The Historical Mile on the Brule

Following the kindly suggestion of the president of this society, W. H. H. Fate, I will give you some stories from the early history of immediate surroundings of the spot where we are gathered today. These stories are "the short and simple annals of the poor" in so much as they deal with people whose first care was to provide food, clothing and shelter for themselves; beyond that, this is a tale of empire builders who meant to exchange the log hut for the comfortable farm house; to convert the wild prairie into fields of abundance; to help the God of Nature beautify the landscape with orchard and grove.

Eastward, at our very feet, the Big Sioux flows to the south thru one of the richest little valleys in the world and like a "back-sliding brother" it makes "many crooked paths." About two miles to the west the Brule Creek breaks from its green hills to wander south and east between tree-fringed banks, thru fields of corn waving green even in this heat and drought and thru stretches of yellow stubble till it joins with the Sioux. The triangle enclosed by the hills on the north and the two streams has been called by many "the prettiest piece of farm land that lies out of doors."

In the beginning of the '60's in the last century, this triangle was fairly well settled. On the forty acres now owned by Edw. Tollefson, lying on both sides of the creek eighty rods south of the road leading due west from Richland, lived Dr. A. R. Phillips. He had the best log house in the county then. It was often used for religious meetings. In July, 1862, the first services were held there;" the Rev. Albert Gore preached. A Sunday school was organized with A. J. Bell as superintendent.

A political meeting was held at the Philipps' place, also; it was out of doors, the speaker standing on the heap of barn refuse by the straw covered barn. In the year 1861, the first governor of the territory, Dr. William Jayne, of Illinois, had called an election to choose a delegate to Congress. Capt. J. B. S. Todd, a relative of Mrs. Lincoln and afterward made a brigadier general by Lincoln, was elected and served a term in Congress. He was running again in 1862, and was the candidate who spoke from this simple rostrum. About fifteen men were present. Jayne, his opponent, was elected; but Todd contested and secured the seat in Congress.

On what old settlers call the "old Fletcher place" the farm now owned and occupied by Ed. Newgard, on the south bank of the creek, Elder Thomas Fate made his home. He erected first a barn covered with hay, then prepared logs for his house. In this hay-thatched barn on Sunday, August 8, 1862, the Rev. S. W. Ingham organized a Methodist congregation, the first of any denomination in the county.

On the old Stoddard place, lying on the creek just south of the road west from Richland, the original settlers, named Andrews, built a log-house. At the time of the stampede, these people left and did not come back, except a daughter who returned the next summer and taught school in the old fort which I shall presently describe. The Rev. Keeler Curtis, whose home was in the west part of Elk Point township, taught the first term of school in the community, in the Andrews' abandoned dwelling, in the winter of 1862-63.

In the same house, a Methodist quarterly meeting, the first held in the settlement, was held that winter by the Presiding Elder. The Rev. J. L. Payne was the pastor. In this house, also, the settlers gathered on the return from the stampede.

The first death in this neighborhood occurred on the old Frisbie place, now the home of L. Bihlmyer, across the road north of the old Stoddard home. The young sister of O. M. Groethe was staying with Mrs. William Frisbie; soon after Easter, 1862, she was preparing to go home. Presently she was missed and search revealed her body in the shallows just below a deep pool. No further details of her death were ever known. She was interred on the summit of a hill overlooking the scene of her mysterious death, as no cemetery was then laid out. Later, a soldier who was drowned while swimming his horse across a slough at the D. B. Wilcox farm was buried near her. The young girl's body has been removed to the St. Paul cemetery, where it now rests.

Saturday, September 1, 1862, A. J. Bell, living where Oliver Groethe now lives, on the west bank of the Brule, about one and one-half miles west and three-fourths of a mile north of Richland, went to the home of Elder Thomas Fate (whom I mentioned as living on the south bank of the Brule) and borrowed a horse to go to Elk Point. There he learned that the Indians had risen in Minnesota and Dakota, that Captain Miner's soldiers were holding them in check in the Jim River valley and that the settlers were fleeing to Sioux City. Bell hurried back to give the alarm and before evening the whole settlement was on the way to Sioux City, going thru Elk Point.

When they reached the ferry over the Big Sioux, it was late at night and the ferryman refused to be routed out of bed to put them across, "Indians or no Indians." So the fugitives camped in the brush by the river that night, in great fear. In the morning they were ferried over.

Monday a committee of three, S. M. Crook, M. M. Rich and Mahlon Gore, was sent up to see how things stood; they returned reporting all quiet along the Brule; so in the latter part of the week the settlers returned. The first night of their return they spent on the old Stoddard place, in the home of the Andrews family, who did not return. Men, women and children bunked down on the floor in their bedding, while a number of men stood guard without, under command of Mahlon Gore. Doubtless here evolved the plan for a fort for the common safety.

This fort was built on the old Frisbie place, now owned by L. Bihlmyer; and its site was just south of the present orchard. It was built in the fall of 1862, just after the stampede. The logs that Elder Fate had prepared for his dwelling were used for it; also a lot of logs from the Richland townsite that M. M. Rich had prepared for a school house, which, by the way, was never built. The fort was built in the form of a square, composed on the east and south of the log houses of the inhabitants; on the north and part of the west side was a log stockade, and the common log stable. Part of the west side was never finished.

Here the settlers lived the winter of 1862-63, the enlisted men among them being supplied by the government with rations. These are the names of some of the men who helped to build or occupied the fort; many did both. William Frisbie, Thomas Fate and his sons, W. H. H. and James, S. M. Crook, Steve Horton, Thomas Watson, Chris. Lewison, Edward B. LaMoure, Rev. Keeler Curtis, Theo. Olson, O. M. Groethe and Munson. [Written by W. H. H. Fate?]

Source: South Dakota Historical Collections, compiled by the State Department of History, Volume X, 1920