regale their audiences with the pleasure their readings gave for an evening. Mary Scott Siddons, John B. Gough, Henry Ward Beecher, Horace Greeley, Camilla Urso, and many others, were among the number.

Mr. Mayo was married in St. Paul, May 7th, 1861, to Caroline E. Fitch, who survived him but eight months. Two daughters and one son are left to mourn their loss.

Just after his marriage and during the Civil War, he and his wife were deeply interested in the work of the Sanitary Commission, and in providing for the soldiers' families that were left at home without means of subsistence. After his marriage he was a regular attendant at Christ Episcopal Church.

He was associated in business, at different times, with Mr. J. P. Pond, Mr. H. M. Smyth, and Mr. Charles H. Clark.

In July, 1889, he was appointed United States Appraiser for this district, under the Collector of Internal Revenue, Colonel Charles G. Edwards, and served in that capacity until his death ten years later. His judgment in matters pertaining to his duties was seldom questioned, and in such cases as were appealed his decisions were almost always sustained.

His cheerful disposition was a constant source of happiness to his friends and family. His rugged frame and mind accepted the heritage of his sturdy ancestors, and his whole life was given to living up to the high standard set by them. How well he succeeded the members of the Historical Society know. That he was ever willing to assist in any way the young men with whom he came in contact, many now living can attest.

In his death, April 23rd, 1899, his family lost a kind husband and indulgent father; the city, an upright, moral and broad-minded citizen; and the Historical Society a genial, capable, and valued friend.

EDWARD C. DOUGAN.

RUSSELL BLAKELEY.

The last pages of this volume, excepting its index, were in type, when death removed another in the series of presidents of this society, one of its early and most valued members. Captain Blakeley had been well known, trusted, honored, and beloved by the people of Minnesota during more than half a century. Before Minnesota acquired its name and organization as a territory, he began his important service in the steamboat navigation of the Upper Mississippi; and during the fifteen years of his connection with the Galena and Minnesota Packet Company he brought here many thousands of the pioneers and founders of our commonwealth. In addition to large business activity, he had always a lively interest in promoting the intellectual and moral welfare of his city and state.

Within the latest five years of his life, when the care of business had been chiefly laid aside, Captain Blakeley wrote, in accordance with earnest solicitations by his associates in this society, two extended articles for its eighth volume of Historical Collections, giving his reminiscences of the old days of steamboat travel and freighting on the Mississippi and the Red river of the North. His portrait is presented in that volume as the frontispiece of his paper, "History of the Discovery of the Mississippi River and the Advent of Commerce in Minnesota"; and the same article includes photogravures of eleven steamboats which plied on the Upper Mississippi, bringing immigrants to this state, before the close of the civil war. After that time, immigration came mostly by railways and wagon roads.

Russell Blakeley was born in North Adams, Mass., April 19th, 1815, being the son of Dennis Blakeley and Sarah Samson Blakeley. On the paternal side he was a descendant from

Samuel Blachley, who was a pioneer of Guilford, Conn., in 1650, removing thence about the year 1653 to New Haven. Another writer has directed attention to qualities which he received by inheritance, being "on both sides of Puritan ancestry and descended from two of the oldest families of Plymouth, Mass., and New Haven, Conn. His remote ancestors were somewhat prominent in the early affairs of the New England colonies. Later some of them took part in the French and Indian War, and when the War of the Revolution came it would seem that nearly all of the able-bodied male members of both the Blakeley and the Samson families fought for liberty and independence."

In 1817 Dennis Blakeley removed with his family to Leroy, Genesee county, N. Y., where Russell received a common school education and grew to manhood. For three or four years, from 1832 to 1835, he was employed as a merchant's clerk in Batavia and in Buffalo, N. Y.

At the age of twenty-one years, in the autumn of 1836, he removed with his father to Peoria, Illinois, and remained there nearly three years. In the summer of 1839 he removed to Galena, Illinois, and engaged in mining and smelting lead, in the employ of Capt. H. H. Gear, during the next five years. He then went to Austinville, Wythe county, Virginia, and was there engaged in lead smelting until the early summer of 1847, when he returned to Galena.

June 8th, 1847, Russell Blakeley began his experience in steamboating as clerk of the steamer Argo, under Capt. M. W. Lodwick, making regular trips from Galena to St. Paul and Fort Snelling. After the loss of his steamer the next autumn, a partnership was formed in the following winter, including Messrs. Campbell, Smith, and Henry Corwith, of Galena; Col. H. L. Dousman, Brisbois, and Rice, of Prairie du Chien; H. H. Sibley, of Mendota; Capt. M. W. Lodwick, and Mr. Blakeley. They bought the steamer Dr. Franklin, and began in the spring of 1848 the regular carrying trade of the Galena and Minnesota Packet Company, under M. W. Lodwick as captain and Russell Blakeley as clerk. In 1851 the latter succeeded Captain Lodwick as master of the Dr. Franklin. In 1853 Captain Blakeley was transferred to the command of the Nominee, and in 1854 to the Galena. When the

Illinois Central railroad was completed to the Mississippi river at Dunleith (now East Dubuque), Ill., in 1855, he was appointed agent and traffic manager at Dunleith for the packet company. His connection with this company continued until 1862, when its business was sold out.

December 9th, 1851, Captain Blakeley was married to Ellen L. Sheldon, daughter of Major John Pitts Sheldon of Willow Springs, Lafayette county, Wisconsin. She was born in Detroit, Michigan, October 26th, 1831, and died at Thomasville, Georgia, March 28th, 1892. During the first ten years after marriage, their home was in Galena, excepting the summer of 1856, when it was in St. Paul. They removed to this city in 1862, and two years later Captain Blakeley built the fine stone residence at the corner of Jackson and Tenth streets, which was ever afterward his home.

During the winter of 1855-6, he became a partner with J. C. Burbank of St. Paul in express and commission business. In 1858 this firm, J. C. Burbank and Co., contracted with the United States government to carry the winter mail between Prairie du Chien and St. Paul; and in the spring of 1859 they succeeded to all the mail service of Allen and Chase, having adopted a corporate name as the Minnesota Stage and Northwestern Express Company. In 1862 they admitted John L. Merriam as a third partner. Five years afterward, when the building of railroads had considerably di minished their business, Messrs. Burbank and Merriam withdrew from the staging and expressing, which then came under the management of Captain Blakeley and C. W. Carpenter, the latter having previously been the confidential clerk of the company. By them a stage line was extended to Fort Garry, Manitoba, in 1870. They continued in business in Minnesota until 1878, when the railroads had virtually superseded all the former main stage routes in this state.

In 1877 this company was reorganized under the corporate title of the Northwestern Express, Stage and Transportation Company, in which N. P. Clark and Peter Sims became interested, with Captain Blakeley as president and C. W. Carpenter as secretary and treasurer. They entered into contract with the Northern Pacific railroad company to run a stage line and transport freight from Bismarck, Dakota, on

that railroad, to Deadwood in the mining district of the Black Hills, a distance of 250 miles through the Sioux Reservation. By this route they carried the mails, express, passengers, and freight brought by this railroad for the Black Hills, until 1881, when the Chicago and Northwestern railway company completed its line to Pierre on the Missouri river.

For the next four years this company, under the direction of Captain Blakeley and Mr. Carpenter, who had purchased the interests of the other stockholders, carried mail, passengers, freight, etc., between Pierre and the Black Hills, owning for this purpose 300 horses, 500 mules, and 1,000 work oxen, besides also hiring for the freighting business at times nearly as many more.

Another transfer of location of this business was made in 1886 to the terminus of the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley railroad, a part of the Chicago and Northwestern system, on its extensions to western Nebraska and northerly by a branch to the Black Hills. With the completion of this branch railroad, in 1891, the last opportunity for employment of such methods of transportation of this magnitude closed. The stock and vehicles that had been used were therefore gradually disposed of and the business terminated, the oxen being grazed for a year on the ranges west of Pierre and sold as beef on the Chicago market. At this time of retirement from active business, Captain Blakeley had attained the age of seventy-six years.

During the last ten years of this transportation company's operations, they carried as express matter, under strong guard of messengers, practically all of the gold and silver product of the Black Hills district, the values at times reaching $300,000 for a single trip.

Other financial enterprises in which Captain Blakeley had interests included the First National Bank of St. Paul, being one of its original stockholders; the St. Paul and Sioux City railroad, of which he was also an original stockholder, and was a director from 1866 to 1880; the St. Paul, Stillwater and Taylor's Falls railroad, being a charter member and the first president of the company organized for its construction; the St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company, in which he was