HASTINGS,
Lying near the mouth of the Vermillion river, is a wide-awake, thriving city, beautifully located on the banks of the Mississippi. It has a fine court house, good hotels, manufactories and business blocks. The Hastings & Dakota railroad has its eastern terminus here. The St. Paul & Milwaukee, Burlington & Northern railroads pass through the city. The river is bridged at this place.
FARMINGTON,
Near the centre of the county, on the Chicago, St. Paul & Minneapolis railroad, is a thriving business village. West St. Paul has encroached largely upon the north part of the county.
BIOGRAPHICAL.
Ignatius Donnelly.—The parents of Ignatius Donnelly came from the Green Isle in 1817, settling in Philadelphia, where Ignatius was born, Nov. 3, 1831. He was educated in the graded and high schools of his native city, graduating at the latter in 1849, and taking his degree of master of arts three years later. He read law with Benjamin Harris Brewster, and was admitted to the bar in Philadelphia in 1852, and practiced there until 1856, when he came to Minnesota and located at Ninninger, and purchasing from time to time nearly 1,000 acres of land, devoted himself to farming, not so busily, however, as to prevent him from taking a prominent part in public affairs. A captivating and fluent speaker, and besides a man of far more than ordinary native ability and acquirements, he was not suffered to remain on his Dakota farm. In 1859 he was elected lieutenant governor of the newly admitted state, and was re-elected in 1861, serving four years. He served his district in the thirty-seventh, thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth congresses. During his congressional term he advocated many important measures, taking an advanced position in regard to popular education, and the cultivation and preservation of timber on the public lands. For his advocacy of the last named measure he was much ridiculed at the time, but has lived to see his views generally understood, and his measures to a great extent adopted in many of the Western States. He advocated amending the law relating to railroad land grants, so as to require their sale, within a reasonable period, at low prices.
When he entered Congress, he gave up his law practice, and since his last term he has devoted himself chiefly to farming, journalism and general literature. In July, 1874, he became editor and proprietor of the Anti-Monopolist, which he conducted several years. Within the last decade he has published several works that have given him both national and transatlantic fame. His works on the fabled "Atlantis" and "Ragnarok" prove him to be not only a thinker and scientist, but a writer, the charms of whose style are equal to the profundity of his thought. His last work on the authorship of the Shakespearean plays has attracted universal attention, not only for the boldness of his speculations, but for the consummate ingenuity he has shown in detecting the alleged cipher by which he assumes to prove Lord Bacon to be the author of the plays in question. The book has excited much controversy, and, as was to be expected, much adverse criticism. Mr. Donnelly was married in Philadelphia, Sept. 10, 1855, to Miss Catherine McCaffrey of that city. They have three children living.
Francis M. Crosby.—The ancestors of Mr. Crosby were of Revolutionary fame. He was born in Wilmington, Windham county, Vermont, Nov. 13, 1830. He received a common and high school education and spent one year at Mount Cæsar Seminary, at Swansea, New Hampshire. He studied law and was admitted to practice at Bennington, Vermont, in 1855. He served in the Vermont house of representatives in 1855-56. He continued the practice of law until 1858, when he came to Hastings and engaged in the practice of law. He served as judge of probate court in 1860-61, acted as school commissioner several years in Dakota county, and was elected, in 1871, judge of the First Judicial district comprising the counties of Goodhue, Dakota, Washington, Chisago, Pine, and Kanabec. He held the first courts in Pine and Kanabec counties. Judge Crosby is held in high esteem, not only by the bar, but by the people at large. He is gentlemanly in his manners, yet prompt and decisive in action.
He was married to Helen A. Sprague, in New York, May 13, 1866. Mrs. Crosby died in 1869. He married a second wife, Helen M. Bates, in New York, in 1872. They have two sons and three daughters.
Hon. G. W. Le Duc was born at Wilkesville, Gallia county, Ohio, March 29, 1823. His father, Henry Savary Duc, was the son of Henri Duc, an officer of the French Army, who came over with D'Estaing to assist the colonies in the Revolutionary struggle. The grandfather, after some stirring adventures in Guadaloupe, where he came near being murdered in a negro insurrection, escaped and came to Middletown, Connecticut, in 1796, where he was married to Lucy, daughter of Col. John Sumner, of Duryea's Brigade, Continental Troops, and a member of the Sumner family which came to Massachusetts in 1637. The father was married to Mary Stewell, of Braintree, New York, in 1803. The family name, originally written Duc, was changed to Le Duc in 1845. The grandfather removed to Ohio and founded the town of Wilkesville. G. W. Le Duc, the grandson, spent his early life at this place, but was educated at Lancaster Academy, a school that numbered amongst its scholars Gen. W. T. and Senator John Sherman, the Ewing brothers, and others prominent in the history of the country. He entered Kenyon College in 1844, graduated in 1848, and was employed for awhile by the firms of H. W. Derby & Co., of Cincinnati, and A. S. Barnes & Co., of New York. Meanwhile he studied law, and in 1850 was admitted to practice in the supreme court of Ohio. July 5, 1850, he came to St. Paul and engaged in selling books, supplying the legislature and the government officers at the Fort, but gradually turned his attention to practice in land office courts. At the breaking out of the Rebellion he enlisted, and was assigned to duty as captain A. Z. in the Army of the Potomac. During his term of service he was promoted to the grades of lieutenant colonel, colonel and brigadier general by brevet. Since the war his most important official position has been that of commissioner of agriculture through the administration of President Hayes. In 1856 he removed to Hastings, and has ever since been identified with the progress and prosperity of that city, and is the owner of large property interests there.