Two rival stage coach lines went from Chatfield to Winona. It took a whole day to make the trip, a stop being made for dinner at a village called Enterprise. The regular fare for the trip was $2.50. The stagecoaches started from Madarra Hotel, Chatfield. This hotel is still there, and is called by the same name.
Walker & Co. ran one of the lines. It was Mr. Walker who first accosted me and said, "If you will go with me, I will take you for 50c." I answered that I had a lady friend who was going on the same trip, and Mr. Walker at once agreed to take her also at the same price—50 cents.
A little later I was accosted by Mr. Burbank, who had established stage lines on the most important routes in Minnesota and he was endeavoring to run out his rival, Mr. Walker. He asked me to go with him. I told him that Walker had agreed to take me for 50 cents, wherewith Mr. J. C. Burbank declared, "Well, I will take you for nothing and pay for your dinner besides."
Judge Lorin Cray—1859.
In the early spring of '59 my father and brother-in-law started with teams of oxen and covered wagons from our home near Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to seek a location in the West, where homes could be had "Without money and without price," in the great new state of Minnesota.
In October of '59 all of the earthly belongings of my father, being my mother, seven children and a handful of household goods, were loaded into a wagon drawn by a pair of unbroken steers, and we started for our new home with great anticipations. Our two cows were driven behind the wagon. My elder brother drove the steers attached to the wagon, and we, the younger children drove the cows, and in the short period of precisely thirty days we reached our new home in the western part of Shelby county. Now we make the trip in twelve hours. But our loads were heavy for the teams we had, and through Wisconsin sand and good Minnesota mud, we made scarcely more than ten miles a day, camping at night in and under our wagons.
The year had been a peculiar one in Wisconsin. There had been severe frost at some time in every month during the entire summer and corn and other produce was badly frost bitten. By October first all vegetation was brown and dead. But there had been much rain in Minnesota, evidently preventing frosts, and when we crossed the great Father of Waters at La Crosse, much swollen and turbid, we were greeted by green foliage and the freshness of spring. Vegetation was rank, grass tender, crops good, foliage magnificent, and boy-like, I at once fell in love with Minnesota.
We entered Blue Earth county near the southeast corner, and went as nearly directly west as possible, passing Minnesota lake near the north shore, camping for the last time very close to the north shore of Lura lake, where we spent the night.
My recollection of the southern part of this county, is that it was mostly low and level, with a wonderful growth of wild grasses. The lands were nearly all taken and there were seen here and there settlers' shanties, and in some places quite comfortable homes, until we crossed the Blue Earth river west of Shelbyville, when, after leaving the settlers' cabins in or near the river timber, the picture was wild and dreary to the very limit. Save a few cabins and claim shanties in the vicinity of the Mounds, one could look from the river west, southwest and northwest, and not a sign of human life or habitation could be seen.
We were four miles from Shelbyville, and to get our mail we must go this distance, and cross the Blue Earth river, either in a canoe or by fording. I remember one occasion in the very early spring, when the river was scarcely free from ice, and was badly swollen, filling its banks, five or six of us, neighbors, started for Shelbyville on foot to get our mail, and to hear the postmaster read the news from the weekly St. Paul paper which came to him, there being at that time, I think, no newspaper taken west of the river. We reached the river. The ice had gone out, and the boat was on the other side. We agreed to draw cuts and decide who should swim the river and get the boat. The lot fell upon Jonah, and I have had chills ever since. I am not quite certain that the cuts were fairly held.