J. Fletcher (John Fletcher) Williams

A History of the City of Saint Paul, and of the County of Ramsey, Minnesota, J. Fletcher (John Fletcher) Williams

This work was prepared at the request and advice of a number of friends, who believed that the writer had the material at hand and the opportunity to prepare it, better than any one else who was likely to undertake it. There seemed, too, a necessity for such a work. The old pioneers of our city and State were, one by one, passing away, and the events of our early history, if not soon gathered and placed on permanent record, .would be lost. The names even, of those who first plante4 their cabins on the site of our city, were fast becoming lost and forgotten: and their worthy acts, their labors, their adventures, the privations and struggles of frontier life, and other events in the earliest days of our city, were rapidly fading from the memory of the little group of pioneers who survived. Even what -manner of men they were, whence they came, their personal history, particulars which will interest those who come after us more, perhaps, than they do the present generation, were matters known to so few, and scattered in fragments among widely distant households, it was almost a sealed book to some of the pioneers themselves.