One of the highlights of my time at the Freeborn County Historical Museum has been the opportunity to find out just how “human&uot; our forefathers were. We think of them as brave people, willing to face the unknown for the sake of a new life in a new land. We don’t often read of their foibles or even their everyday routines. The following information and quotations are from the History of Freeborn County, Minnesota, 1882.

1857 – The population of the county was 2,486, 285 in Albert Lea. A tax of $400 was levied as steps were taken to build a school house. Two mails a week were arriving in Albert Lea via Red Wing. Building was so extensive that all of the lumber the sawmill could turn out was used up and the supply at St. Nicholas was exhausted. In October there were four stage lines running – from Mankato, Winona, and Red Wing, and Mitchell, South Dakota.

1858 – “Albert Lea began to flourish as a sea-port … when the brig Itasca, Captain Franklin of Shell Rock [Glenville], arrived, loaded with shingles. The people began to use nautical terms and to hitch their trousers as though they had just come ashore.”

1859 – On the 6th of May, Nelson Boughton was fatally stabbed by Henry Kreigler, and after a 30 day trial in Steele County, Kreigler was found guilty and returned to Albert Lea for the hanging that took place on March 1, 1861 on what is now South Broadway near the railroad tracks. “The legal strangulation was witnesses by several thousand people … in that arnphitheatre formed by the surrounding hills … It is said that this was the only white man ever legally executed in Minnesota.” One of the first recorded horse races in Freeborn County “was between a horse owned by F. L. Cutler and one owned by F. Lamb, for $ 100 a side. Then came a race between Botsford’s black gelding, Crazy Frank, and Dr. Wedge’s horse Selam, in which Crazy Frank won and Botsford raked in $40.”

1861 – “Ruble’s mill was wrecked and the dam washed away by a freshet in April … In October the butchers in Albert Lea offered two cents a pound for cattle weighing eleven hundred pounds or more.”

1862 – An anti-cattle and horse thief society was organized. Mrs. Hannibal Bickford went to St. Louis to see her husband, a Union soldier who was seriously ill and hospitalized. When she arrived, he was much improved and they made arrangements to return home. When they were on the wharf waiting to board the Denmark, “their attention was called to a little girl who was in a pitiable condition. An investigation showed that the father of the little girl was a Union soldier, and having taken sick his wife went to his relief with the little girl.

She too sickened and both died, and an old tarmagant of an aunt had her in charge to carry home, and she had shamefully abused the little waif .. The woman was willing to be relieved of what she considered a burdensome charge, so she was turned over to Mr. and Mrs. Bickford, the Captain bestowing the name of Denmark Bickford upon her. She was adopted and came home with them to this country, and grew up to be a fine young woman…”

1866 – “During the summer there was an average of twenty wagons a day passing through Albert Lea with emigrants … Wheat in July was selling in Milwaukee for $2.O4V2 per bushel.”

1867 – In May the Albert Lea Musical and Theatrical Association was organized … and on June 18th the association gave its initial entertainment, ‘Box & Cox; married and settled.’

1868 – “Some time in the month of January, James Buchanan of Shell rock, shuffled off this mortal coil through the medium of fifty cents worth of morphine. He was about forty-five years of age and had been in Arizona.”

1869 – “Pigeons were so plentiful in the region of Albert Lea, that like clouds they darkened the sun … The tide of emigration in May was at its flood. Prairie schooners by the score were floating along through town, and day after day their white canvass might be seen surrounded by herds of cattle, as they wended their way toward the setting sun, which presaged a rising orb to all their hopes … The Southern Minnesota railroad reached Albert Lea on Saturday, the 16th of October, and on Monday business began.”

1870 – “During the month of July a petrefied (sic) duck was found near Pickerel Lake.”

I grew up believing that history happened to kings and presidents. Now I believe that history is “us.”

(Bev Jackson is the executive director of the Freeborn County Historical Museum.)