Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/221

 CHAPTER XIV. TOWNSHIPS AND VILLAGES. Featherstone — Florence — Frontenac — Goodhue Township and Village — Advantages and Growth — Holden — Kenyon Town- ship and Village — Modern Progress — Leon — Minneola. Featherstone comprises one entire government township. No. 112 north, range 17 west, and has remained unchanged since the township act of 1858. It has no villages, its trading and ship- ping point being Red Wing, which is its near neighbor. Burnside, also, as well as Red Wing, borders it on the north, Hay creek on the east, Goodhue on the south and Vasa on the west. It is crossed by the Great Western railroad, the line through this township having originally been the Duluth & Red Wing. The township is intersected by the Hay creek valley on the east and by Spring creek valley on the west. These valleys are deep and wide, but their slopes are almost uniformly turfed, while between the bluffs that enclose them are some of the finest farms in the state, in a rich, deep loam. The higher farms on the uplands between the valleys are based on a yellowish loam for sub-soil, and are fertile and reliable for the usual crops. Some of them are sightly and command very picturesque landscapes, extending over the valleys with which the township is nearly surrounded. The surface is from undulating to rolling. Beau- tiful residences, surrounded with groves, from which stretch rich and highly cultivated farms, prevail through the township. The earliest settlers, who had come from countries wooded and watered, were not familiar with the advantages of prairie land, and consequently Featherstone was not settled until settlements of considerable size had sprung up in some of the other localities in the county. The township was named from William Featherstone and his extensive family, who came here with a number of farm hands to assist him in breaking the land, in 1856. He was not, however, the actual first settler, as in 1855 John Spencer, Philip Storkel and the Messrs. Goldsmith and Coleman had staked out claims and started to cultivate the land. Other early settlers were Kill