Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Maria Josepha Dieken was born on March 5, 1850 in Gangelt, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany, daughter of Peter Leonard Dieken and Maria Catherina Busch.

When she was 13 years old, Maria Josepha and her parents immigrated to America. Maria ended up in Shakopee, where, on April 27, 1869, she married Hiram Adam Flecken at St. Mark’s Catholic Church. Maria was 19 years old.

Over the next twenty years, Maria Josepha and Adam had twelve children, though several died as infants. While Maria Josepha took care of the children, Adam was employed in the Omaha machine shops for three years, and then established a brickyard a mile southeast of the city, which he operated for five years. In 1888 he sold the brickyard and Josepha and Adam ran the Occidental Hotel, on First and Sommerville Street.

The Occidental Hotel was built in 1874 on the northwest corner of First and Sommerville Street. It was built by G.W. Gellenbeck, and was opened for business at the beginning of the first week of the new year, 1874.

It was a “two-story frame building with a large dining hall and commodious parlor on the first floor, besides the kitchen and two sleeping rooms. The second story was divided into sleeping rooms” according to the Shakopee Argus, 8 Jan. 1874. It had accommodations for about fifty guests, according to The Shakopee Story, p. 110.

Maria Josepha and Hiram Adam Flecken ran the hotel from 1889 until 1914.

For several years, the Occidental Hotel at the northwest corner of First and Sommervile Street was the scene of colorful banquets, according to The Shakopee Story, p. 238. It was also the place for the annual meeting of the Old Settler’s Associations. It stopped serving meals in August of 1913, according to the Shakopee Argus, August 8, 1913. It continued for several more years as a rooming house. The boarding house was closed in 1931. A portion of the hotel was torn down to make a smaller house for Henry and Mary, two of their children who were unmarried.

What was left of the Occidental Hotel was torn down in April of 1956, as noted in The Shakopee Story, p. 496. Later, a modern filling station was erected on the corner, after it had served for a time as a used car lot, according to the Shakopee Argus-Tribune, April 19, 1956.

Maria Josepha Dieken Flecken died on October 27, 1924. She was 74 years old.

She was buried at the Catholic Cemetery in Shakopee.

Hiram Adam Flecken died on June 30, 1931 at 90 years old. He was buried next to his wife in the Flecken area of the cemetery, Section 33, Lots A and B at the west end.

Bibliography

Shakopee Argus, 8 Jan. 1874.

Coller, Julius A. II. The Shakopee Story.

Shakopee Argus, 8 Aug. 1913.

Shakopee Argus-Tribune, 19 April 1956.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Alois Plut was born in Krupp, near Semich, diocese of Ljubljana, Province of Carniola, Austria on June 21, 1841, son of Joseph and Catherina Starz Plut.

Alois, along with 16 other ecclesiastical students, decided to move to the United States. Alois, age 23, completed his theological studies and was ordained in the Cathedral in St. Paul on February 12, 1865. He became a priest in Stillwater, New Prague, Winona, Cedar Lake, Sleepy Eye, New Ulm, and Glencoe.

As Father Plut traveled to various missions, he mostly traveled on trails. There were no roads at that time. Bitter cold and howling blizzards, pelting rain, mosquitoes, and the heat of summer made it hard, but Father Plut was young and energetic, though it taxed the body, according to The Shakopee Story by Julius A. Coller, II.

In June 1876, Fr. Plut became pastor of the Church of St. Mark’s in Shakopee, where he stayed for ten years.

Meanwhile, in Shakopee, starting in 1862, sisters from the Benedictine Convent of St. Joseph at St. Mary, Pennsylvania arrived. The sisters, with ecclesiastical approval, founded the Convent and Academy, according to Julius A. Coller II in The Shakopee Story.

In a letter to King Ludwig of Bavaria on December 2, 1862, Abbott Boniface Wimmer noted that he founded a little mission for the sisters “to the great joy of the English and German Catholics. The new convent has its own story. First, it was a cow shed, then a horse barn, and now it is an embryo of a woman’s convent, but it only serves, in any event, only the most necessary purposes.”

The sisters erected a large two-and-a-half-story limestone building at the corner of Fourth and Atwood Street, south of St. Mark’s Church. St. Gertrude’s Convent and Academy by the Sisters of St. Benedict was incorporated on May 4, 1866, said Edward D. Neill in the History of the Minnesota Valley including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota.

The first commencement exercises of St. Gertrude’s Convent and Academy took place on June 20, 1871. On September 4, 1871, the academy had an enrollment of 46 young ladies. The board and tuition for the season were $40.00. Bedding and laundry were $5.00, piano lessons were $8.00, and guitar lessons were $3.00. Lessons in cloth, wax works, and the making of paper flowers were extra.

Mother Gertrude Flynn was the prioress. She was admired, and she put the convent and academy in firm financial foundation. By mid-1878, the debt of St. Gertrude Convent and Academy was practically paid off.

When Father Plut arrived in Shakopee in 1876, he and the sisters did not get along.

Father Plut, pastor of St. Mark’s and intensely German, decided in 1878 to refuse to re-employ the Benedictine Sisters as teachers at St. Mark’s School because he contended that they were unable to teach German properly. Father Plut and the sisters had a mutual antagonism that developed.

At one point, Father Plut refused, for a time, to give the nuns pews in the church.

At this time there were thirty sisters staffing the academy, convent, and three schools in Minneapolis, Carver, and Belle Plaine, and the orphanage in St. Paul. Father Plut replaced the Benedictine Sisters with the School Sisters of Notre Dame from Milwaukee in May 1878.

On August 31, 1880, Bishop Ireland advised the sisters that St. Gertrude’s was suppressed, and the thirty sisters needed to join St. Benedict’s Convent in St. Joseph, Minnesota or be dispensed from their vows. Sister Gertrude Flynn, OSB, and the other sisters who had come originally from St. Mary’s Pennsylvania moved reluctantly to St. Joseph.

According to a letter to Bishop Ireland, Abbott Alexius Edlebrock of St. John’s Monastery noted: “They believe they were wrong, and in my own impression is that they were wronged.”

In Shakopee, Father Plut was called to St. Paul in 1886. He filed various pastorates until 1903. Then he returned to St. Mark’s in Shakopee. While there, Father Plut was made a Domestic Prelate by Pope Pius X in May 1906, and by July 24 he became Most Reverend Archbishop.

Monsignor Alois Plut’s vigor and health waned, according to Julius A. Coller, II.

Monsignor Alois Plut, the oldest priest in the diocese of St. Paul, died at the age of 76 on February 20, 1917. He was buried at St. Mark’s Catholic Cemetery, now called the Shakopee Catholic Cemetery, on February 23.

Bibliography

Coller, Julius A. II. The Shakopee Story.

Neill, Edward D. History of the Minnesota Valley including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Johanna O’Brien was born in Ireland ca. 1830, and arrived in Boston on May 24, 1848 on the ship Brig Lively. Her future husband, John Spearman, was born in Ireland ca. 1820, and moved from Canada in the 1840s and then to Minnesota Territory.

John and Johanna married in America.

In 1854, the Spearmans settled in Chanhassen on 92 acres beside Lake Riley. Johanna and John were Catholic and attended St. Mark’s and St. Mary’s Catholic Churches in Shakopee. In fact, Johanna was baptized in 1872 by Father Gregory Koering.

The Spearmans had 11 children: Anne, John, Ellen, Bridget, Mary, Katherine, Jenny, William, Margaret, and Peter and John who died in childhood.

John and Johanna were successful at farming. In July 1860, an Agricultural Census found that they had: 8 acres of improved land/84 acres of unimproved land, Cash value of farm = $500/Value of farm implements = $30, 3 milch cows, 2 working oxen, 4 other cattle, 6 swine, Indian corn in bushels = 160, Irish potatoes in bushels = 139, Butter in pounds = 200, Hay in tons = 6, Value of animals slaughtered = $40.

On October 1, 1877, John and Johanna purchased Block No. 106, Lots 1 through 10, in Shakopee. They paid $1,200.

They built a farmhouse, 1 ½ stories high, at the edge of town. The location is between 8th Avenue and Shakopee Avenue, and between Spencer and Sommerville Street. The house had a kitchen, parlor, two bedrooms, and a back porch. The house was situated in the center of the block. On the homestead included a barn and a chicken coop.

In 1890, the Spearmans had one cow, some hens, and a cat. John walked his cow to the Minnesota River daily to be watered. The retired couple were quiet people who kept to themselves. They wore homespun, unstylish clothing. Johanna was seen in public on Sundays, where she attended mass at St. Mary’s Catholic Church. The couple was described as industrious, economical to the point of penuriousness, and miserly. John paid for all his purchases in cash.

When Anne Spearman Russell Lynch, the eldest daughter, was widowed in 1880, she left California and returned to Shakopee with her three children and stayed with her parents.

Georgie, who was two years old, was loved by the grandparents, and when Anne moved to Minneapolis to marry again, Georgie stayed in Shakopee. George Russell helped with the horses around the farm and helped with correspondences since the grandparents were illiterate.

George was an altar boy at St. Mary’s. But one Sunday in December of 1890, the family was not at mass. The church members went to their house. John Spearman was sitting in front of the kitchen stove, with a bullet hole in the back of his head. The people of Shakopee continued into the house, and saw Johanna O’Brien Spearman, who was lying in a pool of blood on the parlor floor. And in the other bedroom lay George, age 12, dead beneath the bed where he hid.

Nothing was touched. Two certificates of deposit were on the table. It was not a robbery.

The murder had taken place several days ago. The famished cat had eaten several of Johanna and John’s fingers.

The chickens had starved to death. The cow was so weak that it had to be killed.

The City Council of Shakopee offered a $1,000 reward for the capture of the guilty parties.

An inquest occurred, and several people testified about the murder of John and Johanna O’Brien Spearman and their grandson, George Russell, who were murdered in their Shakopee farmhouse on or about the evening of Saturday, December 13, 1890.

Who did it? Some possibilities:

William Spearman? William was working as a hack driver for a livery stable. He had a reputation for being a heavy drinker and was known about town as “Whiskey Bill.”

Joseph? A clairvoyant and Johanna’s niece predicted that a man named Joseph did the deed.

Mr. Farr? Myrtle, a granddaughter, remembered a man who helped around the house. His last name was Farr.

O.S. “Red” Brown? Red Brown got some wood for a fence from John Spearman, and he never paid John back. They had some words, and Brown called John Spearman a son of a bitch.

Two men with an overcoat and a buffalo robe? Two men drove past his house fast toward Shakopee. One had a buffalo overcoat on, and the other one had an overcoat. The men were intoxicated.

A man dressed as a woman? A servant met a person between the church and the priest’s residence, dressed in women’s clothing, but looking like a man. He walked fast to her left, going in the opposite direction.

The triple funeral of John Spearman, Johanna O’Brien Spearman, and George Russell was held at St. Mary’s Church on December 19, 1890.

They were buried at the Catholic Cemetery. No death certificates have been found. It might be that the certificates were overlooked in the sensationalism of the time.

The murders of Johanna, John, and George were never solved.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

Crete “Sandy” Esmeralda Ngatoro Buesgens, age 82, of Shakopee passed away on Sunday, August 13, 2023.

Sandy was born January 26, 1941, in Te’ Ararora, New Zealand. She was a Māori. Her mother was Te ‘Hinganoa Pera Ngatoro.

New Zealand, which Māori called Aotearoa, is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses – the North Island (Te Ika-a-Māui) and the South Island (Te Waipounamu) – and more than seven hundred smaller islands.

As she grew up, Sandy attended Te’ Wana o Rerekohu area schools.

In the East Cape of New Zealand, Sandy could visit Gisborne, the first city in the world to see the sunrise. Or she could slide down the Rere Rockslide or walk along New Zealand’s longest pier. Or she could visit the small town of Te Araroa, in the place where she was born.

After graduating from high school, Sandy relocated to Wellington, New Zealand to pursue her career in nursing. In Wellington, Sandy met James Buesgens, who grew up in Belle Plaine. They married at St. Mary of the Angels Catholic Church in Wellington on October 27, 1961.

James Elroy Buesgens, who was born January 26, 1943, was the son of William Buesgens (1892-1968) and Crescence Marie Schug Buesgens (1900-1989).

In 1962, Sandy and Jim moved to Shakopee. They continued to grow their family. They had four children: Shona (married Bob Pulk), Monica Jimece (married James Siegle), Alana Loni (married Albert Trende), and Shane (married Bonnie Luce).

Jim died in a car accident. Sandy and her children lived on Fifth Avenue and Spencer Street in Shakopee.

Sandy worked at St. Francis Hospital for over forty years.

St. Francis Regional Medical Center has a rich tradition of providing quality healthcare for the people living in Minnesota’s Scott, Carver, and western Dakota counties. Emerging in the middle of the Great Depression, when the nearest hospital was thirty miles away in Minneapolis, Shakopee was once an isolated rural city with a population of 2,400, according to St. Francis’s website.

To serve the community, a group of Franciscan sisters sought to open a hospital in Shakopee and, with community support, they purchased the Scott County poorhouse and soon founded St. Francis Hospital and Home in 1938. St. Francis served 128 patients from the surrounding area in its first year.

By the late 1940s, the original hospital could no longer support the expanding healthcare needs of the post-World War II baby boom. In May 1953, a new fifty-bed hospital replaced the former poorhouse to accommodate the area’s population growth. That first St. Francis provided care for more than 1,300 patients from surrounding communities.

In 1982, St. Francis Hospital was renamed St. Francis Regional Medical Center and, in 1987, the Franciscans transferred sponsorship and ownership of the hospital to the Benedictine Sisters at St. Scholastica Monastery in Duluth and the Benedictine Health System. By October 1993, a new alliance was formed between St. Francis, the Benedictine Health System and HealthSpan (a predecessor organization of Allina Health).

Growing healthcare needs and exceptional community support enabled the new St. Francis to build and open its current facility in July 1996.

St. Francis is currently jointly owned by Allina Health, HealthPartners Park Nicollet, and Essentia Health. Its Catholic identity is sponsored by the Benedictine Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery in Duluth. This unique structure combines the caring and compassion of a community hospital with the modern medical technology, specialties and services found in large metropolitan areas. St. Francis provides a full range of inpatient, outpatient and emergency care services on a medical campus with more than thirty other clinics and more than four hundred providers noted, according to the St. Francis website.

After working at St. Francis for over forty years, Sandy retired in 2012.

Her greatest joys in life were spending time with her nine grand and ten great-grandchildren. Her love for them showed through her smile as she lit up every time she saw them.

Sandy spent many mornings enjoying toast and coffee at Wampach’s in downtown Shakopee, she loved playing bingo and hearing the chimes and bells of a winning slot machine she was playing.

She was an amazing cook where friends and family often benefited from recipes she got from one of the beloved cooking shows she watched, especially her homemade egg rolls and strawberry cheesecake. She also spent time with her interests in knitting, ceramics, occasional part-time jobs, and daily walks down Tenth Avenue.

Crete “Sandy” Esmeralda Ngatoro Buesgens, age 82, of Shakopee, passed away on Sunday, August 13, 2023.

Celebration of Life for Sandy was held at McNearney-Schmidt Funeral and Cremation. Sandy was interred at Saints Peter and Paul Cemetery in Belle Plaine.

Bibliography

“History.” St. Francis Regional Medical Center. https://www.stfrancis-shakopee.com/about-us/history/.

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 Familyby Dennis O’Loughlin III, while Margaret was on a sailing 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 another 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 was 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, other 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

Katherina Freihaut was born on December 11, 1802, in Biblis, Kreis Bergstraße, Hessen, Germany. Her parents were Wilhelm Freihaut (1764-1813) and Katherina Reis (1768-1807).

Katherina married Valentin Bartholomaus Reis on November 25, 1823, in Biblis, Bergstraße, Hesse, Germany. Valentin was born on January 11, 1795, in Biblis, Bergstraße, Hesse, Germany, son of George Bartholomeus Reis (1763-1838) and Anna Maria Freihaut (1771-1834.)

Katherina and Valentin had twelve children, including Bartholomaus, Valentin F., Elizabeth, Johann, Anna Maria, Michael, Elisabeth, Katharina, a stillborn child, Heinrich, Barbara and George Reis.

Valentin, Katherina, and their family headed to America, arriving on July 20, 1846 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Reis family then moved to St. Louis, Missouri. Valentin was a shoemaker for several years.

The traditional shoemaker would measure the feet and cut out upper leathers according to the required size. These parts were fitted and stitched together. The sole was next assembled, consisting of a pair of inner soles of soft leather, a pair of outer soles of firmer texture, a pair of welts or bands about one inch broad, of flexible leather, and lifts and top pieces for the heels. The insole was then attached to a last made of wood, which was used to form the shoe. Some lasts were straight, while curved lasts came in pairs: one for left shoes, the other for right shoes. The “lasting” procedure then secured the leather upper to the sole with tacks. The soles were then hammered into shape; the heel lifts were then attached with wooden pegs, and the worn out-sole was nailed down to the lifts.

The finishing operation included paring, rasping, scraping, smoothing, blacking, and burnishing the edges of soles and heels, scraping, sandpapering, and burnishing the soles, withdrawing the lasts, and cleaning out any pegs which may have pierced through the inner sole, according to James Paton’s “Shoemaking” in Encyclopædia Britannica.

Valentin had a knack for finding jobs that were essential to the communities in which he lived — and working as a shoemaker was no different. Making and repairing shoes, whether for work or dress, required skill and a whole array of specific tools. And in the 1870s, before the mass production of footwear, a town’s shoemaker could count on a steady stream of customers. And that is what Valentin did.

While Valentin was a shoemaker, Katherina took care of the children. It was a big job, but Katherina loved being closer to the children.

By 1860, the family moved to Shakopee, Minnesota. Within a few years, Katherina Freihaut Reis died on December 10, 1867. She was 64 years old. Katherina (also called Catherine) was buried at Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Eagle Creek Township in Shakopee, Minnesota.

Katherina’s husband, Valentin Bartholomaus Reis, died on June 4, 1874. He was buried next to his wife at Calvary Cemetery, up the hill in Eagle Creek Township.

Bibliography

Paton, James. “Shoemaking.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 1902.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Joannes Josephis Antonius Anton Entrup was born on February 8, 1821, son of Antonius Entrup and Maria Catharina Rogge. He grew up in Eggerode, Westfalen, Prussia.

Anton, as he was called, decided to move to America, and he arrived in New York on November 10, 1849. He moved to St. Louis, where he met Elizabeth “Lizette” Schmitz. Lizette was born on January 13, 1823, in Mönchengladbach, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Deutschland, daughter of Wihelm Josef Schmitz and Anna Gertrud Tillges. Lizette headed to America, arriving on June 2, 1853, according to Ancestry.com.

Anton and Lizette got married in St. Louis and moved to Shakopee in April of 1855.

According to The Shakopee Story, the small but growing Catholic people in Shakopee had been visited by Father Augustin Ravoux of Mendota and Father Valentine Sommereisen of Mankato in 1854 and 1855. “It was not until the very dawn of 1856 that they had offered in their midst the holy sacrifice of the Mass, which, according to their belief, is the most important single ritual of the church. The first Holy Mass in Shakopee was offered in the home of Anton Entrup on January 1st by Reverend George Keller, pastor of Assumption Church in St. Paul. It was on this bitterly cold New Year’s day that the Catholic determined to organize and agreed to meet six days later,” according to Julius Coller II, page 42-43.

In a meeting on January 20, 1856, Anton, along with H.H. Strunk, George F. Coller, Adolph Albachten, and Joseph Bartolet were in charge of looking for a location for St. Mark’s church. They bought Lots 4 and 5 for $250, and the first church was built of native limestone for $986.50, according to The Shakopee Story. Anton oversaw the masonry, and Adam Koerner was in charge with the woodwork.

Anton was a mason and bricklayer in Shakopee, since he arrived in 1855.

He built many of the structures in and around Shakopee. Besides St. Mark’s, he also helped built the Argus block in downtown Shakopee.

Antony and Lizette had six children: Charles Augusta, Lisette, August, Julia, Antonia, and Louis.

While working at a building in Jordan, Anton fell from the building on June 19, 1876. He died when he fell from the roof of the building. He was 55 years old, according to the History of the Minnesota Valley: Including the Explorers and Pioneers by Edward Duffield Neill.

Joannes Josephis Antonius Anton Entrup was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Shakopee. His wife, Elizabeth Lizette Schmitz Entrup, died on March 13, 1895, and was buried near her husband at Calvary Cemetery in Eagle Creek, Shakopee, Minnesota, on the high hill overlooking the Minnesota River.

Bibliography

Coller, Julius A., II. The Shakopee Story, pp. 42-43.

Neill, Edward Duffield. History of the Minnesota Valley: Including the Explorers and Pioneers.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

Vitaline Lebeau was born on November 2, 1836, in Montréal, Canada. The city was called by Iroquois, Tiohtià:ke. Other First Nations languages, such as Algonquin, refer to it as Moniang. In 1642 the place, a mission, was called Ville-Marie. And by 1705, Ville-Marie was called Montréal, which it is still called today.

When Vitaline was a young adult, she was married and recently widowed. She moved from Montréal and settled south of Shakopee with a relative, either brother or cousin, by the name of Jean-Baptiste Lebeau.

Jean-Baptiste Lebeau was one of the Canadian voyagers that came up the Rivière Saint-Pierre (St. Peter’s River) with Thomas Holmes and William Quinn. Holmes wanted to establish townsites with an eye to the profit they represented. He asked for carte blanche trading rights but was denied. He was then allowed to be licensed for two sites.

Thomas Holmes was a townsite promoter. By getting a license to trade in 1851, Holmes was a squatter on Indian land. It gave him a toehold on townsites before claims could be legally settled. Holmes “improved” the land with dwellings, warehouses, and stores, and thus were less liable to be taken over by settlers and promoters who came along later. “In other words, fur trading was not an end in itself with these men as it had been with some of the earlier traders in the valley. Rather, it was a means of obtaining a legal or quasi-legal claim on the land they staked out before they could actually file their preemptions with the government,” said Dr. Norene Roberts and Dr. Clark Dobbs in A Lower Minnesota River Valley Cultural Resource Study and Interpretive Plan for the Minnesota Valley State Park & Trail(June 1993).

So, Thomas Holmes, William Quinn, Jean Baptiste Lebeau, and others headed up the Rivière Saint-Pierre. The river became the Minnesota River on June 19, 1852. “Bringing logs and his stock of goods on the flat-boat Wild Paddy, Tom Holmes soon had a log trading house built on the brow of the river bank. This was the first building in the original town site of Shakopee,” said Julius Coller II in The Shakopee Story, pp. 25-26.

By February 11, 1861 Vitaline Lebeau married François-Xavier Beaxine Boan at St. Mark’s Catholic Church, with Father Cornelius Willman, OSB officiating. The wedding was witnessed by Peter Shumbeau and Louis Lebeau.

François- was born on December 24, 1831 at Ste-Therese, Thérèse-de-Blainville, Quebec, Canada. His parents were Christophe Beaxine Boan, who was born in 1780, and Marie Louise Louéraud, who was born in 1787 in Québec, Canada.

Xavier was a clock and watch maker and a ticker, and a jeweler in downtown Shakopee.

Vitaline and Xavier lived in Lots 4 and 5, Block 51 in Shakopee. They had eight children: Mary (1860-1888); Uxilda (1862-1870); Francis (1862-1869); Celia (1864-1939); Rose (1867); Emma (1868-1949); Vitaline (1872-1873); and Leo (1873-1873).

François- was also an alcoholic, according to The DeMers Family of Normandy, New France, Minnesota & Beyondby Father William J. Paron in 2011. Father Paron’s mother, Corinne Ann Dellwo Paron, remembered being told by Celia, her grandmother, that the family lived in fear continually, never knowing when her father would come home and beat his wife (Vitaline) and children.

With the passing of time, life became increasingly intolerable with Xavier, and so, with the permission of St. Mary’s pastor, Vitaline kicked François out of the house. This happened prior to the 1885 Minnesota Census.

François- moved to Duluth, and he died on March 23, 1900, and was buried there.

Vitaline Lebeau Boan, after some peaceful years, died on March 25, 1916, and was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Eagle Creek. Her children, Mary, Francis, Rose, Vitaline, and Leo were also buried there.

Bibliography

Roberts, Dr. Norene and Dr. Clark Dobbs. A Lower Minnesota River Valley Cultural Resource Study and Interpretive Plan for the Minnesota Valley State Park & Trail. June 1993.

Coller, Julius II. The Shakopee Story, pp. 25-26.

Paron, Father William J. The DeMers Family of Normandy, New France, Minnesota & Beyond. 2011.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

Peter Jost Yost was born on February 2, 1822 in Honsfeld, Büllingen, Verviers, Liège, Prussia (later German Empire, now Belgium). His parents were Nicolaus Jost (1782-1844) and Cäcilia Fickers Jost (1791-1855).

In the period 1815-1919 it belonged first to the Kingdom of Prussia and later to the German Empire following the unification of Germany. Büllingen is a municipality of East Belgium, located in the Belgian province of Liège, Wallonia. The official language of Büllingen is German. Its component village of Krewinkel includes the easternmost point in Belgium. The municipality also contains Rocherath, the highest village in Belgium, as well as the second highest point in Belgium, the Weißer Stein near Mürringen.

By 1850, Peter was living and working as a settler-colonist in St. Paul, Minnesota Territory.

Peter married Maria Catherine “Katie” Bender, who was born on April 27, 1837, in Meerfeld. Meerfeld is a village and municipality belonging to a collective municipality in the county of Bernkastel Wittlich in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.

Maria’s parents were Mathias Bender (1804-1853) and Catherina Jungels Bender (1799-1847). Mathias and Catherina married on January 22, 1829. When Catherina died in 1847, Mathias and their three children immigrated to America. On that trip, Mathias died on September 14, 1853. The three children continued to the United States.

One of Mathias’s daughters, Maria Catherine “Katie,” married Peter on February 20, 1855, in St. Paul. They then headed to Shakapee City in a steamboat, where on the levee at the foot of Holmes Street, the first of ten children, Caecilia was born on November 28, 1855.

Peter became the chief of police in Shakopee in 1876. A resolution was passed by the Shakopee council, fixing his salary at $2.00 a day, and $3.00 for special day and night assignments, according to an article, “Wage of Police Hard But $2.00 Per Day in ‘70s,” Shakopee Argus-Tribune, April 1, 1931.

Chief Yost’s duties included giving his whole time the first Monday of each month, from 9 a.m. until midnight. He also had to be available on the 4^th of July, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, or any time the circuses came to town, and any other public days. He had to work on Sundays from 2 p.m. until midnight.

In those days, the chief was kept fairly busy. Shakopee had several saloons, and sometimes there was trouble there. Besides that, the chief was responsible for checking for the saloon licenses were paid for, and that all city ordinances were strictly obeyed.

Once, in 1877, people criticized Peter because of alleged infractions. Yost was charged with letting the patrons of some saloons on First Street become too noisy, thus disturbing the peace of people walking along the street.

Besides this, Chief Yost had to oversee keeping stray animals off the streets, especially those in the business section, and he was supposed to round up or send home all dogs found running around town. Between the cows and dogs and an occasional intoxicated celebrant, he had his hands full.

Chief Yost was instructed to keep all strangers from creating disturbances within the city limits, and to keep track of all suspicious persons.

While there were no gangsters in town in 1870s, there were plenty of unwelcome visitors who tried to reap a harvest by frisking saloon patrons or doing a little pickpocketing on the streets.

In the 1870s and 1880s, the city slickers frequently visited the smaller towns, like Shakopee, especially at fair times, and on holidays in the summer when crowds gathered. Their work was crude, according to the Shakopee Argus-Tribune, but the people had not yet been educated and often were victimized. The larger numbers of people in town, and the culprits were more skillful.

In some towns in the early years, the marshal was allowed fifty cents or a dollar for each drunk he arrested.

It was reported in Gaylord that the marshal used to wait outside the saloon that had the most people in order to make a bit of money. When that started, the drunks stayed in the bar and would not leave unless the saloon owner had to get someone to help them out without the marshal catching them!

Luckily, this did not happen much in Shakopee. In Shakopee, the people enjoyed a real beer or a little good whiskey once in a while.

Peter Jost Yost died on August 4, 1895. He was buried up the hill at Calvary Cemetery in Eagle Creek. His wife, Maria Catherine Katie Bender Yost, died twelve years later on June 21, 1907.

Bibliography

“Wage of Police Hard But $2.00 Per Day in ‘70s.” Shakopee Argus-Tribune, April 1, 1931.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

Mary Julia Ehman was born in Haller, Canton d’Echternach, Grevenmacher, Luxembourg on January 28, 1832.

Though there is little evidence related to her family, it is clear that at some point, Mary Julia Ehman immigrated to America, and was living in Buffalo, New York when she met Peter Lies.

Peter Lies was born on May 24,1826 in Haller, Canton d’Echternach, Grevenmacher, Luxembourg. His parents were Henry Heinrich Henry Lies (1793-1855) and Susanna Marie Tammel (1792-1875). Peter was one of sixteen children of Henry and Susanna. Fourteen of their sixteen children were born in Haller. Four died. Margaretha died at one year of age. Jean died also there at the age of thirteen. Anne Marie married Nicolas Jungels in Haller but died six months after her marriage. Margaret died at ten months of age in Haller. The remaining by name but not necessarily by birth: Nicholas, John, Peter, Claus, Marcus, Mathias, Katherine, Susanna, Elizabeth, and Maria. That leaves two unaccounted for if there were 16 children. A story has it that one of the children was lost in New York City and never found.

Peter came to the U.S. in 1847. He was the first young man to leave Haller for that “supposed wilderness of North America,” according to Joachim Spexarth, in an article published in 1988 on Ancestry.com.

After abandoning the idea of the California Gold Rush, Peter was the foreman in a sawmill near Buffalo, New York, and Canada. Around 1853, Mary Julia Ehman married Peter Lies in New York. Peter had a first wife, an Irish woman, who died in 1852. Their first two sons, John George (1854-1907) and Nicholas Michael (1856-1940) were born in New York.

Meanwhile, on April 7, 1852, the Henry Lies family, his father and mother and siblings started on the journey to America. Henry Lies, like his fathers before him, was a farmer and had a large family. With no new land available, they would have had to follow custom of dividing the farm between their children. The Henry Lies farm consisted of six acres. Therefore, on April 7, 1852, the Henry Lies family started on their journey.

They traveled from their home in Haller, arriving the first night in Hosigen. The second day they reached Pepinster, Belgium, the nearest railroad station, then went by rail to Antwerp the intended seaport. On April 11, they boarded a three mast sailing vessel along with about five hundred other passengers.

After twenty days of favorable sailing, on the morning of May 1, 1852, they sighted the American shore. On May 3, the ship anchored off Staten Island for inspection, remaining unmoved for two days.

Then the group was transported to New York by tugboat; on May 7 they proceeded by river steamer up the Hudson to Albany, and the next day by rail to Buffalo, taking quarters at Steinmetz hotel. Remaining there they met three of their sons who had come to the U.S. ahead of them: Peter who came in 1847; Claus and Markus who came in 1851. Peter was married at this time and had one child.

On May 13, the Lies family proceeded by boat to Detroit, Michigan and then by train to Chicago, and then on to Aurora, Illinois. There Henry and his eldest son Nicholas bought a farm of 208 acres ($22 per acre). They paid for it in the French gold coin they had carried in girdles about their bodies.

Henry died October 17, 1855, in Aurora. Susanna died in 1875 in Aurora. Both are buried in Calvary Cemetery in Aurora, Illinois.

Mary and Peter Lies along with their two boys settled in Stillwater, Minnesota. By 1858, the family moved to Shakopee.

Mary continued to have children: H. Frederick (1858-1863); Susanna (1861-1861); John August (1862-1906); Mathias (1867-1867); and Harriet Lies (1869-1963).

When Mary was 37 years old, and after she had seven children, she died in Shakopee on July 28, 1869. Mary Julia Ehman Lies was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Eagle Creek.

Peter also served in the Civil War. Peter joined the Ninth Minnesota Infantry Regiment Military on August 15, a Minnesota USV infantry regiment that served in the Union Army in the Western Theater of the American Civil War.

On July 15, 1875, Peter married for the third time. He married Maria Mechtildis Pass in St. Paul. Mathilda had five children with Peter: Helen Mary, Henry August, Anna Barbara, Joseph H., and Herbert Duncan Lies.

Peter Lies died on May 4, 1909, in Stillwater, Minnesota. Mathilda Pass Lies died, also in Stillwater, on December 8, 1944.

Bibliography

Spexarth, Joachim. Ancestry.com, 1988.