St. Croix Riverway Time and the River: A History of the Saint Croix

CHAPTER 3:
"The New Land": Settlement and the Development of Agriculture in the St. Croix Valley (continued)

Land Speculation and Growing Pains

In 1856, John Bond expressed the optimism of the time when he wrote in his territorial guidebook, "The immigration to Minnesota is composed of men who come with the well-founded assurance that, in a land where Nature had lavished her choicest gifts — where sickness has no dwelling place — where the dreaded cholera has claimed no victims — their toil will be amply rewarded, while their persons and property are fully protected by the broad shield of law." [96] This rosy picture of the North Country led to a "real estate mania" in the valley. Yankee land speculators bought up land along the river gambling on its value increasing with the influx of newcomers. There were high expectations that the timber resources and waterpower would transform the region into a great manufacturing center. In 1855, the St. Croix Union wrote that from Taylors Fall began "A succession of falls and rapids six miles in length, creating one of the most extensive water powers in the North-west, and easily controlled. With the materials for manufacturing with which the St. Croix Valley abounds, there must spring up here manufacturing cities which may surpass Lowell, Nashua, or Lawrence [Massachusetts]." [97]

Land that had been claimed under pre-emption and bought for $1.25 per acre sold for $5.00 an acre after it had been "improved" with a small lean-to and a small tract of broken sod. Dozens of towns were platted, many before they were even surveyed and their exact location specified. But buyers both in the St. Croix Valley and in the East willingly bought them. Eastern capitalists also poured large sums of money into St. Paul banks that in turn made loans of three percent to land investors in the valley. [98] In some of the more settled towns, it was said that a parcel of land that sold for five hundred dollars in the morning could fetch a thousand dollars by evening. All it took was a fast-talking salesman who could convince an unwary buyer that he could hear a train whistle in the not-too-distant future. As a local commentator put it, "Every settler felt himself a prospective millionaire, and the public imagination soared high with greedy hope." [99] Even remote settlements like Sunrise encouraged speculators. "I shall not undertake to express an opinion," wrote a local resident in 1856, "as to the advantages of this point as a place for investments. . .The confidence of everyone owning property here. . .is its value, I will venture to say,' has increased, is increasing, and ought' not ‘to be diminished." [100]

The one town that did not experience this rush of development was St. Croix Falls. It was situated in a picturesque setting near waterfalls that dropped fifty-five feet in a six-mile stretch. The turbulent falls never had the opportunity to freeze in the winter. This feature made it an ideal location for year-round water-powered manufacturing. Ironically, it was the early recognition of St. Croix Falls's assets that ignited the "greedy hope" that in turn arrested its development. The town's growth was put on hold through most of the 1850s due to the bitter lawsuit between Caleb Cushing and William Hungerford. When it was finally resolved in Cushing's favor in 1857, a financial panic hit the country, and Cushing, back east, lost touch with his Wisconsin interests. His lack of attention continued throughout the Civil War. Cushing and Hungerford "unitedly accomplished the ruin of their town," wrote Folsom. Other hindrances to pioneering in the St. Croix Falls area was of course, its dense forest land. It did not help matters to have the land office, which was opened in 1848, moved to Stillwater in the Minnesota Territory and to Willow River (Hudson) further down river in Wisconsin in 1849. No significant settlement took place in the area before the Civil War. [101]

There was only one other holdup to progress in areas near the pineries, one observer noted wistfully, "It is that there are but few women. We saw scores of old bachelors who have pined away their three and thirty without being consoled by the smiles of this fair portion of God's Creation." Local towns did not have any females to spare. A plea went out to the East "that their philanthropy be extended towards us and the goodly bach's of Taylor's Falls, and that they do send by their earliest possible convenience, a cargo of this valuable commodity. . .Minnesota's sons will welcome the first boat as the most valuable cargo that ever ascended the St. Croix." [102]

Although giddy with hope for the future prosperity of the St. Croix Valley, the communities here did not escape the growing pains experienced by the rest of the country as different groups from across the country and the Atlantic Ocean converged into small towns and farming hamlets. By the mid-1850s many "native" Americans, meaning Anglo-Protestants, became increasingly alarmed at the large number of foreigners, especially Catholics, swarming into the country. They felt the essential free and democratic character of the United States was in jeopardy. Protestants accused the highly centralized, authoritarian Roman Catholic Church of anti-democratic tendencies. Catholics had not been schooled in independent, democratic practices, they argued. Their church required slavish devotion, and their parochial school undermined the public school, which was the backbone of a democratic society. The American party, popularly known as the Know-Nothings, aimed to restrict immigration by limiting office holding to native-born Americans and to restrict citizenship to those who had lived in the United States for twenty-one years. This platform was aimed at states like Wisconsin that had generously offered the vote to foreign-born persons who lived in the state for one year — a first in the country. Many nativist politicians succeeded in gaining office throughout the country, and it looked like immigration and the rights of foreign-born people might be severely curtailed. By the end of the decade, however, the nativist movement foundered on the growing sectional crisis over slavery, and the Know-Nothing Party disappeared from the national stage. Some of its members were absorbed into the new Republican Party that muted nativism under its slogan of, "Free Soil, Free Men, Free Labor." However, the damage was done in Wisconsin. The state legislature was forced to disband its entire emigration agency. It was not revived until after the Civil War. [103]

The nativist movement's tentacles had reached even the raw frontier communities along the St. Croix River. Many Yankee New Englanders, who played a key role in felling the forests and developing the towns along the St. Croix River, harbored nativist sentiment. After an election in 1857, the Stillwater Messenger, a Republican paper, printed derisive comments about Irish voters. The paper complained that they voted as a "solid phalanx" in soiled, shabby clothing. The Democratic St. Croix Union angrily responded:

The Messenger has unwittingly showed the cloven foot. The great majority of the black Republicans hate an Irishman much worse that they do the devil himself, and the Messenger. . .publicly proclaims what is privately taught by their leaders. They hate an Irishman, and some of them are determined that the Irish, and Dutch, and French, and all foreigners, shall be deprived of the right of suffrage. . .Our opinion is, that any foreigner, if he be naturalized, or has declared his intention to become naturalized, has as good a right to vote as a native born. [104]

The St. Croix Valley, however, could not do without immigrant labor. The St. Croix Union argued a more pragmatic approach to the immigrant issue. It claimed:

Strike out what the Irishman has done for America, and the country would be set back fifty years in the path of progress. Corn would grow where the Erie canal bears the freight of millions of fertile acres; the lumbering coach would take the place of flying trains on ten thousand miles of railroad...Hundreds of millions of dollars could not purchase from the American people the property and advantages that have absolutely been bestowed upon them by Irish labor. . .it is an essential element in American thrift and progress and we could not lose it for a month without recurrence of chaos. [105]

By 1860, the Stillwater Messenger showed acceptance of Protestant immigrant groups. It described Scandinavians as "hardy, industrious, frugal and honest people" who were "succeeding well" in Minnesota. Of the Germans it wrote, "The enterprise of the German people who had come among us, and the success which has almost invariably rewarded their laborious and indefatigable efforts. . .have had the effect to induce a large emigration of that worthy class of people among us." But the Scandinavians and many Germans were Protestants, which perhaps made them easier to accept. Some bitterness towards Irish Catholics still lingered in the paper when it wrote that, "The emigrants expected from Ireland this season, are said to be of a superior class from those usually found among us, belonging mainly to the agricultural class, educated, and pretty generally Protestants, and possessed of some money and means." [106]

Wisconsin's emigration office, however, had been successful in laying the basis for the state to become one of the most ethnically diverse in the country. While recruitment of new immigrants was left now in private hands, it proved no less effective. "American letters" from friends and relatives who made it to Wisconsin enticed their European counterparts to make the journey themselves. Churches also played a critical role in this "chain migration," where letters, money, immigrant guide books, and even prepaid ship fares were sent to the old country to bring the next group over to start a new life on the Wisconsin frontier. [107]

Sectional issues and the collapse of the Know-Nothings were perhaps less important to the decline in nativism in the St. Croix Valley than economic issues. In 1857, a natural downturn in the national business cycle provoked a general panic as holders of banknotes rushed to their banks for redemption. Many banks temporarily suspended specie payment and others completely failed. An economic depression followed as businesses throughout the North folded. While most of Wisconsin's banks remained solvent, it was among the worst hit states by the economic downturn. For two to three years coins and reliable banknotes were extremely hard to come by. Wisconsin businessmen then could not pay their eastern creditors. Loans were impossible to obtain. In many areas the economy reverted to the primitive system of bartering goods and services. Federal land sales plummeted. [108]

The panic reached into the St. Croix frontier since logging companies and land speculators had financial ties to the East and saw its markets for lumber collapse. Cash and credit quickly evaporated. Land agencies folded. Several banks in the valley, such as the Hudson City Bank, the St. Croix Valley Bank, the Farmers and Mechanics Bank, and the Chisago County Bank were forced to close their doors. Wildcat currency was refused, and barter became the only means to exchange goods. In November 1857, the Stillwater Messenger made a plea for farmers to sell their wheat they had been holding on to in the hope of fetching higher prices later in order to keep the economy solvent. "There cannot be a greater mistake than for the farmers to hold on to their grain in hopes of higher prices, rather than sell at present prices and pay their indebtedness to country merchants and other creditors," the newspaper wrote. "For in the present unsettled state of the money market, capitalists will not invest money for wheat in store, except at very low rates. . .a considerable rise in the price of wheat is very dim, and it is more likely to go lower than higher." It argued that it was also a matter of "justice and common honesty. . .[to] sell their crop and pay their debts." "It is their neglect to do this, which is the main cause of the money pressure," the Messenger asserted. "The city merchant cannot pay his debts in New York or Boston, because the country merchant cannot pay because the farmers. . .are indebted to him for one, two, and sometimes for even three years' purchases. And here is the root of the whole evil." One way settlers remained economically solvent was to harvest ginseng. Ginseng was a common wild plant that grew in shady places close to the ground. This aromatic root could be immediately sold to markets in China, where it was considered to have magical medicinal powers. Settlers along the Wisconsin River and the St. Croix were among the chief gatherers of this international export. [109]

The financial panic also brought the land speculation frenzy to an end. Antipathy towards speculators had been building for the last few years. Certainly the Cushing vs. Hungerford affair was the most glaring example of speculators single-handedly interfering with "progress." [110] Cushing became the embodiment of the evil non-resident speculator in the St. Croix Valley for years to come. Residents from Marine Mills complained as early as 1855 that speculators were responsible for the slow growth of the town. "The most pernicious of all, which has, perhaps, caused the sluggish growth of this town," wrote one settler, was "the grasping, griping propensity: ‘Get all you can and hold on to all you get,'" of land speculators. [111] By 1857, these land hogs were blamed for holding up development throughout the St. Croix Valley. Land here was "principally owned by non-resident speculators," complained one resident, which "renders its agricultural development almost impossible. The evil effects of throwing large bodies of Government land into markets at one time, to be taken up by moneyed speculators to the exclusion of actual settlers, is terribly made manifest in the immediate vicinity of the St. Croix. This deplorable landed monopoly is the only barrier this portion of Minnesota meets in its onward progress." [112] Many of the towns that had been platted with high hopes and expectations never materialized. W.H.C. Folsom wryly noted that the "town" of Drontheim in Chisago County, which had been platted in 1856, was "still a brush and swamp plat" in the 1880s. The "town" of Chippewa in Chisago County, which was platted the same year, Folsom facetiously noted, "makes a fair farm." [113]

The financial panic also changed the course of agricultural settlement and development along the St. Croix. Land speculators in Marine Mills were forced to unload their monopoly on town lots "on very favorable terms." [114] And it spurred a farming boom. Hundreds of people, who had been reluctant to get into farming because of the insect pests, drought, and prairie fires that plagued the first farmers, abandoned towns for the land when money and employment evaporated. By the spring of 1858 the amount of land brought under cultivation in Minnesota had doubled. [115] In Marine Mills the change in the economy finally brought to the town the completion of a flourmill that it bragged was "superior to any other in Minnesota." [116]

The experience of Irish immigrants to the St. Croix provides a good example of how an economy that went bust pushed them into farming. Wisconsin's eagerness for internal improvements and economic development of its north country in the early 1850s had also acted as a recruiting agent for immigrants to the state and the St. Croix Valley. In 1854, the Wisconsin legislature chartered the St. Croix, Superior and Bayfield Railway to extend through Hudson. Congress soon after relinquished the land for the right-of-way, and the people of Hudson raised forty-seven thousand dollars in subscriptions for the railroad. When work began, a large colony of Irish railway workers came to Hudson. They joined their compatriots who had come to work on the river in the logging industry. When the financial panic struck, many Irish loggers and railroad workers lost their jobs. Many moved out onto "the prairie" and joined the small Irish farming community in Erin Prairie on the Willow River. [117] In 1860, nearly all the heads of families in Erin Township were born in Ireland. Erin Prairie became a prosperous farming community and dispelled the negative stereotypes of the Irish as "barroom loafers" and "ignorant." [118]

Throughout most of Wisconsin lumbering remained in a slump for nearly three years after the panic. National demand for lumber eventually helped the St. Croix Valley make some recovery from the panic, and by 1859 the business community was on the upswing. The growth of agriculture, however, played a significant role in the turn-around of the area economy. St. Croix farmers, anxious to make quick cash, indulged in wheat growing. Cheap land, good soil, and access to a national market made this possible. The St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers, of course, were the main highways for agricultural export, particularly to states south. By the late 1850s railroads enhanced their connections to eastern markets. In 1857, a railroad reached Prairie du Chien and another reached La Crosse in 1858. Wheat was then shipped to the Port of Milwaukee and east through the Great Lakes. The economic opportunities were obvious in the St. Croix. "A farmer can crop one hundred acres of wheat in Minnesota," wrote the Stillwater Messenger in the spring of 1859, "with no more expense than it would cost to crop thirty in any of the Middle States, provided he makes use of all the modern appliances." [119]

The St. Croix Valley's wheat boom was possible because its soil was still rich and fertile when the soil in the lower Midwest and Great Lakes region was exhausted and these areas were unable to meet the national demand. A contributor for the Ohio Farmer admitted to the Stillwater Messenger, "It is already shown that Ohio can produce crops that are better for her soil and climate than wheat; one good crop in three years is about all we can expect." In southern Michigan, southern Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois "the result is no better." The scientific thinking of the time argued that wheat grew better above forty-five degrees latitude and corn grew better below that. "When the country has had a few more years of cultivation," the Ohio Farmer advised Minnesotans, "there will appear in the New York market, flour barrels with Minnesota brands, and that it will be of superior quality." Railroads, the Messenger, argued were key to reaching eastern markets via Lake Superior. "That accomplished, the time will not be far distant when Minnesota flour will find European markets without the expense of a single trans-shipment." [120]

By May 1859, the Messenger could brag that, "The past season is the first season that Minnesota has been a produce-exporting State." Two thousand three hundred and seventy sacks of grain and potatoes had been load onto a steamboat at Hudson. Another packet shipped out thirty-five hundred sacks. "The change from an importing to an exporting community has been attend with visible and happy effects. . .we think we can see that ‘goodtime coming' very near at had." [121] The bountiful harvest of 1860 "will long be remembered as a very propitious and fruitful season, " the Messenger boasted. While crop production was down further south in the state due to drought, the "one great feature of the soil and climate of our favored Minnesota, is the great certainty of producing a good crop every year. There has not been a general failure of any crop since the first settlement of the country." [122]

In many respects, however, wheat production was a symptom of the poverty of frontier life because of its ability to command cash with minimal investment in labor, time, and material. While older settlements in Wisconsin had already experienced the consequences of wheat specialization in soil exhaustion and lower yields, few people in the St. Croix Valley paid any heed. So many were recent immigrants with little means and who did not have the luxury to contemplate the future. They had to survive in the present, even if that meant compromising the fertility of the soil and their future profitability. Many migrants had left eastern states because of soil exhaustion and were, therefore, in the habit of moving on rather than learn to diversify. [123]

Some farmers in the central part of the state went from producing twenty to twenty-five bushels of wheat per acre to only five or six bushels just a few years later. In addition, in some years limited snowfall in the winter left soil moisture so low that it led to crop failures in the early 1850s. These crop failures prompted an agricultural reform movement in the state capitol of Madison. In 1851, legislators and interested citizens organized a state agricultural society and sponsored the first state fair and cattle show that fall in Janesville. The society also encouraged the formation of county level societies. Through state and county fairs, agricultural reformers hoped their exhibits and demonstrations would educate farmers to more scientific farming practices, such as crop rotation and diversification, use of fertilizers, stockbreeding, animal shelters, raising hogs and sheep, the best grasses for hay, and producing butter and cheese that was palatable and saleable. [124]

Several counties in the valley did recognize the need for agricultural societies to begin educating farmers in better farming practices. St. Croix County organized a society in 1857 and Pierce County followed suit in 1859. In 1855, the first annual fair of the Minnesota Territorial Agricultural Society met in Minneapolis. Washington County made a showing of their agricultural wealth at the fair. [125] Although it attempted to form a county agricultural society in 1856, it never succeeded. While farming had taken strong root in the delta region and Stillwater certainly had organizational experience, organized farming was not a priority before the panic of 1857. It was not until 1871 that Washington County finally formed an agricultural society. [126] Minnesota newspapers, however, tried to fill in the gap by printing reports of successful crops. "Onions are among the vegetables which luxuriate in our soil," proclaimed the Messenger, "Several specimens measured 13-1/2 inches in circumference." As to potatoes, "Minnesota produces this vegetable in perfection." Tomatoes here grew "in greatest abundance," some even weighing "a trifle of two pounds." [127] The exorbitant price of fruit brought up from Illinois prompted the local newspapers to encourage farmers to take up fruit growing. [128] "That several excellent and healthy fruits can be raised here, we have not a particle of doubt," chided the St. Croix Union, "we do therefore trust that our farmers will set out more fruit trees upon their premises. It is a duty they owe, not only to themselves and family, but to posterity." The paper ran subsequent articles on how to plant an orchard properly. [129] By 1861, the Minnesota Commissioner of Statistics put out a circular asking farmers, threshers, and town and county officers to compile information on the yields of wheat, corn, oats, barley, and potatoes as well as any damage to crops by pests and weather conditions. [130]