By Lee Epps Part two of a series Captain Samuel Bates McIntire (Cap’n Mac), who came to what would become Houston County in 1852 at the age of 14, prefaced each published portion of his 1901 historical memoir with a poem. As toward our future home we glide, Wild bluffs frown down on either side, And tell of countless ages gone, Since when they first beheld the … [Read more...]

He did not state the reason his parents moved halfway across a continent. “While yet a boy, my mother, two sisters and myself left a comfortable home in the East for the then far West, my father going before to size up the situation and locate. The change from the classic old State of Massachusetts to the then wild territory of Minnesota was a long stride from … [Read more...]

They have been politely called “speculators” or “real estate agents,” and more harshly, “shysters.” But according to Houston County historian Sumner Sheldon, the term used by the early settlers of the Minnesota frontier was “land sharks.” These unpopular, often unscrupulous land sharks purchased land, not to farm but only to sell for higher prices. A rumor of a railroad … [Read more...]

From Lanesboro to Europe? Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was the largest and most attended live, traveling outdoor performance that reenacted scenes of the American west along with exhibitions of sharpshooting and daring horsemanship in both the United States and Europe for three decades, beginning in 1883. Lanesboro historian Cecil Ward claimed the inspiration and sometime … [Read more...]

In the latter decades of the 1800s, frontier settlers, including those in southeast Minnesota, were eager for entertainment that was not homegrown. There was not yet radio, motion pictures or television. Even if a more urban area was available, there were not yet automobiles or paved roads for convenient travel. Traveling entertainers made a living in rural areas be they … [Read more...]

The Cassell family carried everything they owned as they walked about six miles on the Territorial Road before stopping at the log farmhouse of Isaac Holmes. It was mid-summer of 1862, about a decade after the first white settlers began to arrive in southeast Minnesota. It was two years after a survey of 40 acres that was being purchased by Theodore Cassell (Kassell, Castle). … [Read more...]

Imagine traveling alone on a lonely, shadow-darkened, uphill road and suddenly coming toward you - is an elephant in a hurry. It was no rogue elephant intentionally terrorizing rural residents. To the contrary, it was a perfectly respectable, performing pachyderm, which often pushed wagons in between performing sites. That day in 1907, it was surely the only elephant in … [Read more...]

The southern border of Houston County and Fillmore County is the Iowa state line. When settlers arrived in southeast Minnesota Territory in 1852, Iowa had been a state for six years. But the border was only a line on a map. On the ground, nobody knew where the Iowa border was. When the territories of Minnesota and Iowa could not agree on a boundary, Congress intervened. … [Read more...]