(Excerpt from Minnesota: The North Star State
IF this com...)
Excerpt from Minnesota: The North Star State
IF this compend of Minnesota history shall be found a desirable addition to those already before the public, it will be due to the good fortune of the writer in reaching original sources of informa tion not accessible to his predecessors.
The most important of them are: the papers of Governor Alexander Ramsey, in the possession of his daughter, Mrs. Marion R. F urness; the letter books and papers of General H. H. Sibley, pre served in the library of the Minnesota Historical Society; some hundreds of letters saved by Colonel John H. Stevens, and deposited by him in the same library; the papers of Ignatius Donnelly, in the hands of his family; the great collection of Green Bay and Prairie du Chien papers belonging to the Wisconsin Historical Society; the remarkable group of early French documents owned by the Chicago Historical Society; and finally, the price less collection of Minnesota newspapers preserved by the Minnesota Historical Society.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.
The Minnesota Fur Trade and Its Fur Traders from 1816 to 1842 (1921)
(William Watts Folwell ( 1833 – 1929) was the first presid...)
William Watts Folwell ( 1833 – 1929) was the first president of the University of Minnesota and president of the Minnesota Historical Society. For six decades he was active in Minnesota affairs; his fifteen years as president of the University of Minnesota were followed by more than two decades as a professor of political science and librarian on the faculty until his "retirement" in 1907.
In writing about the history of Minnesota, Dr. Folwell had at his elbow the collections of the Minnesota Historical society. He was president of Minnesota university from 1869 to 1884, was a soldier in the Civil war, and had been actively employed in governmental duties for near a half century. Besides thus understanding his state and his people and besides having a personal acquaintance with the geography of his state, he wrote in a pleasing style.
The author relates how fur traders from New York and fur trading companies organized which in New York played an important part in the early explorations and development of Minnesota. Such a trader was John Jacob Astor and such a company was the American Fur Company, which he organized. The book is written in a delightfully entertaining style.
Contents:
Astor and the American Fur Company
Establishment of Fort Snelling
Taliaferro as Indian Agent
Indian Council of 1825
Sioux-Chippewa Warfare
Indian Land Cessions of 1837
Early Life of Sibley
The Fur Trade and the Indians
This book originally published in 1921 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional imperfection from the original publication or from the reformatting.
William Watts Folwell was an educator, writer and historian who was the first president of the University of Minnesota.
Background
William Watts Folwell was born on a farm in Romulus, New York, the son of Joanna (Bainbridge) and Thomas Jefferson Folwell. His ancestry was preponderantly English, with some admixture from the north of Ireland, tempered by long residence in Pennsylvania or Maryland before the migration to western New York.
Education
He found his parents sympathetic to his desire for education, and was prepared for college at academies at Nunda, Geneva, and Ovid, New York. His schooling was interrupted by two years of teaching in district schools, and each summer was spent at farm work.
In the fall of 1854 he matriculated as a sophomore at Hobart College, Geneva, New York. Although he was out of residence a part of his senior year, teaching Greek and Latin at Ovid Academy, he was graduated in June 1857.
Career
During the following winter he continued to teach at Ovid, but in 1858 he returned to Hobart as “adjunct professor” of mathematics. He also taught Latin and Greek, and studied law. The next year he decided to abandon law for philology, and it was as a student of philology that he matriculated at the University of Berlin in the fall of 1860.
He reached home in October 1861, and in January 1862 was commissioned first lieutenant in the 50th New York Volunteer Infantry—later the 50th New York Engineers. He served throughout the war in the Army of the Potomac building bridges and fortifications, and at the end of the war he had reached the rank of major—lieutenant-colonel by brevet.
In 1868 he went to Kenyon College as professor of mathematics and civil engineering, and in 1869 he became president of the incipient University of Minnesota. In this position he proved to be aheadof his times. He advocated and tried to put into practise a junior college system; he initiated the movement for state aid to education in order that high schools might be encouraged to prepare students for the university; he instituted a winter short course of lectures for farmers; and he proposed the removal of the university from its original small urban campus to an ample suburban life.
He had difficulties, however, with a board of regents which considered itself charged with the details of university management and looked upon the president as its factotum. After fifteen years of his presidency the friction still remained.
Folwell was apparently not sufficiently politic for the position, and he resigned, continuing his librarianship and the congenial professorship of political science, and making way for the coming of Cyrus Northrop as president of the university. It is characteristic of Folwell that he became a sincere friend and admirer of his successor.
Besides serving the university as president, professor, and librarian, Folwell took the lead in establishing the Minnesota Geological and Natural History Survey in 1872, aided in founding the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts and served as its president from 1883 to 1888, served on the Minneapolis park commission from 1889 to 1907 and as its president from 1895 to 1903, and was a member of the state board of charities and corrections from 1896 to 1902.
He was president of the Minnesota Historical Society from 1924 to 1927, devoting much time and energy to its work despite his advanced age, and retired with the title of president-emeritus. After his retirement from the university in 1907 he set himself to write a comprehensive history of Minnesota.
He had prepared for the American Commonwealths Series, Minnesota, the North Star State (1908), and while so doing had acquired not only much material unusable in so short a volume but also the desire to continue work in the field.
The result was a critical and comprehensive History of Minnesota based on extensive research in the original sources. Rejecting a liberal offer from a commercial publisher, Folwell determined to give the work to the people through the Minnesota Historical Society, and it was published by that institution in four volumes from 1921 to 1930.
A few weeks before his death he completed a volume of interesting reminiscences. In his later years, Folwell maintained his eminent position in the community which he had helped to develop.
He was friend and counselor to leaders of its civic and economic life, and his influence was sought by proponents of plans for civic advancement.
Personality
Kindly, urbane, tolerant, and liberal, he brought an enlightened and cultured mind to the consideration of community problems. In person, he was slight of build, with an erect carriage, keen dark eyes, and an old-world courtliness of manner. His greatest charm was his whimsicality, a humorous originality of thought and speech which even in his ninety- sixth year bore witness to his critical faculties and intellectual detachment.
Connections
On March 13, 1863, Folwell married Sarah Hubbard Heywood of Buffalo, New York, and in 1865 he removed to the small settlement of Venice, Ohio, near Sandusky, to enter the merchant milling business owned by his father-in-law.