By David Schleper

Florence Courtney Melton told the story of her trip from the Ohio to Washington on February 24, 1929. The book was called History of a Pioneer Family. It was later donated to the Garfield County, Washington Historical Museum in Romeroy, Washington.

Florence’s parents were Levis Courtney and Mary Anne Ashbaugh Courtney. Levi and Mary Anne were the parents of six children. All survived to reach maturity except William Laurence who died at age one while they were still in Ohio. Florence Courtney Melton was youngest member of the family. The family lived in Shakopee for six years, starting in 1854.

Levis, Florence’s father, was a chair maker. He became ill with epileptic seizures in 1849 or 1850, and doctors advised him to move to a colder climate. He and his wife and children moved to Shakopee, Minnesota, but his seizures got worse until the entire burden of the family fell on Mary Ann, Florence’s mother.

There was quite a rush for the new territory of Minnesota in 1854. So, the family equipped themselves for the journey west. Florence’s grandma, her uncles Robert and Joseph and their families, and Jane Patterson, Comfort Patton, and Florence’s mother, Mary Anne, and family started overland for the great Northwest. Here is part of the story about moving to Shakopee from 1854 – 1860:

*****

My folks had one team. Mother took a dozen chickens. I think that was all the livestock. The children were not well. Mary had a chill every other day. She was much opposed to leaving her pretty bedroom. She made so much fuss that Aunt Comfort lost patience with her. She said, “You little dunce, if you stayed here you would die.” Mary said, “I don’t care. I would have a nice little room to die in.” When they began traveling they all felt better.

Uncle William Patton was a drinking man. He carried a bottle with him all the time. He ran out before they got to another town to stock up, one time. They thought of Mother’s bottle she always kept to use as medicine. He got very sick and had Aunt Comfort ask for a little whisky for William. He was taken with pain in his stomach. Mother fixed a dose of some whisky about half whisky and half of the hottest colic medicine known. He drank it down without stopping but when he could speak he said, “I was a damn fool to think I could fool Mary.” They never came to Mother again for whisky.

They traveled across Indiana and Illinois and took the boat at Galena, Illinois. They went to St. Paul. They camped until the men located claims. Uncle Robert and Robert Patterson settled in Wisconsin. A distressing accident occurred while they were camped in St. Paul. Robert Patterson’s oldest son went swimming in the Mississippi and sank within a rod from shore in water twenty feet deep. He was about 14 years old. Uncle Robert was an odd fellow. He was soon surrounded by friends. Everything was done for their comfort that could be done. This may have been the cause of their going to Wisconsin.

The rest of the party kept together and took up claims nine miles south of Shakopee, county seat of Scott County. It was dense timber. Indians were as numerous as the squirrels. There was a lake about a mile from our claim. Uncle Will and Uncle Joe took claims at the lake. Grandmother stayed with them most of the time.

It was September when they got started to work on their houses. They camped on the ground and the nights were quite cool. A neighbor who lived almost a quarter of a mile away had his cabin built. He offered to let the little girls sleep in his house. Mother used to take one boy with her and the girls. After they were tucked in bed, she would go back to the wagon where the other brother was watching Father. She did this for three weeks. She gave directions about the cabin.

The roof was covered with clapboards with logs to weight them down. There was a big fireplace at one end of the room; a small window by the door. The floor was made of small ash trees hewn on both sides and laid side by side; it was called a puncheon floor. Father took the adz and smoothed it; then went over it with a plane until it was almost as planed boards. Mother always said it was the whitest floor she ever owned.

They had no cook stoves, so she wanted a Dutch oven built of stone or brick out in the yard. There wasn’t a man who could build one, so Mother told them to haul some stones and she would build it herself. Uncle William Patton was always ready to help her. He got the rocks and she bossed the job. They built an oven and they used it as long as they lived in Minnesota (six years). The built some kind of shed for the horses; by that time winter was at hand.

That first winter was very long and lonesome. My father soon found he could not stand the cold weather. He and his brother Jake froze their feet every time they tried to work, but Baxter and Mary played out of doors with “Old Sorrel” and a jumper sleigh. The runners made shafts and cross pieces held it together. A seat was fastened on. They played for hours, many a day, with the thermometer 20° below zero.

The Indians taught the boys how to fish by cutting a hole in the ice and gigging fish. They could get necessary supplies at Shakopee, as it was a trading post established by the fur company. Shakopee is a Sioux Indian name that signifies six. The fur company had built six little cabins, hence the name. (Not the real reason for the name!) There was a company of soldiers who came up on the boat our folks came on; they were stationed at Fort Snelling as protection to the settlers.

The long winter came to an end. All was bustle and stir, clearing land, getting ready to plant a garden. Mother worked with the boys. Either that spring or the next, Baxter thought he could cut down trees equal to any man. He cut off one toe of one foot, and soon after cut three toes from the other foot. One toe hung by a thread of skin, the others were clear gone. Mother raised the scissors to clip it off, but he began to beg for it and cried.

He said, “Don’t take them all away.” She said, “All right, I’ll see if I can mend it.” She fixed some splints and set it; it grew together as good as ever – never a thought of a doctor.

She was the doctor for miles around – put the first clothes on all the little ones who came to the homes of the settlers. Also the Indians soon found they could come to her and she would help if she could. In March of 1856 (I believe) Cotapantopo, the chief of the Shakopee band, brought his squaw and papoose, a boy of two years, to Mother. He was very sick. She knew at a glance he had the mumps so she helped them care for him. They spread their blankets in a corner by the fireplace. They stayed there three days and nights. The old chief would try to get the baby to eat. He would smack his lips, and say, “Chehumpa” (sugar), but the baby’s throat was too badly swollen. Mother fixed some soft food for him. They seemed very grateful, and many a mess of fish and venison were brought to us in return.

When they had been there a short time, in Minnesota, Baxter and Mary grew very enthusiastic about teaching an Indian to speak English. He would say over after them in English after telling them in Sioux. He had played with them for an hour or longer when they ran and put their arms on Old Sorrel and said, “Horse.”

He said in perfect English, “It isn’t a horse at all; it’s a mare.” And then he laughed at them. They never gave any more lessons. The Indians would not speak English unless compelled to. One came once and asked for something to eat. He could not make Mother understand, so he said, “Mrs. Courtney, I wish you would give me a bite to eat, I am very hungry.” They were just like other folks; they would conform to the rules if they gained by it. I think the fall after the mumps episode my brothers and sisters all took the mumps from the papoose.

My mother was topping turnips to bury in the root cellar for stock food through the winter. A band of Indians came along, stopped and began eating turnips. She had a small pile of the most perfect ones for seed. One Indian wouldn’t take any from the large pile. She told him, “NO!” (and) jerked the turnip out of his hand, threw it down.

Father saw there was something wrong. He came to the door of the shop, hand axe in hand. The Indian raised his gun to shoot, but Mother struck the gun down. She called Father to go back in the shop, then turned to the Indians and told them to “pockochee,” which is Sioux for “Go home!” The other Indians took no part in the squabble. Some of the neighbors thought we would be massacred, but no notice was ever taken of it. Mother was kind to the Indians but she was the master; they had to come to her terms.

In looking over the timber on the farm, several sugar maple trees were found, so it was a regular job every spring making maple syrup and sugar.

The severe winters proved too much for Father’s health. They both longed for their Ohio friends. On the thirtieth of September, 1857, I (Florence Courtney Melton) was born. The other children were so near grown that I was hailed with delight. No doubt I was a fund of pleasure during the long cold winter. To illustrate what the winters were like, the thermometer froze up the six winters we lived there, with the exception of one.

Sarah was seventeen the twenty-third of November, 1858. They had a dinner and invited friends. The guests came in sleds and drove over a stake and fence to safety. When she married [Jacob Houk] the eleventh of March, 1859, the same snow was on the ground, and they still drove over the fences, and it snowed so hard the day of the wedding that some of the guests had a narrow escape from being lost.

The family became more dissatisfied with the cold and snow. They had an opportunity to sell the farm, and September 1860 saw us bound for Iowa.

Florence Emily Courtney Melton and her husband James Moran Melton (1849-1895) ended up having three children: Ralph B. Melton (1878-1949), Caroline Elizabeth (1880-1966), and Gertrude Lucile Melton (1884-1971).

And that is the story about Florence Emily Courtney Melton and her family in Shakopee!

The first physician was Dr. Frederic N. Ripley. He died in 1856 when he froze to death.

Dr. Ripley had a site near the Crow River. Dr. Ripley and Mr. McClelland started about March 1, 1856 from Cedar City en route for Forest City, for the purpose of obtaining supplies. When they were about halfway there, they lost the road, and wandered until Dr. Frederic Ripley gave out.

McClelland persevered, and at last found a cabin unoccupied. McClelland spent 16 days in this cabin, and only a pound of cheese and a quart of rice to live upon. His hands and feet became badly frozen, and had to be cut off.

Dr. Ripley, at the time of his death, was county commissioner of the new county of Meeker. He intended to make Cedar City his home, and was one of the principal proprietors of that town. He was supposed to be married in a short time to a highly estimable young lady of Minneapolis. The melancholy news had a crushing effect upon the poor lady.

(In other words, she needed a doctor!)

Dr. Frederic was 28 years old, and a native of New York, where he was connected with some of the first families. His remains were not found, and it was probable that the wolves had devoured him.

McClelland had a very hard time keeping the wolves off of him while in the cabin. McClelland was discovered by Messrs. Chapman and Moore of Glencoe while on an exploring expedition.

(Physician, warm thyself!)

(Some information from Shakopee Independent, April 2, 1856.)

In 1848 the U.S. government removed the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) from their reservation in the northeastern part of Iowa to Long Prairie in Minnesota Territory. The Ho-Chunk found the land at Long Prairie a poor choice to meet their needs as farmers. In 1855 they were moved again, this time to a reservation in southern Minnesota.

The Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) Indians stopped in Shakopee on May 31, 1855. They were removed from the Watab, on the upper Minnesota River, and forced to move to the Blue Earth reservation.

The Winnebago Indians came down the Mississippi River, and then up the Minnesota River. The Braves, the woman, the children, their dogs, and the canoes all came, creating excitement wherever they stopped.

Several days’ delay occurred at Shakopee for some reason, and the fifteen hundred Winnebago Indians were camping along the Minnesota River near Shakopee. Some of the Winnebago came into downtown Shakopee, and several of them were getting drunk. The white people in Shakopee was afraid, as the number of Indians far exceeded the whites, and the whites were not close to Fort Snelling.

The white people in Shakopee noticed that some of the Indians were drunk, and they figured out that Old Jenks, a white man living in the town, was the one selling the whiskey to the Winnebago. After ascertaining that Old Jenks was dealing out the whiskey, nearly every white man in Shakopee joined in a procession that marched down to the amazing Old Jenks’s house at night and saw the liquor.

B. F. Davis, who headed the party with a hatchet, rolled out a barrel of whisky. He poured it out on the ground and set fire to it. Lots of other bottles and demijohns were broken. It was all destroyed.

After all of this, the nuisance effectually was abated.

(Some information from The Diary of Daniel M. Storer from 1849 to 1905: A Pioneer Builder and Merchant, p. 65; and History of the Minnesota Valley 1882 by Rev. Edward D. Neill, p. 294)

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Elizabeth Lizette Schmitz was born Jan. 13, 1823, in Mönchengladbach, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, daughter of Wilhelm and Anna Gertrud Schmitz.

Lizette was a keen student and was well grounded in her profession, although she never graduated from a medical school. She grew up in Westphalia, which is a region in Germany between the Rhine and Weser rivers. As a girl she developed the ability to be a great soprano singer. A wealthy physician employed her as an instructor in singing for his only son. While there, Lizette studied with the German physician for a number of years and supplemented her knowledge by reading medical books.

In the early 1850s, Lizette decided to seek her fortune in America. She first settled in St. Louis. She met Joannes Josephis Antonius Entrup there. Anthony, as he was called, was born on February 8, 1821, in Westphalia. They got married in St. Louis and moved to Shakopee shortly after.

Anthony was a mason and bricklayer in Shakopee starting in 1855. He built a number of structures in and around Shakopee, including St. Mark’s and St. Mary’s, and the Argus Block.

Anthony and Lizette had six children.

While working at a building in Jordan, Anthony fell from the building and died on June 19, 1876.

Lizette then found her practice of obstetrics, or midwifery, her sole means of livelihood, and from that year until a short time before her death in 1895, she practiced steadily and managed to maintain a comfortable home for her six children and get them well started in life.

When Dr. Lizette Entrup began practicing in Shakopee, the settlement was still just getting started. There was no railroad, and the only way of travel was the Minnesota River and the crude trails made by white settlers, following the Indian trails of the Dakota. The pioneer doctor drove over these trails behind a yoke of plodding oxen, summer and winter, day or night, and always greeted her patients with a cheery smile.

“No trip was too long or arduous for mother,” said Antonia M. Entrup Strunk, one of her six children in article in the Shakopee Tribunein 1925, and in a book by the Shakopee Heritage Society called Recollections of Early Pioneers 1925compiled by Betty A. Dols.

“She never thought of herself, she was interested only in her patients. Many a night, she fought her way through a winter storm behind her ox-team to reach the bedside of a patient. Sometimes she suffered severely. I remember that on one occasion she came home early one winter morning. We children met her at the door. ‘Oh, mother,’ we shouted in chorus, ‘Your face is frozen!’ Sure enough, both cheeks and her nose and chin were white and numb. Mother simply went outside, rubbed snow on her face, and thought no more about it.”

There were few physicians in the Minnesota Valley at that time, so Dr. Entrup’s practice embraced a large territory. Lizette frequently was called to Glencoe, Jordan, Belle Plaine, and New Prague. Her fame travelled far and wide, and at the height of her career she was one of the most widely known physicians in the state.

Dr. Entrup was a physician with a general practice, but she gave much attention to obstetric work. She “brought more babies into the world in this section of the state than any other physician in her time or since.”

Dr. Elizabeth Lizette Schmitz Entrup died March 13, 1895.

She was buried next to her husband, Anthony, at the Calvary Cemetery in Shakopee.

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By David Schleper

Charles Sperry tended to say one thing, but do the other. Charles often had a lot of bets that he didn’t pay off. People in the town called him a dead beat.

One day, Charles was going around, but this time with plenty of money in his pockets. John Burnham found Charles at Peckham’s store, and demanded that he pay his debt quietly.

But Charles received no answer.

And so John knocked Charles down, and showed that he would repeat the treatment until his demands were complied with.

The fun part is that Charles Sperry was a big fellow, and had been regarded from his own bravado as almost a prize fighter, while John Burnham was smaller and made no such pretensions.

Charles Sperry promised to pay if John Burnham would cease with knocking him down. And so Charles got up, but then noticed that all of the other people in the store started laughing at him—the prize fighter on the floor. So Charles again tried to swagger away, and said he was not going to pay.

John Burnham again cornered Charles in the corner of the store, and once again told him to pay his debt. Charles realized that he was stuck, and he reluctantly paid with a $20 gold piece, which was the amount of the debt.

(Some information from History of the Minnesota Valley 1882 by Reverend Edward D. Neill.)

By David Schleper

On Oct. 13, 1854, a St. Paul newspaper published correspondence dated Oct. 10 from Shakopee, Minnesota Territory that included the news that “Mr. Judd, Daguerreotypist of Hennepin County, has recently purchased a lot upon which he intends to erecting a building suitable for Daguerrean purposes. Mr. Judd is an accomplished artist.”

The daguerreotype process, introduced in 1839, was the first publicly announced photographic process and the first to come into widespread use. It was a photographic process in which a picture is made on a silver surface sensitized with iodine that was developed by exposure to mercury vapor.

By the early 1860s, later processes which were less expensive and produced more easily viewed images had almost entirely replaced it. Daguerreotypes soon were obsolete.

The distinguishing visual characteristics of a daguerreotype are that the image is on a bright mirror-like surface of metallic silver and it will appear either positive or negative depending on the lighting conditions and whether a light or dark background is being reflected in the metal.

Several types of antique images, particularly ambrotypes and tintypes but sometimes even old prints on paper, are commonly misidentified as daguerreotypes, especially if they are in the small, ornamented cases in which daguerreotypes were usually housed. The name daguerreotype correctly refers only to one very distinctive image type and medium, produced by a specific photographic process that was in wide use only from the early 1840s to the late 1850s.

William S. Judd advertised his services as a daguerreotypist, ambrotypist, and silversmith in Shakopee, according to the ad in June of 1857. He noted that he had “taken rooms for a few days, in Holmes’ brick block, two doors north of the Wasson House.” Judd claimed to have had “the experience of a number of years in the business” and added that he was “in possession of all the recent improvements.” He guaranteed his pictures to be “equal if not superior in durability and artistic merit to anything ever produced in the County.”

On June 22, 1857, Judd took a daguerreotype portrait of Miss Abigail Gardiner, who had been captured by Dakota Indians at the Spirit Lake Massacre and later ransomed by three friendly Dakotas. Judd took Miss Gardiner’s portrait at the insistence of the editor of the Shakopee Valley Herald.

 

Inkpaduta was born in what later became the Dakota Territory shortly before the turn of the 19th century. He was the son of Chief Wamdisapa (Black Eagle). As a child, he contracted smallpox, which killed several of his relatives and family members. The disease left him badly scarred for life. After the father was later murdered in a tribal dispute, the band moved to Iowa, near the present-day Fort Dodge. Inkpaduta was an American Indian who was respected by the white settlers who lived amongst Inkpaduta’s people and traded goods with them.

Inkpaduta was born in what later became the Dakota Territory shortly before the turn of the 19th century. He was the son of Chief Wamdisapa (Black Eagle). As a child, he contracted smallpox, which killed several of his relatives and family members. The disease left him badly scarred for life. After the father was later murdered in a tribal dispute, the band moved to Iowa, near the present day Fort Dodge. Inkpaduta was an American Indian who was respected by the white settlers who lived amongst Inkpaduta’s people and traded goods with them.

Inkpaduta and his band were not signatories with the rest of the Wahpekute to the 1851 Treaty of Mendota, which transferred the land in northwestern Iowa to the United States. They refused to recognize the treaty restrictions. In 1852, a drunken white whiskey trader, Henry Lott, killed the new Chief Si-dom-i-na-do-tah, (Inkpaduta’s older brother) and nine of his family.

Desperado Henry Lott had built a cabin which became a rendezvous for house thieves and outlaws near the mouth of the Boone River. Horses were stolen from the settlements below and also from the Indians. He secreted them on Lott’s premises and from there took them to the eastern part of the state of Iowa and sold.

Inkpaduta succeeded his brother as chief. He told the U.S. Army of the murders, but little was done to bring the killer to justice. In fact, the local prosecuting attorney nailed the dead chief’s head to a pole over his house.

In the late winter of 1857, which was severe, Inkpaduta led his starving band into Iowa. On March 8 he launched a series of raids on white settlers in the Spirit Lake area, where a total of 38 people were killed. The European Americans called this the Spirit Lake Massacre. His warriors took four young women captive. Although chased by a civilian corps from Fort Ridgely in Minnesota, Inkpaduta and his band evaded capture. Two of the women were killed along the way (possibly because they could not keep up), and released the third relatively quickly.

And that is the story of Wiliam S. Judd, who lived in Shakopee, and the picture that he made of Abbie Gardner Sharp.

(Some information from Pioneer Photographers from the Mississippi to the Continent at Divide: A Biographical Dictionary, 1839-1865 by Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn, 2005 by Stanford University Press; and Shakopee Valley Herald, June 17, 1857 and June 24, 1857.)

By David Schleper

Susan Maria Hazeltine Adams and her husband Andrew settled in Shakopee in 1854. He was the first county surveyor of Scott County, and she was a schoolteacher. They apparently did not have children when she kept this diary in 1856. She was 29 years old.

March 30, 1856

Delightful prayer meeting…Spent eve in singing and praying. Retired early. (We) talked much about religion etc. after we were in bed.

April 1, 1856

Beautiful morning…I went to school as usual. Wind rose and rain began to fall at noon. It looked dark and threatened a heavy storm. Still I did not dismiss school until the usual time when it began to sleet, hail & snow, in the midst of which marched home. Found a party of Swedes had taken shelter there. Very stormy night. Thought much of my husband and hoped he is in some safe comfortable place…The weather more disagreeable than any I have known for month.

April 5, 1856

Lovely morning. Sun soon thawed the ground. Two years to day bade adieu to Pitt. (Pittsburgh?), perhaps forever. How little I dreamed about any of the changes which should take place during the coming two years. How little I thought my lot would be cast in Minnesota! That I should become the wife of a stranger in so short a time. How different the scenes! What a contrast in my feelings!

April 6, 1856

Cloudy morning but came out very bright & warm by noon…Had much trouble to cross the running brooks on the way. Found blades of grass long & very green. Strawberry leaves in abundance. Oh! Glad sight! Herald of the happy spring time! While at church heard the music of grogs. Good bye to Winter now! Had good prayer meeting…Walked home with A. Sat down by the brook and chatted together. What a pleasure thus to converse of spiritual things! May this joy be ever increasing while we live together.

They lived together another five years. Andrew died in 1861.

(Information from the Minnesota Historical Society, Susan Maria Hazeltine Adams Diary, from Too Hot, Went to Lake: Seasonal Photos from Minnesota’s Past by Peg Meier (1993), Minnesota Historical Society Press, p. 294.)

By David Schleper

Spier Spencer was born in Elizabethtown, Spencer County, Kentucky, January 22, 1827. His father was a prominent slave owner. He lived there until age 14, when his father sold his slaves and moved to Boone County, Indiana. The family stayed in Indiana for eight years.

In 1849, accompanied by his only brother, John B. Spencer, he went west and located at St. Paul when that city was still a small village. They worked as carpenters there until 1853. On November 16, 1853, Spier married Rose Ann Spencer at Traverse de Sioux. Rose Ann Spencer was the first white girl who married there. Spier and Rose Ann were cousins.

For thousands of years, Traverse des Sioux was a crossroads and meeting place. American Indians gathered here to hunt and to use the shallow river crossing. During the 1800s, Europeans and European Americans came to trade furs with the Dakota hunters and to farm the fertile prairie.

In 1851, it was the site of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, where the upper bands of the Dakota nation ceded about half of present-day Minnesota to the U.S. government in exchange for promises of cash, goods, and education and a reservation. U.S. government representatives negotiated the first of two treaties with the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands of Dakota. Approximately 24 million acres of Dakota land were transferred to the government and opened to white settlement.

The town of Traverse des Sioux soon grew up around the site with more than 70 buildings, including five taverns, two hotels, and several churches. In 1856, however, nearby St. Peter was chosen as the county seat and by the late 1860s, nothing was left of the once-booming town of Traverse des Sioux.

Spier and Rose Ann sold their farm and moved to Shakopee in 1853. He purchased 1/3 of the town of Shakopee from Thomas Holmes and David L. Fuller. It cost him $4100.

Spier opened a general store in Shakopee and traded produce and furs with the Indians. In 1855 he built a home on the site later known as the Major Strait farm. He had a side business in 1861 owning and operating a steamboat, Clara Hinds, on the Minnesota River. He was active in the affairs of the rapidly growing village of Shakopee.

In February 1856, with three other men, Spier struck out from Shakopee to stake out and plat a town site in the wilderness. They arrived and staked out the city of Blue Earth. Spier went back to Shakopee, while the other three became the county commissioner, sheriff, and justice of the peace of Blue Earth.

In the fall of 1862 a kernel of wheat struck him in the eye and caused inflammation, resulting in total blindness in one eye. Spier then disposed of the farm, bought a home on Second Street, and opened a private boarding house known as the Union Home. Later he mastered the trade of broom-making and supplied local stores and communities until 1895, when he retired.

Spier Spencer passed away on January 26, 1907 and was buried at Valley Cemetery in East Shakopee.

Rose Ann Spencer was born at Terre Haute, Indiana on April 25, 1834. She was educated at St. Mary of the Woods Convent.

In 1852 Rose Ann came to St. Paul with her parents, and she married her cousin and moved to Shakopee. Spier and Rose Ann had six children: George, Julia, Charles, Carrie, Hattie, and Belle.

Rose Ann was of a kind and loving disposition, a kind neighbor, and a loving wife and mother. She died on October 5, 1913. She was one of the pioneer residents of Shakopee, and she was “summoned to enter into the Great Beyond, and a general wave of sorrow swept over the community when his death was announced.”

This information from Shakopee Tribune Nov. 20, 1903 and October 10, 1913, and two obituaries of Spier Spencer: Shakopee Tribune Feb. 1, 1907; and Scott County Argus, Feb. 1, 1907.

By David Schleper

Ursula Kennedy Holmes was the first wife of Thomas A. Holmes. But for some reason, very few people ever talked about her. L. Kessinger, who wrote The History of Buffalo County, Wisconsin, said in 1888, “All the parties whom I had a chance to consult with regard to the particulars of the life of Thomas Holmes, himself included, were persistently silent on this one point (concerning Holmes’ first wife)…”

According to Lafayette Houghton Bunnell, in the book, Winona (We-No-Nah) and Its Environs on the Mississippi in Ancient and Modern Days in 1897, “There was a demon of unrest in (Thomas A.) Holmes, partly inherited, and partly the result of a misalliance with a woman entirely unfitted for frontier life.”

Ursula Kennedy was the petted daughter of a hotel keeper of Baltimore, Maryland, and came west with her brother, Robert Kennedy, and his wife and two children. Ursula Kennedy Holmes was much younger than her husband, and no doubt married with an expectation of wealth and a return to her beloved Baltimore. She soon saw that that would never be fulfilled.

Besides her dislike of frontier life, Ursula was subject to periodic attacks that made her frantic with pain. Without an option of a competent doctor, she resorted to the use of opiates, which finally enslaved her. Ursula probably kept a supply of opium paraphernalia such as the specialized pipes and lamps that were necessary to smoke the drug. She would recline in order to hold the long opium pipes over oil lamps that would heat the drug until it vaporized, allowing her to inhale the vapors.

In 1840, Thomas built a strong trading boat of hardwood lumber, partly covered with a deck. After floating down the Rock River over the rapids, he loaded up his goods above the rapids on the Mississippi River, and was towed to Dubuque, Iowa. Holmes stayed in Dubuque for some time while his wife, Ursula, was under treatment for what was termed heart disease by the attending physician.

Later, Thomas headed to trade with the Indians, while Ursula stayed in Dubuque with some previous friends for treatment. Thomas returned from his trip up the river with lumber, and had built a comfortable house. Ursula, who returned in 1841, had rooms assigned by her brother, Robert, and his wife, who kept the house for Holmes as a hotel. Ursula seldom appeared, but stayed in her room.

Thomas and Ursula had a partially adopted child with “a very little Indian blood in her veins,” named Matilda. (I have no idea what a partially adopted child is…probably a foster child).

Matilda was the only one called on when Ursula had her almost insane attacks of pain and aversion, not only to her husband but brother as well, for Robert had not sympathy for, nor appreciation of her condition, according to Bunnell. Robert would call Ursula’s pain “tantrums.”

In 1843, Bunnell was heading down the river to attend his brother’s wife’s pregnancy. Ursula wanted to attend, and she wanted to have Matilda along. Robert called Bunnell aside and said that if the boat tips, please save the child first. “Coming from his brother, the warning angered me, and I replied that both persons and their lives would be held sacred by me,” noted Bunnell. The remark showed that Ursula had a distrust of her brother and her husband. Ursula and Matilda, arrived safely.

Bunnell noted that he often thought of Ursula, and the bravery and devotion to Matilda. Not long after, he heard that Ursula was back in Dubuque, and he heard of her sudden death from heart failure.

There was no hope for any reconciliation or adaption to the frontier life for Ursula from her husband, Thomas. Thomas’s character showed the difference between him and his fastidious wife. Once Thomas noted, “While I can only just about write my name now, I can skin a muskrat quicker than an Indian.” Thomas loved the smell of the Indian camp, and of skinning muskrats, rather than the civilized life that his wife wanted.

Bunnell noted that he admired her good qualities, and death had cured her of her diseases.

So now you know about Ursula Kennedy Holmes, the first wife of Thomas A. Holmes!

(Some information from Bunnell, Lafayette Houghton (1897). Winona (We-No-Nah) and Its Environs on the Mississippi in Ancient and Modern Days. Winona, MN: Jones & Kroeger, Printers and Publishers; and Kiester, J.A. (1896). The History of Faribault County, Minnesota: from its first settlement to the close of the year 1879: in three parts: first part, the annals of the county; second part, historical sketches of the several townships; third part, historical sketch of the government of the county, and of the several county offices; the story of the pioneers. Minneapolis, MN: Harrison & Smith, Printers).