The 1892 St Cloud City Directory

1892 Directory

1896-97 Directory including Sauk Rapids and Waite Park

1901 including Sauk Rapids and Waite Park

We here in Minnesota have an invaluable website called Minnesota Reflections, where historic books and newspapers and photographs are posted online.  It's where the Pierz Journal is most available to us, as well as searchable subjects that might pop into your head.  Try it sometime.  The fun is when you start looking for one thing and get into something entirely off track--like the city directories.
In the first few pages, there are lists of amenities the town offers.  There's a statement of how many names they've included, calculating a  "multiple of three, the one in most general use in other cities"--so since there were 2,820 names listed in 1892, they estimated there were really over 8,400 residents.

And just so you can actually answer that Trivial Pursuit question: In 1892, there were 17 churches and 18 "secret societies" in St Cloud, Minnesota.
You're welcome ☺.

Buckman Plat, 1892

HERE'S the whole page on Minnesota Reflections.

Blake & Bentfeld

One of the photos I found and scanned from the Morrison County Atlases was of a store front with "Blake and Bentfeld" painted above the second floor windows.  The caption said it was a Pierz Store, c 1890.  I was casting about for a pic of it on the street there, but Larry went to the definitive source and looked at the list of grocery stores maintained on the MCHS website.  WELL.  Turns out the store was in Little Falls, at 420 East Broadway, not Pierz, and it opened in 1892.  Looks like a new store, huh?  (Yup, I added the correct caption).

I was noodling around my (huge) Pictures file, and this 1892 plat map of the east end of Buckman township caught my eye again, because of how densely it was settled there on the left, and not on the right. The yellow acreage is all railroad land, with much of the rest state or school land.

What's with that?

Well, the railroads were granted 24 miles of land on either side of the tracks--a really wide swath--and if you recall, there were train tracks from Royalton thru Genola and Hillman, on to Onamia, and Duluth.  (The link is a .pdf  map of the ATV trail that's there now).  See where Buckman is in relation to the tracks?  The yellow areas were simply railroad lands that hadn't sold to farmers yet.  Incredible, huh?

Another question is why whole sections (12 and 36) were SCHOOL land, but we haven't researched that yet...lol

Ribbit!--Little Falls plagued by Frogs

The fact that there were swamps east of town and the river IN town might have had a little something to do with it?

Agram Township, 1892

Now, THIS is cool. It's 1892, five years before our great-great grandfather Johann Hesch died (me, dad, Anton, Paul, Johann). This map is from the Morrison County Plat book, and the village of Pierz (Rich Prairie) is just off the top right corner.

Click it to biggify. Recognize any names?

There were 57 pages in the book, and on page 56, this "List of Patrons" included the name of their farms, and what they specialized in.

Ok, so John didn't name his farm, but he's listed as "Farmer and Stock Breeder". Close enough.


From the same page, here're the Buckman patrons. I wonder: did Frank Mischke pay extra for all that?

Again, note that these are not ALL the farmers, just the "patrons". Ka-ching!