Dakota 38

Abraham Lincoln as the Puppetmaster of Death (of starvation, war, and executions)
Ledger Art by Travis Blackbird

by Prairie Rose Seminole

Remember the #Dakota38, hanged in Mankato, MN on Dec 26, 1862, under the orders of President Abraham Lincoln. It is the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

The hanging of 38 Dakota came at the culmination of the Dakota War, which started because of a treaty broken by Congress. 

The Dakota people were being starved to death.

“Let then eat grass or their own dung,” Andrew Myrick, a trader & store owner who withheld their rations.

Andrew Myrick was among the first to die. He was found with grass in his mouth.

The accused were subjected to sham trials held in English (a language foreign to them), and they had no legal representation. They were also not allowed to discuss the broken treaty, or treaty law. Many were innocent. They were hanged anyway, on a custom made scaffold, in front of a cheering mob.

Dakota women & children were forced to watch the hanging. One Dakota infant was reportedly snatched from the arms of a mother and killed on sight.

Around 1,700 Dakota, mostly women and children, were held as prisoners at Fort Snelling. Disease & death were rampant.

Chief Little Crow, a leader during the Dakota War, was later assassinated. His remains were mutilated by townspeople & displayed. They stuffed firecrackers in his nose & ears and lit them. Local doctors eventually took his body parts to study.

Two more Dakota leaders, Shakopee (Little Six) and Medicine Bottle, were later captured and executed.

After the hanging of the Dakota 38, the Dakota people were exiled from their stolen homelands in Minnesota. Banned from entering, unable to return to MN. The governor put a bounty on their scalps. The Dakota people were separated and sent to prison camps in other states where the women were raped by soldiers.

Following the U.S-Dakota War of 1862, the United States government hanged 38 Dakota men on December 26 in Mankato. It was the largest mass execution in United States history. A US military commission, tainted by racism and in violation of due process, hastily convicted two of the Dakota men of rape and all of them of murder in trials that lasted as little as five minutes. President Lincoln approved their executions. Here are the names and faces of some of the men known as the Dakota 38.

All things being ready, the first tap was given, when the poor wretches made such frantic efforts to grasp each other's hands, that it was agony to behold them. Each one shouted out his name, that his comrades might know he was there.  - From New York Times article, The Indian Executions

Postscript to the U.S.-Dakota War

by Curt Brown [Minneapolis Star Tribune, November 8, 2015]

Shakopee, left, and Medicine Bottle were hanged three years
after the U.S.-Dakota War because military leaders wanted to
prove they finished the job.     [Source:  Minnesota Historical Society]

They were the last two high-profile holdouts.

The bloody U.S.-Dakota War had been over for three years. Thirty-eight Dakota men had been hanged in Mankato. But white military and political leaders weren’t satisfied.

They felt they had to show, once and for all, that they’d handled the Indian problem and the frontier was back in business for immigrant settlers who could replenish the fledgling Minnesota economy.

So just after noon on Nov. 11, 1865, 425 soldiers marched in formation to surround a specially constructed double gallows at Fort Snelling.

More than 400 St. Paul citizens turned out 150 years ago to watch the hangings of two Dakota leaders: Medicine Bottle and Shakopee. They had eluded soldiers for years, escaping across the Canadian border to Manitoba with more than 500 Dakota refugees from the war.

John McKenzie was the man who drugged Little Six (aka Shakopee) and Medicine Bottle after the Sioux massacre and brought them in this condition from Manitoba and delivered them to Major E. A. C. Hatch. Knowing the frailty of Little Six, who was a different man from the old chief Little Six, his father, McKenzie left a bottle of drugged whisky with a woman at the house which he was accustomed to visit, knowing that his greedy appetite would ferret it out. The artifice succeeded, and Little Six and Medicine Bottle were tried and hung at Fort Snelling for killing Philander Prescott. - History Of The Minnesota Valley, Scott County History Archives, 1882

Their flight ended in January 1864, when Shakopee and Medicine Bottle stopped by the home of a white friend near Winnipeg’s Fort Garry. That "friend" - Canadian trader, John McKenzie - was secretly in cahoots with a U.S. Army major across the border in what would become Pembina, N.D.

McKenzie plied both Indian leaders with alcohol laced with drugs. Shakopee, then in his 50s, was dosed with chloroform and rendered unconscious. Medicine Bottle, in his mid-30s, struggled longer but several men subdued him. Both Dakota men were tied to dog sleds and taken to Pembina, then Fort Abercrombie, en route to Fort Snelling.

The Minnesota Legislature forked out $1,000 — big money in the 1860s — to McKenzie as a bounty. Trials were held and both men were convicted despite sketchy evidence that they had committed atrocities during the war. They were blamed in the death of Philander Prescott, 60, who had lived among the Dakota for more than 40 years. He was beheaded on the first day of the war as he fled toward Fort Ridgely.

“It would have been more creditable if some tangible evidence of their guilt had been obtained,” said an editorial in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, published the day before the hangings.

The newspaper said “no serious injustice will be done by the execution,” but warned of a dangerous precedent of “hanging without proving.” Saying the men were probably guilty of murder, the paper nevertheless pointed out that “no white man, tried by a jury of his peers, would be executed upon the testimony thus produced.”

President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated seven months earlier. He had stepped in to reduce the number of Dakota men hanged in Mankato from 303 to 38.

One of Medicine Bottle’s descendants, Dakota researcher and filmmaker Sheldon Wolfchild, insists Lincoln would have halted the hangings. But the president’s successor, Andrew Johnson, quickly approved the executions of Medicine Bottle and Shakopee.

When Shakopee and Medicine Bottle were captured in Manitoba, a French Jesuit priest and missionary named Augustin Ravoux baptized them and administered their Last Rites, accompanying them up until their final moments on November 11, 1865.

Wolfchild, 68, lives in Morton, Minn., and has produced a film about the era that saw his ancestors swept from the area five generations ago.

After their hangings, some of the witnesses ran up and cut off pieces of the nooses for souvenirs. St. Paul photographer Joel Whitney snapped glass-plate images showing white caskets at the feet of the dangling men.

Wolfchild says rocks went in the caskets that were buried in a nearby cemetery, with onlookers thinking they had witnessed the interments of important Dakota figures.

Their bodies, instead, were taken away in a horse-drawn cart at the behest of two doctors with offices near 7th and Jackson Streets in St. Paul. Some accounts say the doctors dug up the bodies the next day.

Wolfchild says Shakopee’s body was preserved in a wooden whiskey barrel and sent to a Philadelphia medical school where a professor Pancoast used it in anatomy lessons. St. Paul doctors dissected Medicine Bottle’s body.

“Who is the savage here?” Wolfchild asks. “Running to the scaffold to get a piece of the rope? The bottom line is they had to dehumanize us to where we were little more than beasts so they could get rid of us.”

Wolfchild says that his grandfather five generations ago, Medicine Bottle, didn’t die instantly when his body dropped at the Fort Snelling gallows.

While Shakopee’s neck snapped immediately, he said, Medicine Bottle dangled for 10 minutes before dying.

“He was saying: ‘We don’t die like that. You cannot kill us with a rope,’ ” Wolfchild said. He’s trying to find any remains that might still exist of the two men, pointing to the Missing In Action banners popular since soldiers went missing in the Vietnam War.

“We feel the same way about our ancestors, they are missing in action and their bodies are in universities, museums and private homes,” he said, “waiting for proper burials so they can continue their journey to the spirit world.”

Scaffold:  Shakopee and Medicine Bottle, moments after the execution
[Photographer:  Joel Emmons Whitney - Source:  Minnesota Historical Society]

PROFILE: Captain John A. Vanstrum

I present to you, one of St. Vincent's early pioneers - John A. Vanstrum. A veteran of the Civil War, he became very civic-minded, serving the town and later Kittson County, in many positions. One of his longest-held was as Sheriff.  Serving at roughly the same time, he was Sheriff Charley Brown's counterpart across the river!

Captain John A. Vanstrum, register of deeds for Kittson county for the past decade, a pioneer citizen of the great northwest and a valiant soldier of the Civil War, is now a resident of Hallock, Minnesota, where he enjoys the esteem and confidence of a wide circle of friends and admirers. His portrait [seen here on right], will be appreciated by his host of friends. Captain Vanstrum was born in the province Gustaf and Elizabeth Vanstrum. The parents died in Sweden, their native land. Captain Vanstrum received but a limited education in his boyhood, having to assist his father in a paper mill from his tenth to his sixteenth year. On June 22, 1855, in company with about two hundred emigrants, he left his native land, sailing from Gutenberg on the vessel Ann Washburn, commanded by Captain Winchell. The vessel was heavily laden with Swedish iron for Boston merchants. He arrived in Boston harbor August 6, 1855, and proceeded to Chicago, thence to Batavia, Illinois, where he spent the winter of 1855-6, working for his board and attending school. In September, 1856, he went to Minnesota, via Dunleith, now East Dubuque, Illinois, thence up the Mississippi river, and located at Redwing. Minnesota, where he engaged as clerk in a store.

At the breaking out of the Civil war Captain Vanstrum was residing at Redwing, Minnesota. He immediately offered his services and assisted the late Colonel H. Mattson in recruiting Company D, Third Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, and was mustered into service in October, 1861 at Fort Snelling. The Captain went to Chisago county, Minnesota. where he raised some thirty volunteers (Swedish) for Company D. These men he transported in wagons all the way from what was then known as Center City via Taylor's Falls, Marine Mills and Stillwater, through St. Paul to Fort Snelling, where they arrived October 18, 1861, and on the following day were mustered into service. Captain Vanstrum was appointed sergeant of Company D in October 1861, was promoted to second lieutenant March 30, 1862, first lieutenant May 30. 1862, and Captain of Company D August 2. 1862. He re-enlisted with the same company as a veteran, under the veteran enlistment act, at Little Rock, Arkansas, early in January, 1864. He was honorably discharged with his regiment at Fort Snelling September 17, 1865. His record in war, as it has continued to be, is that of a brave and fearless defender of the Union and the old flag. In 1879 Captain Vanstrum went to Kittson county, Minnesota, and located at St. Vincent, where he was postmaster from 1879 until 1885. In the latter year he resigned his office and during that period the post office at St. Vincent was of more than ordinary importance. It was the international exchange office for all registered mail matter passing between the United States and the northwest Canadian provinces. All registered letters are re-registered at the St. Vincent office. From 1879 to 1885 this office ranked third in volume of registered mail from Minnesota.

Captain Vanstrum was sheriff of Kittson county from the date of its organization, April 8, 1879, to January, 1889, and is at present register of deeds of said county, having held that position continuously since the fall of 1891. Politically the Captain is an uncompromising Republican. He is a member of the I.O.O.F., and is one of the representative men and pioneers of the northwest. (International Order of Odd Fellows)

Source:  Collections of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, Vol. IV (1913)

Memorial Day: Edkins Brothers

Percy's grave is in the
St. Vincent Cemetery

Sgt Major Percy John Edkins
U.S. Marine Corps

On May 18, 1917, the Selective Service Act was passed authorizing the President to increase temporarily the military establishment of the United States.  In 1917, all three Edkins brothers enlisted, trained, and went into the war.

Percy Edkins, born in St.Vincent, worked as an assistant cashier at St. Vincent's Farmers' & Merchants' State Bank at the time he enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Once he got home, Percy married a Gamble descendant  (Alexander Gamble's granddaughter), Alice Griffith.

Percy is listed as a cashier at the St. Vincent Bank; 
Roy DeFrance was the Local Draft Board's Registrar

At the bottom of this post is a page from a book listing all known Kittson County veterans; the book is held by the Kittson County Museum.  This particular page lists the Edkins brothers including their military record...

Local Veterans of World War I - Part I

We are in the midst of the Centennial years of WWI. Many men from Kittson County fought in the "Great War", or the "War to End All Wars". As we know all too well, sadly it didn't end all wars. If you want to find out more about who fought from Kittson County, you can view online the book that was written all about that - The History of Kittson County in the World War.

A few examples of local WWI veterans; I will be sharing more in the near future...



When I was growing up, I knew Eli Gooselaw as a tall, quiet old man who lived across the pasture from our house, north of the St. Vincent Cemetery.  His house was a 2-storey wood clapboard, the paint long ago weathered off.

Outside nearby, he had a tall wood pile, stacked up in the form of a tipi. From what I could tell, he never used the wood,  nor burned it.  It just stood like a sentinel over the years.

The house had old-fashioned tall, sashed windows, that reflected full-moon moonlight so brightly that you swore Eli  (who never used electric lights) had lights on - especially his upstairs' north bedroom.

But back in 1917, Eli "...enlisted in the Army at East Grand Forks ... because they were drafting men. This was the time of World War I, and most of his two years of service were spent in China. Eli was one of the few people who could say he'd been to the big cities of China - Tientsen, Shanghai, and Chin-huang-taoo, along with Tokyo, Japan, the Philippine Islands and Hawaiian Islands."



Fred Gooselaw was born and raised in St. Vincent.  He was the son of Zeb and Joset (Parenteau) Gooselaw.

He became a barber and ran his own barbershop in St. Vincent, then Humboldt prior to WWI. In October 1918 he was shipped off to France as an Engineer Sapper, as part of the October Automatic Replacement Draft.¹

After the war, he carried on being a barber, and eventually moved to Montana, continuing his profession there.

He named his firstborn son, Pershing, born in August 1918, in honor of General Pershing.







James Lang was born in rural Kittson County, Minnesota.  He was the second son of Joseph and Margaret Lang, and farmed with his father.

He then went to fight in the First World War. After returning, he resumed farming until 1955; then he retired. He moved to Humboldt and never married.
























Born in Ontario, Canada of German immigrant parents, Christopher A. Thedorf, Jr. came to St. Vincent as a small child.  The Thedorf family lived in the middle of the town, by the house that would eventually be my grandparents' second home after they moved out, when my parents took over the homestead. Chris' father, Mr. Thedorf, was the proprietor of the Thedore Hotel in St. Vincent.

According to the 1910 U.S. Census, Chris was working then as a bartender in a St.Vincent saloon.  As the article to the left states, in July 1917 he volunteered into the military, choosing the Marine Corps.  The United States had declared war in April 1917 but didn't send forces (under General Pershing) until 1918, so Chris was an early participant in the war.

After the war, he married, moved to St. Paul, MN, and began working for the railroad as both a locomotive engineer, and fireman...










Hugh Lucas was a compositor and printer for the Emerson International newspaper in the late 1800s and worked there with J.E. Bouvette. He was also a carpenter and built his first home in St. Vincent with his own hands, or so the story goes.

Why Hugh felt it was important to volunteer in WWI when he was beyond the normal age is not known, but as you can read at left, he was well thought of by his fellow soldiers. He was a veteran when he went into the service again, having been in the cavalry in the late 1800s.

The article to the left states that he went into the Remount Corps upon enlistment, which was part of the Quartermasters Corps.













______________

¹ - October Automatic Replacement Draft: It means that a man was scheduled to be a replacement for a battle casualty right from the start. Usually the army waited to see what a man could do or where he was actually needed before assigning him a specific job. By October of 1918 the casualty rate was climbing and they were sending men over at an incredible rate. New draftees were barely receiving any training at all before shipping out. To fill the gaps caused by casualties, they started assigning men to be rifle men just as soon as a block of them were called up (or in this case, an engineer sapper...) The program was initiated in October. Had the war gone on longer, as many thought it would, there would have been many more 'replacement drafts'.

Ferry Command: Groundwork

Before there could be Ferry Command, the groundwork had to be laid...

Buildup to War

Father Goiffon

In 1861, Joseph Goiffon, a missionary at Pembina, wrote that a Dakota runner passed through the area on his way to the western plains with a war summons in preparation for a conflict with the Americans.

- From Assassination of Hole-in-the-Day, by Anton Treuer

In the above-quoted book, Professor Treuer tells how there were concurrent uprisings, but their methods were different.  Where the Dakota decided to fight back due the injustices against them, the Ojibwe tried an overall more peaceful path.  The result for each was that the Dakota had loss of life in the fighting, and the biggest mass execution in U.S. history, while the Ojibwe experienced no loss of life and received some concessions from US Government that they were after.

Letter to Rusty

The letter below was received by Alfred "Rusty" Rustad while he was in the service during WWII. It was written by a local representative of the Red Cross; the introduction is from an article that featured the letter, which appeared in the Kittson County Enterprise a few years ago. It paints a unique picture of his hometown area around Humboldt, capturing the people and events of that time...

Another View

by Rev. Hugh Bell

It's been almost one year since my last "View" so when I received a copy of this enclosed letter I thought it a most opportune time to catch up on correspondence in the Enterprise.

The enclosed letter was sent to Alfred Rustad, Jr. "Rusty" 60 years ago this month. For those of us old enough to remember WWII, we remember a time when just about everyone was in the same boat. It was a time of sacrifice and unbelievable hardship. It was also a time of great family support and great national support. Something that perhaps is lacking in the most recent of our wars including the present day battle in Iraq and Afghanistan. WWII was a time when the whole country pulled together for a common good. Today it seems as tho more energy is put into political rhetoric and profit seeking than into freedom in the Middle East. If we could just stop blaming others for our problems, wouldn't it be a wonderful world. Enough sermon, now to Rusty's letter.

Old Pembina City Hall

Old City Hall in Pembina (1934) - Does anyone know when it was built?
[Source: SHSND's Digital Horizons]

Until recently when a reader of this blog alerted me to this image in an online collection, I had never seen a photo of the old Pembina city hall.  I definitely had never seen the building myself.  What happened to it? I found out that in 1935, a new city hall was built - the one I had been familiar with - and soon after that building was started, the old one burned down.

An earlier photograph (date unknown, but presumably around the WWI
time period) showing parade, with old Pembina city hall in background...

I notice one difference in the building in this earlier shot - no 'City Hall Pembina' sign on the bell tower.  It's possible there is no exterior staircase, also, but the soldiers in the parade prevent that determination.

Since this post is about city hall, let's review some of Pembina's past mayors:

Charles Cavileer - He was also (at various times), Pembina's postmaster, Collector of Customs, and a territorial librarian.
J.M. Chisholm - In 1897, Hamilton, ND is listed as his residence, but by 1904, he's in Pembina, and listed as Mayor.  However, later that same year, he is listed as deceased...
Albert J. Christopher - He was mayor of Pembina for over 38 years in 1968 when I found this quote of his:  "I was elected mayor in 1931 and I am now in my 38th year as mayor.  My present term expires in 1970.  I was 34 years old when first elected."  I have not yet confirmed it, but I think there is every reason to believe he holds the record for the longest-serving Mayor of Pembina!
A. Franklyn Barron - I am fairly confident that he was mayor right after Albert Christopher, according to this record found online - his length of office, however, is not known.
Hetty Walker - Wife of Charles Walker, and another long-time mayor, including during the 1997 Red River of the North flood...

1917 Recipe

Hand-written recipe by Elizabeth Jane (Fitzgerald) Fitzpatrick,
my grandmother - used in the "Economy Cookbook" of 1917,
put out by the Ladies of St. Vincent...

Transcription of text in document

War Cake (Eggless, Butterless, Milkless)

Put in a saucepan 1 cup raisins, 1 cup sugar, scant 1/2 cup lard, 1 1/2 cups water, 2 teaspoonfuls cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoonful of cloves and nutmeg, pinch salt.

Boil them for five minutes and when cool add teasponful soda dissolved in little warm water, then add 2 cups of well-sifted flour with 1 teaspoonful of baking powder.

Bake in a shallow greased pan for 30 minutes in a moderate oven.

St. Vincent WWI Veterans

'Casualty' does not always mean 'Killed in Action'
It can also mean 'Wounded' - I knew at least one of 
the men in the list when I was growing up; he was
very much alive for many years after the Great War
[Click to enlarge]

I discovered a blog today with a 'casualty listing' for Kittson County World War I veterans on it.  I excerpted from it all veterans from St. Vincent in the list you see to the left.  This type of listing only contain names of those killed or wounded in action; it's not a comprehensive list of everyone who served (so far I haven't found one that includes all who served...)

I was interested to see that one of my great uncles is listed...William Samuel Fitzgerald.  I had known he was in WWI, but nothing about his experiences. He definitely didn't die in the war, but must have been WIA.

William S. Fitzgerald's draft registration card
The Selective Service Act was only passed
the month before in May 1917...

One St. Vincent veteran of WWI that is not on the list is William's younger brother (because he wasn't a 'casualty').  Below is an image of a postcard sent by my great uncle Edward Fitzgerald, to his sister (and my grandmother) Elizabeth Jane (Fitzgerald) Fitzpatrick, while he was in basic training. Transcription of the card says: 

4/13/1918 

Co J Camp Ross, Great Lakes, Ill.  

Dear Sister:  

This is what a person can see every Wednesday afternoon at Main Comp (Company?) Notice all the visitors along the right of the picture.  

The review we had last Wednesday when Secretary Daniels was here, there was about twice as many "jackies" on the field.  

Ed 
(on the other side was a photograph of service men in review...)

While William was in the Army, his younger brother Ed was in the Navy.

Civil Alert Siren

Town sirens were part of everyday life when I was growing up. We didn't question why a siren would go off at noon, 6pm, and 10pm. It just did.


Now, many years later, I was recently reminded by Emerson resident James McClelland...

I was out for my daily walk on a beautiful fall day. It was approaching noon and just at the precise moment the Emerson fire Siren gave its daily noontime blast.

The blast was no sooner over when I heard the wail of the City of Pembina's fire whistle, three miles distant. I had not been outside at noon for a while and had forgotten about the Pembina wail. Over the years it was clearly heard in Emerson as I recall three times daily. I am not sure if it still gives its three timely signals, but they were noon, six pm and ten pm. At the time Pembina City had a curfew ordinance and this was the warning for all youngsters under sixteen, to get home.

I grew up on a farm five miles north of the border and if the wind was blowing right the Pembina Fire Whistle could be easily heard.

I decided to research it, and found out that there was more to it than we realised...

Caribou Tales: Dennis Boucher

St. Nicholas Ukrainian Church (Caribou, Kittson County, Minnesota)

Let me introduce you to someone from my hometown area - eastern Kittson County to be more exact, an area known as Caribou.

His name is Dennis Boucher¹, and he grew up in Caribou.

Dennis and I found one another through this website. For the past eight months, he and I have been corresponding via email, with Dennis sharing many stories of his family and area local history of which his family has been a part of. Much of it is unknown outside his family, and I am thrilled that he has been willing to share it with me.

Mercy Wheat Campaign

I don't know details on how farmers around my hometown area (Kittson County and Pembina County) contributed to the efforts described as the Mercy Wheat Campaign, but it's likely they did. It was  characterized as involving the entire region known as the Red River Valley of the North, the farmers in it called to supply the over 155,000,000 bushels¹ of wheat to war-torn Europe and Asia after WWII.

Mercy Wheat wasn't as secret as Ferry Command at the time, but in collective memory, it's almost as elusive.  And what is so impressive about this effort was, it was citizen-driven, not government-sponsored, implemented before the Marshall Plan...

In April 1946, Arnold Amundson of Climax, Minn., led a procession of 140 farmers to the local elevator as a national kickoff for Mercy Wheat, a program by the United Nations to deliver grain to war-starved Poland. Farmers were hanging onto on to their grain, so the government offered them a 30-cent-per-bushel bonus to deliver it. NYC Mayor and UNRRA Director Fiorello La Guardia encouraged farmers to grow even more wheat to feed the countries ravaged by the war.
- From Twentieth Century in Review, Fargo Forum
_______________________

¹ - Trivia:  The Farmers Union Grain Terminal Association (GTA or FUGTA), a cooperative grain marketing organization of Midwestern farmers, began operations on June 1, 1938. Its origins, however, go back much farther into the nineteenth century with farmers' rebellions against low prices, mis-grading of grain, false weights, buyer collaboration, and excessive dockage and transportation costs, which resulted in their first attempts at cooperative action...The post-World War II era saw GTA make international news through its contribution of 16 million of the (ultimately) over 80 million bushels provided by the United States in the Mercy Wheat Campaign for war-ravaged Europe.

- From Minnesota Historical Society's GTA Corporation Records Collection

Ferry Command Revisited II

A film was made about the Ferry Command operations...
I have written about Ferry Command several other times here on this blog. There is an important update on the books being written about it, and our area's important role within the operation.

As Ted Beaudoin - the author of an upcoming book on the subject - states below, we owe a LOT to the men and women who were part of this effort 70 years ago. My own mother witnessed the events that happened in Pembina/Emerson, two of the locations involved in this massive and critical operation during a dark time for the world. Our communities were two links in a very large and long chain that meant the difference. Ted does not overstate the importance of what this meant. I urge you to read this synopsis of what his book will be about - it's truly awe-inspiring!

Civil War Veteran Story

An article about a Kittson County resident who was a veteran of the American Civil War was recently published in the Kittson County Enterprise. I love these kinds of stories because they take just one individual's life (of the many out there waiting to be discovered) and helps us remember that they are not just a name and date on an old tombstone, but that they had a life just like we now do...

When Hugh [Cameron] was 20 years old, he came to the United States from Ontario, Canada, and enlisted in Brady's Sharp Shooters and was attached to the 16th Michigan Infantry. His troop fought in the battles of the Wilderness, Cold Harbor and Forth Wheaton, eventually joining the last Civil War campaign at the Appomattox Court house April 9, 1865, just shy of Lee's surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia on April 13. Cameron was discharged from the service in July with the rank of Corporal...

Ferry Command Revisited

I was contacted again by Ted Beaudoin about his latest book, EARTH ANGELS RISING, which will be the second book in his aviation trilogy, Walking on Air. If you remember, this subject was covered in previous posts including this one. Ted wrote to share the latest on his book because he's heading into the homestretch on completing the manuscript, and is about to write up some details on Pembina's part in the story...

...the Rest of the Story

A few years ago, my then-boyfriend and I did a short holiday to Winnipeg, staying at the Hotel Fort Garry, and visiting some of the sites I often went to growing up with my family. It was not only nostalgic, but revealing in the changes I saw. One of them was the statue of Winnie the bear on the grounds of the Assiniboine Park Zoo. The statue wasn't there until 1992, years after I had attended the zoo with my family. While I was growing up, getting married and divorced, having my children and in turn them growing up, many changes happened to 'my city', including the installation of this statue in the Park...


It was incredibly touching to learn that a world-famous beloved children's story, had been originally inspired by a bear cub brought over to England by a man from Winnipeg.

...and now you know the rest of the story!

So Many Crosses

Making Camp in the Philipines-Gordon Short from St. Vincent on far right...

Kittson County: So many crosses, but once-fading veterans' stories have been revived
By Chuck Haga

HALMA, MINN. (November 11, 2008) — As a boy growing up in tiny Halma (pop. 73), Shane Olson never missed a Veterans Day program. It was a family thing.

His father, Billy, served in Vietnam. His grandfathers served in World War II, one as a combat medic on Okinawa. And his great-grandfather, Herbert, was wounded in fighting near St. Mihiel, France, where the American First Army under Gen. J.J. Pershing — in its first independent operation of World War I — pinched off a German salient and captured 16,000 German prisoners.

But there were so many crosses in the cemetery, so many fading stories.

"I always wondered who those guys were besides just a name," Olson said.

Years ago, he set out to collect as much information as he could about the veterans of Kittson County, the far northwestern corner of Minnesota wedged between North Dakota and Canada. He has visited all their graves, and he plans to write a book and build a veterans memorial on the banks of the Two Rivers in Lake Bronson, Minn.

Today is the 90th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I: "The Great War," it was called, and "the war to end all wars," and "the war to make the world safe for democracy."

Go here, for the rest of the story...

Ferry Command: First Delivery

On 15 January, 1940 just west of Emerson, the silence of the early morning was broken by the sound of aircraft. A truck, loaded with 45-gal fuel drums, several cars, their motors running, a team of horses and half a dozen people, some with newsreel cameras, were waiting in the freezing cold. The bundled individuals were looking skyward just to the southern horizon. Suddenly two twin-engine planes became visible. They were the first of a consignment of eighteen planes. They came in low. The cameraman started shooting film. The planes circled, the pilots clearly visible in the cockpits. After a quick check of the wind sock they circled to the south and began their final decent. Touching down on the US side of the field, the dark camouflaged Lockheed Hudson bombers, without markings or ordnance, taxied up to the boundary line.

Joe Wilson, a local Emerson farmer, guided his team of horses, Prince and Fred, toward the planes. He attached a hook and tow rope to the aircraft’s wheel and dragged the bomber into Canada. The newsreel cameras rolled and newspaper photographers popped their flash bulbs. The sudden rush and the flashes were a slight annoyance to the team of horses, but Joe was an efficient teamster and within a matter of minutes both planes were on Canadian territory. The truck rolled up and the driver and a helper dressed in military-style coveralls, started filling the craft with fuel from the 45-gal drums. Moments after the planes were fueled up the flight crew emerged from the idling waiting cars. The engines roared into life and the Hudsons lumbered down the airstrip. Becoming airborne they circled once over the airfield and headed north for Winnipeg’s Stevenson Field.

- Excerpt from “Bombers Across the Border” by James McClelland. Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada Review, June 1996