Wilmington, Minnesota

Portland Prairie was the first part of the town settled. The locality known by this name, however, lies only partly in Wilmington Township, a part of it being in Winnebago Township, and a part extending across the state line into Iowa. The county records show that the ownership of the prairie farms, for a dozen years or so from the first settlement, frequently changed hands. The Germans and Scandinavians were appearing to take up the remaining vacant lands, or purchase of the Americans who desired to sell their improvements. Like most frontier places, the first residences were not commodious, but comfortable log cabins, requiring little except a few days' hard labor to erect. Many families had to bear their inconveniences many years before the luxury of a frame house could be enjoyed. The farming at first was of a rude character, with appliances such as were in vogue before the era of machinery, and while there was an abiding faith in the ability of the soil to produce root crops, corn and oats, there was many a dubious shake of the head when wheat was mentioned. But like many another question, practical experience soon solved the problem in the affirmative, although most of the flour at first used to come from outside the county. Wheat, oats and com soon began to be established crops. The trouble of getting it ground, at first very serious, was in a few years rendered satisfactory by Messrs. Harney & Edward Bell, who built a log mill and set it to running in Dorchester.

Passage source: History of Houston County, Minnesota, published 1919.

The people of Wilmington, like the rest, became thoroughly frightened, and while some remained on their farms, most of them started with their families, and what few valuables they could carry, for Lansing. When near the southeastern part of the town, in the vicinity of C. F. Albee's farm, the American residents succeeded in halting the fugitives, and to assure them that there was no danger, C. F. Albee and A. Sherman started on horseback for Spring Grove to learn whether the Indians were really there, as all comers reported, murdering the people and burning all before them. Everything having been reported as quiet as the conventional Potomac, the people slowly went back to their recently forsaken homes, but many of them had turned their cattle into the grain, the losses were quite heavy.

Passage source: History of Houston County, Minnesota, published 1919.

At this meeting the town was divided into nine ward districts, with the following overseers: Mike McGinnis, G. Andreson, H. Peterson, G. Gilbertson, Knud Severson and T. Oleson. A resolution that hogs should be permitted to run at large was unanimously adopted. The meeting then adjourned. And thus the town of Wilmington was started on its career as a political entity.

Passage source: History of Houston County, Minnesota, published 1919.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Wilmington Township - it names this place 2 more 2 times.