I once took my sister over on the logs to pick strawberries on the end of what is now Eastman Island. They were large, very plentiful and sweet. Almost every tree that grew anywhere in the new territory grew there. Black walnut grew there and on Nicollet Island.
Mrs. Silas Farnham—1849.
Mrs. Silas Farnham says: I came to St. Anthony in 1849. My husband had a little storehouse for supplies for the woods, across from our home on the corner of Third Avenue and Second Street, Southeast. A school house was much needed so they cleared this out and Miss Backus taught the first school there. It was also used for Methodist preachin'. Our first aid society was held there in '49.
I well remember the first Fourth of July celebration in 1849. The women found there was no flag so knew one must be made. They procured the materials from Fort Snelling and the flag was made in Mrs. Godfrey's house. Those working on it were Mrs. Caleb Dorr, Mrs. Lucien Parker, Misses Julia and Margaret Farnham, Mrs. Godfrey and myself. I cut all the stars. Mr. William Marshall who had a small general store was orator and no one could do better. That reminds me of that little store. I just thought I'd laugh out loud the first time I went in there. There were packs of furs, all kinds of Indian work, hats and caps, tallow dips and more elegant candles, a beautiful piece of delaine for white women and shoddy bright stuff for the squaws, a barrel of rounds of pork most used up, but no flour, that was all gone. There was a man's shawl, too, kind of draped up. You know men wore shawls in them days; some hulled corn the Indians done, too, I saw. But to return to that first Fourth—it seemed a good deal like a Farnham Fourth, for the music which was just soul stirrin' was sung by them and the Gould boys. When the Farnhams all got out, it made a pretty big crowd for them days. Perhaps their voices wan't what you call trained, but they had melody. Seems to me nowadays some of the trained high-falutin' voices has just got that left out. Seems so to me—seems so. All the Farnhams just sung natural, just like birds. Old Doctor Kingsley played the bass viol so it was soul stirrin' too. Margaret Farnham, the president of our first aid society married a Hildreth—Julia a Dickerson.
In '49 my husband paid a ten cent shin plaster for three little apples no bigger than crabs. I tried to make these last a long time by just taking a bite now and then, but of course, they couldn't hold out forever.
The Indians was always around, but we never minded them—always lookin' in the windows.
General William G. Le Duc—1850, Ninety-two years old.
I arrived at St. Paul on the steamboat Dr. Franklin. Among the travelers on board the boat were Mr. and Mrs. Lyman Dayton and a brother of Goodhue, the Editor of the Pioneer Weekly Newspaper. The principal, if not the only hotel at that time, was the Central, a frame building about twenty-four by sixty feet, two stories kept by Robert Kenedy. It was used as a meeting place for the legislature, court, and public offices, until something better could be built. Here I found quarters, as did Mr. and Mrs. Dayton.
A few days after my arrival, I was walking along the high bank of the river in front of the Central House in conversation with a large robust lumberman who had come out of the woods where he had been all winter logging and was feeling very happy over his prospects. Suddenly he stopped and looking down on the flowing waters of the Mississippi, he exclaimed, "See those logs." A number of logs were coming down with the current. "What mark is on them? My God, that is my mark!—the logs are mine! My boom has broken! I am a ruined man." He went direct to the hotel and died before sun down of cholera, the Doctor said. He was hurriedly buried and there was a cholera panic in St. Paul. The next day while walking in front of the hotel, Mrs. Dayton called from an open window excitedly to me, "Come and help me quick. Mr. Baker has the cholera!" (Mr. Baker was a boarder at the Central and a school teacher at that time.) Mrs. Dayton was frightened and said she had given him all the brandy she had and must have some more. I got more brandy and she insisted on his taking it, altho' he was then drunk. He recovered next day and I have never heard of a case of cholera in Minnesota since that time.
I hired a little board shack about twelve by sixteen feet at the Northeast corner of Third and Roberts Streets, St. Paul, and put out my sign as Attorney and Counselor at Law, but soon discovered there was little law business in St. Paul, not enough to sustain the lawyers already there and more coming with every boat. My business did not pay the monthly rent, $9.00, so I rented a large house on the southwest corner and started a shop selling books and stationery, and in this succeeded in making a living.