Chapter 21 • The First Store In Richwood Village, 1871

Written by W.W.McLeod in 1972

The first store in Richwood was brought in from Fergus Falls by two brothers by the name of Miles. They had a large stock in a tent and the rest in my house, on the land that is now the Afred Nodsle farm. They were there all summer, but in ole fall of 1871 they closed out and went back to Wisconsin.
Richwood was named from Richwood Ontario, Canada, my native hometown.

In 1871 or 1872 Mr. Rice opened a store on the corner where the tavern now stands and Arbuckel across the street just north of the Marvin Johnson home. Mr. Hazelton bought out Rice, then later sold to J.M. Connell, then J.M. turned the store over to his son. Earl. In about 1930, a Mr. Olson bought the store from Earl. It burned down in January 1930.
Mr. W. G. Hazelton and son Boyd opened a store on the corner north of Floyd Lidstrom's store. Then Boyd died and Monchamp took it over and had the post office.
Then this store burned down also.
The Arbuckle store was sold and moved across from the schoolhouse, then Christ Johnson bought the building and opened up a general store. He had groceries and clothing, etc. In June 13 1958, he retired and sold to Leo Waltz. Leo sold it to D. Winters and then it closed its doors. Now there is only one store in Richwood.
Mr. Knute Lidstrom had a steam threshing machine and threshed in the neighborhood before he moved to Richwood. He opened a blacksmith shop, and he built sleighs and did repair work. From 1901-1917, he owned a hardware store.
After the Monchamp store burned, Delis McDougal operated the post office on a temporary basis in his hardware store. Knute Lidstrom continued the lost office in his hardware store April 1 1921. We could always tell when it was mail time because every one in the village migrated to the post office, a center of news.
The mailman drove a team of horses on the route, which was about forty miles or more. Half-way, they would take a fresh team at John Altern farm where Hans Andreson lived. George Brekkie was mailman at that time. At Christmas many people gave the mailman gifts of oats for his horses.
As automobiles became more plentiful than horses, Mr. Lidstrom put in a gas pump in 1914. Then the Callaway phone came into Richwood.
Knute Lidstrom passed away in 1927, leaving his son Floyd. Floyd was appointed postmaster in June 1927, and he still holds this position. Floyd and Helen moved the post office to to back of the store and put in a grocery department in the front part.
The blacksmith shop was no longer needed, so it was torn down and a warehouse was built to the building.
In 1941 R.E.A. came through Richwood. The village was wired for electricity, refrigeration for cold meat, fresh meat, milk, butter, and vegetables. The store still has the old potbellied stove as of old, and the old regulator clock of years gone by, in the year of 1972. At one time Floyd and Helen had the two phones in his store, the Callaway phone and the Detroit phone.
The mail was delivered, as l remember, in 1916 through these years by Greenlaw, Douglas, George Brekke, Oscar Lien, Clyde Lund and John Schueller. The last mail delivered by horses was about 1940. They still delivered mail in winter by horse as the roads were not open to cars, but one mailman had a snow machine and he delivered the mail in about 1941. In 1945 a new road was built through here on R.F.D. 2 that could snow-plowed. Then they started to use cars the year around to deliver the mail.
The Richwood Cemetery was organized when two men drowned in Buffalo Lake, Van Gordon and Rice drowned in the lake in 1872 and were the first to be buried on the hill above the lake, which later it organized and is now called the Lakeside Cemetery.
The first school in Richwood Township was taught by Hattie Brigham, since then Mrs. W.A. Norcross, according to a letter to Mr. W.W. McLeod:

"Mr. McLeod, you're correct in thinking that I was the first school teacher that taught school in Richwood. You will probably recollect that when you came after me, you were obliged to cut a road through the woods for a passage for the oxen team, and finding that you could not get through in time, you left the oxen somewhere in the vicinity of Campbell Lake, and l came on foot. I was obliged to walk some distance, while you and another man carried my trunk.
I first taught in the village of Richwood, the school beginning on the 22 of Sept. 1872. This was the first school ever taught in that village. The district was composed of three families that of W. W. McLeod, Van Gorden, and E.E. Abbott, and the pupils were eleven in number. For the first two weeks the school was held in Van Gorden's house, and for the remainder of the term, in a house with a board addition. It was during my first week that the great snowstorm of Sept. 25 1872 came.
The next spring I taught on the Richwood prairie in the Hans Hanson School district, which was the first school taught there.
Hattie Brigham, teacher."

Mrs. Hannah Ebeltoft was born in Sweden. She had twelve children and adopted three more. She was at the calling of a midwife until her death, when she was over ninety years old, and the number of patients ran into the thousands. She was a blessing to the people of the county during its early settlement when we had no doctors, going wherever called, whether in Becker County or Otter Tail or Norman county, in heavy snow storms dark rainy nights, in some cases being ferried across rivers in wagon boxes too deep to be crossed with an oxen team and in many instances she saved many lives after they were given up by the skillful physicians.

In October 1870, Mr. and Mrs. L.S. Cravath traveled by stage coach from Sauk Centre to Otter Tail before the railroad came through. They built a log house of unhewn logs and when it was completed they moved in. There was not a house or claim shanty in sight.
Hamden has many artesian wells and some of the finest water in the country. We had one on our 80 west of Callaway. When we were kids, the water was so ice cold we sat on the water tank and washed carrots out of the garden in this cold water.

The headwaters of the Mississippi River, Itasca State Park. Henry Knudtson, Elsie, Ethelmae, Harry and Diane Rae Hanson •

Becker County occupies a peculiar position in the physical geography as the watershed of North America. We have the fountain head of two mighty rivers; the Mississippi which runs to the Gulf of Mexico and the Red River which runs north winding up to the Arctic Sea. Both rivers start on their journey in Minnesota and final destination is in the opposite direction.
Where on this earth is there a more beautiful river then the Otter Tail in Erie Township where to pine trees and fir trees grow along it banks?
The south end of Itasca State Park joins Becker County, which occupies all of sections one, two, three and four of Savannah Township, holds the reservoir bowl of the source of the Mississippi River head; and to Itasca Lake in section Three of Savannah Township, where the Mississippi River starts from.
The drainage divider lies just south of Lake Hernando De Soto, and extends to the line between sections three and ten within the limits of Becker County. This dividing ridge in outline forms a rim around the head of the lake about two hundred feet higher than the lake itself. Lake Itasca has an elevation of 1,467 feet above sea level; an elevation of 1,567 feet; while the Hauteurs, or dividing ridge is 1,688 feet above sea level, and is the highest point of land in this part of the state of Minnesota. There is no perpetual streams of water flowing from Lake Hernando de Soto toward Lake Itasca, but in wet seasons when there is a surplus of water, there is considerable flowage from Lake Hernando de Soto to the stream that drains into Lake Itasca, where they mingle with and become a part of the waters of the Mississippi River, to the Gulf of Mexico, 2,552 miles. There are ten thousand lakes in Minnesota.

This sawmill was owned and operated by Ernest Glebe in Richwood in 1908. Left to right: Fred Nelson, Fingal Olson, Henry Thorsen, Christ Johnson, Henry Hanson, Ole Gunderson, Otto Engberg, Charlie Bunnell, Ted Johnson, Ernest Glebe, George Connell and his horses •