In 1853 at age 21, when he first arrived in what became Houston County, Minnesota, there were only two dwellings within seven miles, and they were small 12 by 16 feet shanties, barely meeting the needs of their residents. Therefore, newcomers had to do whatever they could. There was a just-arrived family from Wisconsin living in their wagon.
Massachusetts-born Eugene Marshall (1832-1919) and two men, one from Pennsylvania and another from Wisconsin were on their own, sleeping were they could – on the ground, on a pile of brush or on a haystack. They persevered until building a log house. Although Marshall wrote it was “so open that a cat could jump through the walls in any direction,” the trio thought it “quite comfortable.” That breezy cabin was located on Grove Prairie, which was in the vicinity of the current Houston County Airport just south of Caledonia.
In a July 14, 1853 letter to his sister, Olive Trow in Massachusetts, Marshall described the area as, “rolling prairies … covered with flowers, some very beautiful. The morning glory and the spider lily are indigenous here and grow in the greatest abundance.”
He noted there were 15 claims within two miles on which improvements had been made or contracted for. Inhabitants were expected to reside on all of them by the next spring.
By the Preemption Act of 1841, squatters who were living on land could purchase up to 160 acres at a price not less than $1.25 per acre before the land could be offered for sale to the general public. The purchaser was required to actively reside on the land and continuously work to improve it for five years.
By mid-summer, Marshall had broken (plowed) about 12 acres on his claim plus nine acres for another man with the help of a boy and the man’s team. He planted an acre of beans and sowed another acre of buckwheat, neither of which he expected to produce a great crop, he expressed without explanation.
He was disappointed in the amount of land he had broken, but there was much to be done that he had not expected. A breaking plough was made of steel and required frequent sharpening. Marshall lamented that by July, he had traveled 15 miles and back for that purpose. At the same time, there were logs to be cut to build what he termed a ”palace.”
He admitted that his first mistake was being too cautious in not purchasing a full breaking team of oxen, thinking he might have made at least a hundred dollars more. He contracted with another man to combine their oxen to plow land for both, 15 acres for Marshall. In addition to the purchase price go $1.25 and acre, land could be broken for $2.50 per acre with fencing possible for $100 to $150 per mile. Ten months later, he said the cost of breaking prairie land had increased to $3.25 per acre due to the increase in the cost of oxen.
Although prices for farm products were lower on the frontier than they were back east, Marshall claimed it was more than balanced out by how much easier it was to raise crops in southeast Minnesota where wheat, corn, oats, rye and cattle could be raised as easily as anywhere in the world.
Ten months later (May, 1854), he informed his sister, “Everything here is progressing finely, settlers are coming in very fast and everything looks promising. Teams are busy at work breaking up the prairies, men are at work building fences and log cabins, and everything is in motion towards improvement.”
Marshall had used 4,000 rails to fence in a field of 25 fertile, level acres with no rocks “to impede the progress of a plough.”
Before land could be purchased, it needed to be surveyed, and Marshall had experience as a surveyor. In his letter of 1853, Marshall told his sister that he was considering an offer of employment with good wages from the man contracted for surveying the area.
In his subsequent 1854 letter, Marshall describes his busy surveying schedule. He had work completed and orders for more work scheduled with expectations of future orders. “Day after tomorrow, I start to lay out a town site on the river, and the 7th of June I must meet to view a route for a road about 40 miles in length and the 15th, I commence upon another of nearly equal … besides these two some 150 miles of road to be located and surveyed, all of which has to be done by me, I think I will be busy most of the season. To say nothing of the town plots I shall have to make out and the farms that will have to be surveyed all of which devolves upon me.”
A few months later in the autumn of 1854, Marshall was elected Houston County’s first county surveyor. This provided an income for which to invest in land.
Although Marshall wished to have a suitable home of his own, his surveying schedule prevented it. He wrote, “I only stay where ever night overtakes me, there I stop, if it is a comfortable place well and good, if it is not, I hope for a better next time and get along as well as I can.”
During most of his first year in Minnesota Territory, he had hired his board with a family who had moved in near his primitive cabin. “Whether I hire my board or live in my own cabin, the fare is alike hard, the comforts of life are not here and living is pork, bread and potatoes for supper, breakfast and dinner.
“All these things make me somewhat discontented, makes me wish for a home of my own, but it is beyond my reach and I must wait … I do not like it, waiting is not my forte …
To be continued …
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