Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/266

 210 HISTORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY deep prairie soil, it made a most desirable place for the location of the early settlers. James Haggard and AY. Wilson came in 1854. Their claims were on section 5, where they erected cabins and prepared for permanent settlement. AVilson, however, after some time, returned to his old home in the East, and Haggard, discouraged by the burning of his cabin, went to Brown county, where he became a prominent citizen. Shortly after t he coming of Hag- gard and AVilson there arrived Simon Sackett, D. F. Stevens and H. D. Devoe. They were followed the next year by Fletcher Hagler, J. R. Good, David Coleman, J. Kutherford, William Farnam, Alexander Long, P. G. Wilson, William Fry, T. D. Hall and J. J. Hagler. Fletcher Hagler, above named, had his claim where the village of Roscoe now stands. He built the first frame dwelling in the township and served as postmaster, but afterward became one of the poineers of Pine Island. Oliver Webb, a lineal descendant of the Pilgrims, came in 1856. John C. Hepner, for many years the village blacksmith, came the same year and built a blacksmith shop. Among others who came at about the same time were two brothers named Dickinson, B. W. Halliday, G. G. McCoy. H. B. Powers and Charles Dana. The latter named the town from the township of Roscoe, Illinois, where he had previously lived. In 1856 Messrs. Hagler and Good built and stocked a store for general merchandise. This store was kept in operation about two years and then discontinued on account of the financial depression. In the spring of 1856 the same company had a village plat surveyed and the blocks and streets laid out. It never, however, reached the gigantic proportions of which the proprietors so fondly dreamed, although the proprietors helped all they could by getting a hotel built and a postoffice started. An early history says: "These pioneers experienced their full share of the hardships incident to the opening and settling of a new community. At once time Mrs. Stevens, the mother of D. F. Stevens, having sent her son to Dubuque for household supplies, relates that for two months she did not look upon the face of a white person except that of her young daughter; and the only bread they had to eat was made from corn given her I>y the Indians and ground by herself in a coffee mill." The first religious services in tfie town were held at the home of Mrs. Stevens in the fall of 1854, the Rev. John Salmon offici- ating. The first church organization took place in the school- house at Roscoe in the spring of 1857. The first Sunday school was organized in 1858, and Loren Webb, son of Oliver Webb, was the first superintendent. In the spring of 1855 Mrs. Haskell Burch, while living in a covered wagon, awaiting the completion