 1841 and was followed by his family. In 1850 he came to Minnesota with the John Stevens party by way of Wisconsin. The party settled in the area of Itasca. It was here that John was hired on with a Thomas Holmes, an Indian trader.

John helped build the Holmes Trading Post.

John became an Indian trader, and in 1852, he made a claim on section 34 and 35 in what was later Eden Prairie. He called the town Hennepin, and platted a portion of the claim into village lots. It failed to develop because of enterprises elsewhere in the township, and no traces remain.

In 1855 he went back to Illinois and married Mary Jane Trumble. It was about this time that John had lost all his possessions, including some 1214 lots in Minnesota. He returned to Minnesota that same fall.

Mary Jane Trumble Mackenzie died in 1870 at the young age of 34. They had a total of 12 children but only two lived to adulthood. Most died in their first five years. In 1874 John married Lavina Robinson, and that marriage resulted in four children, of which three lived to adulthood.

John moved to the Red River Valley in 1861 and settled on the route of the St. Paul-Breckenridge Stage.

When the U.S.-Dakota War started in 1862, John became a scout with headquarters at Georgetown, about sixty-five miles from Breckenridge.

When the Indians became a serious problem, the Selkirk settlement was used by the Georgetown locals for protection. John became a member of the United States Secret Service. In January 1864, John Hamilton Mackenzie ended up in Fort Garry, a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in Winnipeg.

“The snow was from eight to twelve inches deep and the bleak and desolate prairies were continually swept by blinding blizzards. Making their way over the frozen ground in forced marches half frozen and blinded by the pitiless storm, the little band reached Pembina on November 13, 1863. It was not until the middle of December, in 1863, that a little detachment of picked men started out to effect the capture of the murderous Indians.”

Ṡakpedaŋ and Wakaŋ Ożaŋżaŋ found shelter and protection under the British flag across the Canadian border and pitched their camp on the site of the old Selkirk settlement, about 25 miles up the Assiniboine River from Fort Garry.

John was secretly in cahoots with a U.S. Army major across the border in what would become Pembina, North Dakota. Mackenzie plied both Indian leaders with alcohol laced with drugs.

Ṡakpedaŋ, age 53, was dosed with chloroform and rendered unconscious. Wakaŋ Ożaŋżaŋ, in his mid-30s, struggled longer but several men subdued him. Both Dakota men were tied to dog sleds and taken to Pembina, then Fort Abercrombie, en route to Fort Snelling.

Trials were held and both were convicted despite sketchy evidence. According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press on November 10, 1865, “It would have been more creditable if some tangible evidence of their guilt had been obtained.”

Ṡakpedaŋ (Little Six) and Wakaŋ Ożaŋżaŋ (Medicine Bottle) were hanged on November 11, 1865. While Ṡakpedaŋ’s neck snapped immediately, Wakaŋ Ożaŋżaŋ dangled for 10 minutes before dying.

The Minnesota Legislature forked out $1000 to Mackenzie as a bounty.

John then returned to Hutchinson, Minnesota where he lived for many years. Finally, he moved to Blue Jacket, Oklahoma.

John H. Mackenzie, 89 years old, died on February 25, 1920. On December 1,1919, he had a paralytic stroke as the result of an automobile accident, and this was the cause of his demise.

Bibliography

Coller, Julius A. II. The Shakopee Story. Shakopee, MN: Shakopee Heritage Society, 2009.

St. Paul Pioneer Press, 10 Nov. 1865.