Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2024

Lucy Prescott was born April 1, 1828 in Tiŋta-otoŋwe (Shakopee), Minnesota. Her parents were Philander Prescott (1801-1862) and Na-he-no-Wenah Spirit of the Moon Mary Keeiyah Prescott (1802-1867).

Lucy’s maternal grandparents were Catherine Totedutawin, a Wahpeton Dakota, and sister of Wapahaṡa, and Keeiyah (Flying Man), brother of Maȟpíya Wičhášta (Cloudman).

Lucy married Eli Pettijohn on Jan. 1, 1850, at Fort Snelling. According to newspapers at that time, it was the highlight of the Fort Snelling social season.

Eli Pettijohn, born Jan. 28, 1819, in Ohio, was son of Abraham Pettijohn and Jane Sloan. When Eli was just 22 years old, he accompanied his parents on their migration to Illinois in 1840, and then Eli struck out for himself, turned his face westward and, perhaps because his sister, Lydia, and her husband were in Minnesota as Presbyterian missionaries to the Dakota Indians, crossed the plains to what was then an outpost of civilization near the present site of the city of Minneapolis.

He had been in Minnesota since 1841, working as a laborer, carpenter, and a farmer among the Dakota, first for missionaries, and later for the government. Minnesota was at that time a part of the territory of Wisconsin and eight years were to elapse before it could be organized as a territory, and seventeen years before it became a state. It is almost impossible to realize it now, but at the time Eli went into the territory, Minneapolis was known as St. Anthony Falls and was a struggling village of a white traders and Dakota Indians. St. Paul was a settlement of four houses.

The country abounded with fur-bearing animals and a profitable business was carried on by the white traders with the Dakota Indians, who exchanged their furs for supplies. Upon his arrival in Minnesota the first employment which Eli had was assisting his sister, Lydia, and her husband, Alexander G. Huggins, and other missionaries in their dealings with the Dakota Indians. He was employed in the Commissary Department of the Government in furnishing supplies, building houses and in trying to teach the Dakota Indians to farm after the fashion of the white man (even though the Dakota women were already doing just fine with planting without the white men’s suggestions!).

During his service with the government, Eli was stationed at Fort Snelling, and it was while there that his prophetic vision gave him a preview of things to come. He foresaw the up building of a great city near that place. He purchased large tracts of land from Franklin Steele who acted under what he maintained was a “grant from the government.” Eli erected a commodious residence, and numerous barns for his thoroughbred horses, and improved the property.

The wedding ceremony at Fort Snelling in 1850 was performed by Rev. Edward D. Neill, and guests included the officers in full uniform, their wives, the United States Agent for the Dakotas, and family, the Bois-Brûlés of the neighborhood, and Indian relatives of the mother, according to Naginowenah, Lucy Prescott, and the Wizard of Cereal Foods: Cultural Identity across Three Generations of an Anglo-Dakota Family by Jane Lamm Carroll, Minnesota History, 63/2, Summer 2012.

According to Carroll, the ceremony presented a “symbolic tableau of the cultural transition that was taking place from one generation to the next in Lucy Prescott’s family. Her Dakota relatives viewed the wedding from the hallway, not as full guests or participants, but as interested observers—and also as a people whose culture Lucy was leaving farther behind as she married an Anglo-American.

“Naginowenah, Lucy’s mother, did not attend the ceremony. She may be mourning the loss of the Dakota way of life for her daughter. Despite Naginowenah’s 40-year marriage to Philander Prescott, she only spoke the Dakota language, although she perfectly understood both French and English. Naginowenah’s daughter, Lucy Prescott, lived as a Dakota child, but she brought up to be an Anglo-American woman. She spoke Dakota, but was also fluent and literate in English. She raised her children as Anglo-Americans.”

In 1862, Lucy’s father was one of the first people killed during the U.S.-Dakota War. Philander tried to flee to Fort Ridgely while a group of Dakota warriors, including Dakota leaders Ṡakpedaŋ and Wakaŋ Ożaŋżaŋ, encountered Philander on the road and killed him. Lucy later said she had heard that the two Dakota had argued about killing her father; one of them said that Prescott had “always been a friend to the Indians.”

Lucy and Eli had seven children.

The first mill in the town of Sha K’ Pay, Minnesota Territory (later called Shakopee) was located on the same stream that the ruins of the Pond Grist Mill was located, but further west. The Pettijohn Grist Mill was just below the Faribault home, near where the current Dangerfield’s is located.

Eli and Lucy built this mill, which was one of the first mills ever to be built within the state of Minnesota. The wheel of this mill was supposed to be an overshot one, but later it was discovered that the level of the water could not be raised enough, so the wheel was converted into a breast wheel. It was probably built in 1852-1853. It was here, as well as the mill he built near Minnehaha Creek near Lake Harriet in 1854 called Richfield Mills with his father-in-law Philander Prescott and his brother, Willis, where he developed the first processed and packaged breakfast food in the world.

Eli and Lucy built their home on that land near Fort Snelling, and the dwelling was the talk of all that part of Minnesota in that early day. The house was built on a stone foundation, two and one-half stories high, had a square brick chimney, with two large fireplaces, and contained twelve large rooms. When the Civil War started, the property around Fort Snelling, including the part occupied by Eli and Lucy, was taken over for government purposes. No compensation was given.

Eli and his son, William, headed to California, and when Eli returned home, William used Eli’s recipes to make a breakfast cereal, but by 1893, in ways sold to Quaker Oats Company. The company kept Eli Pettijohn’s image in ads ever since, according to The Fireless Cooker; Something of the Pettijohn (Pettyjohn) Family by C.A. Pettijohn © 1948, and privately published.

Lucy Prescott Pettijohn died Dec. 18, 1910 in Minnetonka, near their house near Minnehaha Creek, at age 81.

Eli was of strong physique and when nearly eighty years of age supervised the installation of the machinery in big flour mills at Minneapolis. At the age of ninety he died May 18, 1918 in Minnetonka Mills, now called Excelsior, at aged 96.