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To receive your copy, please send a donation of $17 or more (plus $3 shipping/handling) to:
BV Flood Relief,
P.O. Box 307,
Browns Valley, MN 56219
Joe Brown. . . born in Pennsylvania and raised in Maryland . . . eventually ended up in Minnesota at Fort St. Anthony (later called Fort Snelling), where he became a fifer. The year was 1820. Joseph R. Brown was fifteen years old.After several years with the Army, young Joe Brown went into business for himself, as an Indian trader. Throughout the 1830s, he traveled all across the territory, from Illinois to the Dakotas . . . on the western bank overlooking the head of Lake St. Croix, he founded a trading post he called Decotah. A few years later the name of the settlement was changed to Stillwater, after a lumber company that had taken over the site. Along with St. Paul and St. Anthony (later to become Minneapolis), it was one of the first three towns in Minnesota Territory. Already famous as a pioneer, over the next twenty-five years Joseph R. Brown made quite a name for himself as a statesman, a journalist, a soldier, and a treaty-maker. He served in the Wisconsin Legislature, the Minnesota Territorial Council, and the Territorial House. While in St. Paul, he also edited the "Pioneer" (Minnesota's first newspaper). As both a legislator and a journalist, he pushed for the establishment of a network of roads in the Minnesota Territory. He also played a key role in the signing of several Indian treaties, including the Traverse des Sioux treaty, in which the Dakota (Sioux) Indians gave up their rights to most of the southern and western portions of the territory. After that he became a pioneer again, heading up the Minnesota River to found the town of Henderson . . . and laying out the road to Fort Ridgely. Joseph Brown started the Henderson "Democrat" and became a territorial printer for a number of years. He advocated statehood for the territory, helped write the Minnesota Constitution, and campaigned for an old fur-trading partner, Henry Sibley, to serve as the state's first governor . . . named a major general when Minnesota became a state in 1858 . . . wounded at Birch Coulee . . . rewarded with the post at Fort Wadsworth after the uprising was put down. (Author's note: there's more, but you get the gist.) |