Mark Berg

The earliest surviving issue of a Minot newspaper is that for the Minot Journal from Friday, February 2,1894. The Minot Journal had made its debut on April 27, 1889, at which time George Wilson and Luther McGahan were the joint owners.

None of the previous 250, or so, issues of the Minot Journal had survived to be included in the newspaper archives kept at the North Dakota State Historical Society.

During this month, the Minot Journal was published by Homer Mann and Enos Arnold, who had assumed ownership of the newspaper in November or December 1893.

The Journal office was on east Main Street on the lot just south of the Foot Building (so called after owner Loren Foot) at the southeast corner of Main Street and First Avenue (then called Second Street). The Foot Building was the venue for “A Hard Times” social on Wednesday, February 6. Souvenir “shingles” were passed out during this social, a play was performed, and a 4-year-old sang a solo, as the Journal reported in its issue for Friday, February 9. (Loren Foot had traveled from west of Devils Lake to the Mouse River Valley with Erik Ramstad in 1883, when he settled in the area around Burlington.)

The four issues of the Minot Journal published in February 1894 provide a few details on Minot public education at that time. There were 30 students enrolled: 16 resident students and 14 non-resident students. Their school fees were $3 a month.

The principal was paid $80 a year. This was reported in the Friday, February 16, issue.

In February 1894, the principal was Samuel Danford, who was born in Ohio in January 1865. His wife Clara was also from Ohio; they were raising four children.

Danford had been hired as school principal in 1893; he would go on to be the Minot school principal until the end of the 1897-1898 school year.

Danford was also active in the Methodist church. He was following in the footsteps of another man who had been both a Minot school principal and a Methodist minister.

This was Frederick Hawke. He was born in Canada in 1845. In 1888 and 1889, he had ministered in Bottineau and was then assigned to Minot in 1889.

Hawke was appointed Minot school principal in 1889 and served for the 1889-1890 school year. Hawke is identified as the Minot school principal on page 79 of the ‘First Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction’ (Bismarck, 1890).

For this 10-month school year, he received $50. There were two women teaching alongside him (probably Ida Clark and Sadie Webber). There were 44 girls attending school and 40 boys, for a total enrollment of 84. The number of children in Ward County of school age was given as 120 (63 boys and 57 girls), so only 70% of children were enrolled in school. (Enrollment figures are found on page 83 of this report.)

The two women each received an annual salary of $42.50 (reported on page 81).

Frederick Hawke left Minot in 1891. His position as Minot school principal was filled, firstly, by Christopher Johnson from 1890 to 1892, then by J E Arnold from 1892 to 1893, and, finally, by Samuel Danford as of 1893. (J E Arnold was mentioned as Johnson’s successor as Minot school principal in a newspaper article about Christopher Johnson, titled “Active in politics, business, schools was C. A. Johnson” on page 9 of the Tuesday, June 25, 1935, issue of the Minot Daily News and Daily Optic Reporter. Christopher Johnson passed away in Los Angeles, California, on Monday, July 25, 1949, at age 81.)

The February 1894 issues of the Minot Journal tell a sad story of a number of illnesses afflicting Minot area residents. Scarlet fever was especially prevalent. Robert Gollay, the Soo Line ticket agent, had caught it, and his position as ticket agent was being temporarily filled by his wife Esther and Ed Wiper. Dr. Earl Strain, who was county coroner and president of the Board of Health, mentioned that a number of people had had to be quarantined due to scarlet fever as of February 23. Worst of all, Mr. and Mrs. Perry Stockwell had lost an 8-month-old baby to scarlet fever on Monday, February 19.

Two other deaths occurred during the month to other illnesses. (1) Christine Anderson Wallin, the wife of John Wallin, died of consumption on Sunday, February 11; the Wallins had been married for ten years. (2) Frank Brobst, a popular Great Northern railroader, died of typhoid fever on Friday, February 2. Frank was born in Illinois in 1858, moved to Dakota Territory in 1886 and to Ward County in 1888. On the day of his funeral, all of the other churches mutually agreed to cancel their usual services, so all could pay their respects to Frank.

On the front page of the Minot Journal for Friday, February 23, was a long article highly recommending the natural resources to be found in the Mouse River Valley.

One portion of the article reads: ‘With a good farm to be obtained for nothing, free fuel, free feed and a good market, it is hard to see how the settler in the Mouse River Valley can do otherwise than prosper if he goes the right way about it.’

Nevertheless, actual conditions were hardly such as to afford farms for nothing. The same issue of the Journal listed eight foreclosures in the Mouse River Valley on its back page, mostly because these people could not pay off loans that had been made by the Bank of Minot, whose chief executive was Elisha Ashley Mears.

Mears sold certificates of deposits to raise money to finance property loans, then take the mortgages as collateral. (His bank would wind up holding too many mortgages relative to its other assets, as a result of such foreclosures as these.) These eight foreclosures involved a married couple, a widower and six bachelors. Their debts ranged from $305 to $656. The earliest loan had been made on October 3, 1887, and the most recent one on April 13, 1893. Three others were from 1888 and three more from 1889. The properties foreclosed on were situated in six Ward County townships.

M.L. Berg, of Minot, enjoys researching Minot’s history.