Sherburne County Heritage Center Interpretive Plan Final Report 2005

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Orville Bailey and family settled on a claim adjoining ours in the fall of 1873. We were great friends and had good times together. In the spring of 1874 grandfather George Eaton came from Becker and built a house on some of our land. Charlie Hill came and bought some railroad land and built a cabin at about this time. Not long after this, Horatio Blaisdell came and by this time the new community of Meadowvale was founded. It was a very congenial neighborhood and before there was a house where meetings could be held, it was the practice to hold meetings at the homes, and we often gathered in dinner parties and on holidsays. Mr. Hill, who had sold his farm near Elk River and purchased land near us, and Mr. Terry, Mr. Frisbe's brother-in-law, came from Illinois and settled on an adjacent tract. A road had been laid out from Mr. Keasling's farm to Elk River, and the need of a schoolhouse was felt, as there were about twelve children of school age. A meeting was called to consider the matter. Grandfather George Eaton, who had built a cabin on the southwest corner of our land, donated an acre for the site of the schoolhouse, and the building was soon built by volunteer labor. A most efficient teacher was found —Miss Amanda Snow of Big Lake.... The meeting for organizing the school district voted to call the settlement Meadowvale. A Sunday School was organized and as soon as the little log school was ready for use, all gatherings were held there. (Hattie Eaton, as quoted in Anderson, 114-115) In his own memoir, Fred Keasling, born in 1875 in Meadowvale, added to this picture of early life in Meadowvale. That's What They Said! I was born in 1875. Some of my earliest memories are of the difficulties of clearing the land. The huge trees were chopped down, the logs rolled into big piles and burned. We farmed around the stumps until they rotted. Later there was a market for maple cord wood which sold for $2 to $3 a cord. After we got cows my mother made butter in prints and delivered it to town to regular customers for 20 cents a pound. That was the only cash income we had as butter and eggs taken to the general store had to be "traded out." I distinctly remember my mother asking the storekeeper for ten cents in cash to buy postage stamps but he refused. Flour could be had for cash only. When somebody made a weekly trip to town (Elk River) they brought the mail for the entire neighborhood. Later years my father sold three cows for $27 to get some needed cash. One thing that contributed largely to the family's living was a sorghum mill that my father bought. It was a one horse mill and produced sweetening and material for candy pulls. He charged 15 cents a gallon for making the sorghum. North of our farm was a swamp. In winter when everything was frozen, tamarack trees were cut down and laid in the roadway. Dirt was then Sherburne County Historical Society Heritage Center Interpretive Plan, April 21, 2005, page 43