and then sold it to the Little Falls Manufacturing Company. Church succeeded French as editor, and it went on about two years thereafter, when it was wrecked in the financial storm following 1857.

PARKER H. FRENCH.

All I have been able to learn of Parker H. French is that he was said to have been Walker's secretary of state, when the latter attempted to filibuster Nicaragua. On his arrival in Minnesota with his family, he was introduced by the Pioneer and Democrat of August 21st, 1856, as the United States minister to Nicaragua. Later on September 6th, the Minnesotian says that French and his associates had gone on an exploring trip into northern Minnesota, west of Leech and Sandy lakes, and that he intended to bring a number of families from the south to settle there in the spring of 1857.

After selling the Herald, French went to California, and the St. Paul Advertiser of June 20th, 1857, said he had been advertised to begin a daily in Sacramento about May 1st of that year. The St. Paul Minnesotian of January 1st, 1859, made the announcement that French had become the publisher of the Evening Sentinel, a new paper in New York, and that Hon. Mike Walsh, member of Congress from that city, was helping him run it. This is the last trace I find of him.

AN INDEPENDENT EDITOR.

In examining the files of the early newspapers of Minnesota for facts to picture Territorial journalism, I came upon an editorial showing that as late as 1856 something of the old meataxe style of journalism still survived outside the Chatfield Republican. I did not note the name of the paper or editor. That, however, does not matter.

It seems that a country paper had been established upon the usual understanding that the owner was to have a certain amount of patronage from the people of the new town to keep him from starving. They didn't do as they agreed. So he cut his paper down to a four-column, nine by twelve sheet, and went at the delinquents in a new prospectus as follows:

INDEPENDENT OF ALL SAVE THE MERCIES OF GOD.

This paper will no sooner advocate what its editor believes to be a humbug than a hard-shell Baptist will baptize an infant by immersion

H

or an adult by sprinkling. He will publish in it just what he mill-dam please, without fear or favor, and almost without hope of the reward to which he is legally and morally entitled for services rendered a community marked by piety, parsimony, temperance, and elastic consciences, and who are, and have been, financially and irreligiously kicking a public servant who has done his whole duty. He has honestly upheld the justice of removing the county seat and shown the benefits arising therefrom. He will talk turkey when in the turkey mood, and gabble gossip when he listeth. He will battle for his rights against the world, the flesh, and the devil. He will try to live on property he earned before his advent into this blue-bellied land of sectarian cut-throats and pimps of pious hypocrisy, will claim the right to sue and be sued, will wear a common seal, and, like the register of deeds of Jackson county, raise hell generally, and will probably be remembered as the man all tattered and torn. Terms, one dollar and a half, invariably in advance.

THE FARIBAULT HERALD.

Were it not for the fact that the Faribault Herald begins at Vol. 1, No. 1, I would call it the continuation of the Rice County Herald, which had a life of only seven weeks, when its press and material were purchased by R. A. Mott and used to start the Faribault Herald. Mott saw fit to snuff out the Rice County Herald entirely and begin a new newspaper, so I must chronicle it as such, and name it the thirty-eighth paper in regular Territorial course. Though it increases the list of these early newspapers somewhat, I see no other way to preserve identity and avoid confusion.

Volume 1, No. 1, is dated December 10th, 1856, its place of publication Faribault, Rice county, with R. A. Mott as editor and proprietor. He ran it until June 2nd, 1858, when he sold the plant to Holley and Brown, who unceremoniously stopped the Faribault Herald, in turn, and started a new volume and num-. ber on June 23d, 1858, called the Central Republican, which today is still running usefully and vigorously under the name of the Faribault Republican as has already been stated.

R. A. MOTT.

R. A. Mott was born in Warren, New York, December 6th, 1825. He studied law with James H. Collins in Chicago in 1848, went overland to California in 1850, returned in 1852, and in the spring of 1856 came to Faribault. He joined J. L. Pond as editor of the Rice County Herald in October of that year, and having purchased the plant began the issue of the

Faribault Herald on December 10th, as has been stated. After selling the paper to Holley and Brown in 1858, he was admitted to the bar, and has since followed it as his profession.

Mr. Mott has been county attorney of Faribault two terms; county superintendent of schools several years; and in 1880 he was elected to the state legislature. He has always taken a great interest in the state institutions of Faribault, and has aided them greatly in various ways.

THE MONTICELLO JOURNAL.

The press and material of the Monticello Journal, the thirtyninth newspaper printed in Minnesota, were brought to Monticello, Wright county, in the latter part of November, 1856, by H. C. Bunce; and the first issue was set up and printed mainly by D. L. Kingsbury, now assistant librarian of the Minnesota Historical Society. He does not remember the date of that issue, but it was some time about the middle of December, 1856. The health of Mr. Bunce failed, and he sold the press and material to a syndicate which started the Monticello Times, May 21st, 1857.

THE ORONOCO COURIER.

The Oronoco Courier is another weekly newspaper of which no copies seem to be in existence. It was the fortieth newspaper, and the first trace of it appears in the St. Paul Minnesotian, which says in its issue of December 20th, 1856, "The first number of the Oronoco Courier, of Oronoco, Olmsted county, is received." It seems to have been edited by D. H. Galloway and E. Allen Power, and belonged to a stock company, and the press and materials were purchased in Dubuque, Iowa. It was neutral in politics and was started evidently to boom the town of Oronoco, which was platted less than two years after the first white settler came into that part of the country.

The St. Paul Advertiser termed it one of the ablest conducted newspapers in Minnesota. Dr. Galloway left the paper shortly after it started and went to Rochester, and afterward settled in Fargo, North Dakota. That is the latest trace of him that I have. Power wrote his valedictory and left the paper July 3rd, 1857, and later was elected to the legislature when Minnesota became a state. The Courier then passed into the hands of Alfred E. Sawyer. It ran on until late in December, 1857,

when the Advertiser of the 26th of that month quotes its terse valedictory to its subscribers, as follows: "This number is the last you will receive of the Oronoco Courier. It has fulfilled its mission. It was an institution of Oronoco, and now it is not.”

THE CARIMONA TELEGRAPH.

The Carimona Telegraph followed the demise of the Fillmore County Pioneer. It was printed in Carimona, in that county; and, as nearly as I can time it, was the forty-first paper started in the Territory, and the eighteenth in 1856. There are no copies in existence, so far as I can learn. In fact, the only record of it that I can find is in the St. Paul Advertiser of 1856 and 1857. Under date of December 27th, 1856, that paper published the proceedings of a railroad meeting in Carimona which was ordered published in the Carimona Telegraph, Chatfield Democrat, and Chatfield Republican. The Advertiser quoted the Telegraph again under date of January 31st, 1857, and that is all I can definitely learn about it. As the Fillmore County Pioneer, described in the early part of this paper, lived nearly a year, the Telegraph probably very closely followed it, and then in turn went under just before the Western Transcript was started in Carimona in May, 1857. The village was too small to support two papers at a time; and, of the three it had, the hardiest lived less than a year. It would seem, therefore, either that the town site company wore out printers pretty fast, or that Carimona was an unhealthy place for newspapers in those early days.

SUMMARY, 1856.

Of the eighteen new papers started in 1856, seventeen went down early. Fourteen of them were so completely swept away that no copies remain that I can find. For the remaining four, I find broken files of the Henderson Democrat, Stillwater Messenger, and Chatfield Republican. Of the Dakota Weekly Journal a single copy is all that seems to have been preserved. Only two of the eighteen run today under the original names. They are the Stillwater Messenger and the Chatfield Democrat. The Messenger died, and the Stillwater Republican arose on its grave. The Messenger, however, was afterward resurrected, as I have described in my record of that paper, and is still living.

The Chatfield Democrat was resurrected by Hemphill, and started under new volume and number, September 11th, 1857.

The only way I have been able to follow these vanished newspapers has been by a laborious hunt through county histories and files of contemporaneous journals, and by correspondence with old settlers. Many will have doubts as to whether the search will pay. As for me, I know that these old journals had much to do in building the foundations of Minnesota, and as one of her Territorial pioneers I am proud to contribute this series of papers to the Historical Society as my tribute to their memory.

FOURTH PAPER, JANUARY 1ST TO AUGUST 25TH, 1857.

The small remnant of Minnesota business men now living who were here between 1854 and 1861, still vividly recall how it feels to go through the rise and fall of a boom period. Everything seemed to be in the air and moving briskly in those days. Not even corner lots could be held down. I remember a townsite promoter of 1857 who embellished one of his plats with churches, schoolhouses, county and business buildings, and fine residences, when there was only a claim shanty on the whole outfit, and while yet the country was nearly bare of farm improvements for miles around. He took his townsite plat to Washington while Congress was in session, having only money enough to pay the railroad fare and about two weeks' living in a cheap boarding house. Before the close of the first week, he moved into a suite of finely furnished rooms in the best hotel in the city, and it was said that he returned to Minnesota in the spring with about ten thousand dollars realized from lots in that townsite. make those sales, he had talked fiction during the winter; but I have reason to think he honestly believed that the millions he saw in the air over that quarter section fully justified the fiction.

CURED OF TOWNSITE FEVER.

To

I was one of a company of four who were tangled among townsites along the Red river of the North in 1857; therefore,