It has a name and people live there, but it its not on a map. It was an agricultural community, not a village, which from the early days of settlement became known as Portland Prairie. If you visit historic Portland Prairie Church, you are on a short span of pavement named Portland Prairie Road, part of the dividing line between Wilmington Township and Winnebago Township. The … [Read more...]

One night each year, four young sisters on a Houston County farm helped round up roosters. Twenty roosters perished so that that the girls had $20 to buy school clothes on what was known as Dollar Day Sales each autumn at stores in La Crosse, Wis. A blouse cost 50 cents, wash dresses $1 each. Underwear were four for $1. One sister, Anita Lee (Hartmann) Palmquist, would much … [Read more...]

Part two of a two-part series It was not necessarily how well you could hide but more how motionless you could be. That was the operating conclusion of an accomplished turkey tracker, Sumner Sheldon (born 1910), who even as a Houston County schoolboy possessed the patience to pursue turkey hens to their hidden nests. During egg-laying season, his after-school quest was to … [Read more...]

Part one of a two-part series Wild turkeys fly better than domestic ones, but his mother’s farm-bred Bourbon Red turkeys could fly well, too, maintained Sumner Sheldon when writing about his early-1900s boyhood in Houston County. His mother Ada Sheldon, who raised turkeys during most of her lifetime, often used broody hens (chickens) as incubators, for her turkey eggs, … [Read more...]

By Lee Epps “They were warm and comfortable as fine a house as anyone needed. Just a dandy place to live,” replied a Houston County man (born in 1855) when asked, “What was it like to live in a log house?” Then his wife chimed in, “They were just wonderful, weren’t they? Small, dark, cramped and crowded with rough walls and floors. And let me tell you, they were especially … [Read more...]

Part two of a two-part series There was a Norwegian immigrant girl who pretended she could not speak Norwegian and a United States Civil War soldier who could only speak and understand Norwegian. One immigrant learned to speak Norwegian again before moving to Wilmington Township. These unusual, 19th century language revelations were preserved through the research and writing … [Read more...]

Part one of a two-part series Four years ago, for the 2021-2022 school year, wrestling for girls became a sanctioned high school sport in Minnesota.  But about 160 years earlier, sometime about 1860, one female took part in possibly the first wrestling tussle in Houston County that included a female, surely the first one recorded in a history book. And that 19th century, … [Read more...]

Cattle drives in Houston County, Minnesota? Yes, but it was nothing the bovines expected or enjoyed. Cattle drives were featured in many western movies, but likely no film depicted cattle drives to La Crosse. In the late 1800s, farmers were their own butchers for family and nearby neighbors. And there was also a commercial market at packing houses, especially for hogs and … [Read more...]

Part two of a two-part series “They’re all drunk. They have the corpse standing up in a corner, and one guy passed out and is in the coffin,” reported Ake Nelson to his wife, explaining why he was back home so soon. He had walked, carrying a lantern in the dark, “only” about two miles from home to pay his respects to a neighboring family after the death of one of the Brady … [Read more...]

Life was challenging and often brief for Houston County pioneers, as early as the 1850s. The two earliest recorded deaths in Jefferson Township, the most southeastern township in the county, occurred in 1856, both accidental. Rev. Leonard Sharp, a Protestant Campbellite, had been preaching in Winnebago valley as early as 1854, perished below a falling tree in January, 1856. In … [Read more...]