A Brief History of the BEAR CREEK COMMUNITY, Mower County, Minnesota Part 5 of 5 Every able bodied male citizen was enrolled for military services and many of the Bear Creek early colonists voluntarily enlisted in different Minnesota regiments. It has been stated before that Ole Finhart enlisted and served and so did his brother, Amund, in the same company and battery. Arne Hovda and Syver Simonson served in the 11 th Minnesota regiment and J. H. J. Weeks served in the first Minnesota heavy artillery as commissary sergeant, and Nels Syversen and Engebret Hovda served as privates in the same company of heavy artillery. During the first ten years of the Bear Creek colony the people lived on their own production. The only thing for the table bought was coffee, sugar was looked upon as a luxury. From cane raised on the farms they made their own molasses. Several enterprising persons on different sections of the towns built molasses mills where the cane was pressed and the liquid boiled into molasses. For clothing nearly everything was made at home. The sheep furnished the stuff which was carded and spun and woven into clothes in the little cottage houses of the settlers. Nearly every family owned a home made loom and this occupied a corner on the floor of the main living room. Entering those primitive homes you were generally met by the metric strokes of the batten in the strong hand of the operator, the mother of the family or one of her daughters. In another corner of the house was the spinning wheel busily turning out woolen yarn or linen thread from flax hemp raised on the farm. Some of the children were busy carding wool for the spinning wheel. In the same little house and on the same floor with the weaver and spinner was the lord of the home chopping and shaving a yoke and bows for his oxen on an oaken wooden block brought into the room as a necessary utensil in making the heavy equipment for the oxen to work in. The description given of the industries carried on in the early log house is not yet complete. There was often a woman or man tailor near the table making clothes out of the home manufactured cloth, and often a cobbler was a momentous necessity and he had to have a corner of the house. On Sundays this house of week day activities was frequently changed into a room for social gatherings or a school room for religious instructions of the settlement children; and sometimes it had to be used instead of a church for worship. These houses were all small in room space. The largest of them was not more than sixteen feet wide by eighteen or twenty feet long, and still the first years, in many of them, two families were sheltered. These settlers applied the old Norwegian saying: "Where there is heart room there is house room." The settlement in social relation was very much like a large family and many instances could be written of one family or several aiding where temporary wants were known, and to the honor of the colony it can be said that little or no friction disturbed the general fraternal feeling in connection with the selection of claims, etc. In the few cases where greed made ripples, it was not of such serious nature that it lead to any lasting feud among any of the families. This colony was a competent collection of skilled mechanics as well as farmers. Many of them were carpenters; several blacksmiths, one an artistic turner, a couple wagon makers; three shoemakers and tanners; several stone masons and plasterers, and every man could hew and fit a log into the wall of a log house. During many of the first years the Bear Creek colonists took no part in town or county politics, from sheer modesty, fearing they were not competent in language or knowledge of American governmental methods, they never advanced a suggestion in town or county organization. A few Yankees as they called their English speaking neighbors were allowed free actions to name the towns and to organize the county, and the results show even today that those assumptive first officials were incompetent and careless. The county commissioners of Mower County allowed the Olmsted County commissioners to take one whole tier of sections from Mower County and annexed them to Olmsted County without a protest. To Mower County this blunder is a permanent loss. The first township official in Frankford township was Ole Finhart. He was elected township supervisor. Some years after Finhart's election, Ole Jorgens was elected Justice of the Peace. Mr. Bostwick, who by Jorgens' election had to give up the office made the remark, it was a disgrace to Frankford Township to elect an ignorant boy foreigner for a Justice office. He said he had never heard of any such thing before in all his life, and he was at that time an old man. J. H. J .Weeks was about the same time elected constable. The Norwegian settlers began by this time to attend town caucuses and town elections. A United States Post Office was established in the center of the Bear Creek settlement during the year 1860 with an American by the name of B. F. Langworthy as Postmaster. Nine-tenths of the patrons of the post office were of Norse extraction, and yet a home like name was not given to the post office or any of the towns to indicate for the future that these people were the first settlers in this part of Mower County. Mrs. Langworthy was the active post office clerk or deputy postmaster. Although she was a practical and intelligent lady, she had often great difficulties in reading the Norwegian names and in such predicaments she invented ridiculous constructions on their names for the merriment of her American friends, and she very reluctantly admitted a Norwegian child or adult into her kitchen to receive the mail. Her kitchen was the real post office and the depository of mail matters was a little wooden box partitioned off into a few pigeon holes. She trained her Norwegian patrons to remain outside her kitchen door till she found their mail and then she delivered the mail through the door. The name Bear Creek is prominent in this sketch, but the creek itself is now almost a dry run. Before 50 years ago the Bear Creek was a very beautiful stream of water. The creek proper was made of two branches. The north branch started about the northwest corner of Grand Meadow and the southwest corner of Pleasant Valley. This branch from 50 to 60 years ago was a running stream, had several small lakes in it, or rather large ponds, and an abundance of fish. The south branch had its beginning on the high prairie a couple of miles north and west of the Village of Dexter. If during the coming 50 years these branches dry up and disappear as they have during the past 50 years, the people then living will wonder where the historic Bear Creek had its basins and ditches. It is stated before that the first party of the first Bear Creek colonists started out on the journey for Minnesota from Dane County, Wisconsin. and the real starting point was Spring Dale. It may be asked what route did these emigrants follow through Wisconsin into Minnesota. It is stated by Syver Hovda at this date that so far as he remembers they passed through Blue Mound and Dodgeville and crossed the Mississippi River at Prairie du Chien. They and their teams and cattle were taken over the Mississippi River on a ferry drawn across by horses in a treading power. They landed in McGregor, Iowa and proceeded in a northwesterly direction passing Postville and Frankville, and next Decorah. Leaving Decorah they traveled almost in a due northerly direction through Winnesheik County into Minnesota Territory and entering Minnesota in Fillmore County, they followed the most passable trail thru this county till they reached Spring Valley and here they were on the border of their point of destination. ********************************************************************* The beginning of this Book also includes four pictures; portraits of “Mr. and Mrs. Ole Finhart”, “Bear Creek Community’s First Church”, and a larger picture of the author, Lars G. Hanson. These have not been included since they don’t fit into the text only format of the email list. If you need one of these pictures they can be scanned and sent as an attachment.