Portland Prairie is a region in southeastern Minnesota in Wilmington Township, Houston County near Eitzen, which was not leveled by glaciers and therefore is somewhat hilly. It attracted farmers because there were few trees to cut down. The area was settled in the early- to mid-1850s by families from New England, most notably Rhode Island. C. L. McNelly, born in 1883, was in … [Read more...]

Part four of a four-part series World War I certainly altered the lives of those men enlisting or drafted into military service, but circumstances changed for many back at home as well. Two young women left the University of Minnesota, including Dyllone Hempstead of Houston, to volunteer for farm work. Specifically, Miss Hempstead was raising chickens for Dean A. F. Woods. … [Read more...]

Part three of a series Her grandfather’s fortunate chickens dined on a freshly-baked loaf of bread, originally intended for humans. Her mother had baked the bread, not with wheat flour but with barley flour. “It was awful,” recalled Ingrid Julsrud, a Houston High School student at the time, “heavy, hard, coarse and dry, but the flavor was the worst.”  Those chickens … [Read more...]

Part two of a series It was the same in southeastern Minnesota as it was everywhere in the nation that day. The President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, proclaimed a Registration Day for a military census. On Tuesday, June 5, 1917, all men between the ages 21 and 30 inclusive were to register. World War I had begun in 1914, three years before the United States … [Read more...]

Five Caledonia High School students were celebrated with a dance in their honor, and the next day as they headed to the train station, they were accompanied by a throng of citizens with music provided by the community band. Why? Just five days earlier, on April 7, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson had signed a resolution of Congress, declaring war between the United States and … [Read more...]

Third of a three-part series “He formed everything from door hinges to implements required to clear the land, plow, seed and cultivate the fields and fashion the tools used during the harvest.” Houston County researcher Josephine Hefte thus characterized Thomas Abbotts, originally from England, who arrived in Caledonia in 1856, establishing a blacksmith shop, and later a … [Read more...]

Second of a series Shipping “King Wheat” to market was the primary reason railroad service into the interior of the new state of Minnesota was so critical during the 1860s. Since the late 1850s, wheat had been the major cash crop in an agrarian economy. Ironically, wheat production began to wane by the late 1870s when railroad service finally reached the Houston County seat … [Read more...]

Houston and Fillmore Counties were thriving in the mid-to-late 1800s, greatly due to the transformation of transportation by the railroad – except for the two county seats, Caledonia and Preston. The early Minnesota railroads, built between 1862 and 1870, began in the eastern counties and generally expanded westward as did the settlements. These lines reached from the … [Read more...]

Second of a two-part series He was a farmer, school custodian and school bus driver, but driving had nothing to do with the 40 passenger school bus (minus its roof) ending up in his living room or what had been his living room only moments before. It was 8:50 p.m. soon after nightfall. Farming a half-mile west of Houston, Aldis Gordon was back at his two-and-a-half-story … [Read more...]

Head to Houston (Minnesota, that is) was the reply when Mr. and Mrs. Jack and Lyla Simonson reached out to the A&W restaurant corporation for a franchise opportunity somewhere in Minnesota. Living in Washington state, the couple wanted to move back to Minnesota for health and family reasons. Having previously resided in western Minnesota, they moved to Houston in … [Read more...]