Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

Gertrude Siebenaler was born in Vermillion, Minnesota on Aug. 8, 1919, one of sixteen children of Leo and Magdalena Girgen Siebenaler.

Gertrude married John A. Roepke on March 13, 1947, in Shakopee.

Gertrude was a secretary for four superintendents of the Shakopee Public Schools and was also a historian. She documented the WPA mural which was at Fifth and Holmes Street in Shakopee.

The Federal Art Project was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. It was created not as a cultural activity but as a relief measure to employ artists and artisans. One of the WPA murals was painted in Shakopee nearly ninety years ago.

The project created more than two hundred thousand separate works, some of them remaining among the most significant pieces of public art in the country.

Artists were paid $23.60 a week; tax-supported institutions such as schools, hospitals and public buildings paid only for materials. In 1938, John Metcalf, Superintendent of the Shakopee Public Schools, asked the Federal Art Project of the WPA to create a mural. The mural was to be at the school library, and to show the history of Shakopee from 1842 until 1940.

Muralist Harmon Arndt, a graduate of the Minneapolis School of Art, was employed to do the work.

Harmon met with several of the town’s leading citizens, the school board, high school students and John Metcalf. After many meetings, the work began. Three other artists assisted Arndt who supervised the work. Classes of 1938, 1939 and 1940 donated funds to pay for the mural project.

The first panel depicts Rev. Samuel W. Pond teaching a group of Dakota Indians the Christian word for God and the arts of white culture and civilization. He and his brother, Gideon, came to Minnesota as missionaries from Connecticut in 1834, and in the fall of 1847, Samuel, his wife, Cordelia Eggleston Pond, and their first three children came to the village of Tínṫa Otuŋwe, or prairie village. Samuel called it Prairieville and it later was called Shakopee. On left is John Metcalf, who was superintendent of Shakopee Public Schools who asked for the mural. On right is also part of the first mural, showing the first steamboat to churn the muddy waters of the Minnesota River in 1842 bearing a party of pleasure seekers to Prairieville.

The second panel represents the laying out of the town site (even though a village of Tínṫa Otuŋwe and 600 Dakota Indians were already there for more than 150 years!). In the background is the tamarack log cabin/trading post of Oliver Faribault, who was one-quarter Dakota Indian. One important missing piece is that Oliver’s wife, Wakan Yaŋke WiŋWaken, was also there (though not in the mural). She was Dakota and was born in the Minnesota Valley among her Dakota relatives, including Ṡakpe II. Another missing person was Joseph Godfrey, who was enslaved. Joseph helped build the cabin, and around 1847 he escaped, walking forty miles along the St. Peter’s river to freedom. Two other early settler-colonizers included Thomas A. Holmes holding a scroll which is a plan of the future town; and David L. Fuller who looks through his surveyor’s transit. One person not in the picture was William Louis Bill Quinn, who met with Thomas A. Holmes at Fort Snelling in fall of 1851. Thomas discussed looking for a possible place for townsites. Holmes engaged Quinn as a guide and companion on an investigating tour. Bill, who was part Cree, knew several languages, including Dakota, English, French, and Ojibwe.

The third panel shows the coming of the settler-colonizers in their covered wagons. In the background are the tipi of the Dakota, the original settlers of this territory (though since it was a summer planting village, they lived in tipi tanka, or big lodges, along with a few tipi). The Dakota were forced off the land by land speculators and traders who made treaties, in which they often took advantage of the Dakota. The white population in 1852 consisted of about twenty families; the Indians numbered about six hundred. There were many Métis people here, and people spoke Dakota, French, and English.

The fourth panel pictures the buildings of early Shakopee. The grey building to the left is the Methodist Episcopal Church, erected in 1867. In the background the red building is the City Hall and Fire Department, erected in 1883. The brown building is the Union School located between Holmes and Lewis Streets on the south side of Fifth Avenue, which opened on Jan. 4, 1882. Farther along the panel is a 1908 dock scene of the wharf on the Minnesota River. The boats would dock at the shore or the levee and throw out a gang plank. A swing bridge was built and the bridge swung around on its center pier.

The fifth panel shows a Shakopee soldier leaving for the Civil War. This panel also shows the first railroad train puffing into Shakopee on Nov. 11, 1865. Shortly after, a combination engine and passenger car named The Shakopee made regular trips between Shakopee and Mendota.

The firefighters in this panel are shown fighting Shakopee’s first great fire which occurred in 1872, destroying the frame railroad shops of the St. Paul and Sioux City Railroad along with all the equipment and five locomotives.

H. H. Strunk and Sons Drug Store and John Berens’s grocery store are represented in the sixth panel.

The seventh panel represents the 1909 Street Fair at which James J. Hill delivered an address to one of the largest gatherings Shakopee had ever entertained.

The eighth panel represents modern Shakopee in 1938-39. In the background are the water tower, Rock Spring Bottling Works, St. Mark’s Church, the foundry, and Rahr Malting Plant. The new baseball stadium is also shown.

Gertrude Siebenaler Roepke, age 96, died on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, and is buried at the Catholic Cemetery. Thanks to her, the information about the mural was written down for all of us. Photographs of the mural were by Jackie Colby, and more information was from Marion Heinen Caron.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

In earlier days, the richest in romance, tradition, and pure excitement were the steamboats. Stories of the old steamboat days are always replete with action and interest. While the captain and the mate were important, the old river pilot stands out as the most interesting person in early American history.

George R. DeMers of Shakopee was a veteran river man and pilot of the Mississippi and Minnesota River. Starting as deck sweeper on a boat, he plied the waters of the Minnesota River until he retired to become part of the land a quarter of a century later. From the time he went on the river at ten years of age, his career was as colorful and thrilling as any fiction writer could desire according to “Recollections of a Pioneer Citizens: George R. DeMers Relates Colorful Incidents of His Career as a River Pilot,” Shakopee Tribune, Aug. 27, 1925, and in Recollections of Early Pioneers, 1925 by Betty A. Dols, Jan. 10, 2000, Shakopee Heritage Society.

Threading his way cautiously past sand bars, rocks, and rapids, sometimes through inky blackness, as others were hampered rather than aided by lightning flashes as the boat nosed its way through a storm at night, George R. DeMers relied on his training, his knowledge of the Minnesota River, and that uncanny sixth sense possessed by the old-time river men. In all those years, he never lost a boat or experienced a serious mishap.

George was inclined to attribute his splendid record to good luck. “I just didn’t happen to have any trouble, that’s all,” he said in conversation in 1925, when he was 74 years old. But a more logical explanation was that he possessed a good measure the skill, coolness, and judgment indispensable in a good river pilot. Even in those days of low wages, pilots received $125 or more a month.

George was born in Morris, Illinois on Oct. 22, 1851. His father was Joseph Emile DeMers (1820-1893) and his mother was Marie Anne Antailla dit Pelletier DeMers (1823-1888). Her grandparents were Étienne DeMers (1775-1843) and Therese Chretien DeMers (1779-1853); and Charles Pelletier (1792-1841) and Catherine Forcier dit Nadeau dit Gaucher Pelletier, who were born in Quebec, Canada.

The family moved to Merriam Junction. His father’s farm was near the Minnesota River, and naturally, George became interested in the great boats that swept so majestically up and down the river, and in the boisterous and carefree men that formed the crew. So, George was taken on as a deck hand in 1861, the first year of the Civil War. He served as a deck sweeper for four years and then became a watchman. Two years later, he was granted his papers as a pilot and was assigned to his first boat.

In years following, George served on many crafts that are prominent in river annals. Among them were the Minnesota, Diamond Jo, Otter, Mankato, Mollie O, and International.

Some of these were passenger boats, often with as many as three hundred souls aboard, all in the keeping of the pilot. “It was pretty serious business,” said George, “steering through the night with 300 people asleep behind you, and realizing that you alone were responsible for their safety.” Certain responsibilities were attached to the office of captain and mate, he explained, “but the pilot was held accountable for his boat when he was at the wheel, as he was not subject to the captain’s orders, except in certain minor matters of routine.”

George Robert DeMers married Catherine Kate Galvin (1857-1917) on Aug. 19, 1878, in Shakopee.

When asked to recount his most trying experience, George removed his hat and rubbed his head as a gesture of reflection. “Well,” he said, “I remember one time coming down the Minnesota with the Diamond Jo, the biggest boat I ever took out.”

“I had a valuable cargo and a lot of passengers aboard. We left the levee at St. Paul just before dark. It was cloudy, and I felt sure that we were going to have a storm. As it was early summer and the river was low, I thought I might have a little trouble in a storm at the rapids about Merriam, as that was then the most dangerous place on the river. Sure enough, just before we reached the rapids, the storm struck. Lightning flashed almost continuously, and the rain came down in sheets. I was pretty badly worried for a while, but we made the rapids without mishap.”

At another time, George narrowly escaped drowning. He was a watchman then. “It was on the old Mankato,” he said. “I was sound asleep when the engineer whistled for the landing at St. Peter. I jumped up and miscalculating the distance from shore, dropped into thirty feet of water. They fished me out, and after that I was more careful!”

The boats on the Minnesota River in those days were stern wheelers and carried crews of ten to twelve men, besides the officers and pilots. Each boat carried two pilots. The river men were a rough and ready lot, who settled all disputes with their first. But the veteran pilots called that they were a good-natured, kindly lot, for all that.

According to The Diary of Daniel M. Storer from 1849 to 1905: A Pioneer Builder and Merchant in Shakopee, Minnesota, steamboats were a regular appearance on the Minnesota River. Over time, the steamboats included Tiger, Humboldt, Soleo, Greek Slave, Nominee, Minnesota Belle, Lola, Globe, Black Hawk, Navigator, Monticello, and Reviler. Others included Equator, Frank Steele, Henrietta, Yankee Robinson, Ariel Jones, Albany, Stella Whipple, Antelope, Jeanette Roberts, Northern Light, Chippewa Falls, City of St. Paul, Lorna Doone, Daisy, and Flora Clark.

George’s brother, Charles, was also a pilot. One day the two brothers raced their boats from Mankato to St. Paul. George was on the Mankato, and Charles was on the Carver. The latter won by two hours. The brothers also spent several years on the Red River of the North, traveling between the headwaters of the river and Winnipeg. A prominent thoroughfare in Grand Forks, North Dakota bears the name DeMers Avenue.

With the advent of railroads, steamboat traffic declined, and after a few years, the Minnesota River ceased to be an important avenue of transportation. George gave up his post as a pilot and worked in the Shakopee mills, owned by G.F. Strait. He served as head miller ten years, retiring several years later. He married Katherine Galvin, and they had two boys and two girls.

Modest and unassuming, the Shakopee veteran holds lightly his service as a river pilot, but George DeMers’s record speaks for itself.

George’s wife, Kate Galvin DeMers, died in 1917, and was buried at Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Shakopee. George died at age 78 in Minneapolis in December 1929, according to The Minneapolis Journal, Dec. 9, 1929.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

George Henry Vierling was born Jan. 28, 1821, in Großwallstadt, Miltenberg, Bayern, Germany. His parents were Heinrich Henry Vierling and Johanna Ulrich Vierling (1791-1847). George Henry’s grandparents were Gottfreid Vierling (1746-1819) and Maria Gerthrudis Zahn Vierling (1759-1814); and Andreaus and Magdalene Ulrich.

When George was 29 years old, he emigrated to America, and settled in Boston, Massachusetts in 1851. According to Joan Schaefer, he came here with his brothers, Michael and Frank, and sister Barbara. George Henry Vierling (called Henry) married Anna Mary Frieze in Boston on Nov. 9, 1852. Anna was born Nov. 5, 1835, in Hofstetten, Eichstatt, Bayern, Germany.

In fact, over several years, starting at the arrival in Baltimore on Aug. 15, 1833, people from Großwallstadt moved to America, becoming settler-colonists, to Boston and later to Eagle Creek and Shakopee, Minnesota. Among those on the passenger lists include Fleickensteain, Geis, Gigerich, Rein, Rippberger, Spielman, and Vierling, according to Großwallstadt (Grosswallstadt) Immigration by William C. Scherer in 2022.

Henry and Anna soon had their first daughter, Mary, in Boston. George, who was a musician, moved to Annapolis, Maryland seven months after the wedding, where he enlisted in the Navy as a musician, according to an article by Lucille B. Hummell. He played the violin and several brass instruments, according to Joan Schaefer at ancestry.com on May 18, 2001. Though the normal term of enlistment was three years, Henry was discharged after one year due to his poor health.

In 1854, Henry, Anna, and Mary moved to Eagle Creek Township, now part of Shakopee. After nine years, they moved to Shakopee in 1862. They built a home in on Third Street, just east of St. Mark’s school. They had 12 children.

According to Lucille B. Hummell, “Henry was a natural born musician and had an intense love for music, placing it next to his love for his church (Catholic) and his wife. He was a skillful player of the violin (since he was 12 years old) as well as several brass instruments. The well-known Vierling Band played its own compositions for arrangements of other compositions. For nearly a half century, Henry entertained with his violin.”

Several years later, Henry added the Vierling Cigar Shop in the rear of the home. It was also a shoe shop for a short time. Louis Winters, a cigar maker, helped set up the cigar business with Henry.

One of the most famous brands was the “Diamond-S” cigars. The cigars were advertised by a bit of home scenery, christened after a famous home brand of flour, and appreciated in Shakopee. The Vierling cigars were of such a uniformly good quality that they advertised themselves, and the factory had a flourishing trade not only in Shakopee, but in neighboring towns and in the Twin Cities.

Henry used the best fillers in the different grades, and returned to the factory all trimmings and other waste rather than use them to his profit and to the deterioration of his goods. According to an article in the Scott County Argus, careful buying of stock, having workmen who were experts in the goods, and skilled management of the business brought a fair measure of reward.

Henry Scherer, who was recovering from a near fatal knee injury, worked at Henry’s cigar store in 1879.

John Velz and Joseph Coller served as apprentices at the cigar making trade, though they did not follow the business. Henry’s two sons, John and George, continued manufacturing the C.O.F. and White Lily cigars, according to Scott County Argus, Oct. 7, 1897.

When John Vierling died, the old shop was abandoned as a cigar factory, but the house portion continued to be used as a residence. In February 1935, the house and business were torn down, destroying the landmark, according to the Shakopee Argus Tribune, Feb. 21, 1935.

Anna Mary Frieze Vierling died March 1, 1896, in Eagle Creek Township, and was buried at St. Mark’s Cemetery, now the Catholic Cemetery on Tenth Avenue.

George Henry Vierling died Jan. 21, 1901, at the age of 79 years, just short of his 80th birthday. His funeral took place at St. Mark’s Church, and he was buried in the Catholic Cemetery.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Genevieve Perreault was born Sept. 3, 1850, at Saint-Gabriel-de-Brandon, Berthier, Quebec, Canada, one of nine children of Pierre and Louisa Perreault.

Genevieve’s father was Pierre Peter Perreault, who was born May 13, 1818, in Lavaltrie, Quebec, Canada, the son of Pierre Perreault and Marguerite Latour-DuFour. Pierre was the third great grandson of Nicholas Perrot, famed fur trader, French explorer and interpreter of Natives in the Great Lakes Region. Nicholas had migrated from France to New France (Quebec) in the company of Jesuit priests at age 16 in 1660. Nicholas eventually returned to Quebec where many generations of the Perrot/Perreault family lived until his third great grandson Pierre migrated to Minnesota with his family.

Genevieve’s mother was Louisa Elise Marguerite Tellier-LaFortune, also known as Marie Elizabeth. She was born Sept. 9, 1815, in St. Sulpice Assumption, Quebec, Canada, daughter of Joseph Tellier-LaFortune and Marie-Louise Valliant. Her parents married on Nov. 25, 1839.

Pierre and Marie left for Minnesota with six of their children, including Genevieve, in 1857. These children, besides Genevieve, were Elisabeth, Marguerite, Melina, Joseph, and George. Three children had passed away prior – daughters Felonise, age 1, in April 1845; Eloise, age 1, in July 1849, and a son Pierre, Jr., who died at age 8 in April 1854.

In the 1857 census Pierre is listed as Peter Paro with his wife Lisette, township 11, range 26 in Nicollet County, north of St. Peter, Minnesota. He is listed as a stone mason. After the 1858 Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, they moved as settler-colonists to Native land. It is believed the three families, Pierre Perreault, Clement Cardinal, and Eusibi Picard (husband of Pierre’s daughter Elisabeth) bought the property as a whole then chose their plot of land. According to historical descriptions, Pierre chose to build his cabin half mile up the coolie from what would later become known as the Birch Coolie Battlefield. Nearby were their neighbors, the two Clausen families and the Witts. The cabin site was on the Birch Coolie Creek then known as the LaCroix which flows into the Minnesota River. The LaCroix was and still is lined on both sides by trees as it flows through the ravine (coolie). It was a beautiful peaceful area just below the vast open prairie.

The side Pierre had chosen to build, though flat and even, had a gentle slope down to the creek. An ideal place sheltered from the harsh winds of the open prairie just beyond the trees, yet close enough to the creek to access water and at the top away from any spring flooding. The area was cleared, and in 1859 the last child was born to Pierre and Marie-Elizabeth, Philomene, according to an account written by Colleen Harson-Harvey.

Their farms were just across the Minnesota River from the Lower Sioux Agency which was an administrative center established by the federal government to distribute annuities to pay the Dakota for the land they were forced to relinquish for the new white settlements. The Dakota no longer were allowed on their lands to hunt on. The Dakota were reliant on these funds to buy supplies to feed their families. Payments were late. The Natives grew hungry and the food languished in the warehouses of the traders.

On Aug. 16 a keg with $17 thousand worth of gold coins reached St. Paul. The next day the keg was sent on its way to Fort Ridgely for distribution to the Dakota natives. Fort Ridgley was 13 miles from the family farms. It arrived a few hours too late to prevent an unprecedented outbreak of violence.

Genevieve was about 12 years old when the Picard and Perreault homesteads at Birch Coulee were attacked during the U.S.- Dakota War of 1862. On the morning of Aug. 18, 1862, a bright sunny day after several days of rain, Pierre had just brought in a cartload of hay pulled by the oxen. According to daughter Genevieve, the Dakota advanced wearing war paint. They attacked Pierre. After a struggle he lay dead at the base of a haystack with an arrow through his chest and run through with his own pitchfork. They then set the haystack on fire and killed the oxen. Pierre is likely buried in an unmarked grave on the homestead by the soldiers who were sent two weeks later to bury the dead.

Besides Genevieve’s father, Pierre, her brother-in-law, Eusebi Picard, was killed.

Marie-Elizabeth and her younger children, Genevieve 12, Melina 10, Joseph 8, George 6 and Philomene, age 3, likely fled by foot. They probably followed LaCroix Creek through the safety of the trees to the Minnesota River and on to Fort Ridgley. The terrain along the Minnesota is very difficult to traverse with gullies, ridges, and fallen trees. With small children, travel would be slow and difficult at best. They would have likely spent the night with the massive oaks blocking out any moon light. It was terrifying in the least, with the night sounds around them. Many refugees arrived at the fort the next day.

The surviving members of the Perreault, Picard, and Cardinal families lived at the fort for two months. After their stay at the fort the families sailed to St. Paul Landing, then went on to stay the winter in Shakopee. After the spring thaw, the family, except for Genevieve, age 12, moved to Centerville where there was a large French-Canadian population. Being the oldest of Pierre and Marie-Elizabeth’s unmarried daughters, she may have stayed behind to work for a family. After two years being separated from her family she married Theolon Luce on April 19, 1865, in St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Shakopee. Geneivieve was 14 years old.

Theolon Luce was born Jan. 7, 1844, in Paris, Paris, Île-de-France, France. His parents were Constantine Luce (1812-1870) and Mary Constant (1815-1879). An only child, Theolon and his parents came to America in 1852 and were settler-colonists in Jackson Township near Sha K Pay, Minnesota Territory.

Genevieve and Theolon had 13 children they raised on the original farm outside Shakopee.

Theolon died May 1, 1922 from carcinoma of the liver. According to an article in the Shakopee-Argus Tribune on May 22, 1922, Theolon had been ill all winter but was able to be up and around the house and had been confined to his bed only one week before death claimed him.

Genevieve passed away Nov. 12, 1939. The headline of Genevieve’s obituary in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Nov. 13, 1939, was “Genevieve Luce, 92, Indian Fight Survivor Dies.” Geneivieve was buried near her husband at Calvary Cemetery in St. Paul.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Father Jacob Nedumkallal was a visiting priest at St. Mark’s Catholic Church in Shakopee in 1976. After staying in Shakopee for a while, he attended St. Thomas College (now University of St. Thomas) to continue his education in spiritual counseling, and later St. John’s University, before heading back to India.

Father Francis Eret, St. Mark’s pastor, had a much more limited knowledge of Malayalam, the language that Father Nedumkallal used in India.

Malayalam is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry by the Malayali people. It is spoken by 2.88 percent of Indians and is spoken by 34 million people worldwide, according to Wikipedia.

There are 21 different states with 21 different languages and 15 languages nationally, according to an article in the Shakopee Valley Newson March 17, 1976. “I only know one word, and I forgot it already,” said Father Eret in an article by Mary Schaefer called “Visiting priest will return to India following studies.” “It’s oowa. He (Father Jacob) was saying it on the phone the other day. Oowa. Oowa. Oowa. So I figured it was yes.”

Father Jacob felt at home here in Shakopee. “People are very kind.”

Father Eret said that Father Jacob had been introduced to ham, barbecue ribs, steak, bacon, chicken, and something new to him—strawberries. Fr. Eret said, “He eats it all. He is not fussy.”

In India, Father Jacob mostly ate rice and curry, boiled rice and meat. They also eat beef in India, except in areas where the cow is sacred and the Hindu religion is practiced. The bread that Father Jacob found here was different than those in India. He remembered that it was a wheat bread called chapati. Chapati is an unleavened flatbread originating from the Indian subcontinent and a staple in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, East Africa, Arabian Peninsula, and the Caribbean. According to the article by Mary Schaefer, Father Jacob loved spices. “We use many spices there. They use a lot of coconut. They have plenty of those.”

Along the coastline, people from India enjoyed eating the different fish. In fact, Father Jacob enjoyed eating shark, which he thought were great to eat.

Father Jacob Nedumkallal was bilingual, speaking Malayalam and English. His English is very good. He learned to speak it in high school and spoke it while in the seminary. “Sometimes I don’t get some of your slang words or the idioms. That is the only difficulty, maybe due to differences in pronunciation.”

“I started to school like someone in kindergarten here—six years old. Then we were sent to elementary school, primary for four years. Then high school for seven years,” said Father Jacob. “High school was followed by two years of minor seminary, three years of philosophy and four years of theology.” He was ordained in 1955.

“In 1955, I was appointed in different parishes,” he said. “One year assistant, then pastor. I was also teaching the novitiate for sisters until 1969. I was appointed in seminary as spiritual director and professor of theology. Theology is giving courses – spiritual exercises, prayer, meditations, self-understanding and the practice of virtues. Spiritual director means you give spiritual orientation and you discuss life problems and give conferences. It’s a way of counseling.”

Besides being bilingual, Father Jacob was also bi-ritual. He celebrated Mass in his Eastern Rite Syro-Malabar – and the Western, or Roman Rite. In the Rite-Syro-Malabar he said the Mass barefoot!

The Syro-Malabar Church is an Eastern Catholic church based in Kerala, India. The Syro-Malabar Church is an autonomous church in full communion with the pope, according to Wikipedia. The Church traces its origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1^st century.

After three years in the United States, Father Jacob returned to India.

Bibliography

“Malayalam.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayalam.

“Syro-Malabar Church.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syro-Malabar_Church.

Schaefer, Mary. “Visiting priest will return to India following studies.” Shakopee Valley News, 17 March 1976.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Francis Xavier Hirscher was born May 29, 1827, in Wurtemburg, Germany. His parents were Franz Joseph Hirscher and Klara Anastasia Hartmann. By age 17, both of his parents were dead, and Francis decided to move to America.

In 1849, Francis was working in Louisville, Kentucky and St. Louis, Missouri where he learned the fundamentals of the cabinetmaking trade.

In 1851, he moved to St. Paul. He did cabinet work in the employ of W. M. Stees for five years. Francis (Franz) sold his lot and shanty in St. Paul for $80 and came to Shakopee in 1856. He said that he was glad to get out of St. Paul as it was nothing but a slew hole and wouldn’t amount to much, anyway!

When he arrived in Shakopee, Hirscher noted that Holmes and Fuller were busier than a proverbial cranberry merchant, disposing of lots, including $400 of gold that Hirscher paid for a lot near the levee. Franz built a furniture store and engaged in the furniture and undertaking business. In company with C. Peters, he built the first cabinet shop here; they continued in partnership until 1863, from which date Franz conducted the business alone.

Franz went to Iowa and married Philomena Roth, daughter of Joannes Gottfried Roth and Elizabeth Haag on September 22, 1856, in Guttenberg, Iowa. They returned to Shakopee, where they had several children, including Alois, Clara, Joseph, John, Valentine, Francis X., Jr., George, and Mary.

The cabinet shop became recognized as a source of beautiful hand-carved church furniture, especially altars and pulpits. For thirty years Franz labored at the lathe and bench. In 1882, he built a new shop on First Avenue, just west of Fuller Street. His three sons, Alois, Joseph, and John also joined the business.

By 1887, Franz’s eyesight began to dim. He had cataracts, but he continued to work. In 1888 he started one of the most elaborate projects – a main altar and two side altars and a pulpit for his own beloved church of St. Mark’s in Shakopee. Most carving was done by touch rather than sight. By 1890, when the altars were installed, Franz couldn’t perceive the beauty except in the eyes of his mind.

The towers and spires were so carefully carved of butternut by the blind devout builder. According to Julius A. Coller II, “… he formed the delicate leaves and ritualistic symbols that combine to a masterpiece of art and a transcendence of faith that were to serve through the years as a backdrop for the most solemn ceremonies of his church…”

Although he was blind, Franz continued to work until 1903, when he retired. Three years later, Franz and Philomena celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary.

Franz died six years later, in February 1909. He was buried in a casket that he had made 15 years before he died.

“Although totally blinded by cataracts seventeen years before his demise, Mr. Hirscher had continued his delicate and artistic carving, guided only by his sense of touch, until 1903 when he finally retired.” The Shakopee Story, p. 224

Francis Xavier Hirscher’s funeral mass was at the beautiful high altar at St. Mark’s, the one he so carefully carved.

Bibliography

Coller, Julius A. II. The Shakopee Story.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Frances Wessling was born December 2, 1867, in Hanover, Germany. Two years later, her brother, Bernard, was born, but her mother died, and her father married someone else. They had four more children, and then the second mother died in childbirth. Her father married a third time, and this mother was mean. Frances decided to leave home at 18 years old.

Luckily for Frances, letters from her uncles, both priests, encouraged her to move to America. Her grandfather and her aunt, Anna Wessling, also lived in Pierz.

Father Ignatius told Frances to arrive in America and go to Richmond, Minnesota. When she arrived at the rectory, a priest opened the door and said, “Come in, come in! So, this is Frances. It is good to see you are such a strong, healthy girl!” He took her bags and showed her to the back room. According to A Marschall Family History 1784-1980 by Dorothy T. Klein Luers, the priest said, “This will be your room, but come with me to the kitchen. It is near suppertime and the potatoes need to be looked at!” as he led her to her work.

And so, for 12 years, Frances lived with her uncle and her grandpa, who was kind and sensed to know when she most needed cheering up. She worked hard keeping house and serving good meals. Also a housekeeper, she took care of the garden and the chickens.

Her uncle, Father Ignatius, was busy and ever demanding. Frances wanted to ask him to help her learn English, but he answered, “Women are to be seen, but not heard.”

Frances was upset, but the Sisters learned about it, and helped her by immediately becoming Frances’s teacher.

Not too long after, Father Ignatius was ailing, and his superior sent him to a warmer climate. In 1897, Father Conrad Glatzmeier welcomed Frances as the housekeeper in Albany, Minnesota. She enjoyed the change and fell right in place. She was meeting parishioners and people of Albany, and they invited her to many family and civic affairs.

At thirty years old, Frances was happy. But at a dinner party at Lena Marschall Schaefer’s she took Frances by the arm and directed her across the room to introduce her to her brother, Anton, from Eagle Creek. Lena had coaxed her up on some pretext, so that she could introduce Frances to him. By the second visit, Frances realized that he was widowed. By the third date, plans were made for a fall wedding!

Frances’s uncle, Father Ignatius said, “Frances, what’s this I hear about you thinking of marrying a widower with seven children?”

Frances replied, “Oh Uncle, that’s not true. He does not have seven children, he has nine. And I will marry him.”

Anton told her that they could head to Shakopee, about seventy miles south, but Frances trusted Anton, and said, “It is all as you have told me and I will meet them when you take me there, after the wedding.” And so, Frances married Anton in Albany on October 19, 1904.

On the ride from Albany to Shakopee, the two talked about the family and the farm, so time passed quickly. When they arrived at the farm at dusk, Frances met the children, and over time she remembered their names, roughhoused with the boys, and taught the girls the art of homemaking. She loved the children and they loved her. Before long, Frances and Anton ended up having a new baby, a boy, who was born in 1905, weighing less than three pounds. He was protected by a softly padded shoe box set in the oven. He pulled through, and in November 1906, Teresa arrived, making the family a group of 11!

The Marschall family was overworked. They did not have a choice of clothing, wearing hand-me-downs, milking cows twice a day from the time one could drag a pail, doing dishes after milking, walking to school, and the long hours in the fields were some of the hardships that they endured.

In the fall of 1919, Anton and Frances moved to Shakopee, purchasing a two-story brick home across from St. Mary’s Church. While they enjoyed the early morning bells so near that they could feel the vibrations, Anton and Frances walked four blocks to St. Mark’s because it was the place for those born in Luxembourg and Germans!

On Christmas afternoons, in their house, the big gathering of children and grandchildren arrived for the peanut tradition. With a large dishpan of peanuts cradled in her arms, Grandma Frances passed through the rooms tossing handfuls of peanuts in all directions. What fun to gather them up and gobble them down. And the real fun was to hear Frances tell them to drop the shells on the floor. She called it her annual rugs cleaning. To remove them all the next day, she really had to sweep hard and that way all the dirt would come out too!

On March 11, 1939, Frances Wessling Marschall died.

She was 71 years old and was buried at the Catholic Cemetery.

On July 5, 1945, at age 88, Anton Marschall died and was buried next to his two wives.

Bibliography

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

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

Ernest Raymond Coursolle, Jr., was born February 8, 1961, in Marshall, Minnesota. His father was Ernest Raymond Coursolle, Sr., (1926-1991) and his mother was Hazel Ueland Coursolle (1929-2005).

Ernest, Jr., who was called Raymond, loved his family. His grandparents were Isaac H. Coursolle (1898-1980) and Annie H. Trudell Coursolle (1899-1941) and Bertel “Bert” Ueland (1888-1967) and Helga Isabella Larson Ueland (1898-1956).

Raymond’s great-grandparents included Joseph O. Coursolle (1852-1937) and Rose L. Prescott Coursolle (1890-1912) and Frank M. Trudell (1869-1939) and Emma W. Deman Trudell (1872-1920) along with Ole Johan Ueland (1844-1929) and Karen Serine Johannesdatter Vold Ueland (1846-1929) and Ludwick Louis Lewis Larson (1871-1933) and Henriette Nettie Pedersen Haugerud Larson (1878-1953).

Raymond married Georgina Rios on December 15, 2010, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. They had four children.

Raymond enjoyed doing auto mechanic work and spending time in the shop. He loved riding Harley motorcycles and taking trips to South Dakota, especially out west to Sturgis. Spending time with family was very important to him and he loved playing with his youngest son.

Ernest Raymond Coursolle, Jr., age 58, a member of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community in Prior Lake, journeyed to the spirit world on Wednesday, February 13, 2019, at his home.

Raymond is survived by his wife, Georgina; children, Isaac, Natasha, Wahkan and Randy Skip in the Day; grandson, Isaac II; stepchildren, Kevin, Kapri, Torreano and Tierra; siblings, Doug (Betty) and Denny; nephew, Brad; many other nieces, nephews and friends. He is preceded in death by his parents, Ernest and Hazel; brother, Russ; grandparents, Isaac and Anne Coursolle; aunt, Rosemma Coursolle Crooks; cousin, Glynn Crooks.

For more information about Ṡakpe I, Tínṫa Otuŋwe, and the Dakota, Hoċokata Ti [ho-cho-kah-tah-tee] the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community’s (SMSC) cultural center and gathering space, is worth visiting. The public exhibit, “Mdewakanton: Dwellers of the Spirit Lake,” enhances the knowledge and understanding of the Mdewakanton Dakota people and their history. Hoċokata Ti is at 2300 Tiwahe Circle, Shakopee, MN 55379. (952) 233-9151.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

On New Year’s Day 1850, Eli Pettijohn, born January 28, 1819, and in Minnesota Territory since 1841, married Lucy Prescott, of Shakopee, at Fort Snelling. It was the highlight of the Fort Snelling social season.

Lucy was half Mdewakanton Dakota, the daughter of Na-he-no-Wenah (Spirit of the Moon) and Philander Prescott. Lucy’s parents were Catherine Totedutawin, a Wahpeton Dakota, and sister of Wapahaṡa, and Keeiyah (Flying Man), brother of Maȟpíya Wičhášta (Cloudman).

Rev. Edward D. Neill performed the ceremony, and the guests included the officers in full uniform, their wives, the United States agent for the Dakotas, and family, the bois brules of the neighborhood, and Indian relatives of the mother.

The ceremony presented a “symbolic tableau of the cultural transition that was taking place from one generation to the next in Lucy Prescott’s family. Her Dakota relatives viewed the wedding from the hallway, not as full guests or participants, but as interested observers – and also as a people whose culture Lucy was leaving farther behind as she married an Anglo-American,” said Jane Lamm Carroll in Cultural Identity Across Three Generations of an Anglo Dakota Family in Minnesota History, Summer 2012.

Despite Lucy’s forty-year marriage to Philander, she only spoke the Dakota language, although she perfectly understood both French and English. She raised her children as Anglo-Americans. One of her children was Sophia Oyate Kagewin Prescott.

Sophia was born January 24, 1844, at the Old Military Reserve at Fort Snelling, Minnesota Territory. She married Emsley Jackson Hamilton on June 7, 1867, in Richfield. Emsley was born January 7, 1842, in Quincy, Illinois, son of William Hamilton and Elizabeth Zeiger. He arrived in Minnesota by 1860.

Emsley was a private at the First Regiment of the Minnesota Infantry during the U.S. Civil War. He became a prisoner of war at Andersonville Prison in Georgia from 1864-1865.

Andersonville Prison (also known as Camp Sumter) was a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp during the final fourteen months of the Civil War. The site was commanded by Capt. Henry Wirz, who was tried and executed after the war for war crimes. It was overcrowded with four times its capacity, with an inadequate water supply, inadequate food, and unsanitary conditions. Of the approximately 45 thousand Union prisoners held at Camp Sumter during the war, nearly 13 thousand died. The chief causes of death were scurvy, diarrhea, and dysentery.

Robert H. Kellogg, sergeant major in the 16th Regiment Connecticut Volunteers, described his entry as a prisoner into the prison camp, May 2, 1864:

“As we entered the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with horror, and made our hearts fail within us. Before us were forms that had once been active and erect; stalwart men, now nothing but mere walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin. Many of our men, in the heat and intensity of their feeling, exclaimed with earnestness. ‘Can this be hell?’ ‘God protect us!’ and all thought that he alone could bring them out alive from so terrible a place. In the center of the whole was a swamp, occupying about three or four acres of the narrowed limits, and a part of this marshy place had been used by the prisoners as a sink, and excrement covered the ground, the scent arising from which was suffocating. The ground allotted to our ninety was near the edge of this plague-spot, and how we were to live through the warm summer weather in the midst of such fearful surroundings, was more than we cared to think of just then,” said Robert H. Kellogg in the book Life and Death in Rebel Prisonsin 1865.

When Emsley survived, on June 7, 1867, he married Sophia Oyate Kagewin Prescott. They lived in the area, including Shakopee, for many years. On February 10, 1902, Sophia Oyate Kagewin Prescott Hamilton died, and was buried at Valley Cemetery in Shakopee.

Emsley Jackson Hamilton died in Minneapolis on October 24, 1922. He was buried at Valley Cemetery, where a tombstone mentions that he was a private in the Civil War, and was a prisoner of war in Andersonville Prison, and was one of the few who survived the awful experience.

Bibliography

Carroll, Jane Lamm. Cultural Identity Across Three Generations of an Anglo Dakota Family in Minnesota History, Summer 2012.

Kellogg, Robert H. Life and Death in Rebel Prisons, 1865.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Emelia Berreau was born April 5, 1835, in Paderborn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Her father was Frederick Berreau, and her mother was Antonette Hacke.

On June 2, 1863, in Shakopee, Emelia married Peter Rudolph Geyermann. They had six children.

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

Peter (sometimes with help from Emelia) sent letters home to family in Germany. The letters were translated to English by Ernst Wirt. These letters show the immigrants experiences as they move to America, and their process as they built a house just outside Shakopee in 1855.

On May 3, 1854, he wrote about those heading to America. “…I will give them the best advice: I think you should take with you 10-12 toasted breads, dryed fruits, 20-40 pounds of white flour, and some sacks of potatoes, some hams, some beans, vinegar and onions…” according to Shakopee ca 1858 by Edwin Whitefield at the Minnesota Historical Society.

“You should not buy clothes except one or two pairs of good trousers. Shirts are cheaper than in Germany. One shirt costs 50 cents. Do not bring boots and shoes with you. My sisters being here have to change the manner of wearing their hair. Also take a pot for cooking and a cake mold with you. The other cooking utensils you should buy better in the seaport. Eiderdowns you have bring with you – not the other house-utensils.

“The charge for carriage is too high. Many peoples have left in the lurch all they had because the charge was too high by railway.

“You have to be careful in all seatowns! Don’t go into a hotel for every meal. It will be too dear for you. Every time you must ask the price at first. Never pay more than you have arranged. After having arrived New York you have to prove your tickets. Perhaps you could take the best train to Chicago for five dollars, or at first to Buffalo for four dollars, (or) to Chicago four dollars…”

By November 30, 1855, Peter moved to Minnesota Territory. “I bought a claim there. The land belonged to the government and was not yet sold. The law says whoever comes first and homesteads it has a claim to it, but you have to be over 21 years of age. I had to take 160 acres of land and you were supposed to build a house on this land, and supposed to take care of the land…

“The house that exists is in very poor condition in the country and we are in the process of building a new one. Last Wednesday we started.

“You are probably surprised to hear that people build houses here in the winter, but here in the country people take tree stems and they make very nice houses (log houses). So if you plan to build a house you have to see that you get all the logs nearby, bring it to the place, and cut them into the measurements as big as the house is supposed to be. Then you go and call on 8 to 10 neighbors and then everything will be put together in one day but the roof. The rest a person has to do himself and that goes better than anybody can imagine. Once you are between 3 and 4 years in America, you become a pretty good builder, and you acquire all the tools that craftsmen need to make a building.”

Later, Peter and Emelia wrote, “I have approximately 40 acres of wood on my land, approximately 6 acres of meadow and the rest are hedges…. Here we take 2 or 3 young oxen and put them into a yoke, and then the land will be worked. One yoke of oxen I own and that cost me $150. Animals are very expensive here. I must say that animals are much more expensive now than when I came to America, because when I came to America, a yoke of oxen I could buy in those days for $60. Here the animals are not quite so expensive as in the old states like in Illinois where I came from.

“We had already for 14 days, snow, but this week is exceptionally nice weather and the snow was almost melting away. I hope there is not new snow coming, but we will take it. It would be alright if we got snow so tomorrow morning and Sunday we want to go hunting for deer, while we are waiting to finish the house, because when the house is ready, we won’t have much time. That’s why we want to go and hunt now. And when the Indians don’t come back and take the animals away, there is plenty of deer over here.”

In 1857, Peter and Emelia opened a general store in Shakopee, on the fertile banks of the Minnesota River. According to Peter and Emellia, men and wagons carried goods to the settlers on the prairie. By the clanking of the pots and tinware as their wagons jolted down the hard packed and rutted roads, they came to be known as drummers.

Peter was mayor of Shakopee from 1873-1876, and again in 1878. While he was mayor in 1878, Peter was involved in controversy. The town needed a bridge over the Minnesota River. Peter wanted to have the bridge on Lewis Street, near their store. He won, but some of the people in Shakopee were not happy.

Many residents, especially those in the west part of town, were upset because the Lewis Street Swing Bridge was built on Lewis Street, instead of Fuller Street. They boycotted Geyermann’s General Store. It became so effective that Emelia and Peter were forced out of business. After 24 years in the business in downtown Shakopee, Emelia and Peter moved out of Shakopee in 1881.

They moved to Brewster, Minnesota, where they set up a new store.

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

Peter Rudolph Geyermann died at his home in Brewster from pneumonia on November 25, 1911.

Bibliography

Whitefield, Edwin. Shakopee ca. 1858. Minnesota Historical Society.