Goodhue County, Minnesota - Chapter 5: Forts at Frontenac, 1909

Landing1 of Count Frontenac - Building of Fort Beauharnois by Du Boucher in 1727 - Work of the Jesuits - Disastrous Freshets - Capture of Father Guingas - Linctot's Stockade - St. Pierre and His Meeting With Washington - Abandonment of Stockade - Marin's Fort in 1750 - Final Evacuation by the French - Modern Evidences.

Goodhue county boasts of four of the early French forts. The one built in 16!)o by LeSueur has already been mentioned. The three at Frontenac are worthy of extended historical research.

Tradition declares that Counl Frontenac, in conducting his explorations along the upper Mississippi, landed at practically the present site of Frontenac in the middle of the seventeenth century, hi the late twenties of the eighteenth century, the French, who had some twenty years previous, abandoned the forts at Prairie Island and Wabasha, sawJthe necessity of again establishing some sort of ;i sovereignty over the territory drained by the waters of the upper Mississippi, the French government having been awakened to activity in the matter by the following communication sent from the governor of Canada.

"It is more than obvious that the English are endeavoring to interlope among the Indian nations and attach them unto themselves. They entertain constantly the idea of becoming masters of North America, and are persuaded that the European nation which shall be in possession of the territory of the Sioux and Chippewas will in the course of time be also masters of all of the North American continent, because it is there that men live in health and produce strong and robust children."'

Accordingly, peace having been concluded by the French with several tribes at Green Bay, another occupancy of the country by the French was determined upon, and Sieur de la Pierriere (also known as La Perriere, or Pierrie, du Bouche and Rene, or Reni, Boucher), with a company which included two Jesuits. Louis Ignatius Guignas and a companion, De Ganor, left

Montreal June 16, 1727, and reached the enlargement of the Mississippi, now known as Lake Pepin, September 17 of the same year. It is interesting to note that the name Pepin is first given to this lake in the journal of Le Sueur in the year 1700, and was probably applied in honor of Stephen Pepin, who was with Le Sueur on the shores of Lake Superior as early as 1679. In the latter part of September, 1727, Boucher arrived at Sand Point, which extends into Lake Pepin opposite Maiden Rock. Here he erected a stockade one hundred feet square, within which were three buildings, subserving probably the uses of store, chapel and living quarters. One of the log huts was 34 x 16, one 30 x 16 and the last 26 x 16. There were two bastions, with pickets all around, twelve feet high. The fort was named in honor of Charles de Beauharnois, then governor of Canada. The Jesuits called their mission from St. Michael, the Archangel. Father Guignas, in writing from the new fort, gave the following description of a celebration held there. He says: "On the morning of November 1 [1727] we did not forget that it was the General's birthday. In the morning, mass was said for him, and in the evening some very fine rockets were displayed, while we shouted 'Vive le Roy' and 'Vive Charles de Beauharnois.' What contributed much to. the amusement was the terror which the rockets caused to some lodges of Indians, at that time near the fort. When these poor people saw the fireworks in the air, and the stars apparently falling down from the heavens, the women and the children began to flee, and even the most courageous of the men to cry for mercy, begging earnestly that we would stop the astonishing display of 'fire medicine'."

During the following spring, in the month of April. 1728, the water rose so high in the lake that the floors of the log buildings were submerged, and for two weeks the Frenchmen had to live in the woods. In dispatches sent to France in October, 1729. by the Canadian government, the following reference is made to Fort Beauharnois: ''They report that the fort built among the Sioux, on the border of Lake Pepin, is badly situated on account of the freshets, but the Indians assure them that the water in the spring of 1728 rose higher than ever before, and this is credible, inasmuch as it did not so much as reach the fort this year." Owing to the hostility of the Foxes during that summer, traders were afraid to settle at the post, and in the fall of that year it was practically abandoned. In the spring the abandonment became actual, and the place was without occupants for several years.

place, but found the Sioux unfriendly. Continuing his way down the river to Illinois, he was captured by some allies of the Foxes, and was only saved from being burned by the friendly interposition of an aged Indian, who is supposed to have been one of his converts at the Frontenac mission. After five months of bondage he was set free.

In the early thirties of the eighteenth century, Sieur Linctot selected a better position on higher ground in the rear of the first post, a few hundred feet from the shore, beyond the reach of high water, on and near the bluff edge of a wide plateaux, from which was an extensive view, both above and below the sandy peninsula, or point. Sieur Linctot was appointed commandant, and Sieur Portneuf ranked second. The new stockade ordered to be constructed was 120 feet square, with four bastions and accommodations within for the commandant. Linctot passed the following winter at Perrot's first establishment. "Montagne qui Trempe dans l'eau," now corrupted to "Trempeauleau;" and early in the spring he ascended to the site of the old stockade on Sandy Point, where he found a large number of Sioux awaiting his arrival.

The elder Linctot's request to be relieved of the command was granted, and in 17:!.") the aide officer, Legardeur (Captain de) St. Pierre, was made his substitute. Upon the sixth day of May, the following year (1736), Sioux to the number of 140 arrived at the fort and said that they were taking back to the Puans a slave who had tied to them. St. Pierre told them that he thought it a large guard for one woman, and then they alleged that they were going to hunt turkeys to obtain feathers for their arrows. Continuing their journey down the Mississippi, they met and scalped two Frenchmen. When St. Pierre was on a visit up the river, still searching for the supposed outlet to the Pacific, and to build another post, the lawless party returned, and for four days danced the scalp dance in the vicinity of the fort.

In August of this year (1736) St. Pierre was informed by letters from Lake Superior of the massacre of twenty-one Frenchmen on an island in the Lake of the Woods by a party of Sioux. Among the massacred was the Jesuit chaplain, Anneau, who was found with an arrow in his brain, and the son of Sieur Verendyre lying upon his back, his flesh hacked by tomahawks, and whose head had been removed, and was ornamented with garters and bracelets of porcupine quills. On the sixteenth of September five Indians, three chiefs and two young braves, delivered a quantity of beaver skins to St. Pierre as a pledge of friendship, and declared that they had no part in the attack at the Lake of the Woods. Thev wrere then asked as to their knowledge of the killing of the two Frenchmen on the Mississippi. The next day a chief came with three young men, one of whom wore in his ear a silver pendant. When asked how he obtained the ornament, he smiled but would not answer. St. Pierre then tore it from his ear, and found it was similar in workmanship to those sold by the traders, and placed him under guard. Ouakantape, an insolent Sioux chief, and a party of thirty-six men and their families, arrived and passed the fort, and visited some Puans, who were encamped in the vicinity. Some of his party burned the pickets around Father Guignas' garden. In May of 1737 a war party of 0 jib ways appeared from the St. Louis river and Lake Superior and wished the Puans to unite with them against the Sioux, and threatened St. Pierre. Thus encircled by menacing foes, St. Pierre found prudence the better part of valor, and conferred with Sieur Linctot, the second in command (and son of the elder Linctot), Father Guignas, and some others, in regard to an abandonment. This consultation resulted in a conclusion to burn the fort, which wras done, and on May 13, the French made their second abandonment and sailed down the river.

St. Pierre did not, however, pass out of history, he being, it is believed, the commandant at Fort Duquesne, in western Pennsylvania, who is knowm to every schoolboy in America, England and France as having been the officer to wrhom George Washington, as a young man, bore the historic demand for French withdrawal from the Ohio valley. St. Pierre was in Montreal, in October, 1753. November 3, of that year, the Marquis Duquesne wrote to the minister of war in France that he had sent the Sieur de St. Pierre to succeed Marin in command of the army of the Ohio. St. Pierre reached the place, near where Pittsburg now stands, and where Fort Duquesne was built, the first week in December. Seven days after his arrival there, young George Washington came, bearing a letter from Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, to the commander of the fort. After courteous treatment by St. Pierre for several days, Washington wras sent back with the following note to Governor Dinwiddie :

Sir : - I have the honor to be here the commander-in-chief. M. Washington delivered to me the letter which you wrote to the commander of the French troops. I should have been pleased had you given him the order, or that he has been disposed to go to Canada to see our general, to whom it better belongs than to me, to set forth the evidence of the incontestable rights of the king, my master, to the lands along the Ohio ; and to refute the pretentions of the king of Great Britain thereto. I shall transmit your" letter to M. le Marquis Duquesne. His reply will be law to me, and if he shall order me to communicate with you, you may be assured that I shall not fail to act promptly. As to the summons you sent me to retire, I do not think I am obliged to obey. Whatever may be your instructions, I am here by order of my general, and I beg you not to doubt for a moment but that I am determined to conform with the exactness and resolution that becomes a good officer. I do not know that in the progress of this campaign anything has passed which can be regarded as an act of hostility or contrary to the treaties between the two crowns, the continuation of which pleases us as much as it does the English. If you had been pleased to enter into particulars as to the facts which caused your complaint, I should have been honored to give you as full and satisfactory reply as possible. I have made it a duty to receive M. Washington with distinction on account of your dignity and his personal worth. I have the honor to be, Monsieur, your very humble and very obedient servant. "L. DE ST. PIERRE.

How little did these two men, who so thoroughly appreciated the personal qualities of the other, realize that the far-away wilderness, in which St. Pierre had built a fort among the Sioux, was one day to be a rich and populous part of a great nation, whose sons would be proud to honor the other as their greatest hero. In the French and Indian war, after the defeat of Braddock, who was sent against Fort Duquesne, this same St. Pierre, a most gallant soldier and accomplished gentleman, was fatally wounded in a battle near Lake George, while leading the Indian allies of the French army. His last words were: "Fight on, boys; this is Johnson, not Braddock." From this circumstance , it is believed that St. Pierre had the distinction of meeting Washington on the field of battle, when the latter was serving under General Braddock in his unsuccessful expedition against Fort Duquesne.

In 1750 the Sioux begged to have the post on Lake Pepin re-established, and the governor of Canada sent Marin, the Indian fighter whom St. Pierre succeeded in the valley of the Ohio, to take command. Later, Marin was ordered east, leaving his son, the chevalier, in command. The war between the English and the French made a concentration of forces advisable, and the fort at Lake Pepin was abandoned. This time it was not destroyed, and was used by traders for a year or so afterward. The last occupancy of which anything is known was in 1754.

The above narrative of the early days of Frontenac has been written after a study of authorities, ancient and modern, and the consultation of various manuscripts, taken together with a consideration of probabilities. It is doubtless as correct an account as ever will be written, and is substantiated by considerable evidence. That the Captain St. Pierre, who had command of the Lake Pepin fort, is the same as the Legardeur St. Pierre who received Washington, is proven in as satisfactory a manner as has been a large part of what we now consider authentic history of early America. Some authorities place St. Pierre as the last commandant of the third fort at Frontenac, and declare that lie was there (probably with the son of Marin) in 1758. and that he went directly from there to Montreal, thence at once to Fort Duquesne. The more probable statement is that he was the commandant of the second fort at Frontenac, and that it was he, who, with the son of Linctot. burned and abandoned the second-built fort in 1737. In this connection the thoughtful reader will consider the fact that the commandant of the fort in western Pennsylvania, who received "Washington, Mas an aged man, while this St. Pierre of Lake Pepin fame was a man of middle age. This would be better accounted for by a lapse of sixteen years, allowed by those who place him as the commandant of the second fort at Frontenac. rather than by the lapse of a few months, allowed by those who place him as the last commandant of the third and last fort built at Frontenac. The building of this third fort is variously placed as from 1747 to 1750. Whether Marin was called from the fort to take charge of the army in the Ohio valley in the early fifties of the eighteenth century, or whether he did not leave the fort at Frontenac until after the outbreak of the French and English hostilities, is another question .that has never been solved, although, if St. Pierre succeeded him at Fort Duquesne, the former is probable.

In regard to the early exploration of the French in this locality, much confusion has arisen from the fact that the early investigators evidently took "LaSieur" to be a name, whereas it is only a complimentary title, prefixed to names, as our ' ' Esq. ' ' is affixed to English names, and the result is much the same as the result might be five hundred years from now, should investigators then consider "Esq." a name, and try to identify with each other from records of the present day all names ending in that manner. It is with considerable hesitancy that the editor advances the theory, so firmly believed by the earlier historians, that Le Sieur de la Pierriere du Bouche. of Frontenac fame, is the de la Perriere Boucher known in history as the one who led the Indians in their attack on Haverhill, Mass.. when they killed the Puritan minister of the village, scalped his wife, and then clashed out his infant's brains against the rocks.

In 1766, scarcely more than a decade after the supposed final abandonment of the third fort at Frontenac, Captain Jonathan Carver, probably the first English traveler to the Falls of St.

Anthony, in 1766, describing Lake Pepin, says: "I observed the ruins of a French factory, where it is said Captain St. Pierre resided and carried on a great trade with the Naudowessies before the reduction of Canada."

In 1805, Lieutenant Pike, United States army, passed through Lake Pepin, and described the position of the ruined post as it would appear to him going up the lake, and in view before reaching Point no Point, as being on the west shore behind the point.

In 1887, in digging for a foundation for a cistern, two cannon balls were found near Frontenac Station at a depth of about five feet. One was a four-pound and the other a six-pound ball. These were doubtless buried by the Indians, shortly after the abandonment of the fort, as being useless to them, and possibly "bad medicine."

In the rear of the low lands of the Point is an eminence of some sixty feet, which is the bluff edge of a wide plateau, from which there is an extensive view below and above the sandy peninsula. It is the most suitable spot in the vicinity for a stockade, and there is evidence, in the absence of very aged trees, that there had once been a clearing there. The old Indian trail up and down the valley crossed this plateau and the valley of the Sandy Point creek, now Well's creek, affording easy routes for the Sioux of the prairie to the post. Frontenac Station is overlooked by this plateau, and an enemy approaching the post would probably be met at that point by the artillery tire of the defenders, moving out a short distance from the stockade.

The Graham Family has, since the earliest days, occupied an important place in the life of the county, and the name will be remembered so long as the county exists. Hon. Christopher C. Graham was one of the best-known citizens of the state. He was born in Augusta county, Virginia, in October, 1806, and removed with his parents, when three months old, to Lincoln county, Kentucky. In 1816 the family removed to Booneville, Ind. During his boyhood he attended such schools as were provided in his neighborhood, and later went to the academy at Montgomery, Ohio, where he completed his school education. Mr. Graham was elected to the Indiana legislature in 1835, and served until 1841. The following year he was elected to the senate, which position he occupied until 1846. At the outbreak of the Mexican war he was appointed by President Polk as commissary of subsistence for the Second Indiana Infantry, but later resigned after one year's service. He was also a member of the convention which framed the constitution of Indiana. During the campaign preceding the election of President Pierce, Mr.

Graham was a prominent candidate for the nomination to Congress, but gave way to another prominent candidate. In 1854 he was appointed to the land office as receiver at Red Wing, and at once removed to that place, his family following a year later, the register being W. W. Phelps, also a prominent oldtimer. In 1858 the land office, having been removed to Henderson, Minn., Mr. Graham went to that place, and remained three years, afterward returning to Red Wing, where he remained until his death, in the middle of May, 1891. A newspaper obituary of his life said: "In politics, Mr. Graham was an unswerving Democrat, and yet he was liberal in his political views, as in everything else. He served as mayor of Red Wing for one year, and was elected justice of the peace in 1869, since which he was almost unanimously re-elected every two years. In 1872 he was a candidate for Congress on the Democratic ticket, but was defeated by a small majority. He was a member of the Episcopal church of Red Wing, and for a number of years was one of the vestrymen. He - was also a member of Red Wing Lodge, No. 8, A. F. and A. M. Mr. Graham was a man of the strictest integrity, a Christian in the highest sense of the term, of superior talent, and one of the best public speakers in the state. He was very domestic in all Ids tastes, and no father was ever happier than he when surrounded by his children. He was phenomenally quick at repartee, and no one ever enjoyed a joke better than he or could see the ridiculous side of a proposition quicker than he, and his sayings became common property throughout this community. He did not have an enemy in the world, and though a man of strong convictions, yet he never interfered in the belief of any one." Mr. Graham was married July 7, 1837, to Louise H. Hargrave; born February 14. 1814, and died in January, 1895.

Florence, the oldest child of Christopher C. Graham, now lives at Red Wing. In her honor the township of Florence, this county, was named. She was married January 8, 1872, to David M. Taber; born June 26, 1840, in Massachusetts. Mr. Taber was a lawyer, served as city and county attorney, and had a promising career ahead of him when cut off by death in the prime of life, April 1, 1880, pneumonia being the cause of his decease. To this union was born one child, Christopher G. Mrs. Florence Taber has taken up the work left by her father, and is known for her interest in all matters which tend toward the betterment of the city and county. Ralph G., son of Mr. Taber by a former marriage, married Henrietta S. Pratt. He has been manager of the T. B. Sheldon Auditorium, and has met with much success as a magazine writer. Isabella, the second child died at the age of three years.

family, was born in Boonville, Ind., and came to Red Wing with his parents in 1854 at the age of fourteen years. A printer by trade, he established here a printing establishment, and was on the high road of success when the Civil War broke out. He enlisted in the Union army October 10, 1861, was mustered-in November 7, 1861; served three years; was discharged for promotion; re-enlisted February 4, 1864; was promoted to sergeant; discharged for promotion September 17, 1864; promoted to lieutenant and honorably discharged at the close of the conflict. Returning to Red Wing, he entered the wholesale store of Fredrich, Kempe & Co., and also served as postal clerk. He died in 1903 at the hospital in Minnehaha. His wife, Amelia Lunenburg, whom he married at Galesburg, 111., in November, 1872, now lives in Red Wing.

Mary, the fourth child of Christopher Graham, is deceased. She married Charles L. Davis, formerly editor of the "Argus," who served as captain in the Union army, and is now postmaster at the capital.

Helen 0.. the sixth child, occupies an important place in this community, and lives in the old homestead at 625 Fifth street. A musician of no little ability, she serves as organist in St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, and her philanthropic and religious work is widely known.

Jennie is Mrs. John Maginnis, of Portland, Ore., and Emma, the youngest, was a singer of considerable note, and received her musical education in Boston and in Europe. She is now Mrs. E. W. White, also of Portland, Ore.