business, the board adjourned to meet at Duluth on the 19th. At this meeting in Duluth (no meeting place named) a petition was presented for the formation of a school district for Oneota and vicinity. Six school districts were created at that meeting. No. 1 was for Fond du Lac and vicinity; No. 2 was for that part of the country where New Duluth now is; No. 3 was for the neighborhood of Spirit lake; No. 4 was for Oneota and vicinity; No. 5 for Duluth and Portland and vicinity; and No. 6 for the lower half of Minnesota point.

The early pioneers did not neglect the future of the rising generation. Schoolhouses and teachers came before churches, and as soon as the preacher. After the missionary schools. taught at Fond du Lac by Mr. Ely in 1835, and by Rev. J. W. Holt and wife in 1849, before referred to, the next was a school taught by Miss N. C. Barnett, a sister of Rev. J. M. Barnett of Superior, Wis., in the summer of 1856 at Oneota, where, every year since that date, a school has been taught. The next school was one taught for a short time in the summer of 1861 by a Miss Clark, a daughter of David Clark, who then lived in the Culver house in Duluth on Minnesota point. During 1862 and 1863, a public school for the Fifth district was taught in the vacant United States land office building on "Nettleton's claim." Next was a school in a small building in Portland, situated about where the Ray block stands, east of Fourth avenue east and Superior street, Duluth. Then in 1866 a larger building was erected in the block between Third and Fourth avenues east on the lower side of East First street, also in Portland, where a school was regularly kept until after the new birth of the city of Duluth in 1870. This building was also used until 1870 for religious services and public meetings.

The first enrollment of children between the ages of four and twenty-one years, reported to the county commissioners, was from the school trustees of Oneota school district on January 3rd, 1859. The number reported was thirty-eight children. In 1860 a similar report was made of forty-nine children.

The first report from the Duluth school district was on January 28th, 1861, but the commissioners' record does not give the number.

The total enrollment of children of school age in St. Louis county in the year 1865 was 87, being 49 boys and 38 girls.

On February 12th, 1861, the school funds apportioned to Oneota and Duluth school districts, in the hands of the county treasurer, were $75.40 for the Oneota district, and $37.70 for the Duluth district. Those old days were the days of small things. Contrast the receipts and disbursements of the Independent school district of Duluth, which now embraces the territory of those first six school districts, as shown by its treasurer, for the year 1897, namely, total receipts in the general fund, including teachers' wages, $348,250.73; besides the building fund, $28,856.09, and the sinking fund, $107,043.32. The number of pupils enrolled in 1897 was 9,613; and the total value of school buildings and furniture, $1,800,700.

LOCATION OF THE COUNTY SEAT.

From the year 1855 to the year 1862 the fact of any location of the county seat of St. Louis county was a disputed question. There was no law locating it, nor any existing record that it had ever been located by the board of county commissioners, that body having been empowered to do so by the law. It was contended by the Duluth people that it was located on Nettleton's claim, on the main shore at the base of Minnesota point, by the board of county commissioners, but no record of such fact was ever found. If any such action was ever taken, it may have been by the board of county commissioners of Superior county, of whose acts, if they ever held a meeting, no record was preserved.

For a number of years, persons who were fortunate or unfortunate enough to be elected to any county office were not questioned as to their right to hold their office at their homes, wherever they lived. For two years a majority of the county offices were held at Oneota. For four years the clerk of the district court held his office at his home at Fond du Lac. The county commissioners were a rambling body in their places of meeting.

After the year 1862, it was generally conceded that Duluth was the county seat. Now, even if Duluth's undisputed possession of the county seat for thirty-six years should be questioned, there is no point at the head of the lake that can raise an objection, because she has spread the county seat over twenty-five miles, embracing all the towns, from Clifton, in

the old county of Superior, to the "Grand Portage of the Fond du Lac," the head of navigation on the St. Louis river.

BEGINNINGS IN THIS COUNTY AND THE CITY OF DULUTH.

The first county auditor of St. Louis county, Mr. Edwin H. Brown, was elected in October, 1858, receiving only one vote, and that vote was his own. On November 1st, 1858, he appeared before the county board of supervisors, then in session at the house of E. C. Martin in Portland, and was recognized as the clerk of the board. He was, at that meeting, required to give an official bond in the sum of $1,000. He held the office for fourteen months and received only $32.20 for his services. The first yearly salary fixed by the county board for the county auditor was on July 12th, 1861, at $200.

On January 14th, 1861, the board of county commissioners, in session as a board of equalization, equalized real estate values for taxation as follows: "The land on the shore of the lake and bays of St. Louis and Superior and their immediate vicinity" was fixed at $3 an acre, and "land farther back" at $2 an acre, and townsite lots were left as the assessors valued them, at $1.25 a lot. In September, 1862, the same board fixed the values of the same classes of land at $2 and $1.25 an acre, respectively, and fixed the values of all platted lots in the towns of Duluth, Rice's Point, Oneota, and Fond du Lac, at $1 a lot.

In the year 1860 the total valuation of personal property in St. Louis county was $9,620; in 1861 it was $4,726; in 1862, $5,000; in 1863, not reported; and in 1864, $2,179. The total real estate values for 1860 were $96,836.76; and for 1864, $108,927.00.

In the year 1870 the population of St. Louis county was 4,561, of which number Duluth had 3,131. Carlton county had 286 inhabitants; and Lake county, 135. In the same year the total valuation of real and personal property in St. Louis county was $220,693; the total taxes levied, $7,955; and the total debt, $5,212.

The first deed recorded in the office of the register of deeds of St. Louis county was a quitclaim deed from Rion H. Bacon to Edmund F. Ely, for the townsite of Oneota. It was recorded on June 6th, 1856, and the consideration was $1,500.

The record of the first couple married in Duluth is typical of the union of Duluth and Portland: "By Rev. J. M. Barrett (of Superior, Wis.), on April 12th, 1859, William Epler, a resident of Portland, and Jennie A. Woodman, resident of Duluth," in the presence of J. B. Culver and E. C. Martin.

The first issue of a newspaper published at Duluth was the Duluth Minnesotian, April 24th, 1869, with Dr. Thomas Foster as editor. He came to Duluth the year before from St. Paul, where he had for some years edited the St. Paul Minnesotian. The office of publication of the Duluth Minnesotian was an old building on the westerly side of Lake avenue, about a block north of where the canal now is. The paper soon passed from the doctor's control, and in a few years it ceased to exist.

The remarkable growth of Duluth dates from its first city charter, granted by an act of the state legislature, approved March 6th, 1870.

At the first city election, held on April 4th, 1870, there were 448 votes polled, of which Col. J. B. Culver, Democrat, had 241, and John C. Hunter, Republican, had 205, for mayor, with two scattering votes. George C. Stone was elected as the first city treasurer; Orlando Luce as the first city comptroller; and Henry Silby as the first city justice. All the other officers were appointed by the mayor and city council.

This paper has extended far beyond the limit at first designed by the writer, when he undertook the task. It records portions of the early history of Duluth and northeastern Minnesota which may be of interest to coming generations.

For the time since the birth of the new city of Duluth in 1870, the writer hopes that some one of the many of its residents who have lived in the city from that date, having better qualifications for the work than he, will write the history of its struggles during its first ten years, and of its steady and substantial growth since 1880 to the present time.

THE EARLY SETTLEMENT AND HISTORY OF

REDWOOD COUNTY.*

BY HON. ORLANDO B. TURRELL.

The act creating Redwood county was passed by the session of the legislature of 1862, and a second act changing and defining its boundaries and providing for its civil organization was passed in 1865. This area had previously formed a part of Brown county, and earlier of Blue Earth county. The boundaries of Redwood county, as established by these acts, reached to the west line of the state and northwest to Big Stone lake. At later dates, the counties of Lyon, Lincoln, Yellow Medicine, and Lac qui Parle, have been formed from the territory originally included in this county. Its present area, which it has had since 1871, comprises nearly twentyfive townships of the government surveys, including five fragmental townships on the northeast adjoining the Minnesota river.

In the organization of most counties in the state, the fact of prior ownership and occupation by Indian tribes is taken for granted; but in the case of Redwood county, because a part of its territory had already been occupied by farms with houses, plowed lands in crop, and a fairly developed agricultural industry, it is necessary to revert to previous conditions in order to have a full understanding of its history.

In the years 1856 to 1858 the United States government, under the influence of those who believed that the Indian should be given the opportunity to become a citizen, and that the true policy for the management of the wards of the nation was through their adoption of habits of industry which should *Read at the monthly meeting of the Executive Council, May 9, 1898.