Tallying Wagging Tails

Sometimes I’ll come across a bit of historical trivia that is…interesting…but all and all is not terribly historically significant. This brief article definitely falls square in that category.

But hey, they thought it was important to get a head-count of Stillwater’s canine population – so, 127 years later, you can see their results!

Stillwater Messenger – May 19, 1888

Exactly 585 Stillwater dogs is the summary of officer Geo. Walters’ census completed this week. Unless some of the animals got away the present dog population is much smaller than it was last spring.

A Millionaire’s Missing Mansion

by Brent Peterson

One of the most dynamic things about the City of Stillwater is the number of beautiful mansions built in the years when lumber was king. Many were constructed by those in ownership of lumber companies or mills and we have to be thankful that they still exist today. However there have been a number lost to the expansion of the city or just because they were too large and expensive to maintain. One such mansion, probably the largest of them all, belonged to Isaac Staples.

The property in which Staples was to construct his home was on a hill overlooking the sawmill that he had purchased in 1866. In early 1871, Staples contracted with St. Paul architect A.M. Radcliffe and the early plans consisted of a stone structure with a mansard roof. The estimated cost, according to the Stillwater Messenger of March 24, 1871 was at $30,000.

Just a month later, the Messenger had the full description of Staples new house on “Government Hill.” The newspaper said, “The main body of the residence will be fifty feet square, two stories in height, with a mansard roof of a new and tasteful pattern, that will give an additional story. Back of this will be an ell some 30 feet. The basement or cellar walls will be of solid stone, sold stone walls being also built across the cellar to correspond with the partition walls in the rooms above, making the whole building solid and substantial.”

“Above the basement the outer walls are to be of the choicest selected Minneapolis brick, with the corners, trimmings, door and window and other cappings and facings, either of terra cotta stone or the new artificial stone, making the most attractive and beautiful exterior.”

The newspapers of the summer of 1871 continued to report to the public the progress of the house on the hill. Things such as the enclosure of the “commodious stable” and the placement of sidewalks in front of the ever-growing residence, found it’s way into the columns of the newspapers.

When the interior was to be worked on, it was reported that the plasterwork on the home was let out to a local man named Arthur Stevens. Stevens was an “experienced and skillful workman, and we shall expect to see one of the neatest jobs in the city when the work is finished,” said the Weekly Gazette of August 8, 1871. The painting of the home was let out to the local Webster Brothers.

The pace of work must have pushed the contractors to finish before the winter. A painter, working for the Webster Brothers, fell one October day and died from his injuries the next day.

The home was finally completed and the Staples family occupied the home for nearly 30 years. It was the center of social gatherings in Stillwater for the next three decades. When Isaac Staples died in 1898, no one knew what to do with such a large mansion. In an article, undated, in the collections of the Washington County Historical Society, the story is told of the home being torn down. That at one time it was thought that the Staples house could be used by the Warden of the State Prison, which was just down the hill. It was also suggested in this article that it could be used as a hospital. But probable the cost of the structure and the “enormous expense of maintaining the place” caused any one interested in purchasing the property, including Staples heirs, spelled doom for the residence.

After the demolition of the home, the vacant property was sold off. This property was given back to the City of Stillwater in the 1930s and the property was once again made beautiful. This time it was for the purposes of a city park. That park still exists today and is named for all the pioneers of the St. Croix Valley.

The Amazing Modern World

A hundred years can seem like an awful long time ago. It’s easy to forget that many of the trappings of modern life originate from those first few years of the 20th century. But on the front page of the May 6th, 1906 Stillwater Messenger, before the following pages full of advertisements for farming equipment and horse-riding gear, an article on the miracle of human flight can be found directly above a report on the “Benefits of Food Adulteration” via chemical means.

It must have been a truly remarkable time to live through these dramatic advancements in technology. Their optimism towards the future is perfectly exhibited in the final line of this article.

Man May Now Fly At Will – Stillwater Messenger – May 5, 1906

“The problem of human flight is solved,” writes E.B. Grimes in Technical World Magazine for June. “One hundred and sixty times have the motor driven flying machines invented by Orville and Wilbur Wright of Dayton, Ohio, carried a man safely through the high air. The Wright flyer weighs about 925 pounds, including the operator. It is a true flying machine – not a dirigible balloon – and owes nothing to the lifting power of any gas. It seems to be completely under the control of the operator, who can send it up or down, ahead or to either side at will. Driven by a gasoline engine, said to be of twenty-four horse power, it flew on its last trip a distance of 24 1/5 miles without a stop. The speed during this flight averaged a trifle over 38 miles an hour.

Few inventions have had such tremdnous possibilities. Consider, for instance, what the exclusive possession of such a practical flyer, capable of lifting heavy weight, would mean to a nation at war. From a secure height, every movement of its enemy over a vast territory could be constantly watched; a whole army might be wiped out or at least thrown into confusion by bombs hurled from the sky; great cities might be easily terrorized – war it would almost seem, would be abolished by the common consent of mankind.

Lumberjack “Entertainment”

by Brent Peterson

As today, people in Stillwater a hundred years ago worked very hard to make a living. Those people working in the lumber industry such as the undercutters, sawyers, cooks and river pigs took pride in their work. The lawyers, business owners and even the clerks worked hard for every dollar that they made. All sorts of professions were practiced in the booming lumber town of Stillwater…including the “oldest profession”.

When the lumberjacks would come into town after the spring drive, there were places that the men would go to buy new clothes, get a hot bath, a shave, a haircut, and then possibly visit a social gathering spot to find a new “friend.”

Many of the lumberjacks coming out of the woods during the spring would head over to St. Paul’s Hill Street District. There one could find many of the Capitol city’s “Palace’s of Sin” which was only an hours ride on the train from Stillwater. Many of the famous Madams in that area were “Mother Mary Robinson,” “Lottie Leighton,” “Frenchy Mable LaSarge,” and the one and only “Nina Clifford.”

This is not to say that Stillwater did not have adequit facilities for the lumberjack. Just across the river into Houlton, Wis., according to historian Carol Maki, there were “sporting houses” conducted by such people as “Perry the Pimp,” “Mack Fortune,” and Larry Mandeville.

The best known Madame in Stillwater was the wife of Larry Mandeville. Her name was Nellie and around the area, she was known as “Red Nell.”

Red Nell became infamous, if for only appearing on the Police Register as regular as the sun setting. Over a 12 month period, from August 1882 through July 1883, Nell was arrested ten times. She was listed as having an occupation as a “Whore” and was arrested for running a “house of ill fame.” She was always arrested with another man named Mike Keogh, and he two was arrested for the same crime. Over this 12 month period, Red Nell paid $847 in fines, but never spent one day in jail. Tom Curtis, the late local historian, once stated that the brothels were permitted to operate by paying the city a yearly fine.

Other “ladies of the evening”, such as Delia Inbbuld, Flora Wood and Marti Childs, were arrested during this same time. Some either received a light fine, or maybe a day or two in jail, but some were “sent out of town” for their indiscretions. Stillwater was not the only place that had the ladies working. In an article written for the St. Louis County Historical Society titled “The Lumberjack Queens“, J.C. “Buzz” Ryan stated that he “knew a lumberjack by the name of Charles Baker who was born and raised in Stillwater who told me that the first job he had in Stillwater as a boy was hauling water with a horse and wagon from Stillwater to the Whorehouse at Bayport.”

In the Hudson Star-Times of 16 June 1882, an editorial ripped into the “city fathers” for permitting “Madame Cooper to again pitch her befouled tent in our midst and ply her hellish vocation in the face of decency, order and law.” Continuing, the editor said “Already her cargo of unclean birds has begun despoiling our youths; and is this people to look on in silence while such a base outrage is being enacted? Nor is Dame Cooper’s den the only hole of iniquity that need purging. There are other only wanting occasion to become even a greater stench in the public nostrils than hers and unless respectable society rises heroically and scoops these caves of iniquity from our midst, they may look for murders and debauches and felonies which will make those of the past seem mild in caparison. Away with these dives of pollution. Hudson can not afford to harbor them longer.”

Nellie “Red Nell” Mandeville, Stillwater’s most infamous Madame, died suddenly on July 22, 1888 at the age of 39. In her obituary in the Stillwater Messenger of July 28, the paper said that “the best that can be said of her life is that in public she always behaved decorously and is reported to have been faithful to her husband.” Nell was buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. Paul near where her mother and daughter lived. The end of Red Nell was not the end of Stillwater’s oldest profession. As long as there were lumberjacks, or any businessman that wanted to participate in such crime, Stillwater would always hold business opportunities for the likes of Nellie Mandeville.