Part one of a series The youth played table tennis without incident, but basketball was once curtailed because of cursing. It was the 1940s at the South Ridge Evangelical United Brethren Church (E. U. B.). Since 1968, when that denomination merged with the Methodist Church, the Houston County congregation has been known as South Ridge United Methodist Church. In those early … [Read more...]

Part five of a series In the autumn of 1857, the steamboat “Key City” ran into and sank the freight boat “Ben Coursin’” on the Mississippi River near Dresbach. One account says 12 to 15 people were killed or drowned. David Watson mortgaged his farm and secured $300 in gold to purchase the wreckage and worked all winter to pull the “Ben Coursin’” out of the river in order to … [Read more...]

Fourth of a series During the first three decades of western migration into southeast Minnesota – for most residents in the 1850s, ’60s and ‘70s –rivers were both a welcome highway and an unwelcome obstacle (depending on which direction you wanted to travel). Steamboat transit for passengers and cargo was an early commercial enterprise during warm weather until an 1880 public … [Read more...]

Third of a series The Mississippi River, the superhighway of the mid-1800s when settlers sought new homes in Minnesota Territory, was valuable for traveling north and south but an impediment to traveling east and west. It was easier to cross the river during winter. But when there was no river ice, the earliest crossings from Hokah to La Crosse, Wis. were by canoe, rowboat or … [Read more...]