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This article winds up our discussion of mail services in the Mouse River Valley in the decade of the 1880s. It will focus on mail services between McHenry County and Ward County from 1886 until 1889.
The original mail contract in McHenry County was held by George Hofmann. He and his wife Anna had emigrated from Germany and settled in McHenry County in the spring of 1882. He was a brewer by profession, as he listed his profession at the time of the 1885 census of population. When he first arrived in McHenry County, he had scouted out a location for a brewery.
As reported on page eight of the Bismarck Tribune for Friday, April 7, 1882, George 'Hofmann, an experienced brewer from Moorhead, Minn., has located a site for a brewery one mile north of town [Villard], on a beautiful spring that runs about fifty inches of water. Its source is about three hundred yards from the (Mouse) river. Mr. Hoffman says he can get a water-power on this spring to grind his malt and do all the pumping.'
It appears that Hoffman must have operated a brewery from 1882 down to 1885, at least.
If so, did he sell his beverages at the brewery. or somewhere else? The first saloons in McHenry County appeared in Towner in the summer of 1886. As mentioned on page four of the Villard Leader for Saturday, September 11, 1886, Robert Fox and Robert Gorman ran a saloon together, as did Jim Ferris and Billy Storms. These two saloons were under tents, with the Fox & Gorman saloon in "a fine, large tent located near the depot site."
In August, 1886, McHenry County Sheriff Benjamin Reed had sold two liquor licenses for $150 each to cover sales for a period of three months. Did George Hofmann ever have to pay for a liquor license? The two liquor licenses sold by Sheriff Reed in August were most likely sold to liquor dealers traveling along with the Manitoba Road crews.
Hofmann's mail contract expired in 1886. By then, there were a number of post offices from Towner to Burlington scattered within the Mouse River Valley, including Towner, Newport, Pendroy, Villard, Mouse River, Nichols, Black, St. Carl and Burlington.
In 1887, post offices were established in Echo, Logan and Minot. The Newport post office closed in April, 1887, with its business picked up by the Towner post office.
Similarly, the post office in Black closed in August, 1887, its services transferring to Echo. Black and Echo both lay near the future townsite of Sawyer in the very same township.
The original Mouse River post office was established in December, 1884, in the southwest quarter of Section 30 in Township 154, Range 81, by Robert Davidson. In July, 1885, a post office named Nichols was started in the northeast quarter of Section 25 in Township 153, Range 80, by Palmer Potter. The Nichols post office was located within the bounds of Scriptown, so, like Victoria and Coal Harbor in McLean County, the town and its post office had different names. The Topographer of the US Post Office Department, W. L. Nicholson, had had to write to Postmaster James Pendroy in October, 1886, about this very matter, since the arrangement was not at all clear. James Pendroy was the Pendroy Postmaster, and Pendroy was the nearest post office to Scriptown.
Nicholson had asked, "What is the name of the county seat of McHenry County and its P.O.?"
In reply, Postmaster Potter had answered, on October 22, 1886, "Scriptown is the County Seat of McHenry County. Mouse River P.O. is located at Scriptown."
Perhaps the confusion expressed by Topographer Nicholson was compounded by the fact that, for some reason, the Nichols post office had been renamed Mouse River in June, 1886, and it kept that name until its functions were transferred to Velva in the 1890s.
At the time of the switching of post office names from Nichols to Mouse River, the exact location of the post office was given as the southeast quarter of the northeast quarter of Section 25. (The Velva post office would be located in the southeast quarter of Section 22 of the same township, several miles upriver from the Scriptown site in Section 25.)
After Nichols was renamed Mouse River, the original Mouse River post office was closed.
Robert Davidson was no longer the Mouse River postmaster, but he became the first postmaster at Logan and served in that capacity from April, 1887, until June, 1894.
Also, in April, 1887, Davidson owned a cigar store in Minot with his partner, Jonathan Kenkel. It was located in the Bennett building at the northwest corner of Main Street and First Avenue (then named Second Street). Early that month, their stock included 80,000 cigars with another 60,000 scheduled to be delivered. Someone claimed that Davidson then had the 'most fascinating moustache on record'. (See page four of the Villard Leader for Saturday, April 2, 1887.)
The Bennett building had also housed the first Minot post office. The first Minot Postmaster was Patrick McNamara. He had applied for the job in January, 1887, and he was appointed postmaster in February. McNamara had ordered and was installing, or had installed, 160 lock boxes and 200 call boxes. (See page four of the Villard Leader for Saturday, March 19, 1887.) Unfortunately, the Bennett building was destroyed by fire, Minot's first major fire, on Monday, May 9, 1887, scarcely three months after McNamara was appointed. After the fire, McNamara took out a mortgage on a one-and-one-half story building on the east side of Main Street on the block just south of First Avenue. The building was about where the Samuelsons later sold shoes, and it served as Minot's second post office.
This building is identified as Minot's second post office in a document filed by McNamara in October, 1888. At that time, he was turning over his assets to Wakefield Davis and William Hope, his bondsmen, to wit, "all my property to include both real and personal." He specifically mentioned the one-and-one-half story Post office building (on lot 15 of Block 7) and its contents, "consisting of tobacco, cigars, toys and fancy articles of various kinds & sorts" and "all furniture, beds & bedding in said blg."
(A handwritten copy of McNamara's document is found on pages 62 and 63 in Book A in the collection of Miscellaneous Records on file at the Ward County Recorder's Office in Minot. The document is dated Thursday, October 19, 1888.)
Since William Hope succeeded McNamara as Minot Postmaster in November, 1888, did the Minot post office remain in that one-and-one-half story building, or did Hope transfer postal services into his hardware store, which was just south of that building and situated right at the northeast corner of Main Street and Second Avenue (then called Third Street)? William Mansfield succeeded William Hope as the Minot Postmaster in May, 1889, and served as Minot Postmaster for four years, until May, 1893. Mansfield was a druggist and his drug store was located where the Bennett building had been in 1887. Its seems likely that Mansfield moved postal services into his drugstore at some point during those four years.
So, a possible, but not a verified, list of Minot post offices from 1887 to 1893 might be: (1) Bennett building on west Main Street; (2) McNamara's building on east Main Street; (3) Hope Brothers hardware store - or McNamara's building - on east Main Street; and (4) Mansfield drugstore on west Main Street. But, then, perhaps, McNamara's building had, indeed, been used as Minot's Post Office from May/June, 1887, until May, 1893?
Meanwhile, Palmer Potter held onto his job at Mouse River/Scriptown until May, 1890. At the end of 1887, there were, then, nine post offices along the Mouse River Valley spread out in this fashion from east to west: Towner - Villard - Pendroy - Mouse River/Scriptown - Echo - Logan - St. Carl - Minot - Burlington.
People had been attracted to settle at both Villard and at Scriptown in the hope a railroad would come in their direction in the near future. When Villard was occupied in spring 1882, the Northern Pacific Railroad was considering running a line from Jamestown to the Mouse River Valley. A map appended to the annual report of the Northern Pacific Railroad for the business year July 1, 1880, to June 30, 1881, showed a proposed rail line running out of Jamestown to be built to the junction of the Wintering River and the Mouse River, which was right where Villard was located. Only one fourth of this line seems to have been laid by June, 1881.
A similar map was also included with the annual report for the following fiscal year from July 1, 1881, to June 30, 1882. On this map, the same rail line is indicated as having been finished from Jamestown as far as southeastern Wells County.
In the summer of 1882, there remained the possibility of a Northern Pacific rail line being built to connect McHenry County with Jamestown. But a map included with the annual report for the period July 1, 1882, to June 30, 1883, gave less reason to expect that result.
This 1883 map showed the line out of Jamestown being directed towards Minnewaukan and Benson County and away from McHenry County and the Mouse River Valley.This redirected line had already been completed beyond New Rockford by the summer of 1883; it finally reached Minnewaukan in 1885.
Richard Copeland held forth in some understandably caustic remarks as to his feelings about this change of plans on the part of Northern Pacific officials - almost amounting to a sense of betrayal - on the front page of the Villard Leader for Saturday, August 28, 1886: "We certainly would be very much elated, if we could see the least tangible shadow of such a road (perhaps a Manitoba Road rail line running from east to west at Villard), but having been sadly disappointed even when a road was pointed directly for us, and actually graded within a day's travel, by its taking a sudden shift through a dreary, uninhabited region miles away, we feel very much like doing what Job was advised to do whenever we hear the name of 'Villard' mentioned in the same breath with a railroad project."
M.L. Berg of Minot enjoys researching local history.