Immigration | Page 30

John E. Simonett

Minnesota Supreme Court Associate Justice John E. Simonett, ca. 1990–1995. From the portrait collection of the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.

Photograph of farmers and threshing machine, ca. 1900

Threshing near Le Center

Threshing near Le Center (Le Sueur County), ca. 1900. The colony of St. Henry, located west of Le Center in Le Sueur County, was the center of farming development by Romansh immigrants to Minnesota.

Members of the Simonet and Wolf families

Members of the Simonet and Wolf families. From the Scheller family papers; used with the permission of Therese Scheller.

Photograph of Joseph Wolf Brewing Company

Joseph Wolf Brewing Company, ca. 1914. Photograph by John Runk. The Joseph Wolf Brewing Company was the largest brewery outside of the Twin Cities. It closed in 1925, a casualty of Prohibition. The building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1981.

Stillwater

Stillwater, Minnesota. Photograph by James Sinclair, ca. 1885.

Simonet Furniture Store

The Simonet Furniture Store, Nelson and South Main Streets, Stillwater, ca. 1880. Founded in 1867 by Sebastian Simonet, a master carpenter and Romansh immigrant, ca. 1880. Photograph by John Runk.

DeGonda Family

The DeGonda family in Le Sueur County, ca. 1916. In 1866, Mary Muggli DeGonda and her five surviving children emigrated from Graubünden to Minnesota. This photograph shows the siblings about fifty years later. Pictured are (left to right, back row): Gion Rest (John) DeGonda; Giachen Antoni (Jacob) DeGonda; and (left to right, front row): Onna Maria Turte (Mary Dorothy) DeGonda Freiberg; Rosa Martina (Rose) DeGonda Simonett; and Maria Aloisa (Louisa) DeGonda Joerg. From the Richard C. DeGonda family papers; used with the permission of Richard C. DeGonda.

Romansh in Minnesota

Between 1820 and 1910, it is estimated that at least 30,000 people emigrated from the Swiss canton of Graubünden to the United States. Included in this number were Romansh people—members of an ethnically distinct Swiss population—headed for Minnesota. Beginning in 1854, they settled in Stillwater, St. Paul, the St. Henry Colony (Le Sueur County), the Stillwater-sponsored Badus Colony (South Dakota), and other communities throughout the region.

Connemara Patch

Connemara Patch began as a community of Irish immigrants on St. Paul’s East Side in the early 1880s. An unintended result of Bishop John Ireland’s Catholic colonization efforts and a victim of 1950s freeway construction, it was a small, swampy neighborhood on the banks of Phalen Creek. Despite its short and oft-forgotten existence, Connemara Patch was home to several generations of Irish working-class families and later immigrant groups.

Jake Greenberg's relief registration form

Relief registration form for Jake Greenberg, 1894. From the records of the Minnesota State Commission for the Relief of Fire Sufferers, 1894–1895 (State Archives Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul).

Gale Family Library