Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

Mary Brown Griffin was born around 1825 in Virginia. She was enslaved. Like many other African Americans at that time, little is known about her past.

One thing we know is that at some point, either by skill or luck, she became a free woman in Philadelphia.

Once she was in Philadelphia, Mary met and married James Griffin in 1849. Mary and James moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where James worked as a steamboat builder.

One of the steamboats that James helped build was the Minnesota Belle. When it was ready, James and Mary and their children Richard, Martin, and Estella, were on the steamboat in the beginning of May, ready to locate at the new town near Blue Earth, Minnesota Territory.

As Mary looked around the Minnesota Belle, she saw several African Americans working on the steamboat. African Americans traveling on the western waters were quite common. Some free Black people, as well people who were enslaved, worked on the steamboats, many as firemen, stewards, and chambermaids.

African American travelers occupied a different status from that of the white people on board. Some African American enslaved people traveled with their masters and mistresses, sleeping on trundles in their owner’s private cabins, where they could take care of errands. Most of the people on the Minnesota Belle were probably immigrants from other countries who moved to the United States. Free Black people, such as Mary Brown Griffin, were not allowed in the private cabins, however, but had to travel on the lower deck.

Captain Samuel Humberston had christened the steamboat the Minnesota Belle, and he loaded the boat with immigrants intended mostly for his new town near Blue Earth. He hoped the new town would become the chief city of the valley. Mary and James and their children were not immigrants but decided to move west in 1854.

To the captain’s great chagrin, Humbertson’s new boat failed to climb Little Rapids, near Carver, and he abandoned the river, townsite, and all, in disgust.

The Minnesota Belle landed in Sha K’ Pay, Minnesota Territory, in May 1854, after they failed to get over the Carver rapids. “The boat was from Pittsburgh, bound for the upper part of the valley, and its being obliged to discharge its large cargo of freight and passengers here established Shakopee’s reputation as the head of navigation. This incident was used to good advantage by citizens to secure new settlers,” said William Hinds.

Mary and James and their family were part of the new settlers staying in Sha K’ Pay, Minnesota Territory, from 1854 until 1856. According to the Wright County Heritage Herald, James worked as a carpenter with Daniel Storer and then was a teamster by 1856. He had wagons and teams in Sha K’ Pay, and he helped immigrant families settle in the territory.

In an article in Minnesota History by Emily O. Goodridge Grey called “The Black Community in Territorial St. Anthony: A Memoir,” Grey, an African American in Minnesota Territory, mentioned James and Mary Brown Griffin: “In 1855 there came from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, James Griffen, wife, and children, first locating at Shohope (Shakopee), afterwards taking up land near Buffalo.”

Mary and James made a claim on the shores of Lake Mary, outside of Buffalo, Minnesota. By the 1860s, James started a stagecoach line. He had a daily stage route between Buffalo and Monticello, and three times a week from Monticello to Minneapolis.

Near Buffalo, two more children were born, Guilford and Louisa.

Mary Brown Griffin died August 22, 1882, of cholera sporadic. Cholera is a bacterial disease that is usually spread through contaminated water. Cholera causes severe diarrhea and dehydration. It is easily treated today with a simple and inexpensive rehydration solution. But in 1882, something like this probably was enough to cause Mary to die.

Mary was buried at St. Joseph Catholic Church, which in 1881 was at the corner of Second Street and Tenth Avenue North in Minneapolis. It was a wooden building, 35’ x 80’, and served one hundred German families. Both Father Salzeder and his assistant, Father Bader, served there. According to the Minneapolis Evening Journal on August 22, 1882, Mary E. Griffin was buried from this church.

What is remarkable is that Mary was African American, not German. And she was probably not Catholic. However, her sons, Martin and Frank (Franz) lived in the vicinity of the church. The other members of the family who lived in Minneapolis included her other children, Richard H. Griffin, Estella Griffin Wilkin, and Louisa Griffin James.

Bibliography

Grey, Emily O. Goodridge. “The Black Community in Territorial St. Anthony: A Memoir.” Minnesota History, Summer 1984. p. 53.

Minneapolis Evening Journal, 22 Aug. 1882.

Wright County Heritage Herald.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Mary Ann Moormann was born on May 4, 1845, in Hannover, Stadt Hannover, Niedersachsen, Germany.

Mary married Fidel Hutter on April 7, 1864, at Assumption Catholic Church in St. Paul. Fidel was born around 1836 in Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria. Along with his brother, Fidel moved to America and arrived in Baltimore in May of 1854. His parents were Aloysius Hutter (1796-1853) and Maria Theresa Scholler (1796-1867).

Fidel moved to Waconia Township, Carver County, Minnesota Territory. Five months after marrying Mary, Fidel enlisted in the U.S. Army on September 21, 1864, in St. Paul. He was a private in Company B, First Minnesota Heavy Artillery. Fidel died at the Union Army Hospital from typhoid fever in Nashville, Tennessee on June 29, 1865. Fidel was 28 years old. He was buried at Nashville National Cemetery.

Mary Ann Moormann Hutter married a second time on May 16, 1866. She married another member of the military, Andrew Ferdinand Kreger (1839-1916), whose parents were Andrew Christ Kreger and his wife, Wilhemine. They married at Assumption Catholic Church in St. Paul, the same church where Fidel Hutter married a few years earlier.

Andrew and Mary had eight children.

Mary Ann Moormann Hutter Kreger died on December 12, 1916.

Mary’s husband, Andrew Ferdinand Kreger, died on March 2, 1916, and was buried at the Catholic Cemetery in Shakopee.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Mary Anna Geyermann was born June 6, 1836, in Waldeck, Bernkastel-Wittlich, Germany, a little village near Coblenz on the Rhine. She came to America when she was 18 years of age in 1854. For a time, she resided at Aurora, Illinois, later moving to St. Paul, Minnesota. On June 27, 1859, in St. Paul, she married Paul Weydert, who was born in Landscheid, Luxembourg on May 1, 1829, son of Gaspard Weydert and Marguerite Thies Weydert. Mary and Paul had eight children: Anna, Peter, Helena Mary, Anna Mary, Susan, Theodore, Augusta Elizabeth, and Albert Nicolas Weydert.

Their first child, Anna, died in infancy. Soon after, Mary and Paul moved to Shakopee. Shortly after the birth of their son Peter in 1864, Mary and Paul joined the Holmes Wagon Train.

Mary was one of 14 women who were on the Holmes Wagon Train of 1864, and the only one with a baby in tow. There were about 113 to 175 wagons, and about 200 to 300 people.

The journey across the plains took four months and was filled with hardship, as were the years following in a country altogether new and undeveloped.

A young Indian man travelled beside the train for several days in June of 1864. The Indian man was very interested in the infant son, Peter from Shakopee, who was with Mary and Paul Weydert. The Indian asked in sign language if he could hold the baby. Mary was a bit scared but decided to hand Peter to the Indian. The Indian gently wrapped two beautifully tanned buffalo robes about the baby and gave it back to his mother.

By mid-September 1864 Thomas A. Holmes’s wagon train from Shakopee arrived. They had planned to go to the gold fields of eastern Idaho Territory, but when Congress created the Territory of Montana on May 26, the train headed to Montana. They were tired after four months of harrowing experiences crossing rough waters and Indian lands.

Only half of their names were recorded. Many hailed from Minnesota, but emigrants also came from Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and some were European-born immigrants. The incomplete roster includes several pioneers who stayed and became citizens of Helena.

When they arrived at Last Chance Gulch, later called Helena, Paul tried his hand at mining while Mary took care of the children.

In 1870, Paul, Mary, and their five children were living in Helena, Montana where he ran The California Blacksmith Shop with a partner to keep himself and his family fed on a regular basis.

Eventually Paul wearied of the mining and smithing life in the city and in 1879 Mary and Paul took the young and growing family into the Lewistown area of Fergus County, Montana. They built a ranch to raise sheep.

When not too busy with ranching or smithing work, Paul continued to search for gold in Maiden, Montana.

Paul was a wheelwright, blacksmith and carpenter – all skills that helped him to become a successful rancher.

Paul Weydert died at the age of 72 because of an accident which occurred while unhitching his team of two horses from his wagon.

The horses bolted, possibly the result of the bite of a horsefly or other stinging insect, while he was underneath the “tree” of the hitch.

He was trampled to death.

Mary Anna Geyermann Weydert died on January 7, 1924, in Lewistown, Montana.

At the time of her passing Mary was 87 years and seven months old.

She was buried in Lewistown City Cemetery.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Martha Tamazawiŋ Toboskas War Eagle Wamadeduda was born around 1815 in Otter Tail, Minnesota.

Her parents were Wambdiokicize Little Eagle War Eagle Huvanike (1785-1851) and Maza Kirawiŋ or Laugh at Iron Woman (1784-1875).

In 1834, Martha married Jacob Tatekokipapi Otherday, who was born around 1816 in Minnesota.

Jacob’s parents were Zitkaduta Redbird Otherday and Zitkada Duta.

The May 1875 Minnesota Territory and State Census noted that Martha and Jacob Otherday lived on the north side of the Minnesota River in what is today Eden Prairie. It is the location of the “Sioux Reservation in Shakopee, Minn,” even though it was not a reservation at all. And it was in Eden Prairie, not Shakopee. Instead, the Otherday family and others had land that they purchased.

The 1880 U.S. Federal Census shows Martha and Jacob are living in Eden Prairie, just across the Minnesota River from Shakopee. According to the Census, Martha was sixty years and was keeping house with her husband, Jacob Otherday.

It also shows that on March 12, 1887, Martha Tamazawiŋ Toboskas War Eagle Wamadeduda married Jacob Tatekokipapi Otherday in the Catholic rites at St. Mary’s Catholic Church.

Lucie K. Hartley in a book, The Carver Story: Being the Village of Carver, One of the Earliest Towns in the State of Minnesota, the 1897 Carver County Fair included “The Indian Village at the Carver Fair.” Though some of the words are racist, the demonstration shows Martha and the family in their place in Eden Prairie.

“The Indian Village was a feature of interest during the fair days, and could have commanded even more attention had their history been more generally known. From Wednesday evening until Saturday night, war dances and songs were almost continuously held to good audiences and afforded no end of laughter and amusement, although the performances brought back to one’s memory that treacherous native of this race of human beings.

“The ‘tum-tum’ sound of the beaten drum rent the air and vibrated again and again in everybody’s ears, while the ‘hi-yah’ of male voices mingled occasionally with the shrill tones uttered by the squaws echoed incessantly throughout the village.

“On their faces, as likewise their apparel, every hue that the rainbow boasts of was to be found, which gave them a weird expression that only the Red Race can produce. Numerous people threw aside civilized courtesy and manners and intruded into the Indian camp after nightfall to behold the inside of a teepee, and though after bedtime the curiously and inquisitively inclined always received a cordial invitation to look around from any inhabitant that might be awakened.

“These Indians, although appearing to be as savage as ever, which of course was the idea that was brought here to convey, so as to give the growing generations a chance to study the manners and nature of the aborigines they so often hear the early settlers talk of the whites, during the bloody massacre that occurred in this section.”

“They are all well educated, and are devoted members of the Catholic Church. The band of Dakota Sioux was comprised as follows: James Wabashaw, an old man of 72 years, resides at Red Wing and is the old medicine chief; David W. LaFramboise, the present chief, is 31 years old; James and Thomas Otherday; Joseph Campbell, whose Indian name is Mazaicicasna; Joseph Williams; Charles Jackson (Mazahaninajin); Sam Standing Cloud, Thomas Whipple, Jasper T. Windgrow, Paul Windgrow; Fred Wanboiske; Alex LaFramboise, who is grandson of Chief John Otherday and the son of Alex LaFramboise.

“During the war of 1862, Chief Otherday, who has since gone to the ‘Happy Hunting Ground’ saved the lives of 360 white by giving them timely warning of an intended massacre, and was afterward a private in a company under Captain Sibley, while Alexander LaFramboise acted as interpreter in the same company during the entire war.

“The squaws’ names are Josephine and Mary Rock; Lucy, Julia, and Emma Williams; Minnie and Mary Otherday; Lucy Campbell; Mrs. Julia Williams; Mrs. Windgrow, Mrs. James Standing Cloud; Mrs. Emma LaFramboise, Mrs. Lucy Otherday, and Mrs. Julia LaFramboise.”

The 1900 Federal Census noted Martha, according to the records, was 78 years old.

U.S. Indian Census Rolls show Jacob Tatekokipapi Otherday at age 75 (November 13, 1891), age 79 on June 30, 1896, and age 81 years old on June 30, 1897. By the 1910 U.S Census shows Martha Otherday as 86 years old and a widow, so clearly Jacob Tatekokipapi Otherday died before 1910.

Martha Tamazawiŋ Toboskas War Eagle Wamadeduda Otherday died on October 27, 1911, in Eden Prairie, just across the river from Shakopee.

For more information about Martha Tamazawiŋ Toboskas War Eagle Wamadeduda Otherday and Tínṫa Otuŋwe, visit Hoċokata Ti [ho-cho-kah-tah-tee] the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community’s (SMSC) cultural center and gathering space. 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.

Bibliography

Hartley, Lucie K. The Carver Story: Being the Village of Carver, One of the Earliest Towns in the State of Minnesota. 1971.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Marpiyawecasta Mary Wabashaw Hapah Cloud Man was born in a Dakota village near Fort Snelling in 1817.

Her father was Maȟpíya Wičhášta Cloud Man, who was born around 1780 in Minnesota Territory. After the U.S.-Dakota War, Maȟpíya Wičhášta was forced into internment camp at Fort Snelling. “About 1,300 of the surrendered Dakota were brought down to Fort Snelling. A large, picketed enclosure was built on the river bottomland and here the Dakota were interned, living in their worn-out buffalo skin lodges,” said Mark Dietrich. “Living conditions were deplorable and disease spread quickly in the crowded lodges. During the winter, about 130 people died, particularly of measles, and Cloud Man was among them. He probably was buried somewhere in the bottomland of the Minnesota River,” noted Dietrich in “A ‘Good Man’ in a Changing World: Cloud Man, the Dakota Leader, and His Life and Times,” in Ramsey County History.

Marpiyawecasta’s mother was Mniyodutawiŋ Scarlet in the Water Woman Cloud Man, the second wife of Maȟpíya Wičhášta Cloud Man. She was born in 1785 and died in 1855 in Minnesota Territory.

Marpiyawecasta lived with her family at the village on the shore of Bde Maka Ska called Ȟeyáta Othúŋwe, or The Village Set Back (from the Mississippi River) starting in 1829. Maȟpíya Wičhášta never intended to become a white man. He intended to always remain Dakota. He and other families developed the agricultural village, known as Ȟeyáta Othúŋwe, to survive as Dakota people. The success of the village can be measured in their ability to share food with villages in the area. Ȟeyáta Othúŋwe prevented starvation and ensured the survival of descendants of these villages, according to Bde Maka Ska’s webpage on “Cloudman/Mahpíya Wičhášta.”

In 1833, Marpiyawecasta married James Thompson. James was born around 1799 in Virginia. His father was a white man, and his mother was Courtney, who was enslaved. James, along with his siblings and other relatives had been “owned” by George Monroe, nephew of U.S. President James Monroe, also enslaved people. According to Walt Bachman, “George Monroe’s gambling debts compelled him to sell off Thompson and five of his kin, a transaction that apparently separated Thompson forever from others in his enslaved family.”

James was resold to John Culbertson, a sutler licensed to sell merchandise to the First Infantry. Culbertson, from New York. First Lt. William Day headed to Fort Snelling in 1828, and Day purchased James. In fact, of the 38 officers stationed at Fort Snelling, 33 of them used an enslaved servant at some point. Slaveholding was the norm at the fort. Day repeatedly identified “James, Slave” (with no surname) as his servant on pay vouchers, according to Bachman.

In 1833, Marpiyawecasta Mary Wabashaw Hapah Cloud Man married James Thompson. During this time, James learned the Dakota language.

According to James’s half-breed scrip affidavit, #68 (signed with an “X”), Scrip Rolls, gives 1833 as the year of his marriage to Marpiyawecasta, a full-blood Dakota woman, documented by Walt Bachman in his book, Northern Slave, Black Dakota: The Life and Times of Joseph Godfrey.

After three years, William Day was reassigned to Fort Crawford in Prairie du Chien, and James had to move there with Day, and without Marpiyawecasta. In Prairie du Chien. Missionary Alfred Brunson wanted to convert the Dakota but couldn’t speak the language. So, Brunson devised a scheme to buy the freedom of James, who could speak Dakota from his wife, and hire him as an interpreter. “On March 14, 1837, with funds from Methodist abolitionists back east, Brunson purchased Thompson – a man deemed pious and quite intelligent for $1,200 and immediately signed his deed of emancipation,” said Joel Hoekstra in an article in The Growler called “Up From Slavery: How Early Settler James Thompson Became a Pillar of St. Paul.”

Bunson and Thompson set up a mission at Kaposia, and Marpiyawecasta was reunited. By 1839 the mission fell apart, and Brunson abandoned his post. James and Marpiyawecasta settled near Fort Snelling and then nearby Pig’s Eye settlement, a bend of the river that eventually became St. Paul.

The Thompsons moved to the less-settled area of Sha K’ Pay in 1853, where they lived with the Barnes family in Eagle Creek (now Shakopee). From 1853 until 1860, Mary and James lived in Shakopee, along with their two children, George and Sarah.

Between 1860 to August 1862, the family moved near the Lower Sioux Agency. Thompson left his family realizing (correctly) that his Dakota wife and half-Dakota, half African American children would remain safe. After the U.S.-Dakota War, James was reunited with his family and eventually returned to St. Paul.

“A collection of $17.65 was then taken up for James Thompson, a colored man, the oldest settler in the state. Thompson came to Fort Snelling in 1828, as a slave of one of the officers. He is the only man who was ever held in slavery in Minnesota, and the only colored man who is a member of the association,” according to the Minneapolis Daily Tribune, June 2, 1883.

In 1884, James and Marpiyawecasta moved to Nebraska to be closer to their son. Marpiyawecasta Mary Wabashaw Hapah Cloud Man Thompson died October 11, 1884, at her son, George Thompson’s home at the Santee Reservation in Nebraska.

Four days later, her husband, James Igmosapa Thompson, died on October 15, 1884, also at his son’s residence at the Santee Agency, Knox, Nebraska.

According to William D. Green in his book, Degrees of Freedom: The Origins of Civil Rights in Minnesota, 1865-1912, “In fall 1884, the man many considered to be the ‘oldest setter of Minnesota’ died on the reservation four days after his wife Mary had passed on, far from the city he had helped to build, far from the stigma of being black, far from the kind of society that St. Paul had become.”

Bibliography

Bachman, Walt. Northern Slave, Black Dakota: The Life and Times of Joseph Godfrey, 2013.

“Cloudman/Mahpíya Wičhášta.” Bde Maka Ska. https://bdemakaska.net/place/%C8%9Feyata-othunwe/cloudman-mahpiya-wicasta/.

Dietrich, Mark. “A ‘Good Man’ in a Changing World: Cloud Man, the Dakota Leader, and His Life and Times.” Ramsey County History, Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring 2001, p.4. https://rchs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/RCHS_Spring2001_Dietrich.pdf.

Green, William D. Degrees of Freedom: The Origins of Civil Rights in Minnesota, 1865-1912. University of Minnesota Press, 2015. p. 126.

Hoekstra, Joel. “Up From Slavery: How Early Settler James Thompson Became a Pillar of St. Paul.” The Growler, March 2020. p. 18-22.

Minneapolis Daily Tribune, 2 June 1883. p. 5, col. 3.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Raceway Park was a quarter-mile asphalt oval racetrack located near Valleyfair in Shakopee. One woman who became “the Janet Guthrie of Figure-8s,” Marjorie “Marge” Beckrich, was born in Shakopee on June 7, 1954. Her parents were Harold and Marie Anderson Beckrich.

And she loved driving cars!

Janet Guthrie was a professional racecar driver and the first woman to qualify and compete in both the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500.

At Raceway Park, Marge Beckrich became the Janet Guthrie of Figure-8s! In fact, Marge was the first (and only at that time) woman who raced the Figure 8.

Marge was the first female racecar driver at Raceway Park in Shakopee, where she raced in the 1970s and 1980s.

Many people looked up to Marge, who competed with men, and did well!

Over the years, the lines to go to Raceway Park started to slow down, and during later years, fewer people attended the park. After sixty years of up-close racing, Raceway Park closed in 2013.

According to owner John Hellendrung, there was not enough fan support in recent years to sustain the place. Raceway Park closed, and an asphalt recycling plant was built there.

Marge enjoyed bingo and riding motorcycles. She worked for Scott County Transit for 15 years. Marge was also a member of the V.F.W. Ladies Auxiliary in Shakopee.

Marjorie “Marge” Beckrich died on Friday, October 8, 2010 at her residence in Shakopee. She was 56 years old.

Marge funeral service was held Tuesday, October 12, 2010. She was buried at Valley Cemetery in Shakopee.

And many people remember the time when she drove with men at Raceway Park and did well!

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Marjorie (Marge) Ries was born in December of 1926 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, daughter of Joseph and Irene Ries. Though she was born in Minneapolis, her heart was in Shakopee, where her grandparents lived. She married James Henderson and had five children.

Marge’s father was mayor of Shakopee in 1960, and Marge’s son, Jeff Henderson, served as mayor from 1996 to 1997. Marge was a woman of many facets, which started after attending St, Margaret’s Academy and the College of St. Catherine. She used her background to work at various types of work, including social workmen teaching, public relations, and government jobs as city recorder and administrator in Shakopee.

Marge was well known for her tireless involvement in local government, beginning with being hired as Shakopee city administrator, then serving over thirty years on the Scott County CDA, championing issues of housing and redevelopment. Her commitment to her community extended to serving on numerous boards of directors for civic organizations and her beloved St. Mary’s Church. Marge spent her life in service but was always a loving mother dedicated to her family and friends.

After retiring, she spent five years as the director of Murphy’s Landing (now The Landing), where, in 1986, a former director had absconded with $15,000 in museum funds, and the buildings at the 19th century village were falling into disrepair. Three Rivers Park District bought The Landing in 2002.

Marge agreed to step in as a director for three or four months, but she ended up there for five years.

She implicated a new accounting system, completed an accurate inventory of the site’s historical artifacts, and helped supervise almost all 88 buildings, according to Sheila Evertz from the Shakopee Valley News in 1991. Marge also built up the gate attendance to where it accounted for 87 percent of the site’s revenues.

Marge had strictly adhered to recreating an 1800s town. She helped instill in Murphy’s the grace and dignity of a Williamsburg, Virginia without the massive amounts of federal financial support, said Marge in an article in the Shakopee Valley News on December 26, 1991. Interpreters costumed in garb of the trade and time perform among the carefully restored homes, businesses, school and church.

Marge knew that serving the community was very important for her. In an article in the Shakopee Valley News on June 3, 1981, Marge need “When you get involved in your community, your community becomes more personal; you become part of it and it becomes part of you. That’s so important.”

Carol Thaemert remembered Marge, “I am so glad I got to meet and become friends with Marge. She had a great sense of humor and was one of the brightest women I knew. I will never forget how giving and kind she was and how much she loved her children.”

Marjorie “Marge” Ries Henderson died on January 30, 2010, at age 83. She was survived by her children, Gregory, Jeffrey, Patricia and Elizabeth. Marge hoped to comfort her family and friends and hoped someday they will be rejoined once again around the dinner table to share stories, debate issues, and laugh until heaven shakes. Marge was buried at the Catholic Cemetery on 10th Avenue.

Bibliography

Evertz, Sheila. Shakopee Valley News, 26 Dec. 1991.

Shakopee Valley News, 3 June 1981.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bibliography

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

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bibliography

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

Shakopee Valley News, 25 Feb. 1965.

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

Jordan Independent, 26 July 1973.