Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

Mercy Scofield was born Sept. 2, 1853. Her parents were Isaac Scofield (1830-1881) and Elizabeth Casterline Scofield (1833-1918). Her grandparents were Alvah Scofield (1796-1850) and Cyrene Pennoyer Scofield (1802-1886); and Barnabus Casterline (1799-1882) and Maria Moriah Dubois Casterline (1806-1885).

Mercy was the first of twelve children, and the only one born in Dowagiac, Michigan.

The prevalence of typhoid fever in 1852, only four years after the founding of the village of Dowagiac, led many people to think the locality dangerously unwholesome. But it wasn’t the location, as a woman and man who returned from a visit caused the typhoid fever.

“Some people moved away, and others who were stricken down were obliged to send abroad for friends to take care of them. At one time there were scarcely enough well persons in the place to attend the sick,” according to Alfred Mathews in the book, History of Cass County, Michigan; With Illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers in 1882. Of thirteen persons who got sick soon after the disease made its first appearance, eleven died, said Genealogy Trails’ “Cass County, Michigan, History of Dowagiac.”

It may be the threat of disease or just wanting to go west, Marcy, her parents, Isaac and Elizabeth, and Maria, her grandmother, and Elizabeth’s sister, Sarah Casterline (who later married Henry Calkins of Spring Lake Township) headed to Minnesota Territory as settler-colonists in 1854. Mercy became one year old during the trip.

In an article in the Shakopee Argus-Tribune on May 31, 1934, called “Sends Sketch of Pioneer History,” Rev. William E. Thompson, a former Presbyterian pastor in Shakopee, wrote to the newspaper after he obtained the information from Mercy Scofield in 1930, four years before she died. According to Mercy, they were the first settler-colonists near Spring Lake Township, near what later became Shakopee. The family moved from Michigan to Minnesota Territory using an ox-team vehicle to haul their household goods and had an old horse and wagon to carry the women and child, Mercy.

In the article, Isaac, Mercy’s father, took a claim that was mostly woods, which he cut down and rolled into piles and burned. “In ten years he had cleared ten acres, which enabled him to sell the farm when leaving there for $3000. The family lived in a one room log house using it for all purposes. A piece of board saved from the cover of a box, three feet long and fourteen inches wide served as a table for three years.”

A sawmill was erected near them, and soon they had an abundance of butternut boards. Her father built a table in 1857, and in 1934, it was still in the family. Her father, “constructed a maple wood loom from trees he cut and sawed at the mill in 1862, preparatory to making cloth from the wool of six sheep possessed at the time. When the loom was finished, dogs killed all the sheep, and they only salvaged about two pounds of wool. Next spring they purchased six more sheep and from their wool clothing from the family was woven.” Mercy’s grandmother, Maria, gave a description of the loom from memory, and she also directed the making of a spinning wheel for making yarn.

“The time of day was ticked off by a clock brought from Michigan.”

On June 10, 1857, the Shakopee Valley Herald printed a small article under the headline “Another Town.” The article noted that “Thomas Holmes, A Holmes and Company have purchased property on Spring Lake and will immediately have the same surveyed off into lots.” It continued “We predict that, in a very short time, this will be a flourishing town, being 7 miles from Shakopee over a good road, will, we have no doubt, induce many of our citizens who want to spend the day fishing, gunning or having a sail on the lakes, to visit this pretty place” according to an article from the Scott County Historical Society, “Spring Lake Village.”

Ten years later, the area had become well known for its natural beauty. In 1867 the Shakopee Spectator ran an article outlining the attractions of the area. “It is not generally known that Scott County can boast some of the most desirable summer resorts, in point of scenery, surroundings, healthfulness and grandeur, that adorns any locality in the country.” It mentioned the village of Spring Lake, then described the excellent fishing in the lakes themselves in detail, declaring that Spring Lake is “nearly round but with an occasional bay jutting out from the main body of water with a beautiful gravel beach the whole way around it”, and Long Lake is “quite appropriately named, being some four or five miles long, with several beautifully wooded islands rising from its bosom. Its shores are uneven, rendered indescribably romantic by numerous bays and coves.”

As more European American settlers came to the area, the farmland became more important. On Sept. 17, 1877, the Shakopee Courier described farming conditions in Spring Lake: “This section is composed of heavily timbered land, so as a result farms are not as large as is the case in open or brushland towns. The farmers, however, raise good crops, particularly as far as wheat is concerned…the corn is not as good, there being so little rainfall.”

According to Mercy, the Dakota Indians were plentiful, and “sometimes the woods seemed full of them.” The Dakota knew enough English to communicate with the settler-colonists, and “when they came to the house and on being asked to sit up and eat did as nicely as anybody.”

Elizabeth, Mercy’s mother, asked one Dakota woman with a two year old child to drink some milk. “She refused, saying, ‘No, no, stomach bad.’ None of the Indians, old or young, would drink milk at all.” And Mercy remembered no one “had to lock up anything as the Indians wouldn’t pilfer anything.”

In 1865, the family moved from Scott County to Dakota County, near Randolph on the Big Cannon River. Because Isaac was a blacksmith by trade, he assisted in building a mill dam at that point. Leaving the area near Shakopee, Isaac and Elizabeth had nine children: Mercy, Dorothy Jane, Rachael, Maria, Elvira, Orland Amos, Perry, Mary, and Sarah, though three died young.

In Randolph, Minnesota, Isaac and Elizabeth had three more children: Benjamin, Joseph, and Rubin.

Mercy never married, and she died May 4, 1934. The funeral service were held May 6, 1934 at the Methodist Church in Randolph, Minnesota, with Rev. W.E. Thompson, and she was buried at the local cemetery, according to Find a Grave.