Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Joleen Marie Benoit was born in February of 1950, daughter of Jerome Leonard Benoit (1921-2012) and Elizabeth “Betty” Scroggins Benoit (1925-2006). She was the third oldest of six children in the family.

The Shakopee Jaycees sponsored her in the pageant, which took place on June 10, 1972. Joleen had just graduated from Shakopee High School in 1972.

Joleen had played guitar for four years and always enjoyed music. She sang in choral and folk groups, according to the June 20, 1973 Shakopee Valley News.

Joleen was also involved in high school productions, including a lead in Guys and Dolls and The King and I.

When she participated in the Shakopee pageant, she sang “Killing Me Softly With His Song” by Roberta Flack.

Patty Kelzer won, but then was named the Queen of the Lakes, and Joleen ended up in Austin, Minnesota, where she sang again, and won the Miss Minnesota pageant.

So, she represented the city of Shakopee in the Miss America Pageant in September in Atlantic City.

Although she did not win, they expressed her hope for a career in entertainment. She added that she hoped she would fulfill her dream of preforming on Broadway or singing with a big band.

On February 3, 1980, she married Michael J. Crosby, also known as Michael Joseph Krzyzaniak. In was not a good marriage, and she later divorced him. He ended up orchestrating a $20 million investment scam, where he persuaded 6,000 people, including veterans, to buy a medallion honoring the people of the Vietnam War. In 1993 he was guilty. He escaped, but finally was found in Florida. He served time in a federal prison, and then was caught again, and at age 64 was sent to prison for 151 months in 2013. He died there.

Joleen, after the pageant, went on a Miss America USO Troops tour, and recorded some songs. A few of them were popular for a time.

“I was a singer in our tour group – played a twelve-string guitar. I went on to perform in Brazil and Japan, and eventually had a number one record in Japan in 1990,” said Joleen Benoit.

Joleen remembered, “Simply happy to connect with others who have experienced the ‘magic’ of this tiny little island dropped in the middle of the most beautiful ocean in the world…the Indian Ocean…!”

In 1982 Jolen was named host of PBS’s Nighttimes Variety and was part of the show’s all female band, “Women Who Cook.” They became quite the rage in the Twin Cities in the early 1980s and she and the other ladies performed a sold-out concert with the band at the historic Guthrie Theater.

She was also an entertainment reporter and co-host of the Good Company variety show at KSTP-TV in Minneapolis from 1989-1991.

In 2000, Joleen also released a holiday album called Another Year.

She has had a very successful music career and currently runs her own production company.

Bibliography

Shakopee Valley News, 20 June 1973.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

According to The Diary of Daniel M. Storer, “The night of the 20th, Blind Boone gave a concert here. He is a splendid pianist, the best I have ever heard.”

John William “Blind” Boone was an American pianist and composer of ragtime music. He was born near Miami, Missouri on May 17, 1864, to a contraband slave, Rachel Carpenter, who had been owned by descendants of Daniel Boone. His father, Private William S. Belcher, was a bugler in the Seventh Missouri State Militia Cavalry.

Doctors removed both of Boone’s eyes when he was six months old, attempting to cure his brain fever.

Boone’s mother, Rachel Carpenter Hendricks, worried that her son would find life too difficult without some education, so the hometown of Warrenburg, Missouri decided to pay for Boone to go to the St. Louis School for the Blind. It was here that he played the piano for the first time.

When Blind Boone returned to school after a break, he found a new superintendent who did not believe African American students should have the same privileges as white students. The superintendent would not allow Black students to play piano at school. Unable to bear the new rules, Boone started skipping class to go to the Tenderloin District near the school. The area was poor and densely populated. Boone listened and played music with other African American musicians who worked in the saloons. Once the principal found out, Boone was dismissed from the school!

Returning to Warrenburg, Blind Boone was discovered by John B. Lange, Jr., who put Boone on the road in 1879.

Blind Boone was one of the first musicians to bring Black folk music to the concert stage. When the audience would become bogged down by his impeccable renditions of lofty classical standards, Boone would sense this, and break into a rollicking rag, a practice he affectionately referred to as “puttin’ the cookies on the lower shelf.”

It turns out Blind Boone was one of the first musical composers to blend European classical styles with folk music. He took African American and Afro Caribbean folk styles such as plantationmelodies and minstrel tunes, and put them in classical forms, then performed the pieces in concert halls.

And, he’s perhaps not so much a ragtime musician – his music really didn’t fall into the ragtime genre during his era – as he was an early innovator that created some of the musical building blocks that led to not only ragtime, but blues and jazz.

Boone was generous to those around him. He supported churches and other organizations. Once, in Kansas, he was denied a room at the only local hotel. An elderly relative offered Boone and his group to use her home. When Boone learned she had $360 remaining on her mortgage, a large amount in those days, he paid off her loan. Lange often said, “Boone is charitable, and I have been authorized by him, whenever I see a deserving person in need of assistance to assist such person in his name.”

Boone could tell a child’s age by putting his hand upon a child’s head. He had a very happy and warm personality and children loved him.

John William “Blind” Boone died of acute deflation of the heart on October 4, 1927.

Bibliography

The Diary of Daniel M. Storer from 1849 to 1905: A Pioneer Builder and Merchant-His Personal History of Shakopee, Minnesota from August 1853 to January 1905. Shakopee Heritage Society, 2003.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

John Tudantoiciya Bluestone was born in 1835 in the territorial era of Minnesota, the son of Candeskamani and Blue Eyes Anptuokiyewiŋ.

John Tudantoiciya Bluestone married Haliestone Anna Josephine Makahdegawiŋ Allen. John moved to Eagle Creek (now part of Shakopee) in 1856. The Federal Census and the Minnesota Census show that they lived in Eagle Creek, and the Scott County Plat Map of 1898 show that they were farming in Eagle Creek area.

John spent a lot of time hunting, trapping, and fishing, often with a neighbor, Ed Gilkey. They both enjoyed the fun, and both enjoyed telling stories.

An article in the Minneapolis Journal on May 20, 1901 discusses Ed, who was a storyteller and fisherman in the area. According to the article, “Ed’s versatility is only equaled by his disdain for one who would sacrifice a good story for the sake of veracity.” Ed was a hunter, trapper, fisherman, carpenter, farmer, and woodcutter. He was found by the author of this article in 1901. Ed was fishing from an exposed rock, surrounded by water, off Clark’s point.

“How are they biting, Ed?” the author asked.

“Middlin’ well, considerin’ I ain’t took a drink in a month.” Ed’s philosophy was to drink every time a fish is landed.

“Say, Ed,” the author said, as his boat grated against the rock, “you spin that yarn you’ve be telling about the snake skin, and I’ll let you wet your whistle with some sure-’nough moonshine from old Kentuck.”

“Well, mister, jes’ let me sample that air moonshine – I ken tell it by the small, all right – and I’ll tell you ‘bout the truest and strangest thing that ever was.”

As Ed put a fresh shiner on the hook and contaminated the clear water with a streak of tobacco juice, he said, “You’ve heard of that old Injun, John Bluestone, who used to be ‘bout these parts, I reckon?” Ed was talking about John Tudantoiciya Bluestone, who was living and farming in Eagle Creek. “Wa’al, old John and me used to do a pile of huntin’, trappin’, and fishin’ together away back in the sixties (1860s), and I reckon we was ‘bout as chummy as a white man and an Injun ever got.” Of course, the use of “Injun” is not very nice, and should not be used, but this was written in 1901.

“We had a cabin out in the brush about a mile west of the old Injun reservation.” (This would be the “Shakopee Sioux Reservation” often shown in post cards. But the place was not a reservation (the Otherday family bought the land), and is actually not in Shakopee, but across the river, in East Shakopee near Memorial Park, on the north side of the river in Eden Prairie, at least it showed the location.

”One night – I disremember the month ‘cept it wuz late fall – arter I had stowed the supper things away and was settin’ afore the fire, sorter softenin’ up one a full belly and a pipe of good terbac, old John comes in with a pack of bacon and flour on his back. He’d been into Shakopee, and wuz chuck full of firewater and fight. He rummaged around and got some grub; then he lit his pipe and laid down on his bunk.”

John told Ed that some Anishinaabe (sometimes called Ojibwa) had been to Shakopee and there was a fight. One Anishinaabe had stolen a Dakota woman. Then John mentioned that he had a woman, who was Catholic, and was a sweetheart with John. “Guess me get married,” he said.

“I didn’t give a hang if the Injun did get married, so I says: ‘Go ahead, John, jes’ the thing yer want to do.’ Wa-al, the next mornin’ he went back to Shakopee and I moved up to Fish Lake, leavin’ the cabin empty.

“‘Bout a week afterwards, I wuz fishin’ at the lower end of this lake and I caught a corkin’ big pickerel. I toted him over to my Fish lake shack and cut him open, and darned if he didn’t have small-sized prairie bull-snake inside of him – that’s what I thought it wuz, anyway, until I examined it and discovered that it wuz a snakeskin purse, jes’ like old Bluestone had, and inside that air purse wuz one of these hitching certificates – yer know one of them papers a feller gits when he gets hitched to a gal. I made out the names, John Bluestone and Annie Iron Toe (Haliestone Anna Josephine Makahdegawiŋ Allen), and the next day I struck out fer the shanty and found John and wife livin’ together.

“I shoved the paper under his nose, and I never seen an Injun get so goldarned crazy. Annie, too, she spluttered around in Sioux and white folks’ lingo (Dakota and English), fit to kill.

“After everyone quieted down, and John said, ‘Blackcoat marry me en Annie; much talk good medicine; me put paper me get from paleface chief in skin of snake and make big walk for tepee, take canoe cross lake, Annie she hold skin of snake, drop it in water. Heep big pickle swallow mighty quick; me no thing get back.’”

It is a great story, though it may have been exaggerated!

By 1900, John and Haliestone moved to Paxton, in Redwood County, Minnesota, where John Tudantoiciya Bluestone died in 1904 in Morton. He was 69 years old.

Haliestone ended up in Flandreau, South Dakota, where Annie enjoyed being around friends and family.

Haliestone Anna Josephine Makahdegawiŋ Allen Bluestone died on April 24, 1910, in Flandreau, South Dakota, having lived a long life of eighty years.

Bibliography

Minneapolis Journal, 20 May 1901.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

John C. Sommerville was born in Vermont in 1803. He was in the lumber business in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

He came to Shakopee in the spring of 1851, and was a pioneer associate of Thomas A. Holmes in Scott County. John located on a section of land where he built a house in Helena Township, in Scott County. Later he lived on the southern extremity of the street named after him: Sommerville!

John was elected Scott County commissioner in 1863, and he continued as a commissioner until 1864. He was farming there when he and his wife, Sophronia Perry Sommerville, joined the 1864 Holmes Wagon Train to Idaho to look for gold, though they ended up stopping in Montana.

In 1805, members of the Lewis and Clark expedition were the first white men to visit the valley. While investigating the area on foot, William Clark stepped on and had to remove 17 cactus spines from his feet. This caused him to name the nearby creek and valley Prickly Pear. In the early nineteenth century trappers came to the area, later to be pushed aside by groups of white settlers.

In 1862 a group of immigrants in a wagon train decided to build houses for the winter in Prickly Pear Valley, but this settlement proved temporary. In 1864, four ex-Confederate soldiers from Georgia discovered placer gold in Last Chance Gulch, the heart of Helena’s present-day downtown. The gold strike attracted hundreds of miners eager to find riches.

Other miners joined the Georgians to pitch tents and mine claims during the summer of 1864. Some stayed but most moved on, discouraged by the scant supply of water. In mid-September, the first group of emigrants arrived with the Thomas A. Holmes wagon train from Shakopee. They arrived at Last Chance Gulch on September 29, 1864.

The train included several hundred men and fourteen women. 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, Montana Territory. Among them were long-time Helena attorneys John H. Shober, his partner Thomas J. Lowry, and pioneer rancher Nicholas Hilger. John Sommerville, who would soon play a key role in naming Helena, was also part of the group.

Most of the emigrants had no experience as miners, and the Montana Post poked fun at them, noting that they used blunt picks and worked “like chickens on a grain pile.” But some had good luck. John Marvin Blake of Wisconsin found one of the largest gold nuggets in the area, worth $2,300.

In the fall of 1864, the miners decided that the camp at Last Chance needed a proper name. They gathered and elected John Sommerville chairman. By October 30, 1864, the town’s official christening took place, according to several historic reports from eyewitnesses.

“(S)ome 30 miners crowded into the cabin of George J. Wood,” wrote Ellen Baumler. Chairing the meeting was Sommerville, a towering man who had arrived with the recent Holmes wagon train that had been on its way to Idaho, but had changed its destination to Helena.

The miners jokingly offered names such as Squashtown and Pumpkinville, along with the names of Winona, Rochester, and Tomah.

Sommerville proposed Helena. Since it was a Union mining camp, the miners balked at the name. Many of the mostly Union camp were reminded of Helena, Arkansas; Sommerville offered a different reason.

Sommerville stood up and rose to his full height. He said, “I propose we name it Helena after Helena, Minnesota, in Scott County. That’s where I’m from and that’s the best town in the best county in the best state in the union.”

Helena (pronounced he-LEE-na) won by two votes.

By the time Reginald Stanley returned to visit Helena in 1883, he was surprised to find the city’s name was being pronounced HEL-i-na, apparently based on a hack driver misspelling it “Hellena,” on the door of his hacks.

Over the next 20 years 3.5 billion dollars worth of gold was discovered in the gulch. By 1888 Helena was home to more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the world.

Sommerville made rich claims in a gulch near Helena, but lost part of his fortune in expensive litigation over the ownership of one of his holdings. John and Sophronia returned to Minnesota in 1867.

After returning from the gold fields, John used the money he made in mining to carry out his long-cherished idea of manufacturing a harvester to supersede the old platform reaper. He spent most of his money on this, but before he got it completed, Marsh, Steward & Company beat him to it.

The Marsh brothers believed two men riding and binding could do the work of four men walking and binding. John thought the same thing…but he was just a bit too late to cash in!

Sophronia Perry Sommerville died on September 8, 1872, and was buried in the Valley Cemetery in Shakopee.

Becoming disappointed and restless, John decided to start out for the mining country again, hoping to regain his lost fortune. But he did not reach there.

John Sommerville died penniless in St. Paul on March 7, 1889, at the Home of the Little Sisters of the Poor, aged 79 years old.

He died from a large wart that he had on the back of his right hand. He used all sorts of remedies to remove it, but without success. It finally turned into cancer, which extended up his arm and into his body. If he had consented to have his hand amputated way back in October when he was in St. Paul, his life may have been saved.

John’s remains were brought back to Shakopee and interred in the Valley Cemetery.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

A lone, nervous, unmasked man walked into the First National Bank in Shakopee on January 25, 1937. He had a dark overcoat and a light hat. The tall, thin bandit, the muscles of his emaciated face twitching nervously, approached the cashier’s cage and asked Lucille Schwartz, the teller, for change, according to the January 28, 1937 Shakopee Argus-Tribune.

Then the burglar suddenly pulled out an automatic pistol and demanded money.

Lucille Schwartz, E.J. Huber, the assistant cashier, and Fred Weiland, the clerk, were told to lie on the floor while the man entered the cage and gathered up the currency on the counter and the money drawer. The man then jabbed his gun into the back of Lucille’s neck and ordered her to open the inner vault.

She couldn’t. It had an automatic time lock. Upset, the man asked E.J. Huber to do it. Again, he explained that he couldn’t. The man waved his gun and shouted, “I’ll shoot! I’ll shoot!”

C.T. Weiland, cashier, stepped into view. With a menacing swing the gunman aimed his pistol and again shouted, “I’ll shoot!”

While the victims stood motionless, the bandit slipped from the bank, ran to his waiting car, scarily 100 feet away on the corner of First and Lewis Street. He jumped into the car with $4671 and sped north over the Lewis Street Bridge.

The people in the bank called the police, while others grabbed a car and pursued the fleeing car. No luck.

That would have been it…except for an article half a year later, in the Shakopee Argus-Tribune on June 27, 1938.

As it turned out, John Henry Seadlund was the bandit. In fact, according to J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, John was “America’s most cold-blooded and atrocious criminal.” Yup. The nervous man who stole money from the First National Bank in Shakopee was, besides a bandit, a kidnapper and slayer, according to the FBI’s Cases and Criminals’ article, “Charles Ross Kidnapping.”

John Henry Seadlund was born on July 27, 1910, at Fenco, Wisconsin, and his family moved to Ironton, Minnesota, when he was an infant.

Seadlund was interested in outdoor life and obtained his first gun, a .22 rifle, when he was ten years of age, and often went into the woods with other boys to hunt. As he grew older, he became interested in buying a larger rifle. Seadlund would often go into the Minnesota woods near Ironton and remain for several days on hunting trips. After he turned 14 there was very seldom a season passed that he didn’t kill at least one deer. He was apparently fond of hunting ducks and on his hunting expeditions would kill as many as forty ducks, although the law limited the possession of ducks for one hunter to eight.

He graduated from the local grade school in Ironton and graduated from Crosby Ironton High School in 1928. Following graduation, he went to work in the iron mines, working particularly in the blacksmith shops and machine shops under the supervision of his father. He appeared to be content with this type of work and worked regularly until July 1929, when, because of the Depression, he was laid off. In July 1929, he left home and worked various jobs in Chicago, Illinois.

Seadlund remained at home from September 25, 1930 until May 30, 1934 and tried unsuccessfully to secure employment in the iron mines, which, during the Great Depression, were practically shut down.

Meanwhile, John’s father, Peter Seadlund, died on March 23, 1933, at age of 51. His body was found in the family car, having died from carbon monoxide poisoning. It was speculated that his father’s death, the Great Depression, and a chance meeting with an infamous gangster (Tommy Carroll, gangster of the Dillinger Gang) pushed Seadlund towards committing crimes.

“When his father died, John tried to get work in the iron mines, but they told him there was nothing for him,” his mother, Delia Seadlund, later said. “He sat around home for two years. He was desperate for money,” according to Wikipedia.

Seadlund and James Atwood Gray kidnapped Charles Sherman Ross and hid in a shack a dozen miles north of Emily, Minnesota, while Ross was imprisoned in a nearby dugout. Then a scuffle broke out. Seadlund claimed Gray pointed a gun, hoping to get all the ransom money according to Curt Brown in the Minneapolis Star Tribune article, “Son of Ironton miner morphed into ‘nation’s cruelest criminal’ in the 1930s.” They fell into the pit, fighting for the gun. In the process, Seadlund wounded his accomplice and then shot him another eight times to finish him off. Ross suffered three skull fractures, according to an autopsy. To ensure his captive was dead, Seadlund shot Ross once in the head.

He threw their bodies in the pit, according to Brown, and covered them with brush. Three months later, after his racetrack arrest, Seadlund led the FBI to their frozen bodies and the hidden money near Walker, Minnesota.

John Henry Seadlund, characterized as a cold-blooded and ruthless kidnapper and murderer, as well as a lone bank bandit in Shakopee, was executed in the electric chair for the abduction and murder of Charles Sherman Ross on July 14, 1938. The date of his electrocution was exactly thirteen days prior to the day upon which he would have celebrated his twenty-eighth birthday according to Find a Grave. He was laid to rest on July 17, 1938, in the Woodland Cemetery, two miles south of Ironton, Minnesota, beside the grave of his father.

Bibliography

BMC. “John Henry Seadlund.” Find a Grave, 21 April 2006. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14017335/john-henry-seadlund.

Brown, Curt. “Son of Ironton miner morphed into ‘nation’s cruelest criminal’ in the 1930s.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, 12 Dec. 2017.

“Charles Ross Kidnapping.” Federal Bureau of Investigation. https://www.fbi.gov/history/cases-and-criminals/charles-ross-kidnapping.

“John Henry Seadlund.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Seadlund.

Shakopee Argus-Tribune, 28 Jan. 1937.

Shakopee Argus-Tribune, 27 June 1938.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

Thomas A. Holmes was stricken with “town-site fever.” When the Dakota were forced to leave the Minnesota River Valley area, Holmes and others knew that it was profitable to foresee towns. Holmes and others tried to be on the ground floor on their development.

The Shakopee Story noted that “(t)his was the first building in the original town site of Shakopee. It was a sort of block house, build with the help of John McKenzie, Emerson Shumway, and Daniel Apgar, who came with Holmes.”

John McKenzie was actually John Hamilton Mackenzie.

He was born on June 12, 1831 at Hoag’s Hollow, near Montreal, Canada. He descended from Scottish ancestry. His father took part in the Canadian rebellion, forcing him to flee to the United States in 1841 and was followed by his family. In 1850 he came to Minnesota with the John Stevens party by way of Wisconsin. The party settled in the area of Itasca. It was here that John was hired on with a Thomas Holmes, an Indian trader.

John helped build the Holmes Trading Post.

John became an Indian trader, and in 1852, he made a claim on section 34 and 35 in what was later Eden Prairie. He called the town Hennepin, and platted a portion of the claim into village lots. It failed to develop because of enterprises elsewhere in the township, and no traces remain.

In 1855 he went back to Illinois and married Mary Jane Trumble. It was about this time that John had lost all his possessions, including some 1214 lots in Minnesota. He returned to Minnesota that same fall.

Mary Jane Trumble Mackenzie died in 1870 at the young age of 34. They had a total of 12 children but only two lived to adulthood. Most died in their first five years. In 1874 John married Lavina Robinson, and that marriage resulted in four children, of which three lived to adulthood.

John moved to the Red River Valley in 1861 and settled on the route of the St. Paul-Breckenridge Stage.

When the U.S.-Dakota War started in 1862, John became a scout with headquarters at Georgetown, about sixty-five miles from Breckenridge.

When the Indians became a serious problem, the Selkirk settlement was used by the Georgetown locals for protection. John became a member of the United States Secret Service. In January 1864, John Hamilton Mackenzie ended up in Fort Garry, a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in Winnipeg.

“The snow was from eight to twelve inches deep and the bleak and desolate prairies were continually swept by blinding blizzards. Making their way over the frozen ground in forced marches half frozen and blinded by the pitiless storm, the little band reached Pembina on November 13, 1863. It was not until the middle of December, in 1863, that a little detachment of picked men started out to effect the capture of the murderous Indians.”

Ṡakpedaŋ and Wakaŋ Ożaŋżaŋ found shelter and protection under the British flag across the Canadian border and pitched their camp on the site of the old Selkirk settlement, about 25 miles up the Assiniboine River from Fort Garry.

John was secretly in cahoots with a U.S. Army major across the border in what would become Pembina, North Dakota. Mackenzie plied both Indian leaders with alcohol laced with drugs.

Ṡakpedaŋ, age 53, was dosed with chloroform and rendered unconscious. Wakaŋ Ożaŋżaŋ, in his mid-30s, struggled longer but several men subdued him. Both Dakota men were tied to dog sleds and taken to Pembina, then Fort Abercrombie, en route to Fort Snelling.

Trials were held and both were convicted despite sketchy evidence. According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press on November 10, 1865, “It would have been more creditable if some tangible evidence of their guilt had been obtained.”

Ṡakpedaŋ (Little Six) and Wakaŋ Ożaŋżaŋ (Medicine Bottle) were hanged on November 11, 1865. While Ṡakpedaŋ’s neck snapped immediately, Wakaŋ Ożaŋżaŋ dangled for 10 minutes before dying.

The Minnesota Legislature forked out $1000 to Mackenzie as a bounty.

John then returned to Hutchinson, Minnesota where he lived for many years. Finally, he moved to Blue Jacket, Oklahoma.

John H. Mackenzie, 89 years old, died on February 25, 1920. On December 1,1919, he had a paralytic stroke as the result of an automobile accident, and this was the cause of his demise.

Bibliography

Coller, Julius A. II. The Shakopee Story. Shakopee, MN: Shakopee Heritage Society, 2009.

St. Paul Pioneer Press, 10 Nov. 1865.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

Long before white settlers hacked away part of the hill for its limestone, the Mdewakanton Dakota revered it as a holy place, a lookout, campground, and burial ground. In the Dakota language, He Mni Caŋ (pronounced, heh-meh-NEE-cha) means hill, water, wood, and in English was called Barn Bluff. The bluff attracted ancestral visionaries who acted as guides for the Indian community.

Led by Tatanka Mani (Walking Buffalo) (ca. 1755-1829), who, along with his village, was known as Red Wing, and when he died in March 1829, Wacouta I (Shooter) became leader of the Red Wing band. Red Wing went to pray and connect with Inyan, the original spirit who lives in the hills and high places. The Dakota women collected medicine plants, including hutkan (ginseng), sinkpa tawatne (bitterroot), and pejuta ska (lady slipper).

During the great immigration period of the 1850s to 1880s, thousands disembarked from steamboats at the base of Barn Bluff to begin a new life on the frontier, including Johann “John” Paul, who arrived in 1861.

John Paul was born in September of 1819 in Mecklenburg, Nordwestmecklenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.

He left Germany on August 4, 1856. John had been a potter in Germany, and he was familiar with the process of producing durable stoneware. He knew how to build a kiln, how to cool the stoneware carefully, and how to glaze the product to seal porous clay.

John made the stoneware for himself in Red Wing. He used the natural red clay along the Mississippi River. John discovered the large, glacially deposited clay pits located north of Goodhue. He also established a small pottery business in an old schoolhouse. This was the beginning of the Red Wing pottery that continued for the next 116 years.

“A German craftsman and Minnesota transplant, John Paul was among the first to find natural clay deposits near Red Wing in 1861. He and his fellow settlers spent the next two decades crafting a wealth of wares to meet the demands of farm life. Close proximity to railroads, river barges and the burgeoning grain industry made the city a potter’s paradise,” noted Eve Daniels.

John Paul married Margaretha Leibe (1842-1917), who was born in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. They married on September 7, 1868.

John was a private in the Wisconsin Infantry, Company B, during the Civil War. He was 43 years old and was in for one-and-a-half years, from April 1863 to 1865.

John and Margaretha and their first four children (Charles, Peter, Dudziah, and Emma) moved to Shakopee, Minnesota in 1871. They had four more children while in Shakopee. The children born in Shakopee include August, Belle, Dora, and Lizzie. They lived on First Avenue where River Rock Dental is located.

For a few years, John worked as a potter in Shakopee, using mud from the Minnesota River. He crafted jugs, milk crocks, plates, picture cups, jars and bowls, as well as toy cats, dogs, monkeys, and chickens.

The 1880 Census noted that John Paul, age 42, and his wife, Margaretha, age 36, along with Charles, 11, Peter, 10, Emma, 8, Frank (August), 4, and Belle, age 1, lived on First Avenue. John worked as a brick mason. He only worked eight months of the year, which was typical for those who worked as a brick mason.

John and Margaretha were married for 32 years. Many of the Paul family members were confirmed in 1895 at the Gustavus Adolphus English Lutheran Church in Shakopee.

John Paul died on June 26, 1900, in Shakopee. John, Margaretha, and their son, Peter, were buried at Valley Cemetery in Shakopee.

No stone marker marks John and Margaretha’s graves, though their son’s gravestone is nearby.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Joel Schroeder Weiser was born on August 13, 1834, in Berks County, Pennsylvania, to Samuel Weiser and Mary Schroeder. Samuel was a miller who owned a small farm near Reading, where the Weisers tilled and lived on the land. When Joel was 15, he traveled to Amity, Pennsylvania, with his mother and worked as a tobacconist, a dealer in tobacco, according to Curt Eriksmoe’s “Civil War veteran helped found and grow Valley City” in Did You Know That.

Joel’s older brother, William, was working on a farm near Danby Station, Illinois, and in 1850, Joel joined him there for a month. The two brothers then journeyed to St. Paul and found temporary employment as settler-colonists on Dakota land. The area of Shakapee City, Minnesota Territory, which was, and is, the traditional home of many of the Mdewakanton Dakota Indians, but through questionable treaties, became open for white settler-colonists.

Joel and William relocated to Shakopee, and with like other settler-colonists who moved there, Joel found plentiful work as a mason and plasterer.

In early May 1854, Joel returned to Pennsylvania to marry Louisa Cleaver. Louisa was the daughter of Jonathan Cleaver and Sarah Gabey. Joel and Louisa wanted to encourage Joel’s parents to move to Shakopee. They felt that Samuel’s health was failing and that encouraging them to move to Shakopee might help, as his father was rapidly deteriorating.

After Joel and Louisa’s wedding on May 10, 1854, the couple went to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon, and Joel’s parents traveled by riverboat up the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to join their two sons and daughter-in-law in Shakopee. However, before arriving, Samuel died aboard the riverboat on May 17, 1854. Since Joel and his mother had always been very close, Mary remained with him and Louisa until her death in Valley City in 1877.

Four children were born in Shakopee, the two oldest later dying the same day of diphtheria.

After receiving his medical degree in 1855, Joel’s other brother, Josiah, also relocated to Shakopee and began treating patients, both settlers and the Dakota in Tínṫa Otuŋwe and the “Shakopee Reservation,” which was actually land owned by the Dakota on the north side of the Minnesota River.

During the first few years in Shakopee, the three Weiser brothers did very well and made many friendships with some other settler-colonists and some Dakota Indians.

Soon after the start of the Civil War in 1862, William enlisted with the Union Army. On October 17, 1862, Dr. Josiah Weiser, was inducted into a local Minnesota army, commanded by General Henry Hastings Sibley, to pursue the Dakota Indians. Finally, on September 31, 1864, Joel enlisted with the Ninth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry and was at once ordered to Memphis to engage in fighting the Confederate forces.

When Joel was mustered in 1864, Louisa had three little girls at home.

For the next 11 months, his unit pursued the Rebels through Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, often engaging in battle with bushwhackers who shadowed the Union army’s movements. Not only were Joel and his fellow soldiers frequently harassed by bushwhackers, but they also had to contend with heat, humidity, and the ever-present mosquitoes that inflicted half of the soldiers with malaria during the Civil War.

Shortly before the close of the war, Joel came down with a severe case of malaria, which nearly cost him his life and caused his black hair to permanently turn white. Joel returned home to Shakopee to recuperate, was mustered out of the army on August 24, 1865, and discharged in October. He was discharged in 1865 and Joel and Louisa had three more children in Shakopee, according to Find a Grave.

Joel returned to his work as a mason in Shakopee until 1870, when he was offered a contract to do construction work in St. Paul. With the completion of his contract in 1874, he relocated 12 miles east of St. Paul to work on a farm.

After working as a mason and farmer in eastern Minnesota for over twenty years, Joel and his family packed up their belongings and traveled by train to Worthington, a railroad stop located sixty miles west of Fargo, in northern Dakota Territory, not too far from where his older brother, Dr. Josiah Weiser, had been killed 14 years earlier. Joel filed a homestead and tree claim of 320 acres, 4 miles northeast of the railroad stop, and built a log cabin in Worthington, which was the second house built there. Joel would later change the name of Worthington to Valley City, according to a column written by Curt Eriksmoe.

Shortly after Weiser arrived, immigration to Worthington began to pick up, and by 1878, there were about thirty people living there. Weiser built a house and a general store in Worthington, and it has been written that although the store was small, it “carried the largest and most complete stock to be found in [Dakota] Territory at that time.” Along with Weiser’s store and house, the town consisted of 11 other houses and a saloon, according to “Founder of Valley City waged sustained battle to keep his community relevant,” by Curt Eriksmoe in Did You Know That.

On March 8, 1881, Valley City was incorporated, and Weiser was elected mayor. To facilitate education and religion in the town, the first school and church services were held in his house. Later in 1881, he helped establish a Methodist church in Valley City and donated the block of land on which it was built. Two years later, he expanded his store to include a lumberyard and a farm equipment dealership.

From 1878 to 1890, Valley City had grown from a population of thirty to over 1,000. By 1910, Valley City had surpassed Mandan, Wahpeton, Grafton, and Jamestown to become the fifth largest city in North Dakota. Weiser’s eyesight was becoming very poor, and he was forced to turn over his businesses to his son.

Joel Schroeder Weiser died on January 17, 1925, at ninety years old and was buried at Hillside Cemetery in Valley City, North Dakota.

Bibliography

BluMoKitty. “Joel Schroeder Weiser (1834-1925).” Find a Grave, 3 June 2013. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/111756244/joel-schroeder-weiser.

Eriksmoen, Curt. “Civil War veteran helped found and grow Valley City.” Did You Know That, 6 June 2020. https://www.inforum.com/lifestyle/eriksmoen-civil-war-veteran-helped-found-and-grow-valley-city.

Eriksmoen, Curt. “Founder of Valley City waged sustained battle to keep his community relevant.” Did You Know That, 13 June 2020. https://www.inforum.com/lifestyle/eriksmoen-founder-of-valley-city-waged-sustained-battle-to-keep-his-community-relevant.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

Jason Andre Cahigas Perkins was born in Shakopee, Minnesota on September 20, 1992. His parents were Herbert A. Perkins (1957-2012) and Jennifer Cahigas Perkins-Boddie, who was born in Bolinao, a municipality in the province of Pangasinan, Philippines.

At 6’3”, Jason graduated from Shakopee High School in 2011. He is a Filipino-African American semi-professional basketball player who played for the Caida Tiles Masters in the PBA Developmental League.

Jason is the youngest of three siblings. His father was African American, while his mother, is a Filipina. He’s been into sports since he was little, playing both football and basketball.

While attending Shakopee High School, Jason suited up for the Sabers boys’ basketball team. He also played tight end (TE) for the school’s varsity football program.

During his senior year, Jason averaged 16.6 points and 4.2 rebounds per game, and signed a letter of intent to play for the Valley City State University in April 2011. He also played AAU ball when he was a teenager, suiting up for a squad called Pump N Run, where he got his moniker Hefty Lefty.

After graduating, Perkins attended Valley City State University to play basketball for the Vikings. Valley City State University is in Valley City, a town of 6,500 people located along the Sheyenne River, is a 45-minute commute from Fargo. Jason played for one year there. In 2012, he decided to go to the Philippines to study upon the prodding’s of his mother, who had always encouraged him to live in her native land.

Jason was initially recruited by former San Beda head coach Frankie Lim to play for the Red Lions, but left following Lim’s resignation. Then he was invited by De La Salle University officials to visit the campus, and soon after, he joined the practice with the Green Archers. He served his one-year residency before finally suiting up for the Green Archers in the 2013 UAAP season. In his rookie season, he averaged 12.7 points per game on 52.8% field goals and 9.6 rebounds per game and was instrumental in La Salle’s title conquest.

Jason played professional basketball for the Phoenix Super LPG Fuel Masters of the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA). The Archers went on to win the championship that season. It was tough being away from family. His father died. But he realized that the move was a good one.

“The style of play here is very physical. The referees let a lot of calls go so it gets very chippy,” Perkins said. “There’s a lot of elbows and punches but I’m used to it now.”

“I had to chase my dream by myself although it was good for me because I learned to grow independent and pay more attention to the blessings I’ve received in life,” he said. “Right now, I major in sports science as well as business management. I also try to travel and experience as much as possible now. I’ve swam with sharks, climbed mountains, tried parasailing. Since I moved here my days pretty much just consist of school, basketball, and trying to experience as much as I can out of life,” said Jason in an article in the Shakopee Valley News, “Chasing his dream: Jason Perkins playing basketball in the Philippines.”

Jason Andre Cahigas Perkins has a wife, Marga, and in August of 2022 had a daughter, Luna Bella Perkins.

“While I’m trying to get involved with business I would like to become a professional basketball player here in the PBA [Philippines Basketball Association], although I have to go to graduate school first because I promised my mother,” he said.

Bibliography

Abeln, Todd. “Chasing his dream: Jason Perkins playing basketball in the Philippines.” Shakopee Valley News, 29 Dec. 2014.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

Jane Dillard was born on March 8, 1809, in Virginia, daughter of James Madison Dillard, Sr. (1777-1852) and Jane Elizabeth English (1781-1814).

Jane’s father was born in Culpeper County, Virginia in 1777. He had 16 children by two wives, Jane Elizabeth English and Cynthia Ann Haywood Dillard (1800-1872). James moved west from Culpeper County to the area around Elizabethtown, Hardin County, Kentucky about 1810 with his in-laws, Robert Hamilton English (1757-1826) and Sarah Jane Smith Bellows English (1761-1826) and family.

Jane’s grandfather, William Dillard, was born in 1753 in Culpeper County, and her grandmother was Mary Sarah Norman Dillard (1758-1815). William was a Revolutionary War solder. He enlisted in the Virginia Continental Army at Chesterfield Courthouse September 20, 1780, and subsequently, on September 8, 1781, he was killed in the Battle of Eutaw Springs in South Carolina. That battle was the last major engagement of the war in the Carolinas; both sides claimed victory. William’s brother, Capt. James Dillard, had moved to Laurens County, South Carolina at age 17. He served throughout the Revolutionary War under generals Sumpter and Greene and was with Gen. Sumpter at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, where his brother was killed. Jane Dillard and John Boswell Allen came from Spencer County, Kentucky to Boone County, Indiana.

Jane Dillard married John Allen on November 18, 1829, in Elizabethtown, Hardin County, Kentucky. According to David H. Eggler in an article, “John Boswell Allen and Jane Dillard Allen: Kentucky to Indiana to Shakopee, Minnesota” on September 10, 2019, the record reads, “Allen, John B., and Jane Dillard. Surety James Dillard, girl’s father, who consented in person. Man of age. 18 Nov 1829. C. Lovelace [minister].”

John Boswell Allen was born on February 24, 1806, in Shelby County, Kentucky. His parents were John Allen, Sr. (1769-1837) and Elizabeth Boswell Allen (1768-1820).

John Spencer was the husband of Priscilla Allen and then Nancy Allen, and therefore the brother-in-law of John Boswell Allen. John, his brother George H. Spencer, and his sons John Bruce Spencer and Spier Spencer were all prominent figures in the early history of Minnesota and Shakopee. One article wrote about Spier Spencer: “He was born in Spencer County, Kentucky, January 22, 1827, his father being a prominent slave owner. He lived there until age 14, when his father sold his slaves and moved to Boone County, Indiana, where he remained for eight years.” That relocation, in 1841, was after the move by John Allen. It is conceivable that John Allen, like John Spencer, held slaves in Kentucky before relocating to Boone County, Indiana.

Jane and John moved to Shakopee in 1853. At that time, the place was called Shakapee City, Minnesota Territory, which was the name from 1853-1855. The place was first called Tínṫa Otuŋwe, then Prairie des Français, then in 1851 it was called Holmes Landing, then Sha K’ Pay, Minnesota Territory until the Allens arrived at the territory of Shakapee City. It was not until 1857 that the place was called Shakopee, Minnesota.

Only five white families lived in Shakopee, called Holmes Landing in 1851 and twenty white persons in 1852, which was called Sha K’ Pay. Of course, that doesn’t include the six hundred Dakota Indians who had been living here for more than two hundred years. More settler-colonists arrived in 1853 when many of the Dakota were forced to be removed to the Upper Sioux Agency, including the John and Jane Boswell Allen family, according to A 1891 Sketch of Shakopee, Minn: Historical and Industrial by William Hinds.

According to the History of the Minnesota Valley, 1882, John and Jane “kept a boarding-house in what was called the Pennsylvania House. Luther M. Brown describes this house as having two rooms, one above and one below. The lower room had a log fireplace, while the upper one had only the rafters above and one window with five lights of glass. Nevertheless this hotel could accommodate, as it appears, fifteen or more persons, regardless of sex.”

According to David Eggler, John B. Allen subsequently returned to farming. On February 13, 1854, he paid $1500 for eighty acres of government land on the Shakopee-Le Sueur road three miles from Shakopee plus a timbered tract adjacent to Samuel and Andrew Dooley (Scott County Deeds). He bought additional land in 1855.

“On the 1880 plat map his farm was the entire 165 acres of W ½ E ½ section 15, T115 N R23W in the Town of Jackson. He built the first house in Jackson. In later years, while living in Jackson, John and Jane kept Flora, Cora Ann, and Frank Weiser, children of their daughter Mary Elizabeth Allen Weiser, who had died in 1865, and Frances and Martha May Koons, children of their daughter Henrietta Allen Koons, who also died in 1865,” said David H. Eggler in the article “John Boswell Allen and Jane Dillard Allen: Kentucky to Indiana to Shakopee, Minnesota.:

Jane and John had nine children: Henrietta, Lucy Jane, Martha, Mary Elizabeth, Ann Elizabeth, John Alfred, James Peter, Harrison, and Marcena.

Jane Dillard Allen died on September 5, 1885, in Shakopee, and was buried at Valley Cemetery. Eight years later, her husband, John Boswell Allen died.

The funeral of John B. Allen took place on Tuesday, December 26, from the residence of Spier Spencer, according to the Scott County Argus, December 28, 1893. The tombstone inscription says, “Dearest Father we must lay thee In the peaceful grave’s embrace But thy memory will be cherished Till we see thy heavenly face.”

John B. Allen and Jane Dillard Allen are buried in Lot 392, the Allen plot, in Valley Cemetery in Shakopee.

Bibliography

Eggler, David H. “John Boswell Allen and Jane Dillard Allen: Kentucky to Indiana to Shakopee, Minnesota.” Bellefonte Historical and Cultural Association, 10 Sept. 2019. http://www.bellefontearts.org/Eggler_genealogy/Allen_genealogy.pdf.

Hinds, William. A 1891 Sketch of Shakopee, Minn: Historical and Industrial, 1891.

Neill, Edward D. and Charles S. Bryant. History of the Minnesota Valley, 1882.

Scott County Argus, 28 Dec. 1893.