THE HASTINGS GAZETTE
April 2, 1921
Pioneers in the Township of Nininger
Louis Belanger, the first white settler at Bluff Landing, now Nininger Township, 1847 or 1848. Also short accounts of persons and incidents connected with the first settlement of Nininger, by John H. Case of Nininger, Minnesota, in 1856.
The first white man to locate and build a house in Nininger Township, Dakota County, Minnesota, was a French Canadian named Louis Belanger, pronounced (Belongy). He put it up in 1847 or 1848 or before, a one-story log cabin about 12 by 14 feet in size on the island now bearing his name, which is surrounded by Belanger Creek or Slough and the Mississippi River. This house stood three or four rods from the bank of the river and 30 or 40 roads from the upper west or southward end of the island on one of the Government lots Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, section 4-7 26-R.21.
Sometimes before coming to Bluff Landing, he worked as a voyageur or boatman on the Minnesota River for the American Fur Company and had an Indian (woman) for a wife so Eli Pettyjohn, who came to what is now Minnesota in 1841 told me. I knew Mr. Pettyjohn for 44 years. He died at Minnetonka Mills, Hennepin County, Minnesota, May 22, 1915. He married a daughter of Philander Prescott after whom Prescott, Wis. is named. Philander Prescott had a claim there about 1838 or ’39. Several of the pioneers on the east side of the river who knew Belanger and had been at his cabin on the island several times told me they never saw any woman at his place when they were there and they did not think he had a wife, among those were John Brown of Grey Cloud in 1842, Abe Truax at Point Douglas in 1849, also Joe McCoy of Grey Cloud Island in the forties, and Ravenna township, Dakota County later.
When Belanger built his log house on the island it was part of the Dakotah or Sioux Indian Land on the west side of the Mississippi River and no white men were supposed to build or do business on it without a permit from the government. Perhaps Belanger got a permit form Lawrence Talerferro, U.S. Indian (Agent) at Ft. Snellling.
The first authentic account that I have of Belanger living in Nininger Township was given by Captain Russell Blakely of St. Paul. He said that Belanger was running a woodyard on an island on the west side of the Mississippi River a little below Grey Cloud Island, which was on the east side of the river. In 1847 or 1848 selling wood to the steamboats, that he (Blakely) was a clear on the steamer Argo, that later sunk near Diamond Bluff, Wis. and that he had bought wood of Belanger. He thought the price paid in those days was $2.25 per cord, that Belanger had some place on the higher ground where he lived when the water was high on the island.
I was acquainted with Captain Russell Blakely. He was the captain on several large Mississippi River Steamboats later. After being clerk of the Argo, he was in command of the steamboat Dr. Franklin that landed William W. Poor and his uncle Silas Poor, later residents in Nininger township on the morning of May 26, 1852 at Hastings, Minn. I think that W. W. Poor told me that Michael Marsh of Marshan and McCarthy of Hastings, were passengers on this boat and got off at Hastings when he did. The township of Marshan adjoined Nininger township, (and) was named after Michael Marsh.
Dan W. Truax who came to Pt. Douglas, Minnesota, May 29, 1849, told me that when he first came to Minnesota Louis Belanger was living a mile or more above the old saw mill at Spring Lake that he and John Blakely built in 1853-54, afterwards made into a flour mill. He also had a log house on Belanger Island when I located my claim in Nininger township in 1853 (the farm now owned by Otto Schaar).
I think he was in the spirit world at that time. He was the first white man to claim land in Nininger township.
Belanger had about two acres of land broken up on the claim preempted by Daniel B. Truax and the father of Albert H. Truax, now living at Hastings (in 1921).
This garden land was below the hill west of the present home of Carl Sorg. It was between Sorg’s house and Spring Lake, and was on each side of the present wagon road from the Spring Lake mill to the St. Paul road. It was here that Belanger raised vegetables and corn. Daniel B. Truax showed me where this garden spot was when he first located on the farm now owned by Carl Sorg, in 1853. It was on this land or near the big spring where the first pioneers of Spring Lake got their drinking water that the cabin spoken of by Dan W. Truax (A cousin of Daniel B.) was located when he came to Minnesota in 1849.
It was here that Belanger lived when driven away from his woodyard on the island by high water. In the Spring of 1859 the water on this island was several feet deep. In one of the grain warehouses on the levee at Nininger city, in June 1859, a pine sawlog floated into a window of the upper or stone warehouse and was there when the water went down. My father owned one of these warehouses, a part of which is now the bar of Jessie Frank, on Fourteenth Street, in Hastings. His father, Hiram Frank brought this building of my father and took it to Hastings for a barn.
I believe that as soon as Belanger knew that the treaty with the Sioux bands, the Mde-wa-kan-ton and Wapeton Indians, selling their lands to the government had been signed at Mendota in July 1851, that he built the small log house 10 by 12 in size on top of the hill in order to claim by squatter’s rights some of the better agricultural land and preempt it after it had been surveyed by the government. This house stood nearly back of the present house of Carl Sorg, a very short distant northwest. It was still standing after I came to Nininger in 1856. The first time that I saw Daniel B. Truax, father of Albert H., he was standing just inside the door of this log cabin as my father and I drove up in a single sleigh in the winter of 1857-58. Mr. Truax was not living in this cabin at that time but in a larger log house built about 1853, which was partly on the site where the present house stands (as of 1921).
Some time in the fall of 1851, or spring of 1852, William Hartshorn, a trader with the Indians in Minnesota and Wisconsin, had a warehouse near the river at the foot of Jackson Street, St. Paul Minnesota. He furnished Belanger with goods to trade with the Chippewa Indians for furs in the vicinity of the Yellow River in Wisconsin.
One of Mr. Hartshorn’s clerks at that time was A.L. Larpentier, who hired out at St. Louis Missouri, to Mr. Hartshorn to clerk. He worked for him in 1843 at St. Paul and he came up the river with Hartshorn, he told me. I was acquainted with Mr. Larpentier about 45 years and he gave me an account of Belanger and Hartshorn and his hunting up Belanger in Wisconsin.*
Mr. Larpentier said that Belanger failed to return at the proper time to settle up, so Hartshorn sent him on horseback to Wisconsin to look him up. After a good deal of trouble in fording rivers and creeks and crossing sloughs, in one of which, Wolf Creek, he left his boots in the mud, he at last reached a place where Belanger had been, but he had gone. After following him for some time he at last overtook him near St. Croix Falls. He had sold all the furs he had traded for to other traders. Larpentier brought him back to St. Paul and he was put in the old log jail. He was badly frightened at being deprived of his liberty and one night…hung himself.
One of the earlier pioneers, who lived on Gray Cloud Island above Belanger Island, told me that he knew Louis Belanger when he had a woodyard on that island. That he got in debt to an Indian trader by the name of Hartshorn, who lived in St. Paul, for goods to trade with the Indians in Wisconsin. He, Belanger, had several men cutting cord wood for him on Belanger Island the season before he hung himself in the St. Paul jail, and had a large lot of wood ready to sell to the steamboats. Hartshorn attached it and took it on what Belanger owed him.
I believe that two men by the names of Lamb and Dibble, who had a wood yard on Grey Cloud Island further up the river, bought the wood for sold it to the steamboats for Hartshorn.
This man Dibble was a brother of William Dibble, a very early pioneer at Point Douglas Minnesota, and had a farm between there and Afton. One of his sons, Eli Dibble, is now living on a farm not far from Afton (1921). One daughter married Reuben Mowry, a Washington County pioneer, now deceased, who lived in Cottage Grove township, and later in Hastings. Another daughter married J.W. Wray of Nininger Township, and is living there now (1921), on the Frank Jackson farm.
I have never learned where Mr. Lamb went to when he left Gray Cloud Island.
In May or June 1853, Daniel B. Truax went with his cousin John K. Truax, to Red Rock, Washington County, and bought from someone, the right to Belanger’s claim on the high ground three forties on section 24, and one forty on section 23, all now owned by Carl Sorg, and gave one hundred dollars for it, Mr. D. B. Truax told me.
The land on the island where Belanger cut his wood and had his woodyard was afterward claimed by Edward D. Stone and Mrs. Rachel McCormick, the mother of John Bassetts’ wife, about 1853, she died at her son-in-law’s home on his farm at Bassett’s Landing in Nininger, and was buried near her two grandson who have gravestones in Bassett’s graveyard under a large oak tree, which is still there on the south end of Bassett’s farm about 1857. This was the first graveyard in Nininger Township and is on the farm now owned by Henry Trapp. I have seen Mrs. McCormick at Nininger when I first came there.
Ed. D. Stone was a bachelor at the time he claimed that part of Belanger Island where the Belanger cabin stood and he moved into it.
After Edward D. Stone had proved up and paid for his land on Belanger Island he had the Belanger log cabin taken down and put up as an addition to the log house on his mother’s claim on top of the bluff above ether lower end of the island, a short distance northeast of the present house of A. J. Jeremy.
A man named Hugh McCauley, working for Stone moved it, his wife died in this building after it was moved for the island and was buried in the Bassett graveyard on the farm now owned by Henry Trapp. I do not know when McCauley left Nininger. I never saw him or knew him.
Sometime in the winter of 1852-53, Ed. D. Stone and Mrs. Rachel McCormick had this island surveyed by Joseph Marshall, a brother of William Marshall, ex-governor of Minnesota and colonel of the Seventh Minnesota Volunteers in the Civil War. Joseph Marshall died at Denver, Colorado in the nineties, I believe.
I do not know where they got their permit to survey the island, as there had been no government surveying done in Nininger Township at that time. Marshall started this survey from some government section post in Cottage Grove Township, Washington County, on the east side of the river, where the land along the river had been open to settlement since about 1828. Marshall ran his line across the river on the ice to Belanger Island. The Indians ceded or sold their lands on the east of the Mississippi River in 1837, Hazen Mooers (Movers) and Andrew Robertson were living on Grey Cloud Island in 1838, and Major Joseph R. Brown opened (see if there is a record or a map of this survey at the registrar’s office in Washington or Dakota County Minnesota) an Indian trading post, and farm there, at or near the present so-called Ames farm. Brown also farmed there later. In 1841 David Hone, father of John Hone, now living (1921) at Hastings Minnesota, had charge of J. R. Brown’s farm and Indian trading post.
Daniel B. Truax told me that when he bought the Belanger claim that in the log cabin were a couple of guns, an old stove, and a chair or two. William W. Poor, one of my old neighbors (the father of Otto Poor) at Nininger, said that shortly after his arrival there on May 26, 1853, that he, with Peter M. Caleff (who pre-empted the land that I live on now at Nininger) and Henry G. Bailly (who had an Indian Trading Post at Oliver’s Grove, now Hastings, Minn. in 1850, afterwards called the Buckhorn Tavern, kept by William and Mahala Felton, his wife, afterwards pioneers of Nininger Township, and grandparents of William, Benjamin and Edgar Chamberlain of Hastings) went to Mendota at Bluff Landing, now Nininger in a farm wagon drawn by two horses, after some furs and merchandise for Bailly.
That in passing the small log house of Louis Belanger, which stood on section 24, Township of Nininger, afterwards preempted by Daniel B. Truax. Caleff and Bailly were talking about Belanger and that there were two yoke of oxen grazing near the house. (Belanger probably used the cattle in banking his wood on the island). From their conversation Mr. Poor judged that Belanger had not been dead very long.
William W. Poor died at Hastings, Minnesota, Henry G. Bailly died at Nashville, Tenn., Peter M. Caleff died at Riverside, Calif. Mr. Caleff was the first white man living in Nininger Township to get married. His wife, Elizabeth Truax, came to Point Douglas in 1849, she was a cousin of Daniel B. Truax. I met her and a sister of Daniel W., and John K. Truax, pioneers of Nininger Township, in Los Angeles, California** in March, 1920.
*Mississippi Valley Traveler dates this event to 1851. No grave information is available on Find A Grave.
**Full name being “El Pueblo de Neustra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río Poriúncula,” and shortened to “Los Angeles” in common usage. Historic home to the Chumash and Tongva Native American tribes. Later settled by farmers from Sonora and Mazatlán, Mexico just prior to the onset of the Mexican-American War.
Dates and locations of (some) story characters and the relator, per Find A Grave:
First Lieutenant Henry G. Bailly: Born Oct. 29, 1828 at Mendota in Dakota County. Served in Union Army. Died Jan. 1, 1865 in Hamilton County, Tenn. Buried at Bellwood Cemetery, Marshan Township, Dakota County. Find a Grave Memorial ID 72506110. Picture included.
John Bassett: Several possibilities, none conclusive.
Louis Belanger: No one fitting necessary time frame. Implied death after summer 1851 would postdate the arrival of newspapers in Minnesota and so might be researchable.
Captain Russell Blakely: No clear reference.
Joseph R. Brown: Born Jan. 5, 1805 at Harford County Maryland. Died Nov. 9, 1870 at New York. Buried at Brown Cemetery in Henderson, Sibley County, Minn. Find A Grave ID 30924679. Picture included.
John H. Case: Born Oct. 26, 1848 at Cumberland, Rhode Island. Died Oct. 6, 1926 at Minneapolis. Buried at Lakeside Cemetery in Hastings, Minn. Find a Grave Memorial ID 89379479. Picture included. Family papers at Minnesota Historical Society.
Peter M. Caleff: Born 1818. Died 1892. Buried at Angelus Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles, Calif. Find A Grave Memorial ID 93689001.
William Dibble: No clear reference.
Eli Dibble: No clear reference.
William Felton: Born June 15, 1902 in Pennsylvania. Died May 21, 1883 at Hastings. Buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Hastings, Minn. Find A Grave Memorial ID 92421794. Picture included.
Mahala Felton: Born Oct. 15, 1805 at West Point, Orange County, NY. Died Oct. 5, 1892 at Nininger, Dakota County, Minnesota. Buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Hastings, Minn. Find A Grave Memorial ID 92421795. Picture included.
William Hartshorn: No clear reference, but several possibilities.
David Hone: Born April 5, 1808 at Cherry Valley, NY. Died July 11, 1887 at Hastings, Minn. Buried at Point Douglas Cemetery, Washington County. Find A Grave ID 98029481. Picture included.
John Hone: Born March 7, 1839 in Illinois. Died June 27, 1921 at Dakota County, Minn. Buried at Saint Mary’s Episcopal Cemetery in Basswood Grove, Washington County, Minnesota. Find A Grave Memorial ID 77287997. Picture included.
Michael Marsh: Born March 11, 1828 at Luxembourg. Died Sept. 4, 1891 at Forest Lake, Washington County, Minnesota. Buried in Marsh Family Cemetery at Hastings. Find A Grave Memorial ID 177247229. Picture included.
Joseph Marshall: Possible match from 1897 at Riverside Cemetery in Denver, Colo. Joseph Miller Marshall. Find A Grave Memorial ID 104780286.
Hugh McCauley: No clear reference, but some leads and possibilities.
Rachel McCormick: Birth year unknown. Died Nov. 5, 1861. Buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Hastings, Minn. Find A Grave Memorial ID 92421884.
Joseph McCoy: Born July 1831 in Minnesota. Died Aug. 6, 1914 in Dakota County, Minnesota. Buried at Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Cemetery at Hastings. Find A Grave Memorial ID 179129743.
A. L. Larpentier: No clear reference or leads.
Hazen Mooers: Born Plattsburgh, New York (Plattsburgh is sometimes listed with Vermont, being on the border). Died April 3, 1857. Buried at Fort Ridgely Cemetery in Nicollet County Minnesota. Find A Grave Memorial ID 32817287.
Rueben Mowry: No clear reference.
Philander Prescott: Born Sept. 17, 1801 at Phelps, NY. Died Aug. 18, 1862 in Minnesota. Buried at Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery in Minneapolis. Find A Grave Memorial ID 32739135. Picture included.
Eli Pettyjohn: Born Jan. 28, 1819 at Huntsville, Butler County, Ohio. Son-in-law of Philander Prescott. Died May 18, 1915 at Minnetonka, Hennepin County. Buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Minneapolis. Find A Grave Memorial ID 124811275. Picture included.
William W. Poor: Born June 25, 1832 at New York. Died May 4, 1902 at Hastings. Buried at Lakeside Cemetery in Dakota County. Find a Grave Memorial ID 142290769.
Otto Poor: No clear reference.
Andrew Robertson: Born Dec. 6, 1790 at Scotland. Died May 11, 1859 at Redwood County Minnesota. Buried at Lower Sioux Agency Cemetery in Redwood County. Find A Grave Memorial ID 41971080. Picture included.
Otto Schaar: Born Feb. 1, 1878 at Lakeland, Washington County. Died Aug. 31, 1938 at Hastings, Dakota County. Buried at lakeside Cemetery in Hastings. Find A Grave Memorial ID 126026822.
Carl Sorg: Born 1876. Died 1950. Buried at Lakeside Cemetery in Hastings. Find A Grave Memorial ID 126026992. Picture included.
Edward D. Stone: Born March 2, 1829 at New York. Died Feb. 21, 1895 at Hastings. Buried in Lakewood Cemetery at Minneapolis. Find A Grave Memorial ID 122891143.
Henry Trapp: One possibility, from Dodge County.
Lawrence Taliaferro: Born Feb. 28, 1794 at Virginia. Died Jan. 22, 1871 at Bedford, Penn. Buried at Bedford Cemetery in Bedford, Penn. Find A Grave Memorial ID 17911973. Picture included.
Daniel B. Truax: Born May 25, 1818. Died Jan. 2, 1916. Buried at Lakeside Cemetery in Hastings. Find A Grave Memorial ID 47287306.
Albert H. Truax: Born June 25, 1843 at Orleans Four Corners, Jefferson County, New York. Died June 14, 1927 in Hennepin County, Minn. Find A Grave Memorial ID 47283848 (Possible Truax family members are also buried at Spring Lake Cemetery in Nininger and St. Mary’s Episcopal Cemetery in Basswood Grove, Washington County).
John Wray: No clear reference, several possibilities.