Trails-to-the-Past-Minnesota-Stearns-Biographies-Progressive-Men

DANIEL WEBSTER BRUCKART On both the paternal and maternal sides of the house Daniel Webster Bruckart, a lawyer at St. Cloud, Minnesota, is a descendant, in the fourth generation of prominent Hollanders who came to America during- the early part of the eighteenth century. He was born at Silver Spring, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, April 23, 1851, the son of Samuel and Catharine (Habecker) Bruckart. Samuel Bruckart was a native of the same county, and lived there all his life. He was engaged in the coal business and was largely interested in the development of iron mines in Lancaster and Cumberland Counties. He was prominent in the politics of his county and was a strong adherent of old Simon Cameron. Before the formation of the Republican party in 1856 Mr. Bruckart was a Whig of the Northern stripe, known as “woolly head.” He sided with the abolitionists and was an active participant in the operation of the “underground” railroad in the ante-bellum days.

Young Bruckart attended the public schools of his native town until his fourteenth year, when he went to Millersville Normal .School. When but in his fifteenth year he began teaching, doing this in the winter months and attending the normal school during the summer. Afterwards he entered Lafayette College, at Easton, Pennsylvania, staying at this institution three years. His pronounced oratorical gifts were developed at this college. The most prominent feature of student life at Lafayette was the rivalry between the two literary societies, Washington and Franklin Halls. These two societies alternated at commencement in having a senior give an address, the other society selecting a sophomore to respond. Daniel had the honor of being selected to give the sophomorical address. He was also active in the debating societies, his experience here serving him a good turn later in his profession. He was historian of his class and a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

Daniel at this time having decided to make law his profession in life, and also intending to practice in the West, thought it best to receive his law training in a Western school, so entered the Iowa State Law School at Iowa City, Iowa. He graduated from this institution with the class of 1872. and commenced active practice at Independence, Iowa. Since that time Mr. Bruckart has always been engaged in the general practice of law. He remained at Independence until 1883, when he moved to Minnesota, locating at St. Cloud. He formed a partnership with James McKelvey, ex-judge of the district court, which partnership continued until judge McKelvey’s death, since which time Mr. Bruckart has continued in practice alone. In politics he followed in his father’s footsteps, and has always been a Republican, taking an active part in every campaign since he reached the age of twenty-one, his first vote having been cast in a primary election in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, for John P. Rea, of Minneapolis, for congress. He has few equals in the state as a stump speaker and campaigner. During his residence in the state of Iowa he represented the Third Congressional District on the Iowa state central committee for four years, and also served as secretary of this committee. In 1880 he was an alternate from Iowa to the National Republican Convention.

Since residing in Minnesota he has been a member of the state central committee for two campaigns. He has also taken a prominent part in local municipal affairs, and served as mayor of St. Cloud for three terms. Mr. Bruckart is a Mason, a member of the 1. O. O. F. and K. of P. His religious affiliations are with the Unitarian Church of St. Cloud. He was married May 18, 1875, to Sara Williams of Independence, Iowa. Mr. and Mrs. Bruckart have had three children, two of whom are living: Leigh Dudley, born in 1876, and Lloyd Owen, born in 1881.

LOREN WARREN COLLINS, is associate justice of the supreme court. Mr. Collins is of New England birth, and traces his ancestry back to the early settlers of that section. He was born August 7, 1838, at Lowell, Mass. He attended the common schools and the high school, but never enjoyed the advantages of a college education.

This did not prevent him, however, from becoming a member of the supreme court and one of the leading lawyers of this state. Judge Collins’ father was, for many years, an overseer at the cotton factories in Lowell and Chicopee, Mass. The family moved from Lowell to Chicopee in 1840, when the subject of this sketch was only two years old. They transferred themselves again from Chicopee to Palmer in 1851. In 1853 the family came to Minnesota, locating on Eden Prairie, Hennepin County, and engaged in farming. Judge Collins had qualified himself for the work of a teacher, and his first money was earned as a teacher of a country school near Cannon Falls in the winter of 1859 and 1860 he taught four months for $60 and board. In 1859 Judge Collins began the study of law with the firm of Smith, Smith & Crosby, at Hastings. He enlisted in 1862 in the Seventh Minnesota infantry. These were troublous times on the borders, and in 1862 and 1863 Mr. Collins served in the campaign against the Sioux Indians. The Indian campaign being concluded, his regiment was sent South in the fall of 1863, Judge Collins going with it and serving with it to the end of the war in the Third Brigade, First Division, Sixteenth Army Corps. He was mustered out as first lieutenant, August 12, 1865.

On his return from the war he resumed the practice of law at St. Cloud in May, 1866. In 1868 he formed a partnership with Charles D. Kerr, which lasted until 1872, when Col. Kerr moved to St. Paul. In 1879 he formed a partnership with Theodore Bruener, which was dissolved in 1881. Judge Collins has always taken an active interest in politics and has held a number of important public positions. He was a member of the legislature in 1881 and 1883, and judge of the district court in 1883 to 1887, when he was appointed justice of the supreme court by the governor to succeed Justice Berry. He was elected in 1888 and has been on the supreme bench ever since. While serving in the legislature in 1881, he was chairman of the normal school committee and a member of the judiciary committee. In 1883 he was chairman of the finance committee, chairman of the committee on temperance legislation and a member of the judiciary committee. At the extra session of 1881 he was one of the board of managers on the part of the house in the impeachment of Judge Cox.

He was elected county attorney of Stearns county for several years prior to 1881, and held the office of mayor of St. Cloud in 1876, in ‘78 and ‘80. When elected associate justice of the supreme court in 1888, he ran against George W. Batchelder, a Democrat, and his majority was 46,432, the largest received up to that time by any candidate on the state ticket, but in 1894 he increased it to 49,684 over John W. Willis, who was nominated by both the Populists and the Democrats. This is the greatest majority ever received by any candidate on a state ticket. Judge Collins is a member of the Masonic order, of the G. A. R., and the Loyal Legion.

He belongs to the Unitarian church, and was married September 4, 1878, to Ella M. Stewart, at Berlin, Wisconsin. His wife died May 31, 1894. Judge Collins’ residence is at St. Cloud. He has three children living, Stewart Garfield, Louis Loren and Loren Fletcher.

LOUIS A. EVANS, of St. Cloud, is a native of Pennsylvania. He was born at Philadelphia, November 22, 1822, a son of Levi Evans and Elizabeth Wills (Evans). He attended the public schools of Philadelphia, but was not favored with the advantages of a college education. While yet a young man he left his native state and went South, where he resided until the fall of 1856, when he was attracted by the allurements of frontier life. In the fall of that year he began the long and tedious journey with ox teams which ended at what is now St. Cloud, September 15, the same year. Here Mr. Evans has resided ever since.

He has been repeatedly elected to offices of various degrees of importance and responsibility, administrative, legislative and judicial, and it is conceded that he has filled them all with credit to himself and to the satisfaction of the public. When the city of St. Cloud was incorporated in 1862 he was chosen as its first mayor, since which time he has held the same office four times, which of itself is an indication of the high esteem in which he is held by his fellow citizens.

After coming to Minnesota, Mr. Evans pursued the study of law and was admitted to the bar in October, 1866. In 1860 and 1861 he served as the representative of his district in the house of representatives, and in 1867 was promoted to the upper house in the state legislature. In 1862 Mr. Evans was elected city justice, which office he subsequently resigned to accept that of judge of Probate. After the expiration of his term as probate judge he was again elected city justice, only again to resign to accept the office of judge of probate, to which he had been elected and which he held without a break for nearly twenty years, as he did that of city justice nearly as long after being re-elected to that office. In politics Judge Evans is an old-line Democrat, and has always been regarded as one of the reliable adherents of that political faith, even when his party was so decidedly in the minority in this state that it cut but little figure in public affairs. As a leader among men, however, he was often honored by Minnesota Democrats with the position of delegate to party conventions, and represented the state in the national convention at Cincinnati in 1880, which nominated General Hancock for president.

During all this period of his public life in St. Cloud, the duties of which have demanded most of his attention, he has conducted privately the business of real estate and insurance, in which lines of activity he exercised the same energy and displayed the same qualities of uprightness and reliability which characterized his public acts. He has for many years been one of the directors of the First National Bank, and has been identified in many ways with enterprises for the promotion of the interests of St. Cloud. In early manhood he became a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and helped to organize the first lodge of that order in St. Cloud. Although now in his seventy-fourth year, Judge Evans is an active and vigorous man, in the full enjoyment of all his faculties, and actively engaged in the conduct of his professional and business interests. He was married in June, 1871, to Elizabeth W. Libby. They have no children.

CHARLES F. HENDRYX is one of the best known newspaper men in Minnesota. He came to the state in 1874, and was successively night editor and city editor of the Minneapolis Tribune during the time when it was owned by his father. In 1870 he went to Sauk Center, purchasing the Weekly Herald, whose editor and proprietor he has been since that time. Mr. Hendryx was born at Cooperstown, New York, April 22, 1847, and was the only son of James I. Hendryx, who for twenty-five years was editor of the Otsego Republican, of Cooperstown. He attended the public schools in Cooperstown, and at the age of fifteen was sent to the Deer Hill Institute, at Danbury, Connecticut, an Episcopal school for boys. Where he remained for several years. The gold pin which he still wears he won as a prize at this institute. For one year he attended the Cooperstown seminary, and after that was a student at Hobart College, Geneva, New York. He finished his school education at Cornell University, graduating from that institution as a member of its first senior class in 1869. Senator J. B. Foraker, of Ohio ; Rev. Dr. Rhodes, now pastor of St. John’s church, St. Paul, and Judge Buckwalter, of Cincinnati, were Mr. Hendryx’s classmates at Cornell.

In 1873 the elder Hendryx dispensed of his interests in Cooperstown and with his son, Charles F., came to Minneapolis, becoming proprietor of the Tribune. The investment was not a profitable one, and in 1879, father and son moved to Sauk Center, where the former died in 1883.

Although he has always been an ardent Republican, and has taken an active part in politics since coming to Minnesota, Mr. Hendryx has held but one public office, and that not a very lucrative one. During President Arthur’s administration he was postmaster at Sauk Center. In 1896 he was one of the delegates-at-large from this state to the national Republican convention at St. Louis, and voted there with the other delegates from this state for William McKinley as the party’s nominee for the presidency. Mr. Hendryx for years has exerted a strong influence among public men in Minnesota. As an editorial writer he is strong, clear and convincing; as a public speaker on educational and literary’ subjects as well as political, he is eloquent and forceful, with a command of language that enables him to clothe his thoughts attractively and elegantly. On September 6, 1876, he was married to Miss Fanny Galt Taylor, daughter of the late Colonel William Henry Harrison Taylor, who for sixteen years was state librarian. Mrs. Hendryx is a first cousin of ex-President Benjamin Harrison, and, of course, a grand daughter of ex-President William Henry Harrison. The union has been blessed with three children. The family is prominent in Episcopal church circles in northern Minnesota.

GEORGE REINARD KLEEBERGER of St. Cloud, was born at Monticello, Lafayette County, Wisconsin, February 25, 1849. His ancestry was German on his father’s side, and on his mother’s, Scotch and Irish. His parents were farmers and pioneers of Southern Wisconsin. Mr. Kleeberger lived on the farm until seventeen years of age, attending the country schools in the winter and working on the farm in the summers, as farmers’ boys usually did at that time.

His educational advantages were meager, but he made the best of those which the time and place afforded. From the time he was twelve until he was seventeen he attended various town academies during the winter and imbibed an ambition to acquire a higher education. He began teaching school in his home district when seventeen years of age, the salary being forty dollars a month, at which he earned the first money he ever acquired. From seventeen to twenty-one he was occupied most of the time teaching in the country schools, but managed to complete the course at the normal school at Platteville, Wisconsin, where he graduated in 1870 as the valedictorian of his class. He was then elected principal of a ward school at Manitowoc, Wisconsin, which he held for a year, and then principal of the high school at Green Bay, during the school year of 1871 and 1872. In 1872 he entered Yale college and took three years in the Sheffield Scientific School, graduating there in 1875. On his return to Wisconsin he was elected to the chair of science at the state normal school at Whitewater, and occupied that position from 1875 to 1878.

Mr. Kleeberger then went to California, where he continued his calling as a teacher; the first year as principal of the schools of San Diego; the next year, 1879 and 1880, as principal of the schools at Weaverville; the following years, 1880 and 1882, as principal of the high school at Marysville, and from 1882 to 1888 he held the chair of science in the state normal school at San Jose. In 1888 he was elected vice-president in the same institution, and was also a teacher of pedagogy and psychology until 1895.

In the latter year he was elected president of the state normal school at St. Cloud, Minnesota, and is now at the head of that institution. Mr. Kleeberger is a Democrat in politics, and believes fully in the principles of free trade and tariff for revenue only. He is a member of the Congregational church and occupies an enviable and influential position in the community in which he lives. He was married in 1879 in San Francisco, California, to Miss Mary Allen, of Minneapolis. They have had three sons, only one of whom is living, Frank Louis.

COLIN FRANCIS MACDONALD The publisher of the St. Cloud Daily and Weekly Times is Colin Francis Macdonald. Mr. Macdonald is of Scotch parentage, the son of John A. Macdonald, M. D., who was assistant surgeon of the Second Minnesota Cavalry during the Civil War, and Marjorie McKinley (Macdonald). Both parents were born in Scotland and are now deceased. Colin Francis was born in St. Andrews, Nova Scotia, September 23, 1843, and came with his parents to the United States when five years of age. The family lived in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, until the spring of 1856, when they removed to Minnesota and settled upon a pre-emption claim the same year, one and a half miles above Belle Plaine, Scott County.

The subject of this sketch received his education in the early Minnesota schools. When seventeen years of age he began work in the Belle Plaine Enquirer office, where he obtained his first experience in newspaper work. The following year he assisted his brother, John L. Macdonald, now of St. Paul, in establishing the Shakopee Argus, for which purpose the press and material of the old St. Anthony Express was purchased of Judge Isaac Atwater, of Minneapolis, and removed to Shakopee.

Though a boy of hardly nineteen years of age, Colin responded to President Lincoln’s call for men and August 18, 1862, enlisted with Horace B. Strait, at Shakopee, in what subsequently became Company I, Ninth Regiment Minnesota Volunteer Infantry. This regiment was sent to the frontier to operate against the Sioux Indians, and passed the following winter at Fort Ridgely. October 3, of the next year the regiment was ordered South, and passed that winter in Missouri, guarding railroads. The following spring it was sent to Memphis, Tennessee, where it joined a force operating in Mississippi, Tennessee and farther south. It participated in battles at Brice’s Cross Roads, (or Guntown), Mississippi; Tupelo, Mississippi; Oxford, Mississippi, raid; the pursuit of General Price through Arkansas and across Missouri: two days battle at Nashville; pursuit of the defeated General Hood; the in vesture of Mobile; siege of Spanish Fort, etc. Mr. Macdonald was color bearer of his regiment. At the close of the war he was commissioned as second lieutenant.

In 1866 he returned to Shakopee and formed a partnership with Morris C. Russell in the publication of the Shakopee Argus. The following spring he removed to St. Paul and secured employment on the Daily Pioneer as a compositor. He was employed there until January, 1875, when he removed to St. Cloud and purchased from Will H. Lamb the Weekly Times, which was founded in 1861. Mr. Macdonald continued the publication of the Weekly Times until September 27, 1887, when he commenced the publication of the Daily Times in addition to the Weekly. These two editions’ he is still publishing. His paper is Democratic in its politics, and as Stearns County is strongly Democratic, it is influential and profitable. Mr. Macdonald is and has been, since his first vote, a Democrat.

He was elected to represent the Stearns County district in the state senate in 1876, and was re-elected in 1878 and 1880. During this period he was a member of the only two courts of impeachment in the history of the state —one fur the trial of Judge Sherman Page, of Austin, and the other for the trial of Judge F. St. Julien Cox, of St. Peter, he was one of the four delegates-at-large from Minnesota to the National Democratic Convention at Chicago in 1884 which nominated Grover Cleveland and Thomas A. Hendricks. He has also for many years served as a member of the Democratic State Central and congressional historical committees. He was elected to the office of mayor of St. Cloud in 1883 and re-elected in 1884 and 1885. In recognition of his valuable services to the Democratic party President Cleveland appointed Mr. MacDonald Receiver of the Public Moneys at St. Cloud in 1885 which office he filled until February 10, 1889. He was again appointed to the same position by Mr. Cleveland March 1, 1894 which office he still holds, Mr. Macdonald has always taken a deep interest in the affairs of his own city and has been connected with all public movements intended to build up and benefit it.

He is a Catholic in his religious belief. October 27, 1868, he was married to Julia E. Lord, daughter of Dr. Charles Lord, of Shakopee, who died in January 1876. He was remarried February 21, 1881, to Elizabeth M. Campbell daughter of Edward Campbell of Forest City, and sister of ex-Marshal Campbell, of this state. By the first union four children were born, two of whom survive—Charles I. Macdonald, city editor of the Duluth Herald, and Julia MacDonald. By the second marriage four children were born three of whom are living—Edward Albert, Marjorie Elizabeth and Jessie Mary.

MARTIN MARTY Right Reverend Martin Marty, O. S. U., Second Bishop of St. Cloud, is a native of Switzerland. He was born at Schwvz, January 12, 1834. He early resolved to devote his life to the service of the church, and entering the great Benedictine Abbey of Einsiedeln, made his profession May 20, 1855. The young monk had already pursued his theological studies with such zeal and talent that the next year he was ordained priest, on the fourteenth of September.

About that time a colony of monks from Einsiedeln were sent to Indiana and founded the Monastery of Saint Meinrad Dom. Marty arrived in 1860 to share the labors of his brethren. The little community prospered, a college was established and the mission work became more extensive. In 1870 Pope Puis IX. erected St. Meinrad’s into an abbey, constituting the fathers connected with it into the Helveto-American Congregation, and its prior, Martin Marty, was made mitred abbott. The corner stone of the new monastery was laid May 22, 1872. Abbot Marty presided for several years, perfecting the institute under his care and extending the missions, erecting churches and fostering education.

He had a long cherished desire, however. to undertake mission work among the Indians and in 1876 he set out with some fathers to the Dakota Territory. The work there gave such promise that he resigned the dignity of abbot to devote himself to his new duties. In 1879 the territory of Dakota, comprising one hundred and seventy-five thousand square miles, was formed into a vicariate apostolic and entrusted to the care of the zealous Benedictine, who was consecrated Bishop of Tiberias, February 1, 1880. He continued in charge until 1889, when the vicariate was divided into the dioceses of Jamestown and Sioux Falls, Bishop Marty retaining the latter. In this year he was selected by President Cleveland to serve as a member of a commission appointed to treat with the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota concerning the cession of their lands, and with Senator Henry Rice and Dr. Joseph Whiting, he visited the different reservations and secured from the Indians their consent to the proposals made by congress.

In 1895 Bishop Marty was transferred to the Sec of St. Cloud as successor of Rt. Rev. Bishop Zardetti, who was transferred to the Archiepiscopal Sec of Bukarest, in Romania. At the beginning of 1896 the diocese of St. Cloud numbered seventy-two priests, eighty churches, twelve chapels, one university and seminary, forty-six parochial schools, with an attendance of five thousand one hundred children; one orphan asylum, containing one hundred orphans ; five other charitable institutions, and a population of about forty thousand Catholics. The See of St. Cloud is one of the most important in the Northwest, and to the care and promotion of this important work Bishop Marty devoted his entire time and energy, Bishop Marty died September 18, 1896.

NELSON H. MINER was born on January 26, 1833, at Shoreham, Addison County, Vermont. He was the son of Hiram and Eliza Miner, a farmer and mechanic and in fair financial circumstances. His grandfather, Richard Miner, was a soldier in the Continental Army during the Revolution and participated in the Battle of Bennington under Stark. His early educational advantages were limited to a few months each year in the country school and to the use of a small school library, and a few newspapers and periodicals received by the family.

After leaving home and working on a farm for nearly two years he attended the district school for one winter term and then entered Franklin Academy, at Malone, New York. Here he studied for about three years, paying his way from the savings of the two previous years, and by teaching and farm work during vacations. Instead of pursuing his studies further he commenced to read law in the office of Parmelee & Fitch, in Malone, New York, and was admitted to the bar in that state in 1856. He practiced law two years in St. Lawrence and Franklin counties, New York, and then moved to Waupun, Wisconsin, in 1858, where he built up an extensive practice.

In November, 1860 he came to Minnesota and formed a law partnership with Judge N. H. Hemiup, under the firm name of Miner & Hemiup. In April, 1861, Mr. Miner enlisted in Company E, First Minnesota Infantry, for a three months’ term, and served about one month when the regiment was disbanded for the purpose of reorganizing under the three-year enlistment. At the time of the reorganization he was confined to his bed by sickness, and was thus prevented from re-enlisting. But on the breaking out of the Sioux war of 1862 he volunteered, and was one of Captain Northrup’s company which went to the relief of Fort Ridgley. On August 29, 1864, he enlisted at St. Anthony in Company E, of Hatch’s Battalion Cavalry volunteers, and served on the Minnesota frontier until discharged with the company on May 1, 1866.

During the same month he went to Sauk Center, Minnesota, and resumed the practice of law. On the first of January, 1870, he became associated with A. Barto, afterwards Lieutenant Governor, under the firm name of Miner & Barto. This firm continued ten years, and was resumed in name in 1894, when L. R. Barto, the son of Mr. Miner’s former partner, became his associate in practice.

Mr. Miner has always been a Democrat, though of late years he has not been identified with any political party, he was for several years a member of the Board of Education of St. Anthony, and drafted the act, and procured its passage, by which the Board of Education of the town of Sauk Center was incorporated. The school system of the city is still regulated by this act. Mr. Miner served as a member and secretary of the board from its organization in 1869 until 1877. During this time he was instrumental in securing the building of the first school house and in originating the excellent graded school system of the city. He originated and did much for the support of the Bryant Library of Sauk Center, an institution which now contains about three thousand volumes. In 1867 and again in 1868 Mr. Miner served his county in the state legislature. During his service as representative he drafted and brought to passage the act abolishing capital punishment in this state. He is now mayor of Sauk Center, serving his second term in that office. Mr. Miner is a member of the Masonic order, of the G. A. R., and of the K. P. He is an attendant of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

On January 1, 1857, he was married to Miss Julia E. Martin, who died on April 9, 1872. They had three children, Gertrude Eliza, Helen Adeline and Jessie Fremont. On November 13, 1874, he was married to Miss Kate Martin, his present wife.

WILLIAM BELL MITCHELL has until recently, been identified with journalism in Minnesota since 1858. His father, Henry Z. Mitchell, came to Minnesota from Pennsylvania and by appointment of Governor Ramsey was made commissary general of Minnesota during the time of the Indian troubles. He located in St. Cloud in May, 1857, was appointed postmaster of that town by President Lincoln, and was deputy provost marshal for a time during the war. His wife was Elizabeth A. Canon, whose ancestors were Scotch Covenanters, and among those who suffered many privations and persecutions in Scotland for the sake of their faith. Her only sister was the celebrated Mrs. Jane Gray Swisshelm, who cut a large figure in the anti-slavery movement and in Minnesota journalism in the early history of the state. The subject of this sketch was born May 14, 1843 at Wilkinsburg, now a part of the city of Pittsburg. He attended a local academy and spent a year in the mathematical department of Duff’s College, Pittsburg, before moving to Minnesota. After his arrival in St. Cloud he attended an academy in that town for a short time, and for a year or more took private lessons in such time as his work in a printing office would permit, but by the time he was eighteen his school days were over.

Mr. Mitchell recalls that his first dollar, which he received in depreciated county orders, was earned in the spring of 1858, when he was only fifteen years of age. He was a member of a surveying party under T. H. Barrett, afterwards Gen. Barrett, to locate the state road from St. Cloud to Breckenridge, through a country then unsettled. This work occupied nearly six weeks. The following winter Mr. Mitchell obtained employment in the office of the St. Cloud Visiter, a paper published by Mrs. Swisshelm, intending to remain at first but a short time. He learned to set type, was afterwards made foreman of the office, then local editor and news editor of the paper, did a little general editorial work and so on, with the result that the engagement which was intended to be but temporary, became permanent. The Visiter was the red-hot antislavery paper which fought the battle of abolition so vigorously that one night the type, and part of the press, was thrown into the Mississippi River.

After the war broke out Mrs. Swisshelm went to Washington to devote herself to hospital work. Mr. Mitchell continued to run the paper, and in 1864 purchased the plant. Mrs. Swisshelm had changed the name of it to the Democrat. This was a political misnomer, and Mr. Mitchell named it the Journal. In 1876 he purchased the Press, which had been started four years before, and consolidated the two papers under the name of the Journal-Press. He continued the publication of this paper as a straight out Republican weekly, and made it one of the best country weeklies in the whole country. In 1892, having become interested in a pulp mill and other manufacturing enterprises, Mr. Mitchell sold the paper on September 1, to Alvah Eastman, of Anoka, still retaining, however, a business interest in and having editorial connection with the paper. Mr. Mitchell’s manufacturing business was destroyed by fire in August, 1893, and since that time be has been engaged in the real estate and loan business. He has been for a long time active in promoting the best interests of the city of St. Cloud, and was an active, member and director of the St. Cloud Waterpower Company which constructed the dam across the Mississippi River at that point.

Mr. Mitchell has always been a Republican, and while he was never a candidate for any elective office, has held several appointive offices. President Lincoln made him receiver of the land office of St. Cloud in 1865. He was removed for political reasons by President Johnson, was re-appointed by President Hayes in 1878 and by President Arthur in 1882, and was removed by President Cleveland for “offensive partisan-ship” in 1885. He has been a member of the state board of normal school directors and has been resident director of the Normal School of St. Cloud since 1887. He has taken an active interest in politics and has served on various party committees. Mr. Mitchell is a member of the Presbyterian Church. He was married December 7, 1870 in Marietta, Ohio, to Miss Emily Whittlesey. They have eight children. Carrie T., Mildred W., Eleanor, Leslie, Jane W., Henry Z., Ruth H. and Dorothy.

DOLSON BUSH SEARLE is judge of the district court of the Seventh District of Minnesota, and resides at St. Cloud. His father was Almond D. Searle, who resided in Franklinville, Cattaraugus County, New York, and was a prosperous farmer. His mother was Jane Scott, of Scotch birth and a lineal descendant of Sir Walter Scott. On his father’s side, Mr. Searle’s grandfather was Elijah Searle, a man of more than ordinary ability and force of character. He took active part in public and political affairs. He was formerly a resident of Whitehall, New York, and was a soldier in the War of 1812. He also took part in the battle of Lake Champlain. He died about the year 1865, and was then about seventy years of age. Judge Searle’s grandfather on his mother’s side was John Scott, of Scotch descent, and a man of good ability. He was a farmer at Whitehall, New York, and was a soldier in the War of 1812.

The subject of this sketch was born June 4, 1846 at Franklinville, New York. His early education was obtained in the common schools and the academy of his native town. He graduated from the Columbian Law College of Washington, D. C, in 1868, with high honors. Three years later he came to Minnesota and began the practice of law with Hon. E. O. Hamlin, at St. Cloud, the style of the firm being Hamlin & Searle. Mr. Searle soon obtained a prominent position as lawyer, and also took an active part in state politics as a Republican. He was elected city attorney of St. Cloud for six years; county attorney of Stearns County two years, although in a strong Democratic county, and his majority reached as high as eleven hundred. He was appointed United States district attorney in April, 1882, by President Arthur, and served with conspicuous ability until December, 1885, when he resigned on his own motion in order to give President Cleveland a chance to appoint his successor. Mr. Searle was a member of the state central Republican committee in 1886 and 1887, and took an active part in the Republican national campaign in the fall of 1884. He was appointed district judge of the Seventh Judicial District November 12, 1887, by Governor McGill, and re-elected without opposition in the fall of 1888, and again in 1894. Judge Searle was nominated for congress from the Sixth District in 1892. There was a vigorous contest for that nomination between him and H. Z. Kendall, of Duluth. Judge Searle made a brilliant campaign and ran ahead of his state ticket and national ticket over a thousand votes, notwithstanding the opposition to him in St. Louis County, where he received only a bare majority, although Governor Nelson received about fifteen hundred majority. He was defeated at the polls by Major Baldwin, but by a very small majority.

Judge Searle has an honorable war record. He enlisted as a private in Company I, Sixty-fourth New York Infantry, in August, 1861, and served for nearly two years. He was engaged in the following battles: Yorktown, Seven Pines, Fair Oaks, Savage Station, Malvern Hill, the seven days’ fight before Richmond, the second battle of Bull Run, Antietam, White Oak Swamp, Lee’s Mills, Williamsburg and other notable engagements. Mr. Searle, having been discharged from active service in the army in 1863 on account of disability, was at that time appointed clerk in the war department at Washington and held that position until 1871. He was during most of this period in charge of an important bureau in the Adjutant General’s office.

Judge Searle has always been a Republican, and until he went on the bench was very active in political matters, and has given his influence and best judgment to the proper conduct of the municipal affairs of his own city. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity, being’ a Master Mason, a Royal Arch Mason and a Knight Templar. He is also a member of the Knights of Pythias and of Lodge No. 59 of the Elks. He is a prominent member of the G. A. R., and on October 24, 1896, was appointed aid-dc-camp, with the rank of colonel, upon the staff of the commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic. He was married in 1875 to Miss Mary Elizabeth Clarke, of Worcester, Massachusetts.

GEORGE WARREN STEWART is a lawyer at St Cloud. His father, Joseph Stewart, came to Minnesota from Prince Edward’s Island in 1853 and located at Bellevue, Morrison County, where he was engaged in farming and lumbering for the next ten years. In 1863 he went into the army as a member of the Seventh Minnesota regiment, and died in the service at St. Louis, Missouri, of smallpox contracted while in the army. He was a native of Greenock, Scotland. His wife was Joanna B. Hill, of New Brunswick, her parents both being natives of Maine and members of the well-known families of Hill and Phillips in that state. The ancestors of the subject of this sketch, both on his father’s and mother’s side, were honest and well-to-do farmers and lumbermen, none of whom, however, ever occupied any very prominent positions except in local affairs, but have been recognized as intelligent and worthy people in the limited circle in which they moved.

George Warren was born at Bellevue, Morrison County, Minnesota, June 18,1859. After preparing in the district schools he entered the State Normal School at St. Cloud and graduated from the advanced academic course. In August, 1883, he began the study of law in the office of Taylor & Taylor at St. Cloud. He was admitted to practice December 14, 1884, and tried his first case the following January in a justice court, twenty-three miles from St. Cloud, having driven there before nine o’clock in the morning with the thermometer at thirty-five degrees below zero. He won his case before the jury and returned the same night, with the magnificent fee of five dollars, four of which went to pay his livery bill. However, his legal practice is not to be judged by the financial results of its beginning. He has since practiced his profession continuously at St. Cloud, for one year with Oscar Taylor, under the firm name of Taylor & Stewart; for a short time with Hon. D. B. Searle; then with George H. Reynolds for three years, and since January 1, 1891, has been practicing by himself. Mr. Stewart takes an active interest in the affairs of St. Cloud, and has for eight years been a member of the school board, and for the last six years its secretary. For five years he has served in the city council, and at this writing is the president of this body.

In politics he is a Republican, but beyond the local offices undertaken in the service of his fellow citizens of .St. Cloud, he has never held any office. He is a member of St. Cloud Lodge, No. 32. Knights of Pythias, and St. Cloud Royal Arcanum Council. He is a member of the Unitarian church, of St. Cloud, and has been secretary of the society since its organization, about eight years ago. Mr. Stewart was married August 23, 1888, to Miss Mary L. Huntsman, and has two sons, Warren H. and Donald.

The information on Trails to the Past © Copyright may be used in personal family history research, with source citation. The pages in entirety may not be duplicated for publication in any fashion without the permission of the owner. Commercial use of any material on this site is not permitted. Please respect the wishes of those who have contributed their time and efforts to make this free site possible.~Thank you!