Waseca County, Minnesota - Chapter 45, 1905

Chapter 45

COUNTING IN OF PRESIDENT HAYES - LINNEHAN HOUSE BURNED, ALSO HOUSE OF GEO. KLINE - JOHN HABEIN INJUREDDEATH OF MRS. BENNETT, MOTHER OP SIXTEEN CHILDRENBUILDING OF THE M. & ST. L. RAILWAY - DEATHS OF THE YEAR - COMPLETION OP M. & ST. L. RAILWAY, BANQUET AND ADDRESS.

The strenuosity of the people of this eoiuity during the Centennial year was followed in 1877 hy a calm. Tlie most exciting affair of the year was the counting in of President Hayes and Vice-president Wheeler. At one time anarchy Avas feared, and even at this time men of the highest intelligence and integrity are wont to speak of the affair between the North and the South at that time as keenly critical. The commission that the matter was referred to was composed of five judges of the supreme court, five senators and five representatives - eight Kepublieans and seven Democrats. To the regret of many, the eomniission divided on party lines.

House Burned

The house of ]\Ir. John Linnehan, of Byron, was destroyed bv fire Feb. 4, 1877. ]Mr. and ^Frs. Linnehan were visiting a brother in the neighborhood at the time. In the evening the boys built a fire and went out to do the chores. In a short time the house was discovered to be on fire. Everything was lost ext'ept one feather bed. In addition to the loss of household goods, fifty bushels of seed wheat and a harvester Avere consumed. There was an insurance of soiii(> .+2(10 on the house.

On the 9th of the same month George Kline, one of the "boys" of the First ilinnesota, residing in St. Mary, lost his home by fire. He awoke about midnight and found his house all on fire. His children had a narrow escape from, being burned with the house. All the household goods, clothing, and everything else in the house were totally consumed. He carried insurance to the amount of $500.

John Habein, of Blooming Grove, son of Wm. Habein, while blasting rock, April 2-1, 1877, met with a serious accident. He was charging a rock, and while driving in brick to confine the powder, it exploded, inflicting a deep woiind in the flesh between the thumb and first finger of the right hand, and a severe one on the cheek, just below the ej-e, carrying away the flesh from the outside corner of the eye nearly to the top of the nose, and blowing his face and hands full of powder and small pieces of brick. Fortunately his eyes were not injured. He soon recovered.

Mother Op Sixteen Children

]\lrs. Esther Bennett, mother of Ed. Bennett, Esq., of Waseca. died at Tivoli, Blue Earth county, on the 14th of May, 1877. Deceased was the mother of sixteen children, fourteen of whom attained their majority - ten males and four females. The Bennett family located in Blue Earth county in 1S56, and maintained a prominent position in its early history. The deceased was a most estimable ladj-, highlj^ esteemed by a large acquaintance.

Building Of The M. & St. L. Railway

The ^Minneapolis and St. Louis railroad was constructed through Waseca diiring the year 1877. Thomas White, of Waseca, had the contract for building four miles of the road on each side of Waseca. The road was completed to Albert Lea Nov. 7.

Martin Krassin, Of St. Mary

Who first visited Waseca county in 1854, and who located hevi' with his family in 1855, died June 1, 1877. IMartin Krassin was the son of Gottlieb Krassin, Sr., and was born in Prussia in the year 1821. He came to America with his aged parents and young wife in July, 1854. He stopped for a month or two with relatives, near Princeton, Wis., and then made a trip of exploration j\Irs. Eleanor M. Helms, wife of Hon. il. H. Helms, passed to rest June 30, 1877. She was one of the daughters of Samuel Dodge, who settled near Wilton in 1857. Her age at the time of death was 25 years, nine months. She left surviving her husband and two daughters.

Completion Of Minneapolis And St. Louis Railroad

This important line of road, for which the people of Woodville had voted $30,000, was completed in the fall of 1877, and on the 11th day of December of that year, the managers of the road, in connection with the business men of Minneapolis, gave a free ride and a free banquet to five hundred invited guests along the line of the road. Addresses of welcome and responses were delivered, each village and city being represented on the program. To the toast "Waseca," the response was reported by the ]\Iiuneapolis Ti'ibune as follows:

"Mr. President: Waseca rejoices at the completion of the connecting link of road which unites Lake Superior with the lower Mississippi. This is a happy day for Waseca county. Her humblest citizen may well feel proud of this grand festal occasion. Waseca county, with her streams of pure water, her numerous silvery lake-gems, scattered here and there in every township; her thriving villages, her school houses, her mills, her mercantile enterprises, her banks, her forests and groves of timber, her herds of cattle, her thirteen hundred farms, her granaries crowded with a million bushels of wheat ready for your mammoth mills, her twelve thousand happy and prosperous souls, reaches out her hand to-day across the intervening prairie and woodland, and warmly clasps that of Minneapolis, who, with her palaces of brick and granite, with her merchant princes, with her inexhaustible water power, with her mills of world-wide reputation, with her men of indomitable pluck, with her warm hearted hospitality, has become noted throughout the nation - aye, throughout the civilized world.

"Twenty-three years ago today, the oldest male inhabitant in Waseca county, now living within its borders, belonging to the 'red shirted brigade,' and was engaged in 'swamping' at a lumbering camp on the north branch of the Oconto, in northern Wisconsin. He was a wild, fanatical fellow. One evening by the camp-flre, after reading a friend's letter descriptive of Southern Minnesota, he made up his mind to pack his 'turkey' and make a winter trip to the land of promise.

Child'S History Op Waseca- County

"On the 6th of January, 1855, he and two other venturesome men, one of whom now sleeps in the Wilton cemetery, and the other of whom, poor fellow, is engaged as assistant postmaster in the United States senate, started for Minnesota with ox teams. On the 2d day of February, 1855, they arrived in what is now Waseca county, having camped two nights in the open air, on Minnesota snow hanks. One lone shanty was all there was of civilization to break the native solitude of the prairie and woodland, from Straight river to the frontier town of Mankato. What a change in these twenty-four years! This occasion will not permit even a glance at the hardships, the privations, the struggles, the heroic labors of those who first broke the prairie sod and started civilization in a new country. But the people of Freeborn, Waseca, LeSueur, Rice, and Scott counties, who a few years ago were seen carting their wheat to Hastings, camping at night by the roadside, in fair weather and in storm, need not to be reminded of these scenes, for they have been written upon the tablets of memory by the hand of experience; and that experience prompts every heart to rejoice that to-day we may visit the metropolis of the state, in palatial railroad cars - going in the morning and returning to our own firesides in the evening. The day of slow coaches, foundered horses, and brave (sometimes tyrannical) stage drivers has passed, and in place thereof we have the iron horse with his train of rolling palaces - the grandest production of American capital, skill and ingenuity. Waseca joins with Albert Lea, Hartland, Richland, Waterville, Kilkenny, Montgomery, New Prague, and Jordan in accepting the hospitality of this city, on the 'Minneapolis plan,' and will contribute her full share toward the upbuilding of the dual city at the head of navigation, on the grandest river of North America.

"But this is a digression. Waseca is the theme. Well, Waseca is noted for many things. She is noted for a variety of statesmen. She has more 'honorables' to the square mile than any other county in the state. Some are as wisely silent as Gen. Grant, while others are as noisy - if not as wise - as 'Sunset' Cox or Wendell Phillips. She boasts of six hundred men who, with clear heads and untainted breath, at the last election, cast their ballots in favor of 'destroying the destroyer of millions' and freeing our land of a slavery more intolerable than that which drenched Southern soil with the blood of our fathers and brothers.

"She is noted for her rich and productive soil; for her industrious and well-to-do farmers; for her No. 1 wheat; for her pleasant and comfortable homes; for her four newspaper ofllces; for her numerous churches and numerous saloons, almost equaling Minneapolis, and for her enterprising business men in every branch of trade.

"In 1876 she produced from 47,877 acres 475,177 bushels of wheat. That was the lightest crop ever raised in the county. This year from fifty thousand acres, she has produced one million bushels of wheat. She boasts of over three thousand work horses, thirteen hundred beef and working cattle, four thousand milch cows, thirteen hundred farmers'

"The sheep of Waseca county in 1876 produced 9,089 pounds of wool; the cows produced 283,250 pounds of butter, and 4,288 pounds of cheese; the bees, 136 hives, produced 1,629 pounds of honey; the apple trees in bearing, numbering 5,629, produced 2,325 bushels of apples. The total amount of hay saved was 27,384 tons.

"It is a glorious, good county, a near relation to the garden of Eden, and, as its Indian name implies, is a 'land of plenty,' 'abundant in food' and contains as much solid mud to the square mile, on a rainy day, as any county in the state.

"But on this occasion we may all look beyond the limits of our several localities and join in congratulating one another upon the national importance of the completion of the thoroughfare that now unites the great 'unsalted seas' of the North with the never freezing waters of the Sunny South. And we do not and should not forget that the success ot this important enterprise is due to the energy and labors of President Washburn and his Minneapolis co-workers. To the ability and courage of such men the people of the state owe a large debt of gratitude. Without doubt all will join in expressing the hope that the fraternal relations now existing between the North and the South, the East and the West, may grow with our growth and strengthen with our advancing years, and that ere the close ot another decade the people will have cast aside all local prejudices, so that our great natural highway by way of New Orleans may be utilized to the fullest extent by the millions that are to possess the great valley of the Mississippi.

"Waseca is proud to be represented here to-day by so many of her citizens, and rejoices in the fact that Minneapolis and St. Paul are now within a few hours ride of our happy hunting grounds. We cordially invite our friends of these cities to visit our goodly land that flows with the milk of human kindness and the honey of Christian charity - except about election time - and to learn how good and how p.leasaut it is to dwell in the land of plenty where every one sits by his own fireside and calls no man master."