Fifty Years In The Northwest by William H. C. Folsom

him at Prairie du Chien in 1841. He was one of the principal founders of the city of La Crosse, managing a trading house in company with Scoots Miller. He also engaged in lumbering on Black river. He came to St. Paul in 1848, and has since made that city his home. He has been an enterprising and successful trader with the Indians, principally with the Sioux. Much of his trading stock was destroyed by the Sioux Indians in the insurrection of 1862, but he has been recompensed in part by the government. In 1843 he was married to Rebecca Ismon. They have three children. JOHN MELVIN GILMAN, son of John and Ruth (Curtis) Gilman, was born in Calais, Vermont, Sept. 7, 1824. His father died in 1825. The son received a good common school and academic education, graduating from the Montpelier Academy in 1843. He read law with Heaton & Reed, of Montpelier, and was admitted to the bar in 1844. During the same year he removed to New Lisbon, Ohio, where he practiced law eleven years and served one term (1849-50) in the state legislature. In 1857 Mr. Gilman came to St. Paul, and formed a partnership with Hon. James Smith, Jr., and later became one of the firm of Gilman, Clough & Lane. Mr. Gilman served four terms as a representative in the state legislature. His affiliations have been with the Democratic party, for which he has been twice a candidate for Congress and chairman of the state central committee. He was married to Miss Anna Cornwall, of New Lisbon, Ohio, June 25, 1857. CHARLES EUGENE FLANDRAU, son of Thomas Hunt and Elisabeth (Macomb) Flandrau, was born July 15, 1828, in New York City. On his father's side he is descended from Huguenots driven into exile by the revocation of the edict of Nantes; on his mother's side from the Macombs of Ireland. One of his uncles was Gen. Alexander Macomb, commander-in-chief of the United States Army immediately preceding Gen. Winfield Scott. He was educated until thirteen years of age in the private schools at Georgetown and Washington, after which he spent about three years before the mast; was at New York City about three years, when he went to Whitesboro, Oneida county, New York, where he read law and afterward entered into partnership with his father, being admitted to practice in 1851. In 1853 he came to St. Paul with Horace R. Bigelow and commenced practice in the firm of Bigelow & Flandrau. In 1854 he removed to St. Peter and practiced law for several years. This year (1854) he was appointed a notary public by Gen. Gorman. [Illustration: Truly yours, John B. Sanborn.] In 1855 he was elected a member of the territorial council, and in 1856 was appointed by President Pierce United States agent for the Sioux Indians. In 1857 he served as a member of the Democratic wing of the constitutional convention, and in July of the same year was appointed by President Buchanan associate justice of the supreme court of Minnesota Territory. He was elected to the same office, on the admission of Minnesota as a state, for a term of seven years. During Gov. Sibley's administration, he acted as judge advocate general of the State. Judge Flandrau took an active part in suppressing the Sioux outbreak, serving as captain, and later as a colonel, of volunteers. In 1864 Judge Flandrau resigned his place on the supreme bench and went to Nevada Territory for a year; spent some time in Kentucky and St. Louis, Missouri, and returned to Minnesota in 1867, locating at Minneapolis, where he opened a law office with Judge Isaac Atwater. He was elected city attorney and was president of the first Board of Trade. In 1870 he removed to St. Paul and engaged in law practice with Bigelow & Clark. In 1867 Judge Flandrau was the Democratic nominee for governor of the State, and in 1869 for the position of chief justice. In 1868 he was chairman of the state central committee, and a member of the national convention that nominated Horatio Seymour for the presidency of the United States. Judge Flandrau was married Aug. 14, 1859, to Isabella Dinsmore, of Kentucky, deceased in 1866. His second wife was Mrs. Rebecca B. Riddle, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Feb. 28, 1871. His family consists of two daughters by his first wife and two sons by his second. GEN. JOHN B. SANBORN was born Dec. 5, 1826, in Merrimac county, New Hampshire, on the farm which had been in the possession of his ancestors for four generations. After a common school education he entered the law office of Judge Fowler, of Concord, New Hampshire, where he remained for three years, when he was admitted to practice by the superior court of New Hampshire, in 1854. In the following December he came to Minnesota, where he has remained, a citizen of St. Paul, and in the practice of his profession, except what time he has been absent in the public service. His public career began in 1859-60, in the house of representatives. The following year he was sent to the senate, and that had adjourned but a little over a month when he was appointed adjutant general and acting quartermaster general of the State, and entered upon the arduous duties of organizing the first regiment of volunteers in the State for the war of the Rebellion. In the following December he was commissioned colonel of the Fourth Minnesota, and, with headquarters at Fort Snelling, garrisoned all the posts and commanded all the troops along the Minnesota frontier during the winter. Early in the spring of 1862 he left with his entire command for Pittsburgh Landing, and was assigned to the command of a demi-brigade, which he commanded till the evacuation of those works, and was thereupon assigned to the command of the First Brigade, Seventh Division, Army of the Mississippi, afterward the Seventeenth Army Corps. On the nineteenth of September following, with this brigade he fought the battle of Iuka and won the victory for which he was promoted by the president to brigadier general of Volunteers. He participated in the battles of Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hills, and the assault on Vicksburg--a portion of which time he was in command of a division. After the surrender of Vicksburg he was assigned to the command of the Southwest District of Missouri, where, after the campaign against Price, he was promoted to brevet major general. After the close of the war, by a few months' campaign on the Upper Arkansas and along the Smoky Hill river, he opened to travel the long lines across the plains to Colorado and New Mexico, which had been closed for nearly two years, and restored peace to that frontier. Upon a mission to the Indian Territory, to establish the relations which should exist between the slaves of the Indians and their former masters, he solved the questions and determined the relations, and established them upon a firm foundation in the short space of ninety days. In 1866 he was appointed, with Gens. Sherman, Harney, Terry, and Senator Henderson, a special peace commissioner to the Indians, and for eighteen months served upon that board. This commission visited and made treaties with the Camanche, Cheyenne, Arrapahoe, Apache, Navajo, Shoshone, Northern Cheyenne, Northern Arrapahoe, and Crow tribes; and with the Ogalalla, Brule, Minneconjon, Sausauche, Black Feet, Umkapapa, Santee, and Yankton bands of the Sioux nation. They settled upon and recommended to Congress a fixed policy to be pursued toward the Indians, which, while followed, resulted in comparative safety to the frontier, and greater economy in the service. Since these services the general has devoted himself entirely to his profession, and with more than ordinary success. JOHN R. IRVINE was born in Dansville, Livingston county, New York, Nov. 3, 1812, and was brought up there till seventeen years of age. His education when a boy was obtained at the common schools, and was quite limited. From seventeen to twenty years of age he lived in Carlisle and other places in Pennsylvania, during which he learned the trade of plastering, and was married in Carlisle in 1831, to Miss Nancy Galbreath. Soon after his marriage he returned to Dansville. The following spring he went to Buffalo, New York; in the spring of 1837 emigrated to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and in the spring of 1840 removed to Prairie du Chien. While in Prairie du Chien Mr. Irvine kept a grocery. During that time he made two trips to St. Paul--the last one with a team loaded with provisions, on the ice the most of the way--and on the third of August, 1843, arrived in St. Paul with his family. On his arrival he bought of Joseph Rondeau a claim of 240 acres of land, afterward converted into Rice & Irvine's addition, Irvine's enlargement and Irvine's addition to the city of St. Paul, including most of the present city from St. Peter street to Leech's addition, for about $300. Mr. Irvine entered it in 1848. The east 80 acres of a quarter included in this claim Mr. Irvine sold to Henry M. Rice in 1848, and in the winter they laid off Rice & Irvine's addition, and commenced selling lots and making improvements on the property. Since living in St. Paul Mr. Irvine has been engaged in farming, milling, storekeeping, working at his trade, and managing his estate. He was one of the earliest settlers of St. Paul, whose life amidst its many changes has been contemporaneous with its history from the very beginning. Mr. Irvine has had eight children, seven of whom, namely, six daughters and one son, are living. Mr. Irvine died in 1878. HORACE RANSOM BIGELOW was born in Watervliet, New York, March 13,