First of a series
“My brother Edward and myself were probably the first white men, after the government surveyor, that looked upon the townsite on Hokah,” wrote John Thompson. The pioneer settlement of Hokah in eastern Houston County was also the site of an Indian village, whose chief was Wecheschatope Hokah, translated into English as “garfish.” It is the only town in the United States named Hokah. The name of the nearby Root River reflects the roots and herbs gathered there by Native Americans. Thompson Creek, which empties into the Root River, was named by brothers John and Edward Thompson, the latter the founder of the village of Hokah.
Born in in Canada near Niagara Falls in 1827, Edward Thompson at 15, moved with his family to Winnebago County, Ill., where he learned the machinist trade. After marrying Susan Jenks in 1849, he came at age 23 to Minnesota Territory in search of a site for a mill.
In his 75th year (1902), Thompson wrote, “I first started out to find a location in Minnesota in the fall of 1850. Went by stage from Rushford, Ill. to Galena and then up the river by steam boat to McGregor, Iowa, near where I had some friends who had just settled there. From there, I went by team via Decorah to the South Fork of the Root River near where Sheldon now is, where I built a small canoe and worked my way to the Mississippi and took the last boat of the season down the river…
“Early next spring, I came out again, left the river at Lansing, crossed the river at Chilson’s Ford where I hired a man and a team, went north through the gap in the ridge west of Caledonia and worked our way down … near the mouth of the South Fork.“
John Thompson told about canoeing with his brother Edward and a man named Sumner on the Root River when their new 20-foot canoe soon ran aground. John and Sumner, with shotguns, waded to shore and walked. Then shallow water and an unseen snag overturned the canoe, dumping expert canoeist Edward into the stream, “crackers, bread, cheese, sugar, tea and coffee floating on all sides of him, and his gun – our only rifle on the bottom.” This was serious, since thereon, they had to depend on two shotguns.
Edward concluded, “I did not like the country as there was driftwood and large trees some distance from the river … I was going home, not having discovered the dam site.
“Stopping to stay overnight at Warren’s Landing, I met Job Brown (founder of Brownsville) and on his representations, I went back with him to his place in the canoe and then over the hills to where Hokah now is and was so pleased with the prospects for water power (on Thompson Creek) that at once I made up my mind to settle there.”
Edward staked out a claim and hired Brown to chop and haul logs for a house, plant a potato patch and procure some lumber while Thompson went home to Illinois for his family.
Returning to Minnesota in 1851 with four yoke of oxen, two cows, a good wagon and a cart, he made some improvements, built a log house, making shingles from pine trees upriver and hauling floor and roof boards from Brownsville. For several months, his wife would be the only white woman in the area.
Several friends and relatives soon followed, including Edward’s brother Clark W. Thompson with whom Edward laid out the town of Hokah. When a friend, Jerry Jenks, became ill, Edward sent a man to get a doctor, the messenger stopping first at the river house of man that might loan a canoe. But the dwelling was found deserted with a dead Indian in the yard. Stricken with fear, the messenger returned home.
Another messenger was then sent to Little River Settlement in Iowa and 36 hours later returned with a doctor, who was a “hydropath.” Hydropathy was a popular treatment that entailed placing the patient into a cold-water pack. It broke the fever, but Jenks died.
Edward Thompson continued, ”I had a great deal of trouble with my dam, it going out once before I got my mill started and once after, when I sold out to my brother, Clark W. Thompson, who put up the old flour mill. I borrowed a corn mill and put it under my saw mill in 1853, where I ground corn at night and sawed wood daytimes. When my brother’s machinery arrived, I borrowed bolting cloth and a scourer of him and made the first flour west of the Mississippi in Minnesota.”
According to local historian W. J. Langen, Thompson probably sawed the first lumber as well and soon after, built a furniture factory. Previously, timber had been harvested but rafted down the Mississippi River and not sawed in Minnesota.
As early as 1854, Thompson worked on getting a railroad built through the Root River Valley. In 1866, the Southern Minnesota Railroad began operation with Thompson as master mechanic.
Immediately, a roundhouse and many railroad shops were in operation on the flatland north of the village. In a short time, the population of Hokah had boomed from 100 to 1,500.
Thompson was the first postmaster in the village, the first Justice of the Peace and with his brother Clark, founded the Hokah Chief newspaper in 1856. In 1854, he presided over the first Republican Party convention in the northwest. His mechanical expertise led to his invention of a grain dryer and also a plow device for unloading gravel cars.
Langen wrote, Edward Thompson was “ever anxious to help others and always enjoying the highest respect of everyone. His life was spent in doing public good, paving the way for the coming generation and accumulating little or nothing for himself.”
His wife Susan died at age 33 in 1862. A second wife died in 1902. Edward died in 1909 at the age of 82.
Sources: Just For Old Times Sake; History of Early Days of Hokah, Minn. By W. J. Langen, 1949
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