HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE IN MINNESOTA. 277 



In 1862 (I think I am right in the date), the first flour was 

 shipped from Minneapolis. I remember when Eastman & Gib- 

 son commenced exporting flour. It was not considered that 

 Minnesota flour would be accepted as genuine, and to make it 

 genuine it was branded "Muskingurn Mills, Troy, Ohio The 

 Genuine." I had something to do with the brand, for I remem- 

 ber that I cut the first stencil out of the oil-paper that I used iii 

 my manifest book as a bill clerk on the levee. By permission 

 of S. T. Raguet (whom many of you remember, Sam Raguet), his 

 name went to market on this first flour shipped from Minne- 

 sota. The hickory hoops, to give it the semblance of the round 

 hoop of Ohio, were cut where the other hoops had been supplied, 

 at Chaska, Minnesota. Within about three months after the 

 first shipment, the quality of the flour of the "Muskingum 

 Mills" was so very much better than the other round hoop-pole 

 flour of Ohio that we were compelled to change the brand. 

 Since that time it has dated from Minnesota, and the next 

 brand of flour was "Nicollet." I remember when the form of 

 the brand, the stencilling of the letters, and all that, were mat- 

 ters of great consideration. 



I also remember the pleasant afternoon when the railway 

 was just finished from Minneapolis down to the mouth of Trout 

 brook, in St. Paul, near where the roads cross under the Third 

 Street bridge. The railway ran down to the Mississippi river 

 and there was a small freight station, measuring, I think, 14 by 

 18 or 14 by 22 feet. The first shipment consisted of fifty bar- 

 rels of flour. There was a great deal of difficulty in getting the 

 drays along the side of the railway grade, because marshy 

 ground was crossed before reaching the end of the track where 

 this station was. Right at the end of the track was a broad 

 sandbar, which prevented steamboats from landing there. Be- 

 tween the shallow water and the hard ground of the railway, 

 the sandbar extended some five or six hundred feet, w r here a 

 man if he stood still long enough would soon be lost to sight. 

 I remember that we took up the flour and with some cross-ties 

 skidded it down onto the drays, and hauled them back by the 

 gas works land around to either Sibley or Jackson street. (I 

 am not certain that Sibley street ran through; I think it ran 

 up and stopped in the face of the hill.) We hauled it down to 

 the steamboat, and it was upon this occasion of the shipment 



