Karen,   Tanks for posting this message regarding laying of train tracks in MI.  Very interesting. Sir John, Earl of Berkshire What good is information if not shared with others? --- On Fri, 4/23/10, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [GERMAN-BOHEMIAN] Train Travel To: [email protected] Date: Friday, April 23, 2010, 4:36 PM The first settlers in Minnesota's "wheatlands" arrived on foot - walking  from the nearest river port along the Mississippi.   They struggled through  prairie grass that was often as tall as they were to find the place where they would stop to build. The group of Germans who established New Ulm arrived about  1853.   They included the Bernhard Reinhardt family who paddled rafts and walked along the  Minnesota River to the point they chose to camp during the first winter. It was an abandoned Lakota camp with teepees containing some blankets  and other supplies left behind because there had been a smallpox epidemic among the  indians.  Some of the Indianr dead were still there,tied to trees in open "burials"  leaving them for the birds to pick the bones clean.  The dead left behind also warned anyone passing by that there  was smallpox in the camp. By 1853 vaccination was fairly common in Europe and where it was not, there had been enough exposure to Smallpox that it was endemic and anyone who caught it  did not get all that sick.   Small children and elderly were the ones most at  risk that first winter these first settlers spent in Indian teepees and although there was some  sickness it seemed to be only isolated cases. The Indians returned in the spring and they were angry to see strangers  using their camp, including Bernhardt Reinhardt and his family.  His ten-year-old  daughter, Anna, was among them.   She later married my great uncle and as a  pioneer settler of the area, she was well-known and highly respected.   Her obituary was  the featured headline on the front page of the Fairfax Standard. The Fairfax Standard had a number of interesting stories about the RR  arriving in Fairfax MN (south central MN) in 1872. The railhead was at Fairfax  for some time while supplies for continued construction farther west could be stockpiled.  Fairfax was at a crossroad where an E-W roadway met the N-S main road to  New Ulm. Back then the area farms were still being developed but wheat  seemed to be a preferred crop.   Maybe that was because the farmers  mostly needed it to feed themselves  at first. Fairfax which was a little village with one hotel / restaurant, a general  store and a few houses at the time.    The  hotel was owned by an Irish family who were said to have had a  beautiful daughter and six sons.   The Irish were clanish and did not welcome mixing  socially with the largely German population in the nearby area.  Fortunately there was a  large Irish settlement NE of Fairfax in Green Isle County (founded by Bishop Ireland)  so they could have a social life if they had time for it. The Irish innkeeper's sons were very protective of their sister and the  story told in the Fairfax Centennial editions of the Fairfax Standard  and  in the Centennial book published by the same local newspaper was that German customers were  welcome to use the hotel and to eat in the restaurant, but that was  all.   If any unmarried German farmer were too friendly with their sister as she worked in the restaurant, the  six boys would be waiting for him when he left the place.   Their warnings  to stay away from their sister would be punctuatted with bruising punches that  would be enough to discourage any young man. My great uncle Adelbert / Albert Traegner's wife was a very pretty Irish  woman who had worked in a restaurant before they married.  I have often  wondered if she were the same daughter of the Fairfax innkeeper.   The Traegner farm was just a few miles  south of Fairfax, almost on the main N-S road.  Albert probably made  frequent visits to Fairfax rather than go farther to New Ulm once the RR came through and the town developed  its main street. A lot of the RR workers and track-layers were Irish and they were a rowdy, hard drinking group.  For a while after the railhead reached Fairfax  the town was pretty much like any "wild West" town with gunfire heard  fairly frequently.   Gun-toting gamblers and "Shady Ladies" working out  of their own rail cars followed the track-layers as they arrived and then left with them when they moved on. One of the first RR-inspired enterprises to go up in Fairfax was a shanty  that served as a stand-up bar and liquor store.   The owner  built it quickly in order to get his stock of bottles on sale as soon as  possible.    He did a huge business with the RR workers from the moment he opened on the first day.  That night he locked up as best he could  and went elsewhere to sleep.  When he returned the next day he found  that his "bar" had been robbed and all his remaining stock was gone. He was not too cooncerned -- he had made so much money the first day that  he was able to start over with a more proper building and new stock that  arrived on one of the next trains. Leo and I watched an old movie titled "Union Pacific" a few nights  ago.  It was about rowdy Irish track layers who built the tracks of the first cross-country RR from Nebraska to Promontory Point in Utah.  There the California and East  tracks joined the Nebraska and West system.   The movie starred all the most  famous Irish actors (Eroll Flynn, Joel McCrea, etc.) .  It showed how the track-layers  lived and how the businessmen who fed on them were able to set up at every "next  railhead".  The saloons, casinos, restaurants, laundries and other services were housed  in buildings that had prefabricated walls.   They were simply taken  apart and shipped on to the next railhead or workers camp when the trains moved on. I thought of what I had read about Fairfax in 1872 while we watched that  movie. I remember that while I was growing up the wheatlands of central and  southwest MN supplied important mills in the twin cities (General Mills) and in Red  Wing (where I was born)  Winona and other river towns like New Ulm and  LeSueur. Recently when we have visited MN I have seen few wheatfields compared  to what I remember when I was younger.   Corn, soybeans and other  crops seem to MN moneycrops now.  At least that is how it appears in South-Central MN when I  have been there. Maybe wheat is still important farther west in MN -- perhaps closer to  the Dakotas. Karen In a message dated 8/5/2009 5:30:58 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  [email protected] writes: I am  interested in the train routes that my family traveled on from Chicago,  Illinois to the Wheatland area of Minnesota.? This would be near Minneapolis,  Minnesota. Shirley German-Bohemian Heritage Society web site  http://www.rootsweb.com/~gbhs/ ------------------------------- To  unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to  [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the  quotes in the subject and the body of the  message German-Bohemian Heritage Society web site http://www.rootsweb.com/~gbhs/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message