A Sense of Place

From MINNESOTA GEOGRAPHIC NAMES: Their Origin and Historical Significance by Warren Upham (Minnesota Historical Society, 1920/1969)

Caribou township, organized January 8, 1908, had a few reindeer, of geographic limitation in the wooded and partly swampy region of northern Minnesota and Canada, named Rangifer caribou. The second word of the name is of Algonquin Indian origin, meaning a pawer or scratcher, in allusion to the habit of this animal in winter, pawing in the snow to eat the reindeer moss beneath.

Clow township commemorates several brothers of that name, early settlers there, who came from Prince Edward island. [NOTE: My great grandmother was Elizabeth Jane Clow, daughter of Samuel Clow, one of those brothers...]

Information has been gathered from "History of the Red River Valley," two volumes, 1909, the chapter for this county, by Edward Nelson, former register of deeds, being pages 923-966; and from interviews with Mr. Nelson and Axel Lindegard, a merchant in Hallock, the county seat, during a visit there in August 1909, and Edward A. Johnson, clerk of court, and gain with Mr. Lindegard, in a second visit there, September 1916.

Noyes, a station of the Great Northern and Soo railways adjoining the international boundary, was named in honor of J.A. Noyes, the U.S. customs collector there.

St. Vincent, organized March 19, 1880, is opposite to Pembina, N.D. Its name had been earlier given, before 1860, to a post of fur traders here, in honor of the renowned St. Vincent de Paul, founder of missions and hospitals in Paris, who died September 27, 1660, at the age of eighty years.

As Greg Breining says in his article A Sense of Place, "Good place names are like that--they may describe a place's shape or the animals that inhabit it. They may tell stories, of the people who settled it, who shaped it, and who fought for it."

Of Warren Upham, writer of the above-quoted book, Greg says, "Our sense of place is richly expressed in our names for places. In this regard, Minnesota was fortunate to have Warren Upham, geologist, archaeologist, librarian, and pack rat of obscure facts. It would be hard to imagine anyone better suited to the task of accounting for thousands of state place names."

Census of a New Town

1857 Minnesota Territorial Census of St. Vincent...
[Click to see larger image]

The above image is of the actual 1857 census of my hometown.  If you look at the enlarged image, you will note it says that at this time, the town existed in the "...County of Pembina, Territory of Minnesota." Kittson County did not exist yet.

That year was a momentous year for St. Vincent.  It was the year it was FIRST incorporated.  First, because it was incorporated twice. 

Incorporated TWICE

1881 Charter heading...

ST. VINCENT Township, organized March 19, 1880, is opposite Pembina, N.Dak. Its name had been earlier given, before 1860, to a post of fur traders here, in honor of the renowned St. Vincent de Paul, founder of missions and hospitals in Paris...The city in sections 2 and 11, located on the site of an XY Fur Company trading post, was incorporated as a village on May 23, 1857, and again on March 8, 1881; it had a station of the Great Northern Railway in section 2, and at St. Vincent Junction in section 6; its post office began in 1878. 

- Minnesota Place Names: A Geographical Encyclopedia, by Ward Upham

Lake Agassiz

Pembina River--The Pembina River flows from the northern part of Turtle Mountain in a rather crooked easterly course through southern Manitoba and the edge of North Dakota about 130 miles, measured in a direct line, to its mouth at Pembina and St. Vincent. From its junction with the outlet of Pelican Lake to Walhalla, at the base of the First Pembina Mountain, its valley varies from 175 to 450 feet in depth. Rock Lake and Swan Lake, on this part of the river, each several miles long and from a half mile to 1 mile wide, are due to deposits brought into this valley by tributaries after it ceased to be the avenue of drainage from the Souris basin. In crossing the Red River Valley the Pembina runs in a channel only 20 to 40 feet deep. Its descent from the northern base of Turtle Mountain to Walhalla is about 700 feet, and thence to its mouth 186 feet, its junction with the Red River being 748 feet above the sea. Long or White Mud River, Clear Water or Cypress River, and Tongue River are its chief tributaries, all from the south side.

WELL AT HUMBOLDT, MINN.

Humboldt is a station of the Great Northern Railway, about 7 miles southeast of St. Vincent, at the farm of Mr. D. H. Valentine, on which this well is situated. It is on the flat plain of the Red River Valley, 6 miles east of the river and 5 miles south of the international boundary. The elevation of the surface is 792 feet above the sea, being a few feet above the highest flood stage of the Red River. On account of the saltness of its water, an analysis of which is given in Chapter X, the well is not used.

Prof. N. H. Winchell has reported this section,(14) shown by samples from the boring, a summary of which is as follows:


Drift deposits here reach a depth of 180 feet, below which are 458 feet of strata referable to the Trenton, Chazy, and Calciferous series of the Lower Silurian system. Next beneath the drift is a thick formation of magnesian limestone, shown by comparison with the other wells to be the Galena and Trenton strata, classed together as one formation under the second of these names by Whiteaves and Tyrrell, which outcrops at a distance of 75 to 85 miles northward, in the vicinity of Lower Fort Garry and East Selkirk, Manitoba. Its top and bottom at Humboldt, however, are respectively 612 and 317 feet above the sea, the entire formation here being thus beneath the level of Lake Winnipeg. In southeastern Minnesota, southwestern Wisconsin, and adjoining portions of Iowa and Illinois, the Galena and underlying Trenton limestones together range from 200 to 300 feet or more in thickness. The sandstone next below, having a thickness of 71 feet, is evidently the equivalent of the St. Peter sandstone, referable to the Chazy epoch, which in southeastern Minnesota underlies the Trenton limestone, and ranges in thickness there from about 75 feet to 164 feet. Its continuation in Wisconsin, as described by Chamberlin and Irving, averages probably between 80 and 100 feet thick, varying from a maximum of 212 feet down to a fraction of 1 foot. In this and adjoining States, according to Irving, it is continuous "over a region whose diameters are 500 and 400 miles."(15) Beneath this the Humboldt well penetrated 92 feet of shales, partly arenaceous and calcareous, which correspond to the Lower Magnesian or Shakopee limestone of southeastern Minnesota, ranging from 96 feet in thickness at Shakopee to 200 feet in Houston County, while in Wisconsin it is from 65 to 250 feet thick. The reports of the geological surveys of these States regard this formation as of Upper Cambrian age, but Walcott, in his more recent review of the Cambrian,(16) assigns the Lower Magnesian limestone wholly or mainly to the base of the Lower Silurian system. Its eastern equivalent is the Calciferous sandrock of New York. The entire Cambrian and Algonkian systems are wanting in this section, and the Lower Silurian strata rest directly on the Archean crystalline rocks.

From The Glacial Lake Agassiz,by Warren Upham

City of St. Vincent - Older Than We Realized

From Minnesota Place Names:  A Geographical Encyclopedia by Warren Upham

I just found out today that St. Vincent was incorporated twice. No one knows why, but I have some theories.¹ The first time in 1857, the second time in 1881. This was brought to my attention by current resident and St. Vincent City Council member Kris Baldwin Ohmann, whom I worked with earlier this year in reclaiming the Red River Valley website. I greatly appreciate Kris letting me know about this odd situation. To be honest, it makes a lot of sense that the town would have been incorporated much earlier than 1881 because it has a very old history in the region.

For purposes of organizing a community celebration of my hometown, I am hoping that everyone I will eventually be working with (I'm trying to organize a committee as we speak...) will agree to work with the earlier date - May 23, 1857 (and yes, it is verified by historians...) To keep my sanity and give us a wee more wiggle room to get things properly organized, we're likely gonna move the original, tentative date of August 6, 2011 (when it was going to be the 130th based on 1881 date) up to August 4, 2012 for the 155th based on the newly-discovered older date.

¹ - For the first incorporation:  Athough it didn't become a state until 1858, Minnesota's constitution was drawn up and ratified in 1857. In fact, in February 1857, the U.S. Congress passed the Enabling Act for the State of Minnesota which allowed for it to organize and become a state.  I think St. Vincent's timing for this initial incorporation was in anticipation of the territory in which it was currently a part of, becoming a state in the very near future.  A mere week after St. Vincent incorporated that first time, an election was held to select delegates for the future state's constitutional convention on June 1, 1857.  The convention itself met in July and August 1857, and the constitution was ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1858.  St. Vincent was positioning itself for the future!  As for the second incorporation, I have yet to find anything definitive as to the reason, but I shall continue to research this - my working shot-in-the-dark theory is, maybe they reincorporated 24 years later to absorb another nearby settlement - if it's one thing I'm learning since starting this local history blog the past several years, it's that there is a LOT more to learn about my hometown than I ever imagined...

Joe River School 1939-40

Back Row:  Ronald Cox, Phyllis Brown, Wilbert Clow, William H. Ash 
Middle Row:  Donald Shaw, Roy Webster, Hugh Griffith, Jim Griffith
Front Row:  Leo Ash, Kathryn Griffith, and Laurance Shaw
Teacher (not shown):  Lillian Bill
[Courtesy: Raymond Ward Photo Collection]

Not far from St. Vincent, is an area called Joe River. As the crow flies, it's east of town.  The Joe River winds its way through the countryside there, several families settling in that area.  In fact, my own great grandparents originally homesteaded out there, before moving in to St. Vincent itself.

The school was located east of the North Star Church, near where the county road meets the railroad track - which when you come to think of it, seems a dangerous place to build a school where children will be playing, but that's what I'm told.

Joe river derives its headwaters from St. Joseph township [and its name...] - "Minnesota Geographic Names: their Origin and Historic Significance", by Warren Upham

Hill Farms

Co-Workers of my Grandpa Fitzpatrick at
Humboldt Hill Farm:  'Illegal' Canadians?

We often hear about illegal aliens working in America nowadays.  We normally think of them as coming from Mexico, South America, or even refugees that have entered the country illegally.

This problem is nothing new.  About a century ago, Kittson County Sheriffs faced the same problem, except the illegal aliens were coming from the north - Canada.  The irony of it is, manpower was in short supply in the local area, and these Canadian men were more than willing to work, yet the law sought to kick them out back to Canada.

In two cases involving Canadian employees on the Red River Valley estates, Hill tried and failed to leverage support from Minnesota's former governor, Senator Knut Nelson. The first problem began in 1913 when Walter Hill, at his father's insistence, hired a Canadian veterinarian recommended by Thomas Shaw and ran into problems with the Immigration Bureau.  In March 1914 James Hill wrote to Nelson, asking him to intervene, but with no success.  A similar conflict arose in 1915 on Hill's bonanza estate at Humboldt, which had remained primarily a productive wheat farm, raising extensive crops under hired management.  In 1915 problems emerged with the farm's traditional Canadian labor force when the sheriff arrived in the middle of harvest and "took away four...shockers."  They were charged as illegal aliens, but Hill's manager asserted that the men had been working on the farm without trouble for fifteen years. Hill again turned to Senator Nelson for help, but despite his protestations, the men were deported back to Canada.  Hill did not let the matter rest.  He asserted that immigration officials aimed to "make fees" by bothering "a number of poor men who...are trying to earn a living." The acting secretary of labor,  J.B. Densmore, corrected Hill, pointing out that the agents did not profit from arrests; he then closed the case and refused to make further inquiries.  Thus, by 1915 Hill's political influence had virtually vanished. Without the muscle of the railroad and with few federal connections, Hill found himself in the uncomfortable role of a private citizen...

From Profiting from the Plains: The Great Northern Railway By Claire Strom

First United Stated Dragoons

In the early part of the 19th century, what would later be commonly referred to as the U.S. Cavalry, were known as the U.S. Dragoons.

In 1849, the First United States Dragoons would play a part in our area. According to an introduction to first-hand accounts documented in the book, "Minnesota as Seen By Travellers"...

...Too frequently reports of exploring expeditions are written only by the leaders...It is interesting, therefore, to get an intimate account of one of these expeditions as it appeared to an underling. The writer was a member, very probably a sergeant, of Company D, First United States Dragoons.

The writer had an appealing writing style, with much dry wit and not a little sense of humour; nothing much has changed since that time either, since he often mentioned... mosquitoes! In fact, he wrote:

"Poor hungry things! How would they have been saved from starvation, but for this expedition of ours to the North?"

This recollection is too good simply to refer to, quote from, or even serialize in entire.  Instead I bring to you in-whole, the writings of a Sergeant from Company D, describing their coming up from Fort Snelling to the Pembina/St. Vincent area to survey and establish the U.S. Boundary. I have a hunch you'll find it as fascinating as I have.

Please note that inconsistencies in spelling are from the original, and are left intact on purpose so you can experience how people wrote at this time.  It does not necessarily reflect inferior education, but rather was more common among all levels of society and rank during this time period; in general, English has been and continues to be a rather fluid and fascinating language...but that is a topic for another time!

Also, the spring/summer of 1849 was an unusually cold and wet time period - be aware of these extraordinary conditions as you read this account.

And now, "Canteen Sketches", by an unknown soldier of the ranks...