This Day in Minnesota History

December 25, 1913

Minneapolis's first public Christmas tree is lit in Gateway Park.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 25, 1943

Citizens of Minneapolis are shocked when the body of the year's ninth murder victim is found. There had been only one murder the previous year.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 26, 1850

Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey declares Minnesota's first Thanksgiving Day. He cites good crops; no hurricanes, droughts, or diseases; and friendly relations between Native Americans and settler-colonists as worthy reasons to give thanks.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 26, 1862

Thirty-eight Dakota men, convicted of crimes committed during the US-Dakota War, are hanged by the federal government in Mankato. Their trials were brief and carried out with little legal authority. It was the largest mass execution in American history.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 26, 1990

Sister Mary Giovanni Gourhan, founder in 1963 of Guadalupe Area Project alternative school, dies. A native of West St. Paul active in that neighborhood's Chicano community, Gourhan ran an unorthodox school, teaching the basics as well as Mexican history and effective living and meditation techniques.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 27, 1846

David M. Clough is born in Lyme, New Hampshire. He settled in Isanti County and served as governor of Minnesota from 1895 to 1899. During his tenure, the state raised four army regiments for service in the Spanish-American War and began building a new Minnesota State Capitol. Clough died in 1924.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 27, 1858

Charles J. Rinehart, accused of murdering carpenter John B. Bodell, is lynched in Lexington. His case had not yet been brought to trial.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 27, 1906

Mahnomen County is formed. Mahnomen (manoomin) is an Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) word for wild rice. Many Anishinaabe peoples, including the Ojibwe, have a historical and spiritual relationship with the plant.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 27, 1957

Governor Orville L. Freeman announces that Minnesota will crack down on "drinking drivers," urging sheriffs in the state to resist local pressures to reduce drunk driving charges to charges of careless driving.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 28, 1846

The state of Iowa is admitted to the Union. Iowa Territory had extended north into what is now western Minnesota, and this area was without a formal government until Minnesota Territory was created in 1849.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 28, 1909

W. E."Pussyfoot" Johnson, who had the authority to enforce federal liquor laws on Native American reservations, leads a raid on the saloons of Park Rapids, which were illegally serving residents of the White Earth Reservation of Ojibwe (considered wards of the state and protected by an 1855 treaty). Johnson and a trainload of US marshals gather all the bottles they can find and demolish them on Main Street.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 29, 1854

The first legal execution in Ramsey County, Minnesota Territory, takes place when Yuha Zi, a Dakota man convicted of murdering an immigrant woman named Bridget Keanor, is hanged on a gallows on St. Anthony Hill (now Cathedral Hill) in St. Paul.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 29, 1891

The Minnesota Library Association is organized in St. Paul. Professor William W. Folwell, the librarian of the University of Minnesota, is elected president of this first state library association, and other members of "that useful profession" fill the offices of vice president (Helen J. McCaine of the St. Paul Public Library) and secretary and treasurer (J. Fletcher Williams of the Minnesota Historical Society).

This Day in Minnesota History

December 4, 1855

During Alexander Ramsey's term as mayor of St. Paul, the city council establishes its first professional fire department, which succeeds a volunteer hook and ladder company and inherits its equipment, including an engine, ladders, ropes, hooks, and axes, as well as a church bell donated by the Reverend Edward D. Neill.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 4, 1860

The local telegraph office opens in St. Anthony (now northeast Minneapolis), following the St. Paul and Minneapolis offices in linking Minnesota cities to the rest of the world by means of electric wire strung on poles.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 4, 1928

A car bomb kills "Dapper Dan" Hogan, owner of St. Paul's notorious Green Lantern speakeasy and longtime boss of the city's underworld.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 5, 1853

Henry M. Rice easily replaces Henry H. Sibley, who chose not to run for re-election, as Minnesota Territory's delegate to Congress. Sibley had won the office by a narrow margin in a previous election following a heated campaign involving fur-trade interests, with "fur" symbolized by Sibley and "anti-fur" by Alexander M. Mitchell, the candidate supported by Rice.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 5, 1873

Lincoln County, named for the Civil War president, is created, having been established by the legislature on March 6 and approved by vote of the people in November. Three previous attempts to rename or carve out a county in honor of Lincoln had failed to garner the requisite popular vote.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 5, 1950

A snowstorm lasting until December 8 drops thirty-five inches on Duluth and twenty-five on the Twin Cities.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 7, 1863

Richard W. Sears is born in Stewartville, Minnesota. While a railroad freight agent in Redwood Falls, he bought an unclaimed shipment of watches and sold them through the mail at bargain prices. From this mail-order idea developed the A. C. Roebuck and Company, housed on the seventh floor of the Globe Building in Minneapolis. Renamed Sears, Roebuck and Co., the business was eventually headquartered in Chicago.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 7, 1864

The Eighth Minnesota Regiment helps defend Murfreesboro, Tennessee, from a Confederate attack, suffering ninety casualties. Murfreesboro had been the scene of the Third Minnesota's surrender two and a half years earlier.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 7, 1941

Outside of Pearl Harbor, the destroyer Ward, its crew primarily reservists from St. Paul, attacks and sinks a Japanese midget submarine, the first shots fired on the date of infamy. Inside the harbor, Minneapolis-born Captain Franklin van Valkenburgh is killed on the bridge of his ship, the USS Arizona. He was later awarded the Medal of Honor by Congress.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 7, 1963

T. Eugene Thompson, a lawyer who helped to draft Minnesota's 1963 revised criminal code, begins serving a life sentence in the Minnesota State Prison for hiring a man to kill his wife, Carol.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 8, 1863

The First National Bank of St. Paul is organized, the first Minnesota bank chartered under the national banking act of 1863. Derived from a private bank owned by Parker Paine, it would eventually lose its name through a series of mergers, although there is still a First National Bank Building in St. Paul.

This Day in Minnesota History

December 8, 1886

In a fight over the possession of Traverse County records, citizens of Browns Valley (the old county seat) brawl in the streets of their town with farmers from Wheaton (the new seat) who arrive early in the morning to claim the records. The outnumbered "invaders" flee with only one load, which is later returned to Browns Valley. All the records are eventually moved to Wheaton without further battle.

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