Lutefisk and oyster stew were Christmas traditions for many families around Spring Grove in the first half of the 1900s. And Santa visited every year, too. The following Christmas memories were part of an oral history project made possible through a grant from the Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning. In the winter and spring of 1997, six Spring Grove … [Read more...]

In addition to beautiful brick buildings, formal education of the youth in Houston, Minn., has taken place in church basements, a log hut, an opera house and a schoolhouse that not only swayed in the wind but also provided a path for floodwater. Education in the village began in 1855 in a log shanty in lower Houston on the south side of the old Root River bed. As enrollment … [Read more...]

Part two of a series “No one man can be given more credit for the development of the city of Spring Grove than Mons Fladager,” wrote area historian Jane Briggs Palen, who noted that there were only two inhabitants in Spring Grove – Robert McCormick and William Hinckley – when Fladager arrived in 1859. He operated a store in a log hut, that with help from two sons and … [Read more...]

Spring Grove, the first Norwegian settlement in Minnesota, is still known for its Norwegian heritage. But the non-Norwegian name was given to the village by Pennsylvania printer James Smith, who in 1852 was Spring Grove’s first settler. His 1853 store was the first business. Smith would also be the first Justice of the Peace and postmaster. Before the influx of Norwegian … [Read more...]

Housecleaning appeared more appreciated by the livestock than by the humans. Some older cows jumped and pranced when they were returned to stalls that had just been cleaned. “Envision these animals sticking their noses in the fresh straw and with udders waving, leaping from ecstasy,” recalled Warren Lange in 2015 about cleaning the barn as a boy on a Houston County farm in the … [Read more...]