Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022
Hiram Adam Flecken was born in Limberg, Zittert, Holland on November 11, 1840. His parents were Hubert Flecken and Mary Johnson. Hiram was usually called Adam.
In 1863 Adam and his parents moved to the United States, and Adam settled in Carver County, according to Little Sketches of Big Folks in Minnesota, 1907.
When the Civil War started, Adam volunteered. At age 23, he was assigned to Company H, Second Regiment of Minnesota Calvary of the Grand Army of the Republic. Adam was in the army from February 22, 1864 until April 28, 1866.
The Second Minnesota Cavalry Regiment was mustered at Fort Snelling for three years’ service on December 5, 1863, and was mustered out on November 17, 1865 and May 4, 1866. It served entirely in Minnesota, Dakota Territory, and Montana Territory.
Adam remembered the trip west “through South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming into Idaho in the summer of 1864 and the brush strokes of his reminiscences paint a scene of the primitive west – monotonous stretches of prairie, strips of desert sand, streams fringed with gaunt cottonwoods, willows, and scrubby oaks, and then, far ahead on the horizon the beckoning mountains, shrouded in their purple mantle of haze, first the Black Hills, then the Big Horn range and the foot hills of the Rockies,” said in the article, “Pioneer Day Recollection: Adam Flecken Tells Interesting Story About the Primitive West” in the June 18, 1925 Shakopee Tribune, and now published in the book Recollections of Early Pioneers 1925, edited by Betty Dols in 2000.
Adam knew that the company from Fort Snelling was there to escort a train of gold-seekers bound for the mountains of Idaho. Of course, there were other people already living here, even though they mentioned there was “no sign of habitation save for the blackened tents of the Indians.” Indigenous people lived here for years at Paha Sapa (Black Hills), Ȟeyúškiška (Bighorn Mountain), and, as one member of the Navajo Native Nation Len Necefer called the Rocky Mountains’ Longs Peak the Arapaho name: Neníisótoyóú’u, according to an article “This Account is Reclaiming the Indigenous Names for Mountains One Geotag at a Time,” in Smithsonian Magazine.
The people have stewarded it throughout the generations. Important resources including plants, migratory big game, rock shelters, tipi poles, stone for tools, the bison, fish, deer, elk, roots, and berries are critical for the people.
Adam was part of an escort of 300 or 400 men and a few women and children heading west, and some people were nervous about the Indians. In Missouri, Adam noted, “Two of our pickets were killed by Indians one night. It was my turn to go on guard duty a night a few days later, and I remember that night as well as if it were yesterday. The night was cloudy and there was a faint light from the moon. A light moved the branches of brush and blinds of grass gently, and I was ready to fire at everything that moved. Nothing happened though and we didn’t lose another man on the trip.”
During the trip to Idaho, Adam said, “The members of the escort didn’t have much time to study the country, anyway. We were kept busy most of the time. We had our horses to look after and many other military duties, which were increased greatly by conditions in the western country. We slept in little tents, three feet high and just large enough for two men. We ate only two meals a day, chiefly hardtack, pork, and coffee.”
When he was discharged in 1866, Adam worked as a farmhand for several years, cutting grain with a hand sickle, building it by hand and experiencing the usual conditions of farm life in Minnesota.
Adam married Maria Josepha Dieken at St. Mark’s Church on April 27, 1869. Maria Josepha was born on March 5, 1850 in Gangelt, Rheinland, Prussia, daughter of Peter Leonard Dieken and Maria Catherina Busch. They had 12 children.
In the 1870s Adam lived in Shakopee, employed in the Omaha machine shops for three years, and then established a brickyard a mile southeast of the city, where he operated for five years. In 1888 he sold the brickyard and Maria Josepha and Adam ran the Occidental Hotel, on First and Sommerville Street from 1889 until 1914. It then stopped serving meals and became a boarding house for salesmen until 1931. The building was torn down in April of 1956.
Maria Josepha Dieken Flecken, age 74, died on October 27, 1924.
Hiram Adam Flecken died on June 30, 1931 at 90 years old. He was the second last survivor of the Civil War in Shakopee. They both were buried at the Shakopee Catholic Cemetery.
Bibliography
Dols, Betty. Recollections of Early Pioneers 1925, Shakopee Heritage Society, 2000.
Fessenden, Maris. “This Account is Reclaiming the Indigenous Names for Mountains One Geotag at a Time.” Smithsonian Magazine, 22 Feb. 2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/social-media-can-let-people-know-about-mountains-indigenous-names-180968186/.
Little Sketches of Big Folks in Minnesota, 1907.
“Pioneer Day Recollection: Adam Flecken Tells Interesting Story About the Primitive West.” Shakopee Tribune, 18 June 1925.