M.L. Berg

In the summer of 1882, a caravan of ten adults wended its way across northern Stevens County in search of a place to settle. For the most part, they chose locations west of the future site of Minot. These adults were Henry and Tomine (Minnie) Gasmann, Sever (or Sivert) and Sarah Anderson, Ole and Petra Thygeson, Ole and Gunhild Spoklie, John Jacobson, and Ed Thygeson; Ole was Ed’s father, and they were related to Minnie Gasmann.

En route, Minnie recalled, “There was a party camping in a tent, and the men busy building a house. They called that place Villard.” Eight separate family groups had formed this first community around Villard; they had only just arrived, with the two final arrivals, Richard Copeland and Gustav Swenson, coming on June 2, perhaps just three weeks earlier. A month later, in July, 1882, the Gasmanns chose a plot in the coulee that still bears their name, where they arrived on July 4.

Minnie also noticed that the prairie trail that led to Fort Stevenson entered the Mouse River Valley near their cabin. In the fall of 1867, men carrying military mail between Fort Stevenson and Fort Totten had begun a 60-mile dogleg path to circumvent the Dog Den area that led into the Mouse River Valley. Did the trail near the Gasmann residence have any connection with this 1867 route? Or was the trail a well-established Native American one, linking the Mouse River region with the Missouri River region?

Despite a low number of settlers in northern Stevens County, mail was delivered to them at least once before the end of 1882. Minnie recalled that the mail had been delivered that winter, so the likely month was December, 1882. Beginning in the summer of 1882, George Hofmann of Villard had been awarded a mail contract to handle mail delivered to Villard or sent out of Villard. (In the 1880s, Hofmann was a mail contractor, but he did become the Villard Postmaster in the 1890s, serving from December, 1895 to February, 1898.)

In view of the sparse settlement west of Villard, Hofmann might have chosen to entrust the mails to people traveling in that direction, rather than hiring carriers, as he had to do for the route between Villard and Washburn.

However it happened, Charles Bailey, a McHenry County resident who lived west of Villard, became a mail carrier. Minnie mentioned that he had brought them their mail late in the year. After he entered their residence with the mail bag, he made quite an impression by what he did next.

Minnie said, “I can just see yet, as he dumped out the mail on the floor, and Henry picked out ours, which was not much.” Bailey dumped it out, because he could neither read nor write. Bailey was married, and his wife was, again according to Minnie, “a fine looking woman.” The Bailey’s child was but a month old in December, 1882. If Bailey’s mail delivery to the Gasmann’s that same month was not the first of its kind, it is the earliest such mail delivery on record.

Roughly four months later, in April, 1883, three men scouted out the area around the junction of the Des Lacs River and the Mouse River, an area they referred to as “The Forks” at first. These men were Joseph Colton, his son-in-law James Johnson and J. J. Rodgers. Colton and Johnson had left their families in Lisbon as a precaution. The two men decided to stay at “The Forks,” but Rodgers opted to return to New York state.

Colton and Johnson managed to arrange a post office at “The Forks.” Johnson was duly appointed the Postmaster at Burlington, the official name for the post office, on February 26, 1884. (James Johnson was followed as Postmaster by Sarah Colton, Joseph Colton’s daughter, on December 6, 1889.) Burlington had a post office nearly nine months before Villard did, even though Villard had been founded a year earlier.

Richard Copeland was named the first Villard Postmaster on November 21, 1884. The distance between the two post offices was 55 miles.

To be continued …

M.L. Berg of Minot enjoys researching local history.