Mrs. L.F. Sampson (Eliza Spaulding) Excelsior book Thanksgiving Day. When the Reverend Galpin invited the "whole neighborhood" to When Rev. George Galpin (brother of
dinner at his new house, he meant not only his
those in Chanhassen Township. The wome parishioners in Excelsior, but also Charles) came, he built the town's first
n had prepared "baked beans, potatoes, hotel, a small log cabin which later became
turnips, biscuits, butter and cranberry sauce But the men's sole contribution turned Eh the kitchen of the enlarged "Excelsior
out to be one coon —for 18 adults and 12 chi
�� �`°� � House."
For lack of seating space and adequate fu h
across supports. Of course, the coon disappeared at the first table, leaving the others �� _ Gilbert) in a building of split basswood
to satisfy themselves with extra helpings of beans. But, as their preacher pointed out, logs, with shakes for shingles and the
they could still be thankful for their safe arrival in this new land of o - ground for a floor. It was located at the
(DD, 12) pportunity.�
t e Cte
', Streets. corner (AS wha 1281; is McG now S A) cond According and en
T
1854 .. ' ; ' McGrath, George Galpin built the second
IIPPr
; v store of tamarack logs where the Frank
Perkins house now stands on Second
January 7. With Charles Galpin as postmaster, the Excelsior Post Office was officially Street.
On St. Albans Bay, John McKensie
established on this date, according to the Government's "List of Post Offi y had built a lar a to
ces." �. g g
�:gR corner of Section 26 and cabin laid in out the a propos southwest -
Summer. While �Po4.;
° . I, there were ed settlement he called Port Minnetonka.
•' estillonlytwoor
three houses and a carpenter shop in He did not foresee that, in his absence
Wm. B. Morse owned much of Morse Island, during the coming winter, develpers from
Excelsior Village, six families came from later Big Island
Rhode Island to settle beside Lake Minne the East would jump his claim, o take over
washta. On their way they struck the his cabin, and plan their own new town. (AS, 1491)
1,1 i g .f worst road of the trip in the swampy land
�
" ° near what • is now Clear Springs. The September 21. Lake Minnetonka had claimed her first victim. On help this September day,
"� men from Excelsior stopped at William Ferguson's to ask his in raising young
mosquitoes were dreadful beyond belief."
� � 1' r One of the men said, "This is Hell!" "No " g g "
William Lith ow s sailboat. Someone had discovered the submer ed boat from the
', said another, "Not Hell, but Purgatory" mast standing out of the water" near the eastern point of Morse (Big) Island, but there
!a And that, said Mrs. Anna Seamans Apgar, was no sign of the owner's body. The drowning had occurred, presumably, a day or
two earlier, during extraordinarily high winds.
z is how the name Purgatory Springs came
into being. Piecing the story together afterward, Excelsiorites learned that Miss Johnson, the
Mrs. Leroy Sampson, also a Seamans first single woman to stake a claim on Minnetonka, had seen William struggling with
homesteaded
Silas ak 1854 am�hesr,(wh chleshehow id the
un- the ' too big sail on the but he Bono in
heed. She saw him make gale. t safely called
ough
him, "Reef your sail," paid y g
fortunately) spent several months living Narrows, but after that he was out of her sight. (AS, 1487)
in one windowless log shack, until their homes were built and their furniture arrived.
She said that no one slept a wink the first night in that shack, and the man who had September 29. Search parties had been tryi unsuccessfully for week to find
driven them from St. Paul sat up all night with his horses, "because of strange noises William's body when two men came upon it, ng washed ashore on a Northome a beach.
we heard. In the morning we found it was the mournful [sound] of the loons on the They asked Mr. Ferguson "to watch the body while they went on to Excelsior for
lake that had kept us awake, instead of the wolves we had feared."
other men." (FJ)
Ironically, this happened to be the same day that the mother and aunt of the de-
Mrs. Newman Woods, who later lived in Excelsior, also remembered those days of
her girlhood. She recalled how the women made mince pies by soaking pumpkin in ceased arrived in St. Paul, from Boston, expecting to spend the winter with William.
vinegar and drying wild grapes for raisins. (ORFC, 97, 100) His enthusiastic letters about the lake, about his comfortable and roomy cabin, and
Others who chose Minnewashta for their homes, besides Silas Seamans and his about the new village on Excelsior Bay had led them to plan a lengthy visit.
brothers, were the Gould brothers, the Hopkins brothers, George Bennett, James
When told of the accident, the mother was grief stricken, because she herself
Phillips and Z, D. Spaulding, the man who ground corn in his coffee mill. (N, 256) had suggested the sailboat, thinking it safer than the dugout her son had been paddling
Still other newcomers in and around Excelsior were Mr. Babcock and his sons to and from Minnetonka Mills once a week for mail and supplies. She had sent William
(feeling superior because they came from Boston), William Harvey, W.B. Morse on
his island (later Big Island), Mr. Phinney, Dr. Snell, and Mr. and Mrs. Hyatt. The $200 to have the best possible sailboat made at St. Anthony to take the place of his
hazardous, hand - wrought "canoe." By late summer the new boat had reached the
I Murrays and Bardwells settled in Chanhassen, Fred H. Latterner in Eureka, and Mills, where William launched it and began learning to cope with the huge sail and the
William Ferguson in Linwood, then still part of Excelsior Township. (NWT; McG -A) rock ballast needed for the small craft. (AS, 1487) Had he been more experienced,
4 5