J

SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF HUTCHINSON.*

BY HON. WILLIAM W. PENDERGAST.

FOUNDING OF THE TOWN BY THE HUTCHINSON SINGERS.

The gradual decadence of the gold excitement which drew so many thousands to California during the half dozen years succeeding the discovery of gold there in 1848, turned the tide of migration toward the west borders of the Mississippi. Long trains of west-bound travelers headed for Chicago every morning and evening from New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Chicago was the great distributing point. There all stopped to catch their breath and take their bearings, and the thirty-year-old city at the head of lake Michigan seized the business which Chagres had snatched during the California boom. She took advantage of her opportunity, and also, I fear, of her innocent tenderfoot victims. The immense tidal wave was there divided. One branch flowed southwest into "bleeding Kansas," following up Massachusetts' "thirty thousand moral rifles," the war cry being "Freedom for Kansas." The other stream swept northwest to the region of the "sky-tinted waters."

In the spring of 1855, I was caught up in Massachusetts and swirled along in this mighty movement of restless humanity, but not to the land of gold. Chicago, "the Garden City," was to be my Ultima Thule, my firm abiding place, but

"The best laid schemes o' mice and men

Gang aft a-gley."

*Read at the monthly meeting of the Executive Council, February 11, 1901.

Two months later I was plodding my weary pilgrim way through southern Minnesota, "spying out the land” and weighing its future. It seemed to be a beautiful land, just as it came from the hand of nature, and any farmer should have been satisfied with a hundred and sixty acres of it. But I was told that a hundred miles or more to the northwest, on the borders of the "Big Woods," the soil was still better and the outlook even more alluring. That promising, if not "promised," land I then and there resolved to see before many moons had waxed and waned. The trip I was then taking could not be prolonged, on account of work awaiting me in Milwaukee and Chicago.

In October I started out on my second Minnesota trip, upon which two weeks were spent in explorations to the north, east, and south of the Falls of St. Anthony. By that time it was getting too late for the survey of the Big Woods country, if the job was to be a thorough one.

Fired with zeal for the new land, I went back as far as Milwaukee, and in a few days had the pleasure of hearing my old friends, the Hutchinson family, from Milford, N. H.,-Judson, John, and Asa,-sing to a full house,

"We've come from the mountains of the old Granite State," and other inspiring songs, rendered as only they knew how. After the concert, at my invitation they all promised to call on me the next day, which they accordingly did. In our pleasant talk they unfolded to me their plans for the future. They had started out to sing their way through to Kansas, there to found a village, call it Hutchinson, make homes for themselves, build up the town, join the "Jayhawkers" and squelch the "Border Ruffians." Said I, "Why not skip all that blood and poetry, go to Minnesota, the most favored country on the earth, and found a city that you will always be proud of?" "Have you been there?" they asked. "Yes." Then question followed question, like shots from a Gatling gun. The answers were satisfactory, and led to the settlement of the town of Hutchinson in McLeod county, Minnesota.

Hither many later immigrants have been attracted, and they are now faithfully working shoulder to shoulder with the old timers, who have borne the burden and the heat of the day, to make this what it certainly bids fair to become, the most charming and

delightful, the most cozy and truly homelike place in the North

west.

The result of the conference was an immediate change of plans on the part of the Hutchinsons, who had in so short a time become convinced that their horoscope had not been rightly interpreted. It was agreed that my cousin, Roswell H. Pendergast, should go along with them, and that I should stay through the winter, dispose of my photographing business, and follow on the first boat that should go through from Galena to St. Paul in the spring of 1856. The objective point was some place in the charming region west of the Big Woods, to which allusion has already been made. The exact spot was to be fixed upon by the Hutchinsons, their advance agent, E. E. Johnson, and R. H. Pendergast, who went with them.

Having arrived at the little village on the west side of the Mississippi adjoining the Falls of St. Anthony, they were lucky enough to fall in with an educated and enterprising young civil engineer, by the name of Lewis Harrington, who readily entered into the spirit of their plans, and who without hesitation accepted an earnest invitation to become a member of the company. Before they left this little settlement, Col. John H. Stevens, its father, B. E. Messer, an accomplished musician and former singing master, John H. Chubb, a young bachelor from Whitehall, N. Y., Henry Chambers, an unnaturalized Canadian, Lucius N. Parker, and John Calef, were duly initiated into the fraternity.

November 16, 1855, the company, with two two-horse teams and a week's supplies, sallied forth like Don Quixote, "in quest of adventures." The general plan formulated at Milwaukee had been talked over and deliberated upon till it was made more specific by fixing upon a favorable location on the Hassan river (now called the South branch of the Crow river) northwest of Glencoe as the most desirable place for the new settlement. There was a good road as far as to Shakopee, which was at that time larger than Minneapolis. There the first night was spent.

November 17. Without waiting for breakfast, so anxious were they all to get a glimpse of the town of which they were to be the fathers, they started out betimes in the morning, and, crossing the ferry five miles farther up the Minnesota, reached