Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Elizabeth Hermes was born in Prussia, at Endolf in the province of Westphalia on Feb. 11, 1832. Her parents were Johannes Wilhelm Hermes and Maria Catherina Schoettler. When Elizabeth was 18, she and her parents moved to the United States. They then lived in Detroit for two years. Then they moved to Minnesota Territory.

On their way from Detroit to Minnesota Territory, Elizabeth married Johan John Theodor Koeper (1818-1901), son of Johann A. Koeper and Anna K Haggen. They married in Chicago on Sept. 15, 1852.

Elizabeth and John first settled in St. Paul, and they were engaged in the hotel business. After two years there, they took a steamboat up the river to Shakopee on Oct. 28, 1854.

Elizabeth and John settled on the fertile spot upon the banks of the Minnesota River in what was, at that time, the Cates Farm. They lived there for 18 years.

The Hermes-Koeper family increased by ten children. The first two probably died shortly after birth in St. Paul. The rest of their children included Elizabeth (1854), Charles (1856), August (1858), Anton (1860), Sophia (1861), Frank (1865), Joseph (1870), and Emma (1872).

In 1872 Elizabeth and John moved to their new homestead located inside the city limits on the west side of Shakopee. John preempted a tract of land adjoining Shakopee as originally platted and platted a portion of his tract as an addition to Shakopee city, known as Koeper’s Addition.

Elizabeth’s brother, Franz, who was a bachelor, lived in a log cabin at the bottom of the hill on the Koeper farm. He also enjoyed his Schnapps. According to one story, Franz was attempting to climb the hill on all fours so as not to arouse the household. The geese, who were roaming loose on the farmyard, disclosed both his position and condition with their honking, combined with Franz’s German cursing! Mamie Koeper heard this story from her mother, according to a note in A Little History: Compiled in Celebration of the Life and Death of Henrietta Deutsch (1984) by Betty Scherkehbach.

John was engaged in the distillery business for four or five years at what was later called the Union Brewery. After that, John and Elizabeth and family were involved extensively in dairying and farming.

Elizabeth was a member of the Old Settlers’ Association and was well known in town. In the closing years, Elizabeth had a lingering and painful illness, though she bore her suffering in patience.

Elizabeth Hermes Koeper, at age 63, died after a long illness, on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 1895. The funeral happened at St. Mark’s Catholic Church and was attended by many friends and family. It was clear that people had a high esteem in which she was held.

Elizabeth was buried at the Catholic Cemetery in Shakopee.

Six years later, Johann John Koeper died of heart disease at age 82 on Thursday, Jan. 3, 1901. One newspaper remembered him, and remembered his hearty laugh, his interesting tales, and his bluff honest voice. He had been part of the Shakopee community for almost half a century and was remembered on his daily round in the dairy wagon. Johann was buried next to his wife, Elizabeth, at the Catholic Cemetery.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

Elizabeth Clarke Mawney was born Aug. 13, 1813, in Cranston, Rhode Island. Her parents were John Mawney and Ruth C. Gladding Mawney (1790-1815). Elizabeth’s paternal grandparents were Dr. John Mawney (1750-1830) and Elizabeth Prentice Clarke Mawney (1765-1803).

Dr. Mawney was born in Cranston and was the son of John Mawney and Amey Gibbs of Providence, Rhode Island. He first married Nancy Wilson. The second marriage was with Elizabeth P. Clarke (1765-1803). Dr. Mawney was a physician, and a colonel in the Rhode Island Militia during the Revolutionary War, according to Gaspee Info.

He was a member of the party that burned the British vessel Gaspee in 1772, and following the incident removed a bullet from Lt. Duddingston, the vessel’s commander. Fifty years after the American Revolution, Dr. Mawney was among the four veterans of the Gaspee incident still living and was honored by the State of Rhode Island.

The Gaspee Affair was a significant event leading up to the American Revolution. HMS Gaspee was a British customs schooner that enforced the Navigation Acts in and around Newport, Rhode Island in 1772. According to an article, “An Act of War on the Eve of Revolution,” on the U.S. Naval Institute website, the Gaspee ran aground in shallow water while chasing the packet ship Hannah on June 9 near Gaspee Point in Warwick, Rhode Island. A group of men attacked, boarded, and torched the Gaspee.

The event increased tensions between the American colonists and British officials, following the Boston Massacre in 1770. British officials in Rhode Island wanted to increase their control over trade—legitimate trade as well as smuggling—to increase their revenue from the small colony. But Rhode Islanders increasingly protested the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, and other British impositions that had clashed with the colony’s history of rum manufacturing, slave trading, and other maritime exploits.

This event and others in Narragansett Bay marked the first acts of violent uprising against the British crown’s authority in America, preceding the Boston Tea Party by more than a year and moving the thirteen colonies toward the war for independence.

Elizabeth married William Albert Cole (1815-1902). William’s parents were William Davis Cole (1780-1842) and Mercy Pearce Cole (1782-1847). His grandparents were Capt. John Cole, Jr. (1749-1825), and Virtue Davis Cole (1755-1820); and Joseph Pearce (1760-1814) and Sarah Havens Pearce (1760-1845).

Elizabeth and William had eight children.

The first child was William Davis (1842-1880). William was a Civil War veteran and was buried near the front entrance of Valley Cemetery. He served in Company I of the Ninth Minnesota Infantry, along with several other Shakopee young men. William never married and returned home to Eagle Creek (now part of Shakopee) after the war to live with his parents and siblings and a neighbor to Samuel Pond. Sadly, he died at age 37 due to consumption, also known as tuberculosis.

Their second child was Henry Harry Barton (1843-1925). Harry, like his other siblings, was born in Baltimore City, Maryland, and moved to Eagle Creek. Like most of his siblings, Harry was buried at Valley Cemetery in Shakopee.

The next child was Sarah Elizabeth. Sarah, who was born in 1844 in Baltimore City, married Pvt. George Sidney Mayfield (1843-1932) in 1866. Both are buried in Valley Cemetery, with Sarah dying in 1918.

The fourth child of Elizabeth and William was Anna Frances (1846-1929). Anna married George Washington Murphy (1843-1918). George’s parents were Richard G. Murphy (1801-1875) and Sarah Sally Lemen Murphy (1809-1846). George lived with his family at what is now the Landing in Shakopee. He was also in the Civil War (1861-1865). In Valley Cemetery is a tall spire, which is a monument for Richard G. Murphy. Richard came to the Shakopee area after being appointed Indian Agent in the territory of Minnesota in 1848. He built a large hotel and operated a wharf and ferry service on the Minnesota River just east of Shakopee (now part of Shakopee), along with his youngest son, George. Anna and George were buried at Valley Cemetery.

The fifth and sixth children were Harriet Baron (1850-1924) and Kate (1851-1946). Harriet married George C. Christ (1833-1915). Kate married George A. Pettey (1841-1890), who was in the navy in 1863. All of them are buried at Valley Cemetery in Shakopee.

Elizabeth and William’s seventh child was Eliza Mercy (1853-1939). Eliza married Lewis Sharpless (1836-1899) in Shakopee on Nov. 3, 1885. Lewis first married Jane Burke, and they had five children before Lewis moved to Shakopee and married Eliza. Both Eliza and Lewis were buried at Valley Cemetery.

The final child born to Elizabeth and William was Minnesota (1855-1918). Minnesota, also known as Minnie, was born when Minnesota became a territory, and so that is why she was named Minnesota. Minnie married George Washington Kinsey (1834-1917). George is on the monument with William David Cole. He was another Civil War soldier. George married Minnie in 1882. They are both buried at Valley Cemetery.

Elizabeth Clarke Mawney Cole died Sept. 15, 1891, and was buried at Valley Cemetery in Shakopee, along with her husband and her children. A few years later, in 1902, William Albert Cole died.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Elizabeth Betty Anne Schmitt was born Jan. 7, 1930. She was the daughter of Theodore Ted Schmitt (1882-1935), who grew up in Shakopee, and Kathryn Fritz (1887-1972), who grew up in Chaska. Betty was the youngest of 13 children.

Betty’s father died of silicosis when Betty was five years old. While they were living in a house not far from St. Mark’s Church, her mother had to confront the fact that, during the Great Depression, she had 13 children to feed. Her mother rented rooms at the house. And then her mom went around the town and asked people who had vacant land if Kathryn and her family could plant gardens there. And so, every day, the children had to go around town to take care of the vegetables. From earliest childhood into her late 80s Betty lovingly tended her vegetable and flower gardens, and canned and froze her harvests. No one could stretch a dollar like she could.

Like others of her generation, Betty said that she “learned at an early age, what some people never learn – that if we wanted something out of life, we had to go out there and make it happen. We learned how to be self-sufficient.”

Betty also was a devout Catholic and a lifetime member of St. Mark’s Catholic Church. But as for school, Betty went to St. Mary’s School.

David Schleper asked her about this, and she explained that at St. Mark’s, students had to pay for books. When St. Mary’s School started in 1935, the students did not have to pay for the books, which was important during the Depression. And so, Betty, like others, went to St. Mary’s for school.

Betty married Earl William Dols on June 3, 1947, at St. Mary’s Church. Earl was born Jan. 16, 1919, to Leonard Dols (1873-1957) and Mary Ellert Dols (1878-1955) on their dairy farm six miles north of Glencoe, Minnesota. He attended local schools and completed the automotive course at Dunwoody Institute in Minneapolis. He worked at the Ford garage in Glencoe before going into the Army in 1941. He served in the 175th Field Artillery attached to the 34th Infantry Division called the Red Bulls in England, Ireland, Scotland, North Africa, and Italy. At the end of the war in 1945, he came home and worked at Shakopee Ford for the next 35 years. He learned to fly on the G.I. Bill at Flying Cloud Airport and had his own plane with a partner for a time.

The couple had two children, Leonard and Linda. When Leonard, her older child, was in college, Betty went to work for the Mertz Insurance Agency, later called Mertz-Horeish Insurance Agency in Shakopee for 25 years until her retirement in 1990. During that time, she achieved licensure as CPIW and CIC. After she passed her board certification, she taught classes in her spare time to help others achieve certification. She was recognized as Insurance Woman of the Year 1980 by the Insurance Women of Greater Minneapolis, according to the Shakopee Valley News on May 21, 1980.

After her retirement, she began a second career as a professional genealogist. She was president of the Minnesota German Genealogical Society and traveled to Salt Lake City and Germany to do research. As a lifelong resident of Shakopee, Betty loved her community and volunteered countless hours for many organizations, such as Meals on Wheels, Friends of the Library, Scott County Historical Society, and Shakopee Heritage Society. Betty was a proud member of the historic Shakopee Book Lovers Club.

Betty was one of the founding members of the Shakopee Historical Society in 1992. Later the name of the society was changed to the Shakopee Heritage Society to avoid confusion with the Scott County Historical Society. For more than a decade Betty worked to build the Shakopee Heritage Society, and she held several offices for multiple terms and brought many interested and informative programs to the meetings.

Several articles from the Shakopee Valley News discuss Betty, the genealogist, who volunteered at the Stans Museum effort to catalogue the death and marriage records of residents. Over 650 thousand entries, and 120,300 handprinted entries were written on 3×5 cards by Betty and nine other volunteers who took three years and eight months to make the information available. Some of the articles from the Shakopee Valley News include “History at Your Fingertips” by Shannon Fiecke, April 24, 2008; “She’s the Area’s Family Sleuth” by Kristin Holtz, April 30, 2009; “Roots of Family Trees Surface at County Historical Society” by Nicole S. Colson, Jan. 3, 2013, and “Finding Your Family History” by David Schueller.

David Schleper remembered going to the Stans Museum every Thursday while she volunteered there. The two of them spent hours and hours talking about the history of Shakopee. Over time, Betty willingly produced over 100 families’ ancestry charts, and family group sheets documenting births, marriages, and deaths. But she didn’t write the family’s stories, which is best done by family members. She still loved doing research, and it’s fun to come across a black sheep. “Every family has someone they would rather not have, but those people generally make it more interesting,” said Betty, grinning.

Betty Anne Schmitt Dols, 91, died peacefully on Monday, Nov. 8, 2021, at St. Gertrude’s Nursing Home. After a mass of Christian Burial on Nov. 15, 2021, at St. Mark’s Catholic Church, she was buried next to her husband at the Catholic Cemetery in Shakopee.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Josiah Schroeder Weiser was born Aug. 17, 1832, to Samuel and Mary Schroeder Weiser in Reading, Pennsylvania. Josiah’s father was a miller near the city. After completing his normal school education in Reading, Josiah attended the Fredonia Academy in Pomfret, New York, and then enrolled in the Jefferson Medical College (now the Sidney Kimmel Medical College) in Philadelphia, according to an article by Curt Eriksmoen on May 29, 2020, in his “Did You Know That” column.

He graduated in 1855 and decided to join his two brothers, William and Joel, and his mother, who were living in Shakapee City, Minnesota Territory since 1854. His father died in 1854 while traveling to Shakopee. Josiah’s brothers and their mother began farming, and Joel found plentiful work as a mason and plasterer.

Shakapee City, located across the Minnesota River southwest of Minneapolis, was a rapidly growing community for white settlers. It was the traditional home of many of the Mdewakanton Dakota Indians, where they fished, hunted game, and gathered wild rice, nuts, berries, and roots.

Dr. Weiser (along with Dr. Wakefield) treated the wounded Dakota during the Battle of Shakopee in 1858. The Dakota had old men, boys, and even some men who were disabled in the battle, a total of 65 men. According to the History of Carver County, “There were but few good guns among them, all being common fowling pieces, some of them old and unreliable, while a dozen or more men had no guns at all. But the white men of Shakopee supplied this deficiency; they gave the Indians every gun in town.” Dr. Weiser and Dr. Wakefield helped the wounded in downtown Shakopee. Josiah had been in Shakopee since 1855, and he was a doctor to many people in Shakopee, including the Dakota, and he learned the language, so that helped.

Everything appeared to be going well for Josiah as his practice continued to grow, and in 1858, he partnered with David Lennox How in owning a drugstore in Shakopee. Dr. Weiser married Eliza Victoria Hunt on June 2, 1859, in St. Peter’s Protestant Episcopal Church, Shakopee. They had two children in Shakopee, Ada (1860) and Florence (1862).

Josiah enlisted in the First Minnesota Cavalry (Mounted Rangers) as a surgeon on Oct. 21, 1862.

“Dr. Josiah S. Weiser, regimental surgeon for the First Minnesota Mounted Rangers, was from Shakopee, Minnesota, and had lived among the Dakotas, learning their language and serving as their doctor,” said Paul N. Beck in his 2013 book, Columns of Vengeance: Soldiers, Sioux, and the Punitive Expeditions 1863-1864. An orderly, also on a horse, was an aide to Dr. Weiser. He was African American.

Dr. Weiser was assigned to the First Minnesota Mounted Rangers, which was under the command of Col. Samuel McPhail. On June 16, 1863, Sibley and his army of 3,320 men began their long journey into Dakota Territory.

Riding on horseback across the prairie in the summer heat was very taxing on the soldiers, and they were on constant lookout for a pleasant area where they could dismount and relax in comfort. One such place was six miles southeast of present-day Kathryn, in Barnes County, where they arrived on July 13, 1863. This site was later named Camp Weiser, in honor of Josiah, the company physician, according to Curt Eriksmoen.

For over a month, Sibley’s soldiers pushed westward without seeing any warriors. They were informed about a place called Big Mound, ten miles north of present-day Tappen, where there was an encampment of about 2,500 Native Americans.

Weiser was acquainted with some of the Indians, and “as he approached Big Mound to greet several Indian friends,” he was shot through the heart by a renegade who was not a member of the group.

“Believing he saw men that he knew, Weiser and his African American orderly rode out of camp to a nearby hill, where scouts were meeting with some young warriors,” said Beck, when he was unexpectedly shot. A member of Iŋkpáduta’s band suddenly pulled out a gun and shot Dr. Weiser in the back, probably thinking he was Sibley.

There have been many medical doctors from North Dakota and northern Dakota Territory killed on battlefields outside of the state, but Weiser is the only medical doctor killed inside the state’s present borders during a military conflict, according to the article “Assassination in central ND likely was the spark that ignited the Dakota War” in Curt Eriksmoen’s “Did You Know That” column, on May 29, 2020.

Soon, both sides began shooting at each other, and a battle began.

The Santee were poorly armed. Only about half had firearms and those had little ammunition. Several hundred of the Mounted Rangers pursued the Indian warriors, protecting the flight of their women and children, until nightfall. Most of Sibley’s infantry devoted themselves to destroying the large quantities of jerky, buffalo robes, cooking utensils, and other goods left behind by the Sioux in their hasty flight. According to records, “…the majority of the Santees whose villages they had destroyed and who were now economically devastated by the battle, left with no food or shelter for the winter, had had little or nothing to do with the uprising.”

Dr. Joseph S. Weiser was killed July 24, 1863, in the Battle of Big Mound, Dakota Territory. Located in Kidder County, a headstone marks the place where Dr. Weiser was shot, according to Find a Grave.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

John Luman Wakefield was born April 25, 1823 in Winstead, Connecticut. His parents were Luman Wakefield (1787-1850) and Elizabeth Betsey (Rockwell) Wakefield (1789-1831). John graduated from Yale Medical School at New Haven, Connecticut, in 1847.

John first practiced medicine in Winstead. He then moved to the California goldfields in 1849. He treated patients there until 1854, when he became ill with cholera and returned to Winstead.

John’s younger brother, James, had graduated from Trinity College by then and became a lawyer. He and his brother decided to go west to Minnesota Territory and settled in Sha K’ Pay in April 1854. James became a successful land speculator, a state and then a federal legislator. John set up a medical practice there and was one of the town’s earliest physicians. He was also a land speculator.

He married Sarah Florence Butts Brown in Jordan, Minnesota on Sept. 27, 1856. Sarah was born June 12, 1830, in Providence, Rhode Island. John was listed as 33 years of age and she was 28. Their first child, James Orin, was born in 1858, the year Minnesota became a state, in Shakapee City.

By the late 1850s, treaties with the U.S. government had confined the Dakota to a reservation straddling the upper Minnesota River and the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) to lands further north and east. White immigration and reliance on the fur trade intensified the two groups’ competition for resources. The addition of guns made the fighting even more deadly. The Ojibwe-Dakota tensions turned violent again in June 1858 across the Minnesota River from Shakopee. Dr. Wakefield and Dr. Josiah Schroeder Weiser helped the Dakota hurt in the battle. The Dakota had old men, boys, and even some men who were disabled in the battle, a total of 65 men. According to the History of Carver County, “There were but few good guns among them, all being common fowling pieces, some of them old and unreliable, while a dozen or more men had no guns at all. But the white men of Shakopee supplied this deficiency; they gave the Indians every gun in town.” Dr. Weiser and Dr. Wakefield helped the wounded in downtown Shakopee.

In 1860, their second child, Lucy Ellen, also called Nellie, was born. John and Sarah’s relationship seemed to have been rocky from the start, and it wasn’t helped when the doctor chose in 1861 to move with Sarah and their two very young children to the Dakota reservation in southwestern Minnesota. John would serve as the Upper Agency physician.

Though Sarah didn’t view the Dakota as equal to her, she nevertheless respected them to a significant degree and valued their friendship. Sarah hired Dakota women and girls to help in her home; she rode out to Dakota camps to sit fireside with the women, smoking pipe with them as they cooked, learning their language and their stories. The Dakota called Sarah Tonka-Winohiuca waste, or large woman.

The family’s house at the Upper Agency was located next to the agent’s quarters and warehouse building. It was a big house, and had plenty of food, unlike the Dakota in the area.

In pioneer riverman-turned-farmer William Cairncross’s memoirs, there’s a story from 1861 that took place at the Upper Sioux Agency near modern-day Granite Falls. He’d brought supplies by wagon to the Indian reservation a year before the U.S.-Dakota War erupted, according an article by Curt Brown called “Tales deliver a ‘hot dose’ of river life in the mid-1800s” by the Minnesota Star Tribune, May 13, 2017.

When a Dakota father with a sick child asked Dr. Wakefield for some medicine, the doctor – smoking his cigar with his feet up – told him to go to hell.

“At that I was angry, and jumped up to my feet and pointed my finger at the doctor and swore an oath,” Cairncross wrote, “that if I was that Indian and had come ten miles to get something for my child, and the doctor sat at the stove and refused something for him, so help me, he would never doctor another, if I were to hang for it. …. There were just such things as that that made the Indians break out and massacre the whites, and I could hardly blame them.”

The Dakota War broke out the morning of Aug. 18, 1862, at the Lower Agency. News of the events traveled to the Upper Agency, and white settlers, agency employees, and some Indians, fearing for their safety, began to make their way to Fort Ridgely, the closest military fort in the area. Dr. Wakefield arranged for his wife and children to leave that afternoon with George Gleason, an Upper Agency clerk. They left about 2 p.m. and traveled using Wakefield’s horse and open wagon. On their way to Fort Ridgely, Gleason was killed and Sarah and her two children were captured by a few Dakota. Sarah wrote a book, Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees: A Narrative of Indian Captivity, which is available through the Shakopee Heritage Society.

Dr. Wakefield, along with 61 settler-colonists from the Upper Agency, arrived safely in Hutchinson a day later. Six weeks later, Sarah and her two children, plus about 260 white and mixed-descent women, a few men, and children were freed.

Dr. Wakefield and Sarah moved back to Shakopee. They had two more children, Julie Elizabeth in 1866 and John Rockwell in 1868. Six years later, on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 1874, Dr. John Lumen Wakefield died at his residence in Shakopee. The immediate cause of the doctor’s death was attributed to an overdose of an opiate. It appears that he returned home, and shortly after retiring requested his wife to call him at a specified hour. A short time after, the attention of his wife was attracted by his breathing, and upon attempting to arouse him she found herself unable to do so. Assistance was called, but to no avail, and he expired soon after.

The War in Words: Reading the Dakota Conflict Through the Captivity Literature by Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola (2009) by University of Nebraska Press, described Dr. Wakefield as a drinker, smoker, and bon vivant who died with outstanding debts that took up $4,500 of an estate valued at $5,073.

After her husband’s death, Sarah moved to St. Paul. She married Lewis Henderson (1852-1923), who was 22 years her junior. The marriage, which took place in the late 1870s, lasted only a few years, and, by 1885, census records list her again as Sarah Wakefield.

Sarah Florence Brown Wakefield Henderson died May 27, 1899. She is buried at Valley Cemetery, next to her first husband, according to Find a Grave.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Jacob Jack Le Van Sach and his wife, Pham Ngoc Diep, were born in Vietnam. Jack was born in Saigon, which became Ho Chi Minh City when the communists took over in 1975. Ho Chi Minh City is the largest city in Vietnam, situated in the south. In the southeastern region, the city surrounds the Saigon River. Pham Ngoc Diep was born in Mỹ Tho. It is a city in the Tiền Giang province in the Mekong Delta region of South Vietnam. It is the regional center of economics, education, and technology.

Jacob was forty years old, and Pham was 43 years old in 1975. They had three children, according to an article in the Shakopee Valley News on Sept. 3, 1975. Their oldest child was Le Nghi Nguyen, who was a 12-year-old son. Their only daughter was Le Thuy Kieu, who was born in 1965. And their youngest, another son, Le Nguyen Nghi, was born in 1970.

Jack received a baccalaureate degree from the University of Saigon in 1953. In Vietnam, he was a secondary school teacher, according to the article “Parishioners welcome Jacob Le Van Sach family.” He authored several books as an area developmental specialist. And in Vietnam, he was a U.S. Embassy liaison translator. In fact, during his liaison with the Vietnamese government since 1968, Jack authored several textbooks for teaching languages.

Large-scale immigration from Vietnam to the United States began at the end of the Vietnam War, when the Fall of Saigon in 1975 led to the U.S.-sponsored evacuation of Vietnamese refugees. As the humanitarian crisis and displacement of people in the Indochina region (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) intensified, more refugees and their families were admitted to the United States.

Like government and military officials, urban professionals and well-educated South Vietnamese people who could speak English and were familiar with American culture were the first immigrants to arrive in America in 1975. South Vietnamese left because they feared that their way of life would not be the same with North Vietnam in power.

Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota was significantly involved in the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees in Minnesota after the Fall of Saigon.

When Jacob Jack Le Van Sach and Diep Phan Ngoc Sach, along with their three children, arrived in Minnesota, parishioners from St. John’s Lutheran Church in Shakopee, including Pastor Walter Johnson, greeted the new immigrants at the Amtrak station. According to the Shakopee Valley News, the family met the people from St. John’s Lutheran Church as well as parishioners from St. Mark’s Catholic Church including Duong Manh Hung and Pham Thi Hoa, who had just moved to Shakopee a few weeks before.

It worked well to have people who had recently arrived there to help the family as they all could speak Vietnamese. It also was helpful because Jack and his family knew more English.

Eventually, Jack and Diep ended up in Hennepin County. Jack received a doctorate degree and worked as a refugee relocation specialist.

Dr. Jacob Jack Le Van Sach died Oct. 29, 2013, in Blaine, Minnesota.

He was 78 years old, and a widow who never married after the death of his wife a few years earlier. He was cremated and buried in Brooklyn Park.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Mudcura Sanitarium (1908-1951), later known as the Assumption Seminary (until 1970), was located on what was once Highway 212 just west of Highway 169, near the Seminary Fen.

The sulfur springs, mud, and plants from this area had been used by Dakota medicine men for many years before the settler-colonists discovered their healing attributes.

The treatments at Mudcura used these plants and mineral-rich mud when treating people for medical ailments, including for arthritis, asthma, nervous disorders, and even alcoholism.

Mudcura Sanitarium was not located in Shakopee, though it was close. It was located between the cities of Chaska and Chanhassen, and just across the river from Shakopee. Though located in Chanhassen, many postcards named the place as in Shakopee.

One of the masseurs at the place was Dr. Gustave Herman Seidler. Dr. Seidler was born in Gerbstadt, Germersheim, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany on Dec. 9, 1867. He married twice. The first woman died in Germany, and Dr. Seidler was left with two daughters, Bertha and Helene, according to an article in the Nov. 21, 1913 Shakopee Tribune, “Instantly Killed.”

He married for a second time in Germany, and moved the family to America in 1904, and to Shakopee in 1908.

The Seidlers lived near the train tracks in Shakopee on Nov. 11, 1913. Dr. Seidler’s daughter, Helene, ran in front of the Omaha #11 Passenger Train, which was speeding to town at 9:45 p.m.

Gustave ran to get her, but he stumbled and fell. The wheels passed over his body and completely severed both legs above the ankles, according to an article in the Scott County Argus, Nov. 21, 1913, called “Shocking Accident Horrifies Community.”

Helene called Coroner Hirscher, and Dr. Gustave Herman Seidler, in pieces, was brought to the office, and eventually to Valley Cemetery in Shakopee, where he was buried.

He was survived by his second wife, Minnie Finsch Seidler and his two children, Bertha Ida (1897-1994) and Helene (1898-1948). Gustave’s second wife died in 1931 and is buried at Valley Cemetery near her husband.

As for the Mudcura Sanitarium, it closed in 1951. The sanatorium was sold to the Black Franciscans, Order of Friars Minor Conventual, from Louisville, Kentucky. They named it Assumption Seminary. It remained in operation until 1970.

After 1970, the property changed hands many times but remained abandoned. On Nov. 8, 1997, a fire destroyed the building, a sad ending for Mudcura Sanitarium, a landmark that was known internationally for good health.

Douglas James had been working in Chinese restaurants since 1965, when he was 16 years old, and began dreaming of owning his own restaurant, according to the Shakopee Valley News on March 19, 1986. In January 1986, Douglas opened the House of Yim at 576 Marschall Road in Shakopee, said staff writer Beth Forkner-Moe.

Douglas and his family worked in Chinese restaurants. His great-uncle, Walter James, came to America in the 1890s, and opened the Nankin Cafe in Minneapolis in 1919.

Nankin Cafe was a Chinese restaurant, considered “a downtown Minneapolis landmark for eighty years,” according to Rick Nelson, in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Feb. 25, 1999. Founded by Walter James in 1919 at 15 S. Seventh Street, now the site of the Park and Shop ramp (formerly the Dayton-Radisson ramp), it was sold in 1949 to the Golden and Chalfen families.

“Walter James was born in 1892 in Olympia, Washington into a family of modest means.

“As a child he and a friend played hooky from school often until they were finally caught. At the tender age of nine he went to China with a family friend and stayed in his father’s home village of Taishan for two and a half years. When he returned, he rejoined his family and spent his teenage years around Tacoma, Seattle, and Yakima. He did odd jobs here and there, including managing a Chinese restaurant and working as an interpreter for the US Immigration Service. In the latter role he visited many Chinese steamboats that came into the Tacoma harbor. He got to know many of the Chinese sailors on board and soon was trading with them, buying silk handkerchiefs and other merchandise from them and reselling them. His budding entrepreneurship took a step forward when he was offered a position by a restaurateur from Chicago. He moved there in 1913 but did not like the city.”

He soon moved to Minneapolis and opened his first Chinese restaurant, Canton, there. In 1919 he opened his second one, Nankin Café, in downtown Minneapolis.

Nankin was a grand operation that featured antique Chinese furniture as well as a western orchestra. James created his signature dish, Nankin Chow Mein, early and it became very popular, well known far beyond Minnesota. The restaurant was highly successful, becoming a magnet for the local Chinese community, as well as a landmark for the city of Minneapolis, noted by the Chinese Heritage Foundation.

Through his Walter C. James Foundation, he gave generously to many charitable organizations in Minnesota, Chicago, and Hong Kong. In founding the Chinese American Civic Council, he hoped “to promote better citizenship, to strive for freedom and equality of all persons, to work for the civic and economic development of Chinese communities, and to foster the well-being of citizens and residents of Chinese extraction.”

In the Minneapolis Star, in August 1981, Karen Winegar noted, “The cheerful, hardcore and silent bus help are part of a crew of some two hundred workers, said to be the largest restaurant staff in town…They zoom in and out the swinging doors, zip up and down the carpeted stairs. The public never sees the thirty Nankin chefs, twenty of whom can only speak Chinese. Together, they crack out some three thousand meals daily. That’s almost a million a year. And in a town which seems to slam its shutters around 9 p.m., the Nankin could be relied upon to serve food until late at night.” The Nankin closed on Feb. 24, 1999.

Douglas James worked at the Nankin from 1965 until 1984, and then he worked at other Chinese restaurants in the area, learning more about his trade. “I learned as much as I could.” By January 1986, Douglas James opened the House of Yim at 576 Marschall Road in Shakopee.

Douglas was drafted into the Army one week after high school graduation. He spent two years in the service, including one year in Vietnam. After being discharged, Douglas used the G.I. Bill to go to Duluth Business College where he learned bookkeeping and accounting, according to the Shakopee Valley News in 1986.

The House of Yim employed ten people, including Douglas’s wife, Doris, Chan, a cook, two people who worked in the kitchen, including Lien Tam, and John Ploof, a work-study student from Shakopee Senior High School; his brother-in-law, Barton Leung, who was also learning how to run the restaurant. Five part-time wait staff included Sheryl Gulbrandson, Lona Brown, Nicky Uber, Heidi Boyd, and Stacy Anderson.

The House of Yim served food in the Cantonese style, with several selections including several kinds of chow min, sweet and sour pork, egg rolls, egg foo young, and other traditional Chinese dishes.

Douglas’s philosophy about business was, “I stress being honest. You also need to have quality food and services and a good atmosphere, so people like being there.”

The location is now the New Dragon Cafe.

In the depth of the Depression, there was little work for young people, and no money to pursue an education.

Many people worried that long-term unemployment and borderline poverty would undermine young Americans’ faith in democracy. Eleanor Rosevelt felt that “I live in real terror when I think we may be losing this generation. We have got to bring these young people into the active life of the community and make them feel that they are necessary,” according to The New York Times, May 7, 1934.

Eleanor, working closely with educators and relief officials, pushed Franklin D. Roosevelt to address this problem. Although at first he did not want to develop programs for young people, this lobbying effort changed his mind. In June 1935, President Roosevelt signed an executive order establishing the National Youth Administration (NYA), a New Deal program designed specifically to address the problem of unemployment among Depression-era youth, according to Eleanor Roosevelt in This I Remember, 1949, p. 162-163. While some were paid to remain in school, others were allowed to live in NYA camps where they were taught a trade.

In June 1935 the six transient work camps located in the area included one in the eastern part of Shakopee, next to Highway 101, where The Landing is located now. They operated from 1935 to 1939.

The Minnesota Highway Department purchased four farms comprising 520 acres of farmland adjacent to Shakopee in the Minnesota River Valley for $46 thousand.

One of these farms was the Donovan farm east of Shakopee where the old Murphy house on the site was under renovation. This site – known as Camp #5 – was to be the headquarters, the largest, and best equipped. Eight buildings were built at the Murphy site, sufficient in size to house 200 to 250 men. Construction of the permanent camp at Shakopee was reported to be well under way, as 65 transient men were union carpenters, according to The Shakopee Argus, June 7, 1934.

The camps had medical and dental wards under the supervision of a doctor and two dentists. Every man was assigned to some camp duty such as messenger, first aid, gardening, landscaping, carpentry, kitchen, or many other occupations, said Betty Dols in the February/March 2009 Scott County SCENE article, “Scott County’s Depression Era Camps.” They raised their own vegetables and canned some for the winter. The transients also constructed a rather elaborate warming house at the ice-skating rink in Shakopee north of First Avenue in October 1935.

In March 1938, a new federal project for a work-study program like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) continued in Shakopee, but with a non-military structure. Enrollees earned $10 per month, plus room and board. They could study agriculture, cooking, auto mechanics, carpentry, forestry, welding, and other activities related to a campsite of 2,700 acres of wooded land.

Many young men learned a trade there. In 1939, the federal government added ground mechanics for the aviation industry to the curriculum. In 1940, construction of sea plane bases was added. In 1941 and 1942, young men were taught welding, machine shop, and radio to prepare them for work in defense plants, according to Betty Dols.

The NYA Center officially closed on July 3, 1943, according to the Shakopee Argus-Tribune, July 1, 1943. On Jan. 6, 1944, the Shakopee Independent School District was given all the machinery, tools, and educational equipment, said the Shakopee Argus Tribune, Jan. 6, 1944.

In 1947, the City of Shakopee paid the State of Minnesota $7,500 for the buildings and part of the acreage, which would become Shakopee’s Memorial Park and The Landing, noted Betty Dols in the February/March 2009 issue of the Scott County SCENE.

According to Donna Miles Lane, “With the end of WWII in 1945, some of the buildings with shop equipment were leased to private industry. To help ease the housing shortage, some of the barracks were rented to war veterans and their families. And this is what happened to my family.” Donna shared her story in the Shakopee Heritage Society Newsletter, Winter 2020.

“When my family returned to Shakopee in 1946, we had to live with my mother’s parents until we found a place at the NYA camp. I was about five or six years old, so though some of my details might be fuzzy, I wanted to tell my story.

“Most of the buildings were single family units, but there was one large building in the middle shaped like a T. This was the unit that my family moved into. Bob and Betty Mertz were on the other end, and Cy and Millie Sames had the middle unit. There was a large, unheated room where the three homes came together. We used it for storage, and it is where my pet gopher hibernated in the winter,” said Donna.

“These homes were bare bones, a large rectangle that was divided into four rooms, with a small bathroom in the corner of the kitchen. It had a sink and a stool, only! There was no hot water. In fact, this led to a bad accident when I was about nine years old. My mom boiled water to wash dishes. I had to carry the water to the sink. As I changed the position of my hands in order to dump it into the sink, I dropped it, and the boiling water came back on me. I was severely burned from my chest to my legs. I spent many weeks lying on the couch. I couldn’t go to school. The only good thing was that I got many beautiful dolls from my friends!

“This was a great place for a tom-girl to grow up. The buildings were not tall, so we played endless games of ‘Red Rover Come Over.’ The Minnesota River was just down the hill, and I spent many days down there fishing, finding turtle eggs (and bringing them up to a spot near a massive wall to watch them hatch), building forts, catching gophers, and playing in the woods.

“My dad, Don Miles, was the local deputy sheriff. Each Fourth of July, he would get fireworks and put on a show for the whole neighborhood. We also had the first TV set, and every Saturday night the house would be filled with neighbors to watch wrestling!

“Just up the road was the empty Murphy’s house and landing. It always intrigued me, but I never explored it on my own. I wish I had! On the other side of camp was the old Pond Grist Mill ruins. I did venture there and explore it, but I had no idea how historic it was.”

Donna is the secretary of the Shakopee Heritage Society, and so Donna continues to learn more about Shakopee.

“With many young families living here, there were many children. So I started babysitting starting when I was nine years old,” said Donna. “They paid me 25 cents an hour, which seemed like a fortune to me!

“Finally, sometime in the 1950s, the buildings were sold and removed from the site. The camp was eventually closed, and we were able to buy a house on west Sixth Avenue in Shakopee in the mid-fifties.

“I had many happy memories of growing up at the NYA Camp!”

Donna Miles graduated from Shakopee High School, and on Aug. 6, 1960, she married Donald Lane at St. Mark’s Catholic Church in Shakopee.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

The Fuller family, three brothers and three sisters, arrived in St. Paul in 1850. Alpheus, David, and George were merchants. They owned a store in St. Paul, trading posts in the territory, and real estate business. Lizzie, Sarah, and Abby lived with their brothers and ran the household with the help of a servant and a gardener.

David Fuller arrived in Shakopee for a short time in the summer of 1851, and the next spring came back and secured from Thomas A. Holmes a half interest in the township, which they platted as the town of Shakopee City. He also purchased Shaska Township (Chaska) from Holmes in 1852.

Fuller Street in Shakopee is named after David L. Fuller.

David was born Sept. 2, 1826, in Windham, Connecticut. His parents were David Luce Fuller and Hadassah Gay. David had ten siblings, including Abert C., Jane Gay, Alpheus G., George R., Sarah Comins Abbe, Elizabeth, Abby Ann Abbe, Jared, William, Franklin Aaron, and Issac L. Fuller.

David and Thomas donated block 56 as the site for county buildings, which is now known as the Court House Block in Shakopee. (A few years later, Thomas tried to get the block back, but the court stopped him from getting the block or the money).

In 1856, the Fuller family built a hotel in St. Paul. David was owner of the Fuller House in St. Paul. It was later named the International Hotel. The hotel was operated by Alpheus G. Fuller,. The hotel stood on the northeast corner of Jackson and Seventh Streets. The land was given to the brothers and $12 thousand was raised as a bonus. The hotel was a five-story brick building and cost $110 thousand. It opened Sept. 25, 1856.

Slaveholders and other southerners spent vacation at the hotel. The hotel owners (Fullers) accumulated wealth by giving slaveholders lodging (about $6,000 a month). So even though the Fullers were not from the south, but from Connecticut, they still supported slavery by benefiting from the money collected by southern slave owners, according to Dr. Christopher P. Lehman in a book in 2011 called Slavery in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1787-1865: A History of Human Bondage in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Southerners were able to travel with their slaves to Minnesota because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision which declared that, as property, slaves weren’t citizens and couldn’t sue to win their freedom – even in non-slaveholding states. “So that led to a big rush of people who would vacation here in the north and bring their slaves from the south, and just dare people to do anything about it. So even though you had the Northwest Ordinances, you had the Missouri Compromise, none of these laws amounted to a hill of beans because they weren’t being enforced,” said Dr. Cristopher P. Lehman.

In 1857, an economic crash caused the population of St. Paul to drop from 10,000 to 5,000. But before that, the city withstood an attempt to move the territorial capital from St. Paul to St. Peter.

The bill to move the capital had passed the territorial legislature when Joe Rolette, the legislator from Pembina, intervened. Rolette was French Canadian Métis, known for wearing Native American clothing and adornment. “To attend this session of 1857 he walked the whole distance, about 400 miles, as the snow was too light to permit riding in his dog sled,” said an article in the Wahpeton and Breckenridge Daily News, Sept. 10, 2010.

“Rolette’s arrival in St. Paul in his gaily decorated dog sled in the winter was one event that marked the opening of the legislative session. On occasion, he made the journey on snowshoes, all 385 miles.” More importantly for the city, he was the chairman of the enrollment committee of the legislature, and a partisan of St. Paul’s claim to the capital.

Rolette put the bill in his pocket after passage and secretly secured it at Truman and Smith’s Bank. He then sequestered himself at the Fuller House, playing cards and lying low, while others reported that he was on his way back to Pembina by dog sled. When the time limit for the capital relocation bill had expired, he reappeared and produced the bill. Since it had never been enrolled, it did not become law, and the capital remained in St. Paul, said Neoma Laken in an article, “‘Jolly Joe’ Rolette Jr. a Character, Merry-Maker,” in the Wahpeton and Breckenridge Daily News, Sept. 10, 2010.

On Oct. 13, 1857, a state constitution was ratified. On May 11, 1858, Minnesota was admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state. The capital stayed in St. Paul, according to Collections of the Minnesota History Society, Volume 1, Part 2, Volume 10, St. Paul, Minnesota MHS, February 1905.

The Fuller/International Hotel was destroyed by fire on Feb. 3, 1869.

David was a large and lymphatic man. He returned to Connecticut, where he died Dec. 1, 1856.

David was buried at Fuller Cemetery, in Scotland, Connecticut.