achievements are due to the enterprise and foresight of f this memoir.

of 1855 Mr. Olmsted was a candidate for delegate to Conas defeated. There were three candidates before the g that contest-Henry M. Rice, the regular Democratic William R. Marshall, the nominee of the first regular onvention held in the Territory; and David Olmsted, the the adherents of a wing of the Democratic Convention off in consequence of the tenor of certain resolutions. e convention. The contest was spirited. Each of the s supported by ably-conducted journals, but the Olmsted weak to afford him any chance of success," although he e contest with his popularity unimpaired and his honor

1856 his health became so impaired that his physicians spend the winter in Cuba. He followed the advice, but climate failed to afford him the desired relief, and he scenes of his early struggles and final triumphs. After at Monona, Iowa, and at Winona, he went to St. Paul, ds there. It was his last visit to the capital of Minnerded his friends an opportunity to secure his portrait, ns the City Hall. In October, 1857, he went to the old klin county, Vermont, to remain at his mother's house ummons should come, and where he died on the 2d day 51. "The news of his death was received with sincere ends in Minnesota, and the press paid generous and O his worth and integrity. St. Paul Lodge No. 2, I. O. nt Landmark Lodge No. 5, A. F. A. M., of which he was r, passed heartfelt resolutions of regret, and the Old ation' of Minnesota, at their next annual reunion, records an appropriate eulogy. On the map of the s he helped to shape, his name is well bestowed on lourishing and populous counties."

nds, and one who knew him well, thus sketched the d Olmsted in a communication to the St. Paul Pioneer, th:

ad a mind of a peculiar order. His leading characteristics were

never a partisan, but always a patriot. Often absorbed in deep thought, even to absentmindedness, and without a polished address, he nevertheless won the hearts of all by his kind, straightforward and manly conduct."

FRANKLIN STEELE

Was another enterprising pioneer, and one the people of the territory delighted to honor. He was born in Chester county, Pennsylvania, and, when a mere youth, was advised by Andrew Jackson to identify himself with the West. John H. Stevens, Esq., of Glencoe, (formerly a clerk of Mr. Steele's,) in a lecture delivered before the Hennepin County Lyceum, furnished the following brief sketch of Mr. Steele's operations in the land of his adoption:

"The day he landed at Fort Snelling, the Indians had concluded a treaty with the whites by which the St. Croix Fails were ceded to the latter. Mr. Steele went over; liked the place much; made a claim; hired a large crew of men, put Calvin A. Tuttle, Esq., now of St. Anthony, at their head, and commenced in earnest to build mills. Upon being appointed sutler to the army at Fort Snelling, he disposed of the St. Croix property, and became interested in the east side of St. Anthony Falls. He has continued to make this county his home ever since his first arrival in the territory. Mr. Steele has been a good friend to Hennepin, and as most of the citizens came here poor, they never had to ask Mr. Steele a second time for a favor. Fortune has favored him, and while many a family has reason to be thankful for his generosity, he has constantly made money."

JAMES M. GOODHUE, THE PIONEER JOURNALIST.

Says

Minnesota Territory was organized March 3, 1849, and nine days. thereafter, James M. Goodhue (after whom Goodhue county was named) arrived in St. Paul, with press, type, etc., to commence the publication of a newspaper. Mr. Goodhue was a graduate of Amherst College, and a lawyer by profession, and like many another man before and since his day and generation, became a newspaper editor by accident. Mr. Neill: "He had been invited to take the oversight of a press, in the lead region of Wisconsin, during the temporary absence of its conductor, and soon discovered that he increased the interest of the readers in the paper. From that time he began to pay less attention to the legal profession, and was soon known among the citizens of the mines, as the editor of the Grant County Herald, published at Lancaster, Wisconsin."

the heat of part measures; the

at the Alps. On moment the mou

; the next, like a arent of many wat of Falcan, he would With the power and graphist, he was Een the distant read gate pavements an ngglish stream, territory of the s posed to despond,

While residing at Lancaster he became interested in the territory of sky-tinted waters (Minnesota.) With the independence and temerity of one Benjamin Franklin, he left Lancaster as suddenly as the ostensible editor of the New England Courant left Boston, and he arrived at the landing of what is now the capital of Minnesota, with little more

s of his paper in rela

Tere the character nesota, who was who died at St. I

ght o'clock

1, 1849, he found St. Paul nothing more than a frontier Indian tlement, known by the savages as the place where they n Minne Wakan, or whisky, and wholly unknown to the rld."

. Goodhue's intention to call his paper The Epistle of St. e had so announced in a prospectus published in February In the first issue of his paper, however, which was made day of April, he announced a change of title, in the words The paper was to be called the Epistle of St. Paul, but we found so many little saints in the territory, jealous that we determined to call our paper the Minnesota

heat of partizan warfare, all the qualities of his mind were combined to asures: the columns of his paper were like a terrific storm in mide Alps. One sentence would be like the dazzling arrowy lightning, ent the mountain oak, and riving it from the topmost branch to the next, like a crash of awful thunder; and the next, like the stunning of many waters. To employ a remark made at his funeral,' With the an, he would hammer out thunder bolts on the anvil of his mind, and e power and dexterity of Jove.'

hist, he was equaled by few living men. His sentences so leaped with distant reader perused his sheet, he seemed to hear the purling brooks pavements and crystal waters of the lakes of Minnesota, and he longed ish stream, the deadly malaria, and worn-out farms, and begin life ory of the sky-tinted waters. When the immigrant from week to 1 to despond, and give way to the distress of home-sickness, the hope3 paper in relation to the prosperous future, chased that dismal feeling

racteristics of James M Goodbr the

the p atere ti

EARLY STEAMBOATING.

When Colonel LEAVENWORTH arrived at the site of Fort Snelling, in September, 1819, steamboats had never disturbed the water of the Upper Mississippi River. His journey from Prairie du Chien to St. Peters, was made by keelboats, and was considerably delayed and impeded by the low stage of water which prevailed at that time. Previous to the spring of 1823, it was generally believed that the rapids at Rock Island, offered an impossible barrier to the steamboat navigation of the "Father of Waters" above that point. In the month of April of that year, however, it was publically announced in the city of St. Louis, that, on the 2d day of May, the Virginia, a steamboat one hundred and eighteen feet in length, twenty-two feet in width, and drawing six feet of water, would leave her moorings in that city for Fort Snelling. There was no delay in the departure of the Virginia, and the trip was safely accomplished, and the vessel arrived at her point of destination not far from the middle of May. Mr. Neill says, "the arrival of the Virginia at Mendota, is an era in the history of the Dakota nation, and will probably be transmitted to their posterity as long as they exist as a people. They say that some of their sacred men, the night before, dreamed of seeing some monster of the waters, which frightened them very much."

the stear

e appearan
of the rive

ial region

Eow terrib

(nerable tree 4. and brust at plains and ged with mo terrific er exhibited an

In his published "Reminiscences; Historical and Personal," General Sibley relates the following incident concerning the arrival of the Virginia at Mendota or Fort Snelling: "A sentinel on duty first heard the sound made by the escaping steam, before the boat was discernible. He cried out most vociferously, and when officers and men crowded around him for information, it happened that the sounds were no longer audible. The poor fellow was in imminent danger of being put under guard, when the Virginia' made her appearance, and her arrival was greeted by the booming of cannon, and by shouts of welcome from the whole command."

Among the passengers on this trial trip of the Upper Mississippi were Major Taliaferro, the agent of the Dahkotahs; Beltrami, an Italian count, once a judge of the Royal Court, then a political refugee; Great Eagle, a Sauk chief, returning to his village from a conference with Governor Clark; and a family from Kentucky, with their children, guns, chests, cats, dogs and chickens, emigrating to Galena, then the

night we trav

the Virgin Fomen and that it was

extreme frontier and inst beginning to be a center of great attraction

a. and spla

ng their fea

te blowing

mothers forg
aces; chiefs,
animals."
as to this tim

Sa of troops al
ling was cons

ening with t

at arrivals at F

Virginia, May
Neiville.

Patnam, April 2
Mandan.

Indiana.

Lawrence, May

Scota.

Eclipse.

Palmyra, Captain

the St. Croix, and

She carried m

he passengers, probably Count Beltrami, although Mr. Neill ive the name, in writing of the incident of the trip, tells the

steamer had passed the mouth of the Upper Iowa, a grand illumination ppearance of the 'great fire canoe.' It was perfectly dark, and we were at the river Iowa, when we saw at a great distance all the combined images regions in full perfection. I was on the point of exclaiming with Michael w terrible! but yet how beautiful!'

able trees of these eternal forests were on fire, which had communicated nd brushwood, and these had been borne by a violent northwest wind to lains and valleys. The flames towering above the tops of the hills where d with most violence, gave them the appearance of volcanoes at the moment errific eruptions, and the fire, winding its descent through places covered hibited an exact resemblance to the undulating lava of Etna or Vesuvius. ht we traveled by the light of this superb torch."

e Virginia neared the shore at Mendota, writes Mr. Neill, en and children beheld it with silent astonishment, supit was some enormous water spirit coughing, puffing out and splashing water in every direction. When it touched their fears prevailed, and they retreated some distance, but lowing off steam commenced they were completely unthers forgetting their children, with streaming hair, sought s; chiefs, renouncing their stoicism, scampered away like imals.”

o this time, keelboats were used exclusively for the transtroops and supplies. Sixty days time from St. Louis to was considered a good average trip.

ng with the Virginia the following is a complete list of rivals at Fort Snelling up to May 26, 1826.

ra, Captain Holland, was the first steamboat to plow the t. Croix, and reached the Fall of St. Croix on the 17th of

lho carried man and machinery for th

vinated milla at