Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Mari Luz Palacios arrived in Shakopee, Minnesota on August 25, 1955. She was the first of many exchange students to attend Shakopee High School.

Mari Luz was from Madrid, Spain. When she arrived in Shakopee, she stayed with Dr. Bror Folke Pearson (1906-2004) and his wife, Elizabeth Stephens Pearson and their three daughters and one son. Dr. Pearson was a doctor in Shakopee for 42 years. In 1970 the B.F. Pearson Elementary School on 917 Dakota Street South was named after Dr. Pearson. In 2012 it was changed to Pearson Sixth Grade Center, and since 2020 it is the Pearson Early Learning Center. Mari Luz stayed with the family for one year.

In Shakopee both outside exchange students and exchange students arriving in Shakopee impact their lives and the lives of the families.

The Shakopee Rotary Club, which was founded in 1955, had 82 outbound students to 22 different counties. The Shakopee Rotary Club hosted 74 inbound exchange students from thirty different countries.

Mari Luz adjusted to her new life in America very well. She was selected as a candidate for homecoming princess in the fall of 1955. Her school spirit was exhibited at the games and the many activities that she took part in. Everyone in the class of 1956 loved her and never tired of listening to her speak.

Mari Luz Palacios returned to Madrid on June 25, 1956. She then attended the University of Madrid to study medicine. But Mari Luz loved her experience as the first exchange student to Shakopee.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

Marie D. Schneck was born in Menomonie, Wisconsin on April 13, 1909, daughter of Gustav Adolf Schneck and Marie Friendrike Hedwig Engel.

Marie moved to Minnesota and married Osbone “Ozzie” Wesley Klavestad, who was born on August 28, 1903, in Norway, son of Klaus Svensen Klavestad and Hilda Mathilde Roed.

Marie and Ozzie had one child, Marjorie Marie Klavestad Rines, in 1928.

In 1951, during a thunderstorm, Marie, along with Ozzie, found the building on the former site of the Gellenbeck Stage Stop (1849-1880). The two of them bought it for a place to display Ozzie’s gun collection. A lifelong collector, Ozzie amazed an assemblage of firearms including engraved rifles belonging to Jesse James, Annie Oakley, and Buffalo Bill Cody on the walls. A four-barrel, percussion plains rifle of Ṡakpedaŋ was also there, though it is now part of Hoċokata Ti at the Mdewakanton Sioux Community.

Marie and Ozzie named it the Stagecoach Museum, and over the years it expanded to include the Stagecoach Restaurant, Stagecoach Opera House, and the Sand Burr Gulch, a recreated old west street complete with blacksmith, barber shop, saloon, and with animated cowboy puppets that acted out jerky wild west scenes for the general public.

The restaurant had waitresses dressed as cowgirls, with earrings that were little, tiny six shooters that actually shot. Ozzie often came out looking like Wild Bill Hickok, shooting his pistols into the ceilings. One area had a Silver Dollar Bar, with silver dollars under glass. Heads of dead animals, such as buffalo and elk, were on the walls. A player piano played by itself and an old vending machine, called a mutoscope, had picture shows on it – put in a penny, turn a crank on the side, and watch the pictures flip through to appear like a movie!

Behind the museum was Sand Burr Gulch, which was a replica of a western town with over twenty buildings containing 75 animated life-size figures synchronized with recordings in appropriate settings. It recreated an old west street complete with blacksmith, barber shop, saloon, an underground gold mine, and the Palace which had an animated band playing Sousa’s music. On Sundays fast-draw shoot-outs happened in the “Old West” town.

Next to the museum was the Bella Union Opera House, where actors put on “mellerdramas” of yesteryear, where the audience can hiss the villains and cheer the heroes as loud as they want.

The Stagecoach Players company was founded in 1962 by Wendell Josal (president and managing director) and Robert Moulton (vice-president and artistic director) to perform melodramas with musical olios in the opera house of the Stagecoach Complex. In 1971, Moulton was succeeded by Lee Adey. The troupe mounted 44 productions in 18 years, playing to over 300,000 people in 1,898 performances, as a commercial company.

For thirty years, Ozzie and Marie ran their enterprise, with help from a few hired hands who helped run the restaurant and the theater and kept the place running.

By 1981, Ozzie and Marie Klavestad retired and sold the property. Though it was supposed to carry on the tradition, nothing happened, and the Stagecoach Museum began the slow descent of time into rubble, according to “How the West was Lost” by Joseph Hart in the Oct. 9, 1996 issue of City Pages.

In 1996, five fire departments burnt the remnants of the restaurant, bar, Sand Burr Gulch, and Bella Union Opera House. The area is now the Dahlen Sign Company at 901 Stagecoach Road in Shakopee.

Marie Schneck Klavestad died on October 14, 1983. Osborne “Ozzie” Wesley Klavestad died in a nursing home on April 6, 1986, the abandoned dream museum already in broken fragments.

Bibliography

Hart, Joseph. “How the West was Lost” City Pages, 9 Oct. 1996.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Marie D. “Mayme” Keup was born in Belle Plaine, Minnesota in 1893 to August Johann Keup (1855-1950) and Pauline Polly Bauer Keup (1866-1961).

Mayme married Adolph Conrad Frederich Schroeder in Belle Plaine on April 18, 1923. Adolph was born on May 5, 1884, in Shakopee, son of Herman Frederick Schroeder (1854-1922) and Marie Mary Reinke Schroeder (1851-1932). Adolph’s father owned a brickyard which developed into the Schroeder Brick and Lime Manufacturing Company. It was one of the leading and most prosperous business enterprises of the city and was well known in the northwest. While Adolph ran the business, Mayme helped in the office.

Adolph died in 1949, and Mayme became a widow. But she was a dedicated citizen of Shakopee and was involved in numerous activities in the area.

Mayme helped the United Fund and Red Cross. She was the Scott County chairwoman. She also served as secretary of the Shakopee Chamber of Commerce, and she was also head of the cemetery association.

In an article in the January 28, 1965 Shakopee Valley News, “You Name-It. Mrs. Mayme Schroeder’s Done Her Part,” Mayme was named recipient of the WCCO Radio “Good Neighbor Award” on January 25, 1965. She had lived in Shakopee for more than forty years. She had been a godmother and adopted aunt to several generations of children, attending baptisms, graduations, marriages, and she kept a well-stocked cookie jar handy, according to the article. She had been a backbone of the Scott County Red Cross since 1932 and had been a Sunday school teacher for 22 years. The blood program started in 1950, and Mayme nursed it and worked steadily for fifty years.

Mayme did county welfare work – before we had a county welfare department, according to the article. March of Dimes, Cancer Fund, Heart Fund, United Fund – you name it – and this lady had been part of it. And she still had the neighborly habit of sending over a big kettle of soup or fresh baked apple pie to families where illness or accidents struck.

In 1965, Mayme was named one of 100 Outstanding Minnesotans. She would feed those affected, many times taking brackets, linens, and supplies from her own closet to administer to those in need. She also helped locate and reunite many families of servicemen. She was vice-president of the Minnesota Red Cross Hospital Service in 1946, where she spent countless hours supplying comfort articles to patients in Veteran’s Hospitals, according to an article in the Shakopee Valley News, February 25, 1965.

At St. John’s Lutheran Church in Shakopee, Mayme had been a pillar of strength. She had been a Sunday school teacher for twenty years, president of the Ladies Aid Society and Women of the Church activities group. She was also the first woman to serve on the finance and building committees, and the first chairwoman of the church’s Lutheran Welfare Society.

In a 1971 Shakopee Valley News article, Mayme noted that she joined the Shakopee Booklover’s Club and had been with the group ever since that time. “We’re kind of proud of the fact that the club has been active since 1903,” Mayme chuckled, “And they say women can’t get along!”

One Shakopee man noted her volunteer service in numerous civic, fraternal, and church groups, and “has done more good for the county than any other person I know,” according to a Shakopee Valley News, June 30, 1971 article called “With Red Cross Over Half Century … Mayme Takes Her Swing at Everything.”

For the last 25 years, Mayme was secretary, treasurer, and manager of the Valley Cemetery Association, and when Marie “Mayme” Keup Schroeder died on July 22, 1973, at St. Francis Hospital, she was buried in Valley Cemetery, next to her husband, according to an article in in the Jordan Independent, July 26, 1973.

Bibliography

“You Name-It. Mrs. Mayme Schroeder’s Done Her Part.” Shakopee Valley News, 28 Jan. 1965.

Shakopee Valley News, 25 Feb. 1965.

Geis, Lois. “With Red Cross Over Half Century … Mayme Takes Her Swing at Everything.” Shakopee Valley News, 30 June 1971.

Jordan Independent, 26 July 1973.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

Margareth O’Keefe was born in County Waterford, Ireland in 1825. Her parents were Michael O’Keefe and Margarita Lannan O’Keefe.

County Waterford is in the province of Munster and is part of the southern region. It is named after the city of Waterford. Waterford city is situated in southeastern Ireland, on the river Suir (pronounced Shure) about seventeen miles from where the river enters the sea. Practically the entire city is built on the south bank of the river. The “old town,” now the business center, clusters behind the broad quay-front on a low-lying strip of land left behind by a gentle loop of the river at this point. From this, the land rises sharply to the east and opposite to the west while remaining level in between.

Waterford is Ireland’s oldest city. Though Waterford’s name is handed down from the Viking influence in the region, the area’s history of course precedes this. It was inhabited by a Gaelic tribe called the Déise, who conquered the area sometime between the 4th and 8th centuries after being driven out of the region known today as southern County Meath and northern County Kildare. They were converted to Christianity by St. Declan, who also founded the monastery at Ardmore.

The Vikings came to the area in the mid- to late-800s, as is evidenced by the remains of Woodstown, a Viking settlement just west of Waterford city. It is the only large-scale Viking settlement of that era to be found in western Europe and was likely the largest Viking settlement of Scandinavia. According to IrishCentral, Vikings founded Waterford city in 941; the name comes from the Old Nose Vedrarfjord. Reginald’s Tower, in the city’s historic Viking section, is the oldest civic, urban structure in Ireland.

Since then, it has seen sieges, invasions, famine, and economic highs and lows. It remains the foremost city in Ireland’s southeast, according to Wikipedia.

Margareth left Ireland for America in 1851, and became a settler-colonist, living in Ohio and Chicago, Illinois for two years. Then Margareth moved to St. Paul in 1853. While there, she met the acquaintance of Timothy Canty.

Timothy was born about 1822 in Ireland, and arrived in Lower Canada, and then to the United States. He came to Holmes Landing (Shakopee) as an employee of Thomas A. Holmes. Some said that Timothy came on the flat boat Wild Paddy in the fall of 1851, though others think he arrived a short time later. He came to file on a tract of eighty acres granted him by the government because of his involvement in the Mexican-American War, also known as the Invasion of Mexico.

While in St. Paul, Timothy and Margareth married, and they moved near Marystown to their farm in 1854. People said Timothy loved Margareth’s red hair!

Marystown is an unincorporated community in Louisville Township, near Shakopee. The community is located along Marystown Road (Scott County Road 15) and 160th Street West.

They had two sons, John in 1857, and Daniel Canty in 1859.

After working with Holmes in Shakopee, Timothy worked on the steamboats, including Greek Slave and Pocahontas. When the Civil War arrived, Timothy wanted to go, but he couldn’t leave his wife, who was blind at that time.

Timothy Canty died in 1885 in Louisville Township and was buried at the Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Eagle Creek.

Margareth then moved in with her son, John, for the next 16 years.

Margareth O’Keefe Canty died on June 16, 1900, and was buried next to her husband, Timothy, at the Calvary Cemetery in Shakopee.

An obituary in The Irish Standard in Minneapolis on June 30, 1900, noted that Margareth O’Keefe Canty “died at her home near Marystown on Sunday, June 17 (actually June 16), after an illness of sixteen weeks. Mrs. Canty (nee O’Keefe) was born in the county of Waterford, Ireland, left for America in 1851, lived in Ohio and Chicago for two years and came to St. Paul in 1853 where she made the acquaintance of Timothy Canty, and soon after married and came to Marystown in 1854 and settled on the farm where she lived until called by her Creator, respected and loved by all around her.

“The funeral took place from St. Mary’s church, Marystown, Rev. Ronald O.F.M, offering requiem high mass for the repose of her departed soul. Her husband preceded her in death 16 years ago, and since she then had lived with her son John, who cared for her, taking the place of a dutiful son and father.”

Bibliography

“What’s your Irish county? County Waterford.” IrishCentral, 28 May 2022. https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/county-waterford.

“History of Waterford.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Waterford.

The Irish Standard. Minneapolis, 30 June 1900.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Margaret Bridget Haley was born on May 24, 1824, in County Cork in Ireland. Her parents were Daniel James Haley (1803-1876) and Johannah Barrett (1802-1882).

In the 1840s, Margaret moved to New Orleans. She was there to join her brother in Pennsylvania. According to the Life Story of the O’Loughlin Family by Dennis O’Loughlin III, while Margaret was on a ship to New Orleans, she met a well-to-do woman who talked her into going to work for her in New Orleans. The woman said that if Margaret didn’t like it, the woman would pay for her way to her brother’s place in Pennsylvania.

According to Margaret, she never saw her brother or any of her relatives again!

In New Orleans, Margaret met Dennis O’Loughlin, who had been born on May 24, 1824, in County Clare, Ireland. Dennis was a medium-sized man with light complexion, though he turned darker after contracting yellow fever. Margaret was a good-sized woman, very outspoken, and could express herself in no uncertain terms.

Margaret and Dennis married in New Orleans. Around 1850, they took a steamboat to St. Paul, Minnesota Territory. Dennis worked on the Mississippi River on the levee, and owned lots where the state capitol now stands. The first of nine children were born in Minnesota, starting with Mary Ann, who was born in St. Paul in 1851, and the rest in Eagle Creek Township.

When visiting relatives in Le Sueur County, Dennis stopped in Shakopee. He met an old country Irishman who persuaded him to locate in Eagle Creek Township, where they bought 160 acres of unsurveyed land from Minnesota Territory for $1.25 an acre. The land, according to Dennis O’Loughlin III, was mostly covered with hardwood timber, some natural wild hay meadows … There was a creek across one corner and a small part of a lake on the property. Most of the land had to be cleared. The first buildings were upon a rise of ground near the center of the land, but a log house and others were built near the creek.

Margaret knew that Dennis was a hard-working man, but he often would go to Shakopee and met with his old cronies. He wouldn’t come home until someone went after him. Then he wouldn’t go again for a couple of months. He was well-liked and never quarrelsome.

Dennis and Margaret sold their lots in St. Paul to get money to bring Dennis’s parents over from Ireland. Michael O’Loughlin (1803-1865) who swore in Gaelic, and Bridget Moran O’Loughlin (1803-1862) both were buried at the Catholic Cemetery, but no markers were located.

The Civil War had been going on for three years in 1864 when someone from Shakopee came out and told Dennis that his name was on the list soon to be called up. If a man enlisted, he could go to whatever regiment he wanted to, and his family would get $300 bounty. So, Dennis went to Fort Snelling and enlisted in the Ninth Minnesota Volunteers because there were other men from County Clare.

Margaret walked to church regularly, five miles and back. Someone from Shakopee came to tell Margaret that Dennis had enlisted at seven in the morning. She walked to Fort Snelling, arriving at 1 p.m. Dennis was allowed to come back home for her for the last time. The children remembered the stick candy he brought to them, and the youngest ones got to wear Dennis’s soldier cap.

Meanwhile, Margaret cared for the nine children. The oldest was 13, and the youngest was six months old. Margaret had 12 acres cleared, dug ditches, and built rail fences. The family owned cows, but hardly anyone had horses at that time. Oxen were the main source of power, but it is not known if the family owned any.

The adjoining neighbors included Thomas Turner, Thomas Kennedy, Edward Smith, and Mr. Manning. The children remembered that potatoes piled in their jackets, and salt and milk was sometimes all they had to eat. The early settler-colonists were very neighborly. Whenever anyone of them needed help of any kind, others pitched in to help without being asked or expecting pay for it.

Dennis joined the Union forces into Nashville. In a letter home, Dennis said, “I am in the highest courage and good health, but I feel very much homesick and lonesome after the children.” A few days later, he was hit with a bullet hole between the left thigh and groin. He got gangrene which ate through an artery, and he bled to death. Dennis was buried in Nashville, Tennessee on December 29, 1864.

Margaret was left as a widow with nine small children. She got only six dollars a month pension at first, but twelve dollars by the time she died. She never considered marrying again. Margaret was a midwife and would also lay out the dead. At the wakes she would sing a death chant, but the children hated it and asked her to stop.

A squatter built a cabin on her land. If she allowed it, she would have lost the creek and the lake. When the squatter went to get his family, Margaret burned his cabin down. He did not try to build another. Margaret’s strength and fortitude were great. She was also a singer and dancer. It was said that she could play tunes on the floor with her feet and bring them out as well as if she had been playing some musical instrument.

Margaret was one of the hardest workers in getting donations to build the Church of the Immaculate Conception in 1864. She would ask for donations from people no one else would think of and got them, too. The church was dedicated in March 1866. It was snowing, raining, thundering, and lightning all day, but Margaret and her daughter, Nellie, walked to the dedication.

Margareth Bridget Haley O’Loughlin died on October 7, 1886, in Eagle Creek, Shakopee, Minnesota, and was buried at Calvary Cemetery on the top of the hill.

Bibliography

O’Loughlin, Dennis III. Life Story of the O’Loughlin Family, 1959.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Margaretha Mary Wolf was born on September 8, 1841, in Tettingen, Perl, Merzig-Wadern, Saarland, Germany. Margaretha, at age 13, came to America in 1854 with her parents and siblings. Her parents were Johann “John” Wolff and Margaretha Gerardÿ.

In the Minnesota Valley MINT, Monday, June 15, 1981, by Sue Warmka, the Wolf family had been in Scott County for 127 years. John Wolf, Margaret Gerardÿ Wolf, and their six children, including Margaretha, arrived on July 4, 1854.

“Because of Tettingen’s location close to the Moselle River, many immigrants followed the stream to LeHarvre France and left the continent from there. They would have arrived in the port of New York, going overland to Chicago, and on to Galena, Illinois, where they traveled up the Mississippi River to St. Paul. From St. Paul, it would have been on to Shakopee via the Minnesota River and from Shakopee, they walked the distance to St. Joseph, carrying all of their possessions,” according to the article.

John declared the intention to become a United States citizen on May 19, 1855, a prerequisite to receive homestead land from the United States government. John and Margaret received from the United States for $150.00 ($1.25 per acre) the west half of the northwest quarter of section 26 and southwest quarter of the southwest quarter of Section 23 in Township 114, north of Range 23. This is Sand Creek Township, but they had bought it before the township was named so it went by numbers.

This paper was filed in Red Wing, Minnesota, the land office at the time for the territory of Minnesota, on September 12, 1855. This deed was signed by President Franklin Pierce on Nov 1, 1856, in the city of Washington. It is certificate no. 275 in volume 1 with the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Eastern States Office in Alexandria, Virginia.

The land that John and Margaret settled on was hilly with heavy clay soil and covered with trees. Before the family could farm, they had to clear the trees, and they used the wood for erecting farm buildings.

On September 26, 1859, Margaretha’s parents donated three of these forty acres on the northwest quarter of the northwest section 26 to Rev. Thomas Grace, Bishop of St. Paul, Ramsey County. They were paid one dollar for the paperwork involved. This land is supposedly the cemetery of St. Joseph.

The Federal Census of 1870 shows John and Margaret living in Spring Lake Township, but with the death of John in 1873, Margaret went to live with her son Mathias and his family in Helena Township until her death from pneumonia in 1885.

Margaretha married Mathias “Matt Hennen” at St Mary of the Purification Catholic Church in Marystown on April 14, 1864.

Matt was born on February 20, 1833, in Bonerath, Rhineland-Palatinate, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany. His parents were Johannes Phillipp Hennen and Anna Claudina Theis. Matt had come over from Germany to the United States with his two brothers, Michael and Johann. Johann was lost at sea during a storm on the way to America, either washed off the ship by a wave or fell overboard.

After marriage, Margaret and Matt Hennen farmed near Marystown, just like their parents before them.

Margaretha and Matt had five children: John, Matt, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Katherine Hennen. They were all baptized at the Marystown church.

Mathias “Matt” Hennen died on October 23, 1891, in Spring Lake, and was buried at St. Mary’s of Marystown Catholic Cemetery.

After Matt died, Margaret lived with son Matt, Jr. Her son John was a close neighbor, and she may have stayed with his family too, according to the John Wolf-Margaret Gerardy Wolf Family Tree book.

Margaretha Wolf Hennen died on October 1, 1909, in Spring Lake Township, and was buried at St. Mary of Marystown Catholic Cemetery in Marystown, Minnesota.

Bibliography

John Wolf-Margaret Gerardy Wolf Family Tree.

United States, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Eastern States Office. Certificate No. 275. Vol. 1, p. 328. Bureau of Land Management, Eastern States Office, Alexandria, Virginia.

Warmka, Sue. Minnesota Valley MINT, 15 June 1981.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

As she got off the ship in 1852, red-haired Margaretha Flammang smiled and said goodbye to the people she knew. She was energetic. She collected her luggage. She was strong, well built, and healthy. As the crowd thinned and the last few stacks of luggage were being loaded onto wagons, Margaretha drifted off to read bulletins, while keeping a sharp eye on her small assortment of baggage, according to Dorothy Klein Luers in the book A Marschall Family History 1784-1980. She returned to a bench and sat down.

Boisterous Margaretha turned silent and looked sad. Nearby was Henry Marschall II. He noticed that no one arrived to meet her. Finally, Henry went over to see if she needed help.

“Are you waiting for someone?” Henry asked.

With tears in her eyes, Margaretha said, “I am alone.” In fact, Margaretha was born on April 16, 1830, in Konsdarf, Luxembourg. Her older brother, Peter, left a few years before, heading to the Gold Rush in America. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since. Margaretha’s plan was to find him in America.

Her mother went with her. The long trip on the ship, with the cold, wet weather, the poor food, the crowded cabins, and the sickness, including her mother, made it hard. Margaretha asked the captain, but nothing happened. The ocean trip took over three months. At one stage, the wind blew and the storm raged so savagely that the voyage regressed for three weeks. People died daily, according to Dorothy Klein Luers.

Margaretha’s mother died four weeks ago and was buried at sea.

Henry knew that Margaretha was a forceful woman. He admired her spunk. He sighed her deep laughter as she recalled happier times. He asked her if she’d like to help him build this new life in a new country.

And so, in a little French church in St. Anthony Falls in 1852, Margaretha Flammang became the bride of Henry Marschall II. They lived in St. Paul for a short time, then moved to Helena Township near New Prague. Margaretha was a loud, demanding, impatient, hot-tempered woman. Busting sod, building, growing, and all needed for the homestead demanded much work. And the neighbors were Bohemian, and the Luxembourgers couldn’t understand them, and the Bohemians didn’t understand the Luxembourgers.

The Dakota Indians would stop by, and asked Margaretha to give them coffee and food before they left. Sometimes Margaretha would make weak coffee. When the Dakota grumbled, she would say that it was all she had, and then she would slam the door when she returned to the house. For the Dakota, it was normal to share with others.

It was long hours, the winter was cold, and on February 5, 1857, Anton was born.

In 1862, the Marschalls decided to sell the farm. A woman who bought the place came to them with $1500 in gold pieces which she carried in the long apron that she wore!

Margaretha and Henry bought a place in Eagle Creek Township for $1200, which left them rich! The location was up the road from Shakopee, at the top of the hill. Margaretha and Henry had seven children, with Anton the only boy. After Anton and his two wives took over the farm, Margaretha and Henry moved to a house on East Fourth Street in Shakopee.

Henry Marschall II died on October 4, 1892.

Margaretha kept her spark. When Anton got his first family car in 1916, a seven-passenger Studebaker, Margaretha wanted to be driven to Hastings to see her friend and relative. She was impatient and couldn’t see a delay in starting. As they drove, Margaretha fussed at the slow speed, saying that she could have got there faster if she walked. Finally, they got there, and after visiting for 15 minutes she was ready to go home. There was no point in sitting around any longer!

On September 23, 1918, Margaretha died. She was 88 years old. She had been in failing health and died on Sunday. The funeral was held at St. Mark’s Church, and she was buried next to her husband at the Catholic Cemetery in Shakopee.

Bibliography

Klein Luers, Dorothy T. A Marschall Family History 1784-1980.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

Manuel “Manny” Lee Florez was born in Shakopee on May 1, 1938. He was the son of Bernard and Elizabeth (Weldon) Vig. His three sisters, Elizabeth, Darlene, and Doris, and his brother, John, lived with him in a house near Sand Pit Road in Shakopee.

Manny attended St. Mary’s School, and he served as an altar boy. He was a member of the St. Mary’s Altar Boys’ Society.

His friend, Nancy Metcalf Schmit, was with Manuel, as they were at recess. It was in 1951. Manny was in the eighth grade. While on the playground, Manuel fell and skinned his knee. He had to go to the hospital. Doctors discovered that Manny was the victim of bone cancer, and by January 1952, one of his legs was amputated after a serious infection in an effort to prolong his life.

Despite his surgery, Manuel remained cheerful and hopeful of recovery. He wanted to go back to participating in the Boy Scout troop in Shakopee. He was a model pupil, with an absorbing interest in schoolwork. At one point, Manuel gave a girl from St. Mary’s a locket, with a piece of hair in it. The girl held onto the locket and kept it for years and years.

Manny had to leave eighth grade when the illness forced him to leave St. Mary’s School. Despite his suffering, Manny looked forward to continuing his studies when his health permitted.

Manny’s illness lasted for ten months.

Nancy and four of her friends went to visit Manny at his home. The home was an old brick house, red in color.

When they arrived, Nancy asked if they could see Manny. She was told that he was in the room on the second floor.

As they crept up the stairs, Nancy and her four friends looked in the room. They looked in the bedroom. Manny looked like an old man, sitting on a chair by the window. As they headed back down to the first floor, Nancy was ready to ask where Manny was. But then it hit her. The old man in the window was Manny, slowly fading away.

On a Saturday morning in November 1952, Manuel Lee Florez died.

Manny had a funeral at St. Mary’s Church. Father Henry Byrne sang the requiem mass. Father Donald Salt and Father John Flaherty were present in the sanctuary.

Pallbearers, who were school mates, included Dallas Peter Capesius, Richard Wampach, George Schmitt, John Vierling, Thomas Hovorka, and William Ries.

Six Shakopee boy scouts served as honorary pallbearers.

The burial of Manuel Lee Florez was at St. Mary’s Cemetery, now called the Shakopee Catholic Cemetery.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

Major Richard G. Murphy was born in Tennessee on January 4, 1804, and he never saw the inside of a school except for a three-month period when he was 21. He fought in the Blackhawk War and in 1832 he was elected to his state’s legislature of Illinois. In 1848 President Polk appointed him Indian Agent in the Territory of Minnesota.

Indian agencies were created as part of the U.S. government’s efforts to control trade between the U.S. and Native American nations. Throughout its more than thirty-year history, the St. Peter’s Agency was administered by several individuals, including Richard Murphy, who was an Indian agent in 1848-1849.

During the early 1800s, the U.S. government adopted policies aimed at acculturating and assimilating Native people into European American society. Agents at the St. Peter’s Agency encouraged Dakota people to give up hunting as a primary method of subsistence, educate their children according to European American standards, give up their traditional religion to become practicing Christians, and adopt European American agricultural methods.

The U.S. government’s policy of assimilation would effectively destroy the traditional cultural identities of Native American nations. Many historians have argued that the U.S. government believed that if Native people did not adopt European American culture, they would become extinct as a people. This paternalistic attitude influenced interactions between the Dakota and the U.S. government throughout the first half of the 1800s, and its effects continue to be felt today.

Major Murphy’s first wife was Sarah Sally Lemen, born November 2, 1809, in St. Clair, Illinois. They married on September 2, 1834. They had five children: William, Mary Ann, Joseph, Benton, and George. His second wife was Nancy Glore, and they married on April 17, 1851, in Randolph, Illinois.

A stage line was established between St. Paul and Shakopee in 1853, and a ferry across the river at Shakopee opened the same year.

The first license for a ferry across the Minnesota River was granted to Thomas A. Holmes in 1853 and let to John Hare. The ferry crossed the river near the town site. On July 3, 1864, license for a ferry was granted to Richard Murphy at a point called Murphy’s Landing, about a mile below the village of Shakopee. (A third ferry was licensed on January 1, 1855, to Luther M. Brown at a point half a mile below Holmes Street. This ferry was of short duration).

In 1853 Murphy settled in Eagle Creek Township just east of Shakopee, where he built a large two-story house and hotel. It became a mecca for travelers, with good food, drink, merry dancing, and fresh horses. Back then, it was only about 1 ½ miles from Shakopee, and many parties and dances were held there. It was the liveliest pioneer inn on the Minnesota River between Fort Snelling and New Ulm.

Richard had exclusive right for 15 years to operate a ferry across the Minnesota. Nearby was a grist mill where Samuel Pond and Cordelia Eggleston Pond’s sons worked. The grist mill and the area where the Murphy’s ferry is now part of Three Rivers Park District’s “The Landing,” near Memorial Park in Shakopee.

Murphy unfailingly collected his fare in mid-stream, even during the Battle of Shakopee, which was fought less than a hundred yards from his home. The Dakota buried their enemies near Faribault Post, not too far from Murphy’s place.

Some Shakopee people called the inn “Murphy’s Folly” because Major Murphy supported David Faribault, who lived nearby. David wanted to develop Eagle Creek. Murphy had built his two-story inn, a wharf, and a huge barn for the products from the 900-acre farm. He thought that the railroad would junction at Eagle Creek. Instead, the railroad picked Shakopee. As the river trade and stagecoach travel succumbed to the railroad, so did the prosperity of Murphy’s Folly.

Richard was president of the First Legislative Session of the Senate in Minnesota. He was sworn in on December 7, 1857, and subscribed to the oath of office on December 8, 1857. He continued until December 6, 1859.

On January 10, 1875, Major Murphy died. In the Shakopee Argus obituary, the editor notes: “No man living can say that he ever deceived him by anything he said or done. He was, if you use such an expression, ‘Honest to a fault.’ He loved his family and his ‘kith and kin.’”

Once the railroads arrived, the inn became a farmhouse. By 1900, it was abandoned “to tramps and the elements.” In 1936, the National Youth Administration refurbished the three-story stone house. In 1947, it became emergency housing. By 1956, the house was owned by the city of Shakopee, and before too long, was torn down.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

C.M. Wilson was born in 1842 in Ohio. When he was nine years old, he moved to Minnesota Territory in 1851. In Thomas McLean Newson’s book, Pen Pictures of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Biographical Sketches of Old St. Paul in 1886, he writes about some of the people who lived in St. Paul, and biographical sketches of old settler-colonists. He writes about the settler-colonists from the earliest settlement of St. Paul from the east, as well as those from Europe who moved here, and continued to 1857. One person who he writes about is C.M. Wilson, the boy who engaged in trading with the Dakota in Sha K’ Pay, Minnesota Territory in 1853.

C.M.’s parents, General Thomas W. Wilson and his wife, along with C.M., came to St. Paul in 1851. C.M. attended Miss Harriet E. Bishop’s school for a year and also attended a mission school that was run by Rev. Breck. “C.M. was one of the oldest scholars living of both these schools.”

At that time, many kids were in two gangs in St. Paul. The upper-town boys would have contests against the lower-town boys. Sometimes the two groups would have pitched battles. “When quite young, he seemed to possess not fear, and was at one time the captain and leader of the upper town boys vs. the lower town, and all old citizens can readily recall many contests between these two factions, some of which ended in pitched battles,” said Thomas McLean Newson, p. 326.

In 1851 in St. Paul, C.M. Wilson and his friends heard screams in the direction of the upper levee of the Minnesota River. C.M. and his friends ran to the area of the river and saw people pointing to a man who was sinking into the water for the third time. Although there were several grown people witnessing the struggle, no one moved to save him. C.M. pulled off his boots, jumped into the river, and swam to the man, who was sinking below the surface. C.M. seized the man by the hair and pulled him to the shore. Everyone was impressed with C.M., who was only ten years old, but was braver than any others in St. Paul that year!

Another time, C.M. was at an old house, called the Daniels House, a wooden building of four stories on the upper levee in 1852. Suddenly, it was in flames, A lady boarder frantically and piteously looked up into the faces of several men as she said, “Can’t you save that valuable package?” She pointed to the Daniels House, which was in flames, and looked around. No one responded.

“I’ll go!” said C.M., and he did. He brought out the valuables, and just as he got out of the building, the whole framework fell in with a terrible crash! The brave traits of C.M. caused him to be in prominence. The adult population praised him, and he was lionized as a hero by the boys in St. Paul, according to Pen Pictures of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Biographical Sketches of Old St. Paul in 1886. C.M. and his brother were engaged in trading with the Dakota Indians at Sha K’ Pay, Minnesota Territory in 1853. He was one of the only white boys in the place, and the Indians called him “the little black head,” said Thomas McLean Newson. C.M. gained knowledge of the Dakota language and habits, and even thirty years later, the Dakota Indians would see him and remember “the little black head,” as they used to call him.

In 1855 until 1857, C.M. attended school in Granville, Ohio. He then returned to Minnesota and farmed until 1861, where he joined the Union army. Major Wilson was in a company of George Stoneman, Jr. (1822-1894), a United States Army cavalry officer. Major Wilson was promoted step by step, and each time for meritorious conduct.

In 1864, Major Wilson was captured and taken to Andersonville prison. He was also a prisoner in Monticello, Florida, and Florence, South Carolina. In Florence prison, he escaped with fifteen others but was recaptured using bloodhounds. Three of the fifteen prisoners were killed by the bloodhounds, while seven more died before reaching the Florence prison again. Major was held in high esteem by his fellow prisoners.

After the war, Major Wilson helped build railroads and became inspector of customs. He married Miss Miller of Ohio in 1871. They had two children, a son and a daughter. His wife died in 1884, according to Pen Pictures of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Biographical Sketches of Old St. Paul.

Major Wilson was a rather slender, wiry man, who was full of energy. He used his indomitable willpower in his aims and in his purpose. He had a very active brain, backed by nerve, and entered earnestly into his enterprises. He was liberal according to Pen Pictures of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Biographical Sketches of Old St. Paul. C.M. was liberal in his disposition, social in nature, a natural schemer, persistent in his efforts, and devoted to his friends.

Bibliography

McLean Newson, Thomas. Pen Pictures of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Biographical Sketches of Old St. Paul in 1886.