Dashing Through the Snow: Ann North’s Letters

This article is from the 2015 edition of the RCHS Winter Newsletter. RCHS is working to share more of our content digitally.

Dashing through the snow in a horse-drawn sleigh was one of the few ways of finding some wintertime fun in Minnesota frontier days.

Ann North’s letters from St. Anthony, Minnesota, to her parents, grandmother and brothers and later from the fledgling village of Northfield on the Cannon River, are a treasure trove of historical information about life in those early days of Minnesota when it was still a territory, and then in its early statehood days. They also provide a great look at the early days of Cannon City and Faribault as well as Northfield. Copies of those letters are on file in the Rare Book Room of the Rice County Historical Society Museum.

Sleighing as a pleasure is referred to a number of times in her letters. But, of course, it was also the best way of getting around on snow in those pioneer times when there were no railroads, rivers for steamboat traffic froze up in winter, and there were only wagon paths through woods and prairies.

At the time she wrote to her parents about the lack of snow for ideal sleighing, Ann North had lived in St. Anthony in the Minnesota Territory for five years. She had married John North, 15 years her senior, in August 1848 in Dewitt, NY, shortly before her 18^th birthday. John was a teacher, lecturer and lawyer, active in the abolitionist and temperance movements. Ann had attended a female seminary and her education included piano lessons, French and German. She was a strong writer and reader of the classics and current events of her time. 

Shipping of Ann’s piano to St. Anthony took precedence over the books in John’s law library. The piano arrived shortly after their arrival by steamboat to St. Anthony on Nov. 4, 1849, while the books did not reach St. Anthony until the following summer.

Housing was scarce in the growing village of St. Anthony. They first lived in the Northup’s crowded boarding house. But John North arranged with prominent businessman, Franklin Steele, (as in Steele County) to rent a house from him on Nicollet Island. Steele winterized it for the couple.

Their first winter in Minnesota was severe. The island house was not easily accessible from the mainland during winter. Contact with other villagers was limited. Food was expensive, according to Ann’s letters, and there was very little fresh food available, especially milk and eggs.

Ann and John North’s first son was born in September 1850, but the baby lived only six days. Ann’s grandmother, Mrs. Lewis, had traveled to Minnesota from New York for the birth and was on hand to support and comfort Ann and her husband.

Money was tight, so Ann gave piano lessons. The summer after they moved into their own home, she planted a garden and they eventually had a cow, pigs and chickens. There were no apple trees in Minnesota yet, but there were many wild cranberries and wild plums. However for the most part, the staple diet was salt pork and potatoes, her letters tell.

Yet perhaps the improved diet from their first year in Minnesota helped Ann with her second pregnancy. A healthy daughter was born to the Norths in March 1852. They named her Emma after John’s first wife who had died in 1847 after two years of marriage. Ann wrote that naming their daughter Emma “pleased Mr. North.” Ann’s letters always referred to her husband as “Mr. North.”

John North’s unmarried sister, Clara, became a permanent member of the North household by the time Emma was born. Clara was a great help to Ann as other children were born and the family grew in size. By the time they moved to the fledging village of Northfield in January in 1856, sons, George and John, had been born. Georgie was named after Ann’s brother and Johnnie after “Mr. North.”

By 1855, John North had become disenchanted with St. Anthony and his law practice there and had begun to explore land along the Cannon River.  Winter did not stop him from his explorations, and he was gone a lot early that year, according to Ann’s letters to her parents.

She wrote, “Mr. North and Mr. Williams will go down to the Cannon River and we will be quite alone.” However, we know that her Grandmother visiting the family at that time. Also wintering with the family were John’s sister, Clara North, as well as a hired girl living in the household, With these three women and the children, Ann was far from alone.

John North would at first purchase an interest in the city plat of Faribault, but later sell that interest. Instead, he found the small settlement of Alexander (later named Northfield) to his liking. He decided a saw mill at the site of Alexander could be profitable and went about plans for the mill as well as building a house there for his family.

While John North went “to the Cannon River” frequently in 1855, Ann North had never visited the community of Alexander, which was renamed “Northfield” by the time of her arrival there in January 1856.

Sleighing fun mentioned

She writes on Dec. 23, 1855,“We have had FINE sleighing for about ten days. Once last week the temperature was 20 below. This morning was the coldest one we’ve had, but as we have no thermometer, I do not know how cold it was. Water froze in my bedroom. Preparing to go to “Cannon River.” Thought house would be ready by early December.”

In another letter written on Dec. 30, 1855: “Still in St. Anthony. Obliged to keep fire nights. (`Fire night’ would be putting wood in stove at intervals to assure constant heat all night). Even with that, water froze in my bedroom.”

She adds, “You know I never saw the country, and know nothing of it. (Cannon River valley.) I believe I can adapt myself to circumstances as well as most anyone.”

Lumber sleigh

John and Ann North and their three young children, Clara North, and the Norths’ hired girl, Hetty, left St. Anthony on Jan. 1, 1856, in subzero weather. They used a canvass tarp covered lumber sleigh, to travel to Northfield and their new home on the Cannon River.

In a letter, Ann told how the back of the lumber sleigh had feather beds and blankets for Emma and Georgie and a rocking chair for her and 3-month-old Johnnie. The 40 mile trip from St. Anthony to Northfield took a day and a half with a four-horse team pulling the lumber sleigh filled with people and some possessions. Most of the family’s possession had been sent ahead.

The frigid winter weather did not keep the Norths from moving to the Cannon River and the house built for them. She writes in a letter to relatives on Jan. 13, 1856: “We have had the most severe weather, and the longest time of it that I ever knew. For more than two weeks it was intensely cold, a good many have frozen hands, feet and faces and some have been frozen to death.

“And, in the midst of all that, we moved down here with these three little children. We keep three fires and have a stove in the room where Clara, Emma, Georgie and Hetty sleep. We have some colds that are troublesome. Our house fronts the west and we have a fine view of river, mill and the woods on the opposite side.”

But the cold weather doesn’t limit the North’s travel. She writes in another letter, “Tomorrow I expect to go to Faribault with Mr. North and there I hope to see friends’ faces again. The Nuttings, Mills and Duttons are there. (She became friends with them in St. Anthony.) It is quite a ride in an open sleigh with a baby, but I want to see them.”  

In a letter written on Jan. 20, 1856, she writes of that visit: “Mr. North and myself went to Faribault last Wednesday and returned Thursday. Johnnie was four months old and weighed 21 pounds and I can assure you I was some lame when I came home from carrying him. . . . We took dinner with Mrs. Truman Nutting, Wednesday. She and Eliza seemed very glad to see me. She is keeping a public house, in new country style.”

They spent the night at Mr. Dulton’s. In the morning they called on Mr. Nutting’s sister, Mrs. Howe. Then rode by sleigh six miles toward home and had dinner with Mr.  and Mrs. Sears at Cannon City. She writes, “They have a fine steam saw mill just commencing operations there. After a few hours visiting, we came home, a ride of nine miles, having had a delightful ride and visit. The country to me is beautiful for it looks more like home. There are hills and forest.”

From her letters, Ann definitely enjoyed gliding over snow in a horse-drawn sleigh. How refreshing to other pioneers, too, to take a sleigh ride when the snow was just right and have some winter fun and forget about “fire nights” and the other harsh realities of Minnesota’s winter.

—Pauline Schreiber, RCHS Board Member and Volunteer