By Joseph Back

Cordenio Severance was of Puritan stock, his family coming over from England to New England in the 1630s during what became known as the “Great Migration,” just before Oliver Cromwell’s rise to power and the subsequent fall from grace of Puritanism in the broader English mind.

As such one “John Severance” is recorded to have arrived at Ipswich, Massachusetts in 1636, being some 27 years old.

John would marry a girl named Abigail and go on to have a son named John, who in turn would marry a girl named Mary and have a son named Joseph, who married a girl named Anna. Each would also have other children, with large families driving the growth of colonial New England.

Cordenio would enter the picture some five generations later and half a continent away, born at Mantorville in Dodge County, Minnesota on June 30, 1862. The future owner of Cedarhurst Mansion was the first child and only son to Dodge County auditor Erasmus Severance and his wife Amanda, Erasmus also known in some re-

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Somewhat less elegant than the front half, a small house turned to a kitchen for the help sits at the back of the historic Cedarhurst Mansion. Cordenio’s wife Mary Francis Harriman came to Cottage Grove while young, where her grandparents lived. Photo by Joseph Back. CEDARHURST

FROM PAGE 1 cords as “Erastus.” Cordenio’s father was 32 years old when the son was born, his mother 27. A second child named Caroline would arrive in 1869, seven years after her brother.

Back in 1862 and within a matter of weeks—long before young Cordenio would know what was happening—a crisis would emerge to the west, as a treaty that had been made 11 years before he was born would turn sour, leading to bloodshed, with Minnesota governor Alex Ramsey—a signatory of the failed treaty—dispatching troops from Fort Snelling under the command of General Henry Sibley. With events causing panic, a dispatch from the St. Paul Press and carried in the Mantorville on September 12 shed more light on the situation, questioning its universality: “The prevailing idea that this outbreak was an organized and preconcerted raid of all the Dakota bands, involving wide combinations with other tribes, seems to be entirely dissipated by this simple and straight forward story,” the report referencing one “Other Day” reported. “There might have been a concealed organization with a view to an onslaught…but it is quite obvious from this narrative that if such a conspiracy existed, several of the most numerous bands and influential chiefs were not in it or in any manner accessory to it: Wabasha, who arrived just before the outbreak, was totally ignorant for it…It was evident that it was by the connivance of the Wakpetons, that Other Day was enabled to effect the rescue of the whites at the Upper Agency without opposition. It is also gratifying to know that the farmer Indians of the Hazlewood Republic are not only not parties to the raid, but even meditated an armed opposition to it…” the Express passed on the report from St. Paul.

In the end, however, there would be executions at Mankato and the Dakota themselves driven from the state for a while, fear and anger driving events rather than reason.

Back at Mantorville, the papers reported Governor Alex Ramsey’s call for Dakota removal on the wishes of settlers, followed by a proclamation of Thanksgiving the next week, as was becoming customary in that time but not yet a fixed federal holiday.

Followed the next week with delinquent tax lands from 1859, and their descriptions. Wood for heating purposes was obtained for winter learning by the school trustees, and a sorghum crop with aggregate cane syrup of 40 million gallons was reported from 250,000 acres. As Cordenio grew, this is the world he grew up in, ending up at Carleton College for two years, beginning in 1877.

Leaving in his sophomore year to return home, he later read law in the office of Robert Taylor, a lawyer from Kasson. But something very important happened at Carleton, an event that would steer him elsewhere: he met his wife Mrs. Cordenio Severance, then known as Mary Francis Harriman, a 14-yearold college freshman. As to Cordenio, he was 15 years old upon entering college.

Taking to each other through their time at Carleton, it just so happens that Mary’s mother’s parents—that is, her maternal grandparents— owned a farm in and about the Cottage Grove area. Her mother’s father was a man named Charles Fanning, while her mother’s mother was a woman named Fidelia, born “Holbrook.” Coming from Massachusetts and Maine respectively—per Find A Grave—Charles and Fidelia were in Cottage Grove as early as 1880 or else earlier, though earlier finds are doubtful upon examining the cursive on a federal census of that time. What can be known, is that Charles Fanning, his wife, son Edwin, one “Luther Pierce,” and Julie Sullivan were still in Maine as of 1860, the men listing occupation as “merchant,’ and Sullivan a “domestic. Fanning would be a “farmer” 20 years later at Cottage Grove, Minnesota.

But we are getting off track. The point to take away from this foray is that Cordenio likely came to Cottage Grove because of Mary, with whom he reconnected after she returned from yet more schooling at Wellesley College out east and he had been admitted to the bar. So who was Mrs. Cordenio A. Severance, according to the custom (law of couverture) whereby a man and his wife were one considered a single legal person?

That is an exploration for another day. What can be known of their life together, after marrying in the old Congregational Church at East Cottage Grove in June of 1889, is retained in fragments. While two children would be born to the couple neither would survive infancy, and come the year 1900 Cordenio and his wife were living at 589 Summit Avenue, also the law office of Cordenio and his two partners Frank Billings Kellog and Cushman Kellog Davis.

Fast forward some 20 years later, and the U.S. Federal Census records have Mr. and Mrs. Severance living on St. Peter Street of St. Paul, in a Ward 4 rented home. It wasn’t the country house at Cottage Grove, perhaps, but it worked for life in the city.

Born into rural America, Cordenio remained partial to it throughout his life, as is related in a biographical work entitled “Cordenio Arnold Severance” and containing detailing on both husband and wife. A lover of animals and the cello per this source, Cordenio lived a farm life in some extent throughout his life, dying of a heart attack in California at 62, his wife Mary following months later from Europe.

Among the buildings falling to time and gravity is this barn to the back of Cedarhurst, developing a bow as it falls in towards the center, a real life physics lesson. Photo by Joseph Back.