James Thompson, St. Paul's first African American resident, dies in Nebraska. Thompson had the distinction of being the only enslaved person sold in Minnesota. He was brought to Fort Snelling as the servant of an army officer in 1827, where he proved himself gifted in languages, quickly learning Dakota. Bought and freed by Methodist missionary Alfred Brunson, Thompson then served as an interpreter at the Kaposia mission and eventually settled in St. Paul, where he donated the land and much of the material for the city's first Methodist church (now the site of the St. Paul Hotel). In his time, he was also famous for defeating Edward Phelan in a fight over a pig that Phelan had stolen from him.