3-052-465 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches of a new settlement in Minnesota, 1880. 'Our Illustrations of a "frontier town'' and settlers' home, with some of the Indian neighbours, in the State of Minnesota, are supplied by Sketches we lately received from Mr. W. P. Hooper...Minnesota was organised as a "Territory" in 1819, and was admitted into the Union as a "State" in 1857...The aspect of such an incipient "frontier town," in its first year or two, when it consists merely of a few log houses, including a "store" or general shop, a blacksmith's or wheelwright's, and a drinking- saloon, but in good time a church and school, may be easily recognised; and the passing bullock-waggon is a type of its rudeness. In the nearer view of a settler's log-built cottage, nestling in the warm side of a grassy bank, where the industrious wife is picking maize from the corn-cobs hung up to dry, while the husband paddles his own canoe to get across the lake or river, and the horses rub each other's necks in peace, we have quite an idyllic scene. Not less pleasant is the figure of a Minnesota farmer's daughter on horseback, carrying her basket for the purchase of groceries or "dry goods" in the nearest market town which may be twenty or thirty miles from her parents' home'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.