Mr. Orton was the first postmaster of this place, the mail being brought once a week from Appleton, twenty-five miles east, by Mr. Lathrop, who had a wagon train hauled by oxen by which he carried flour and provisions to the settlers along the lake shore.
There is a log cabin still standing in Big Stone City, which was built in the year 1857.
A. B. Kaercher has in his possession the Government Patent given in 1855 and signed by Franklin Pierce to his father, John Kaercher, for 160 acres of land in Fillmore County, Minnesota, where John Kaercher founded the Village of Preston, and erected the second flouring mill in the Territory of Minnesota.
Lyman R. Jones of Ortonville has a stove door taken from the ruins of the Presbyterian mission, built in 1838 and which was destroyed by fire March 3, 1854.
Mr. Roberts, an old timer here, has the powder horn which Little Crow carried through the Sioux massacre.