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The Village of St. Anthony

Introduction

Text-to-speech Audio

You are standing on what was once the main street of the village of St. Anthony. The village was platted in 1848 and, two years later, boasted a population of 656 people. St. Anthony eventually merged with Minneapolis (1872), making it the city’s oldest neighborhood. What was it like in 1850?

Images

Métis ox-carts on Main Street, 1855

Métis ox-carts on Main Street, 1855

Backstory and Context

Text-to-speech Audio

In 1850...

You would have seen

  • a beautifully wooded island in the center of the river, and a waterfall that some people claimed rivaled Niagara Falls in scale and beauty. Huge rocks scattered at the base of the Falls caused water to spray in every direction. Eagles nesting nearby hunted for fish at the waterfall.

You would have heard

  • the creaking of ox-carts along St. Anthony’s Main Street on their way to St. Paul as Métis drivers brought furs and hides from trade routes across the west.
  • the clatter of a sawmill running six days a week, twenty-four hours a day to provide materials for newcomers to build houses
  • People speaking Dakota, Ojibwe, French, and English in regional accents that told you if they were newcomers from the Northeast or the South.

At the newly built village school house Elizabeth Backus, a Connecticut native, taught nine boys----including seven of Pierre Bottineau's children who only spoke French, while she spoke only English.

At Roswell P. Russell’s store, the first in the village and a makeshift room portioned off the cabin he shared with the Luther Patch family, customers bought some needed provisions

At the First Baptist church organized in 1850 a congregation of ten people gathered together in an unplastered and unfloored room with low ceilings. Catholics traveled to St. Paul while their church was being built, and Episcopalians started construction on their own church. Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians built churches in the next decade.

Sources

Millett, Larry. AIA Guide to the Twin Cities. Minneapolis, MN. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007.

Petersen, Penny A.. Hiding in Plain Sight: Minneapolis' First Neighborhood. Minneapolis, MN. Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association/NRP, 2009.

Vaughan, Margaret. "Métis in Minnesota," MNopedia. October 24th 2017. Accessed July 26th 2020. https://www.mnopedia.org/group/m-tis-minnesota.

Image Sources(Click to expand)

Minnesota Historical Society

Additional Information