Deerfield Township

Deerfield Township

In the north-west corner of Steele couny, with Rice countf on the north, and Waseca on the west, and bounded on the east by Medford and Clinton Falls, with Meriden on the south, lies the town of Deerfield. Its location is very favorable in an agricultural point of view, being ten miles from the city of Faribault and only seven from Owatonna, the real railroad center of Southern Minnesota, with the little village of Medford within three miles, which affords a market and freighting facilities for all who may desire to dispose of their wheat and other grains at this place, without carrying to a point more remote by teams. The south-west portion of the town finds an easy and convenient market at Waseca, on the Winona & St. Peter Railroad, so that in almost any direction the people may find a market for all their grain and produce at a very short distance from their doors.

The soil for the most part is a deep clay loam, rich and very fertile in the production of all the small grains, such as wheat, oats, rye, barley, &g. Grass grows more luxuriantly than on most prairie land, as the soil is heavier and "the grass is not so easily injured by close grazing.

The population of the town is made of Americans and -Germans about evenly divided as to numbers, and a few Irish, and are an industrious and temperate people, who are seeking for wealth by digging ib from the fruitful soil. There is a good supply of timber for fencing purposes and fuel, though this town, like all the others, is destitute of pine that furnishes the principal part in all buildings. In the south part of the town is a belt of timber bordering on Crane Creek, of about two miles in width, which extends along the west side of the town the whole length, with occasional small prairies intervening, while it is but a short distance to the large timber belt of the Cannon and Straight rivers on the east and north.

There are no mills in this town, yet there are those of easy access at Clinton Falls, Medford, Warsaw, Morristown, and other places, so that the facilities for having grain ground, or procuring a supply of oak, maple or basswood lumber, are sufficient for all practical purposes.

Deerfield was first settled about the 12th day of May, 1855, by Edward McCartney, from Elgin, Ills., who with his family of wife and three children and a brother of his wife, located on the north-west quarter of section eight. He remained about two years, when he sold out and return- -ed to Illinois, but soon came back to Minnesota and located at Morristown in Rice county, but becoming discontented went to California, and after spending a time in the land of gold, returned to Minnesota, sold his property and emigrated to Cass county, Nebraska, where he now resides. Other settlers followed Mr. McCartney into the town,

The first birth in town was a daughter in the family of Mr. Hobaugh, residing on section twenty-six, in September, 1856, who was duly christened Caroline Hobaugh. The first death was that of a Miss Austin, a young lady of some seventeen or eighteen years of age. The first couple to embark on the sea of matrimony from this port were Mr. William B. Evans, formerly of Doylston, Pa., and Miss Fredrica C. Williams, from Guilford, Conn., which embarkation was celebrated on the 16th of June, 1859, at the residence of the bride's mother - Washington Morse, a Justice of the Peace, tying the knot that no less a dignitary than a dis* trict judge could untie. The first school taught in town was in the summer of 1857, in what is now school district, No. 20. The teacher was Miss Elizabeth Hodgson, formerly from Taunton, Mass. The first religious service was had in the town at the funeral of a Mrs. Anderson, and was conducted by Rev. Washington Morse, a minister o^ seventh- day advent creed, who took the occasion to enlighten his audience as to the particular and distinctive tenete of his religious views. There are two church organizations - the Adventists and the German Methodists - though neither of them have a church edifice, but hold their service in the school houses.