Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/205

 HISTORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY 153 At the first election, held in 1858, there were fifteen voters: John Thomas, Justin Chamberlain, J. G. Johnson, John Leason, B. H. Munroe, ' S. B. Harding, W. S. Grow, John Sterns, M. Streetor, Charles Spates, A. 0. Moore, J. Eggleston, Thomas Leason, William Thompson, Seth Barber and John Quinnell'. Among the early supervisors were W. S. Grow, Timothy Jewett, Leland Jones (four terms), J. G. Johnson, A. Coons, R. H. Knox, Q. Bunch (two terms), L. Jones. Among the early town clerks were J. G. Johnson, Leland Jones, Norris Hobart, S. Barber, T. J. Leason (two terms), Leland Jones (two terms), William H. Ben- nett, Leland Jones, John Leason, J. G. Johnson. The contribution of Burnside, including what is now Welch, to the Civil War was as follows : Joseph S. Abels, William Brown, Lewis Cannon, Harlan P. Eggleston, Ira Eggleston, John S. Hobart, Robert W. Leason, James A. Leason, Thomas J. Leason, John P. Leason, Charles B. Noble, Lewis Quinnell, Thomas Quinnell, John .Richards, James Shaw, Ira Tillotson, James A. Wright, William H. Wright, John Williams, Edward Coller, Nathaniel Brown, Augustus C. Baker, Dennis O'Loughlin and Orrin A. Phelps. To Rev. J. C. Johnson is accredited the following narrative : "I built a claim house, 16 x 20, in the town now called Burnside, commencing it in January, 1855, and moving into it in the follow- ing August. I found out that naked nature needed more clothing than a newborn child — first a hen-roost, then a pigsty, a stable, stock-yard, corn-yard, a forty-acre pasture, one hundred acres encircled with a wooden fence, breaking costing five dollars per acre ; school houses to be built, cemeteries laid out and enclosed, bridges everywhere to be built, highways surveyed and worked. The winter of 1855-56 was a rough one. As a member of the Minnesota Methodist Episcopal conference, I was trying to sup- ply the work of preaching at a point five miles above Hastings in the forenoon, at Hastings at 2 P. M., and at Ravenna, seven miles below, at 'candle light.' Late in the fall, one of the darkest and most stormy nights known to men, overtook me on the open prairie below Hastings. The only way to find the path and keep it was to feel it out with the feet. After a while a distant light appeared in view, and, thoroughly drenched, I soon found shelter in a small house occupied by two families. But the poor pony had no shelter and scant food. "One Monday morning of that winter, in trying to get home from my appointment, a blizzard commenced raging. Scarcely any travel on the road except one stage through. About forty degrees below zero of cold came on. The wife and two little children at home alone, neighbors few and far between, stem Necessity says, 'You must get home,' but that open, bleak prairie