Page:History of Stearns County, Minnesota; volume 1.pdf/843

 county, 28.2 mills. State taxes levied, $119,419.17; county taxes, $106,710.30; city and village taxes, $86,142.16; school taxes, $169,792.93; total levy, $560,936.52.

1914. Number of acres assessed, 850,159.60; value of acreage property, $12,711,697; value of town and city lots, $4,430,829; value of personal property, $3,679,983; value of moneys and credits, $2,267,830; total taxable value, $23,090,339. Average value an acre, $14.95. Average rate of taxation for county, 28.1 mills. Taxes levied: State taxes, $126,311.28; county taxes, $153,999.69; city and village taxes, $94,887.69; town taxes, $88,670.42; school taxes, $185,194.47; total levy, $649,063.55.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

BIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW.

Interesting Facts Gleaned from the Life and Career of Many of the County's Leading Men—Pioneers Who Helped to Subdue the Wilderness—Citizens Who Have Come Later and Taken Their Share in the Growth and Progress of the County—Leading Men.

John L. Wilson. This patriarch of Northern Minnesota pioneers was by common consent known as the "Father of St. Cloud," a designation to which he was justly entitled, as it was he who secured the land on which the city was originally located, platted it and built on it the first frame house, and this was his home continuously from the date of his settlement here in 1853 to the day of his death, January 3, 1910, when he lacked but a few weeks of rounding out full ninety years. Mr. Wilson was of New England birth, his parents living at Columbia, Washington county, Maine, where he was born February 24, 1820. After one change of location in that state the family moved in 1830 to New Jersey, and a little later he went to New York city and secured employment in a printing office. During the ten years of his residence there he was engaged in various occupations, until in 1840 the family moved to what was then the new West, locating at St. Charles, III. Mr. Wilson, an active young man, took up the business of contracting, giving especial attention to the building of saw mills and flouring mills. In 1851 he came to Minnesota and the following year erected a saw mill, as also a house, at Sauk Rapids; then completed a sawmill, which had been previously begun, at Little Falls, and afterwards built at St. Augusta Stearns county's first sawmill.

It was in 1853 that Mr. Wilson decided to locate at St. Cloud, purchasing a claim made by Ole Bergeson, a Norwegian squatter, platting the townsite, and giving it its present name. New settlers quickly came in and the embryo town grew in population and in importance. Mr. Wilson encouraged settlement by giving to those who first came lots on which to build. He was exceedingly liberal so long as the supply of lots held out, encouraging both public