The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1911-05-19

Former Judge Lorin Cray was the
principal speaker at the dedication
of the new playhouse az Vernon Cen
ter this afternoon. He spoke of Rec
elections" saying:
Settlement of the township of Yer,
non Center was begun in 1855 by Is;
raer> Wing, Thomas Doak, James
Taylor, ]. A. Darling and others.
Settlers came rapidly and i'm 1856
and 1851 the government lands were
all taken. y. For a time there were
lightning changes in the matter of
name for the town. On April 6, 1858,
the town was organized and named
MOntevideO. On April 16 this name
was changed to Vernon, and on Oc-
tOber IA, the name was again chang
ed to Vernon Center. This name
Vernon was selected because several
of the TOWNSHIP prOprietOrs came
from Mount Vernon, Ohio. The vii
lage of Vernon Center was plated in
1857 on lands owned by the Blue
Earth compayn. The first religious
service was held in the fall of 1855
by Rev. c. l.. Taylor, a Methodist
minister living at Shelbyville, and
who held number of meetings in
the neighbOrhood of Vernon Center
and Shelbyville.
| knew Rev. Taylor well. He was
good natured, jolly. happy old soul,
not extremely ambitious, but always
contented. He kept small store at
Shelbyville, and on Saturdays of al
most any week, the settlers in the
vicinity would congregate at his
store, and listen to him read aloud
from a weekly st. Paul paper which
came to him. he then being the post
matter at Shelbyville-
Quite an important event in Shell
byville was the arrival of barrel of
brown sugar at his store, coming by
team from st. Paul, and when it was
opened a bystander remarked that it
was quite a good quality of sugar
and suggested that little water
could be added, but Brother Taylor
said, "Ah, boys, | tried that once!"
Territorial settlers in Vernon, be-
sides those heretofore mentioned,
were Franklin Barnes, Isaac Book
walter, David Carpenter, E. T.
Champlin, Ezra A. Cooper, Elnathan
Kendall and others, soon to be fol-
lowed by such well known and good
citizens as ]. d. Blanchard, Lysander
Cook, E. d. Cornish, DR.. o. H. Nc
Michael Peter Mertesdorf, Theodore
Sewers, A. C.. WILDER and many 9TH
erS.
Vernon Center, or Old Vernon, as
it is now sometimes called, bid fair
at one time to be a thriving village,
situated in the beautiful valley which
it occupied. 1t had several stores, a
blacksmith shop, drug store, -four
mill and hotel.
1t was at this hotel where the set
tiers gathered at the time of the
Spirit Lake massacre in 1857, and at
the time of the Sioux outbreak in
1862, and it was there that the flu
neral of Mr.. Charles Mack of Willow
Creek who was killed by the Sioux
Indians in August, 1864, was held.
But when the new town was start
ed in 1879, called EdgwOOd Station,
the name being afterward very prop
erly changed to Vernon Center, the
old town like Shelbyville began to
decline, but who can say that with
it's beautiful location, situated in one
of the most fertile agricultural re-
gions of all this country, that the
new town may not expand and grow
so as some time to include and en-
brace that beautiful valley along the
river side occupied by what is left of
the old town.
Much stranger things than this
have many times occurred.
| can we'll remember having cross
ed the prairie from Willow Creek to
Vernon, and from Willow Creek to
Garden City, and not having passed
a single habitatiOn for the whole
distance, the tall prairie grass grow
ing from the tough unbrOken sod,
SO rank and strong, that it then
seemed as if these prairie lands
could never be made fairly tillable.
But the strong arm of the persistent
and Industrious pioneer worked Won
derful changes, as we see.
The scythe, and the herds of cattle,
in the course of time partially sub.
dued these grasses, and the breaking
pillow did the rest, slowly turning to
the warm rays of the sun a virgin
soil, second to none on earth.
Patient and persistent work has
brought prosperity and happiness out
of poverty and wretchedness, turned
prospective starvation into peace and
plenty, hardships into comforts, con-
slant toll into restful days, and who
is there of all the people of the
earth that is more entitled to enjoy
all of these blessings than the man,
the woman and the child who has
battled with nature and with natures
hostile elements, who has faced adj
versities and almost unsurmOuntable
difficulties, dangers and death, until
a barren waste has been transformed
into a veritable garden, as has the
country which surrounds us here, on
both the east and the west, the
| north and the south. Kindly tell me
who?
The early settler of this country
came with neither money nor expe-
rience but with a dominant desire to
secure the greatest blessing known
TO civilized man, and that is, a home
With seant shelter for wife and chill
dren, daring the fierce winters, clad
but little better than the first of
earth. burned brown by the scorch-
ing rays of prairie sun, he attack
ed Mother earth and babe her yield
him sustenance for himself and his.
Persistently and continuously he la
bored, unfalteringly he hoped, brave