Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

Orestus S. Brown was born in New York in 1831. He moved to Shakopee in 1869 when his son, Frederick Van Ness Brown, was seven years old.

His wife, Evelyn Bortle Brown, died March 8, 1871. The family and servants lived on a farm between Hamilton (Savage) and Shakopee in Glendale.

In 1880, Orestus and his second wife, Carrie, along with their two children, Frederick and Gertrude, moved to their new home in downtown Shakopee.

And along with the family was Alice Briggs, who was listed as an indentured servant.

The house is at 519 First Avenue East, one of the oldest structures in Shakopee.

The house was built in 1856 as a 24’ x 24’ limestone. In 1880 it sold to David and Julia Brown, and in 1888 to O.S. Brown. The house is across the street from the First Presbyterian Church, now the Iglesia la Luz Mundo Casa de Oracion.

Some people in Minnesota were rich. But this wealth was not shared by all. People on the top, mostly businessmen, made lots of money. The middle-class people, such as doctors and lawyers, lived very comfortably. But, like most ordinary working people, Alice’s family was poor. Alice was 15 years old. Her father was from Tennessee, and her mother was from New York. Alice had brothers and sisters, and though they were living in a small, cramped home, Alice decided to get a job.

There weren’t many jobs in rural Minnesota except for farmhands, factory workers (which were mostly for men) and servants. The pay was bad, the hours were long, and there was not a lot of personal freedom, but Alice decided to work for a rich family in Shakopee. Once Alice got the job, she needed to be neat and pleasant around their home. She needed to be obedient and show the right attitude.

O.S. and Carrie wanted a servant who did the work. Alice needed to get up at dawn to light the fires and boil water for washing. She had to help cook and serve breakfast (and then, afterwards, she could eat her own breakfast). Alice had to clean the home, wash the floors, and help with the laundry. Alice had to sweep, dust, clean glass windows, and shake and beat the carpets. She had to polish the heavy wooden furniture, wipe down walls, and clean the pavement and steps outside the front door. She had to work all day, from 5 a.m. until 11 p.m., where she could retire to her cold and damp room and into the hard and lumpy bed to sleep (and hope the bed bugs don’t bite) before being up again at the crack of dawn.

Luckily for Alice, Freda and Charles Long were also servants of the Browns in 1880. Freda probably cooked, and Charles helped chop wood and helped with the farm. Freda, a white female, was age twenty, and Charles was white and male, age 23. Charles was also a farmhand. Both Freda and Charles were from Michigan, but their parents were from Prussia. Alice was born in Minnesota, and her parents were from Tennessee and New York.

A boarder, Columbus McMullen, also lived at this home. He was bedridden and probably disabled. He was 27 years old and probably needed to be helped by the three servants.

Monday was laundry day. Filthy clothes were washed and mended, and bed linens were cleaned. Bundles and baskets of wash were taken outside. The dirty water from the day before had to be hauled out of the kettles, bucket by bucket, and dumped in the yard, though not too close to the house. Then came refilling the kettles with water pulled up, bucket by bucket, from the well, or down at the bank of the Minnesota River. Then clean water had been poured into the kettles. Proper laundering required lots of boiling-hot water.

To loosen the dirt, the clothes were first boiled in a massive copper cauldron outside. Then they were scrubbed with lye soup made from ashes and pig’s fat. Sometimes Alice would use a brush, and other times against an old scrubbing board that liked to take the skin off Alice’s knuckles. Stains —and nearly every piece of clothing had some —were treated with lye or pipe clay and then soaked in soapy water.

People who lived in this house in Shakopee remember a spirit, an African American, who was doing laundry over and over.

Was it the spirit of Alice Briggs?

Alice was not in the next census, so people don’t know what happened to Alice, who lived and worked in Shakopee.