A Bad End

After all he did for the town, he ended his days sadly...

Daniel F. Brawley was an early settler to St. Vincent.  He was involved in many aspects of building the town early on.

The above news blurb appeared in a Manitoba newspaper in the late 1800's, sharing news of the sad end to Mr. Brawley...

Interapolis: City That Never Was

I recently posted about a very real city that is now long gone called Huron City. 

That post drew responses that revealed to me that there was a proposed 'twin' to Huron City, a town that never was, called Interapolis...

Map from View from Inside the Portcullis: A History of Emerson Customs and General Area, by Elmer McClelland (1992)

A. W. Stiles, connected with the U. S. Land Office in Washington, D.C., walked up the street to take in Hallock the other day while the train stopped. Mr. Stiles is one of the pioneers of this country. He ran the first sutler store at Fort Pembina, establishing it in 1871, the year the fort was built. He also started the townsite of Interapolis, located between St. Vincent and Emerson, in this county, but which never amounted to much. [From Kittson County Enterprise, July 1894]

Since receiving a copy of the above-referenced book recently from Elmer McClelland (cousin of James McClelland, friend of this blog), I have since come to find out that the term I had coined for the town was already coined by him, i.e., the 'city that never was'...great minds think alike, I guess! Anyways, Elmer's piece from the book has this to say about Interapolis:

This town or city site was actually planned, with certain streets and avenues named. It was to have been on the east side of the Red River immediately south of the International Boundary - south of Emerson, Manitoba and due west of Noyes, Minnesota. Its name was listed as "Interapolis". To pinpoint exactly its mythical location, glance off to the south as you leave Emerson on Highway 75 and proceed westerly towards the Highway 75 bridge. The town or city that never materialized would have been about 200 yards to the south - at least, its most northwesterly corner would have appeared there, if all had gone as planned. This writer gained photocopies of the planned city from the Hallock, Minnesota deeds office. These copies show that Mr. & Mrs. Albert Stiles filed the plan on September 9, 1882. The office land description is as follows: North half of the South East Section 26 - Township 164, Range 51, in St. Vincent Township of Kittson County, Minnesota, U.S.A.

Mr. Stiles had arrived in the area to become sutler at Fort Pembina and probably envisioned great possibilities for his new city. The plan covered 62 blocks and the streets and avenues were named: International Avenue, Stiles Avenue, Manitoba Avenue, Missouri Avenue, Irvine Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, River Street, Wilson Street, West Lynne Street, and First to Fifth Streets. There was also a proposed ferry and steamboat landing site on the Red River.

Alas, not a building was ever to grace this proposed town. The plan remains in the Hallock deeds office and the land is used as prime agricultural land at this writing.

I can attest to that last statement. When I was growing up, I had horses as a teenager. At that time, Harvey Le Mesurier's old place was being lived in by Reuben and Gloria Ohmann and their family, and I was best friends with their daughter Kathy. The place was north of my parents, who lived in one of the most northern points of St. Vincent, by about a mile. Right north of the Ohmanns was where Interapolis would have been. Kathy and I used to ride our horses there quite often, and I always noticed it was a very isolated area, peaceful, with one of the only true hills around, believe it or not, quite a dip for our flat-as-a-pancake area, which was fun to run up and down on at a canter!

Ephemera: Promotion of Progress

The image above is from an envelope I have in my possession. It is in the upper left-hand corner representing the return address of Charles Johnson of Pembina. I haven't been able to find out much about Mr. Johnson, but do see him listed in the Pembina County Pioneer Daughters Collection of the Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library, at UND.

To me, it shows the ambition of not only Mr. Johnson, but the dreams of the communities he represents themselves. At the time of the late 19th/early 20th century, things were changing fast, and hopes were high...

Rural Life: Dying or Changing?

We all have seen the decline and depopulation of our hometowns in rural areas, but then you see an inspirational story like this and are reminded it doesn't have to be that way...

Awhile back, Minnesota Public Radio did a series on small town life in Minnesota. It found that "...A number of communities are struggling to manage growth while saving their history. Some say small towns are losing their character. Others say small town life is still good." I daresay most of you from my hometown area reading this - or those of you from other rural areas - will probably agree life is good where you live. I truly don't think those living in rural areas feel stuck there, or disadvantaged, but quite the contrary. It is the spirit of the people that will keep small towns alive.

The Silent Prairie: Solitude, Isolation, Insanity

E.V. Smalley, a well-known agricultural writer, had much to say in the 1890's about the lonesome lives of the pioneers who settled on individual farmsteads. He pointed out that European farmers usually lived in villages and enjoyed a full social life in the village compound. The women had a chance to talk to each other in the village and to visit each others homes frequently. Children had playmates close at hand; the school and the church were convenient places to get together. The old men sat outside in front of their houses and spoke with all those who went by. The mailman and the peddler made their daily rounds. The homes of these European farmers might have been small and meagerly furnished, but they were well built and for centuries they had offered good protection against the weather. Such a pleasant social setting helped to offset the many hardships and the monotony of a peasant's life.

This picture of the old country was a decided contrast to the life of the American farmer on the western frontier. Here he lived in isolation, often in order to satisfy the requirement of the Homestead Act. The long, cold winters of Red River land were ideal for "the natural gregarious instinct of mankind to assert itself," and to gather around each others hearth fires. But the American farmers' houses, set in the middle of the farms, were too far apart for much visiting. Besides, the pioneer could not afford a solid, weatherproof house like his European counterpart, so he often existed miserably in "a flimsy wooden frame house and if it were not for tar paper and sod he would find himself covered with snow or dirt after each storm." They had left "pleasant little homes in neat farm villages of Europe [or New England] to settle in sod or tar paper houses on the bleak prairie of America." Because of his poverty, the pioneer's home was frequently a "cramped one room house with one window" and from that window all he could see was the wide open prairie, his own straw stack, and occasionally smoke arising from his neighbor's house, anywhere from one-half to five miles away. O.A. Olson explained his father's first impression of the Dakota Prairie:

Go West, young man, said Greeley:
Go West, where land is free.
I went, I saw, I settled
On a prairie without a tree.

From the first storm in November to the last in April, there was little social life for the early settlers except a bi-monthly trip to the general store in the nearest village. This trip was made by all the members of the family if the weather was good and the village was not too far away. At the store the men liked to sit around the stove and talk to find out what had happened in the world since they had last been to town. If the trip was too long or the weather too severe, the men of the family went to town alone to get the provisions. Many times conditions permitted travel only by foot. Social calls on the neighbors "were not what they should be because everyone lived too far apart and the weather and roads too contrary."

The frontier lacked homogeneity not only because of the distance between the homes, but also because the settlers had come from so many diverse areas that they lacked even a common language and a common background. This great disadvantage kept them apart even though they strongly felt the need for social intercourse "which next to food, clothing, and shelter, is an essential to life." One contemporary writer asked, "Is it any wonder that there is a great amount of insanity among the settlers?"

From The Challenge of the Prairie, by Hiram M. Drache

Bad Blood

Early on - and according to my grandmother and mother, well into the last century - there was strong competition between the new towns in our area that was often reflected in the area's newspapers...and it wasn't always very friendly either. It's not known if it was friendly competition gone awry, or if a specific incidence or set of incidents set it off. From an 1890 issue of the St. Vincent New Era:

Last week, the Enterprise chump returned to his congenial mire, and vividly describes the high old time that he and his Jack-in-the-box candidate had together the previous Monday.

The manner in which the brainy Enterprise editor gets "onto" things, the reverence and awe even the small boy feels when in his august presence, also the etiquette to be observed in the Enterprise office, its editor gives away, and gives himself away at the same time, as follows: "A small boy came down from dead city on Monday, after sauntering about town dropped into our office, took a fresh chew of tobacco, spit on the stove and began to ask questions."

From the article we refer to it appears that "Old timer" of the previous week, degenerated into a "small boy" lat week, who carefully loaded up the smallest specimen of a man in the county, and the little man loaded up his little popgun, which he persists in calling a newspaper, and then let it off, regardless of consequences, at the mutual victim of these terrible conspirators.

Kittson county is only beginning to realize what a horrible thing the wrath of the great Hallock journalist is, when touched off by the "small boy" from St. Vincent, and the butterflies, this summer, unless they are of very daring disposition, will do well to keep posted, and govern themselves accordingly, or some time the twins may raise such a clatter as would ruffle the down on their wings if they happened to be in the path of the rumpus liable to be kicked up any moment.

The conundrum people are asking themselves, with bated breath, is, if the "small boy" can kick up such a dust in the Enterprise office what sort of a racket would a busy, able-bodied man, from St. Vincent create in that hole? At very thought of which we are almost driven to drink - a glass of very weak lemonade.

In another issue that same year, the subject was taken up again. A letter-to-the-editor written to the New Era had these wise words to say:

Cities of Destiny: St. Vincent, Pembina, Emerson and West Lynne
__________

May 5, 1890

When will our town have a boom? is a question which is asked, almost daily, by some one of the long-suffering and patient citizens of the "Four Corners." The writer will not pretend to prophesy when that much desired event is to occur, but he has a suggestion to offer, which, if followed, may possibly help to expedite the matter.

I read regularly, and with great interest, each of the three enterprising journals published at the Corners, and it frequently strikes me as strange, that I scarcely ever see a favorable item in any one of them respecting the neighboring towns, and very often months pass by without even a mention of each other.

A stranger to read any one of these papers would never imagine that there was any other town within fifteen miles of the place where it is published, although the distance from the southern boundaries of Saint Vincent and Pembina, to the northern boundaries of Emerson and West Lynne is about the same as the area embraced in the river front of Fargo or Grand Forks.

In the pride and zeal which individual citizen naturally feels for the particular town where his own home is located he should not lose sight of the fact, that between Pembina, St. Vincent, Emerson, and West Lynne there is a common interest and a common destiny, and that, therefore, there should be mutual sympathy and assistance.

The slurs, which are often made by the citizens of each town against the other towns, are very unwise to say the least of them, and "while they may make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve." And they tend to depreciate all the four towns in the estimation of every disinterested person.

It will be apparent to anyone who will investigate the subject, that these towns within two miles of where the International Boundary Line intersects the Red River, will, in time, become the greatest railway centre northwest of Duluth.

The construction of fifteen miles of railroad, over a level prairie, south-west from Pembina and twenty-five miles north-west from Emerson, (already graded) will give them seven miles of railway, beside which, there are favorable prospects for the early construction of tow more roads, to the south-east, through Minnesota.

It is not possible to find a spot on the globe where nine or even seven lines of railway are centered on a navigable stream, where there is not a city of considerable magnitude; but in order to attain our predestined greatness, within a reasonable period, it will be necessary that our citizens realize that anything which is benefit or injury to one of the Corners, will have the same effect on the others.

Let us not only "gather together" but pull together and advertise our collective advantages to the world; debate, if we wish, the comparative merits of the several towns and the enterprise of their citizens, but don't forget and don't let the world lose sight of the fact, that although divided by state lines the "Four Corners" are, for all social and commercial advantages, one City.

We might well adopt as our joint motto, that on the arms of the state of Kentucky and Missouri, "United we stand, divided we fall..."

Historical Essay Vault: Eulogy for St. Vincent

It looked like St. Vincent was blessed with everything a good town needs: easy transportation, jobs, and good soil, and water. But somewhere they lost whatever it was they had had. For St. Vincent is no longer a little town with a lot of growing to do - but now St. Vincent has little to look forward to except a slow death. In 1909 these words were written:

"Today we have abundant evidence that we are standing at the threshold of a new dominion that is to arise on this plateau of North America...With unshackled hands, free thought and liberty of conscience, the people of the valley of the Upper Mississippi and Red River of the North may add much to the luster of the Great Republic, born on the 4th of July, 1776. Let us pursue no narrow policy. Let us welcome the Dane, the Swede, the Norwegian, the Russian, the German, and all newcomers..."

Somewhere along the line we forgot how to use this potential, and now we are paying for it. We will probably never regain our way of life and the promises it showed, but this area will always be rich with the memories of the bright past.

- St. Vincent, by Barbara Bostrom