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

DAKOTA COUNTY. This county, a rich farming district, lies on the west bank of the Mississippi between Ramsey and Goodhue counties. It was originally well diversified with timber and prairie lands, and is well watered by the tributaries of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. Vermillion river, which flows through this county, has near its junction with the Mississippi a picturesque waterfall, now somewhat marred by the erection of mills and manufactories. HASTINGS, Lying near the mouth of the Vermillion river, is a wide-awake, thriving city, beautifully located on the banks of the Mississippi. It has a fine court house, good hotels, manufactories and business blocks. The Hastings & Dakota railroad has its eastern terminus here. The St. Paul & Milwaukee, Burlington & Northern railroads pass through the city. The river is bridged at this place. FARMINGTON, Near the centre of the county, on the Chicago, St. Paul & Minneapolis railroad, is a thriving business village. West St. Paul has encroached largely upon the north part of the county. BIOGRAPHICAL. IGNATIUS DONNELLY.--The parents of Ignatius Donnelly came from the Green Isle in 1817, settling in Philadelphia, where Ignatius was born, Nov. 3, 1831. He was educated in the graded and high schools of his native city, graduating at the latter in 1849, and taking his degree of master of arts three years later. He read law with Benjamin Harris Brewster, and was admitted to the bar in Philadelphia in 1852, and practiced there until 1856, when he came to Minnesota and located at Ninninger, and purchasing from time to time nearly 1,000 acres of land, devoted himself to farming, not so busily, however, as to prevent him from taking a prominent part in public affairs. A captivating and fluent speaker, and besides a man of far more than ordinary native ability and acquirements, he was not suffered to remain on his Dakota farm. In 1859 he was elected lieutenant governor of the newly admitted state, and was re-elected in 1861, serving four years. He served his district in the thirty-seventh, thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth congresses. During his congressional term he advocated many important measures, taking an advanced position in regard to popular education, and the cultivation and preservation of timber on the public lands. For his advocacy of the last named measure he was much ridiculed at the time, but has lived to see his views generally understood, and his measures to a great extent adopted in many of the Western States. He advocated amending the law relating to railroad land grants, so as to require their sale, within a reasonable period, at low prices. When he entered Congress, he gave up his law practice, and since his last term he has devoted himself chiefly to farming, journalism and general literature. In July, 1874, he became editor and proprietor of the _Anti-Monopolist_, which he conducted several years. Within the last decade he has published several works that have given him both national and transatlantic fame. His works on the fabled "Atlantis" and "Ragnarok" prove him to be not only a thinker and scientist, but a writer, the charms of whose style are equal to the profundity of his thought. His last work on the authorship of the Shakespearean plays has attracted universal attention, not only for the boldness of his speculations, but for the consummate ingenuity he has shown in detecting the alleged cipher by which he assumes to prove Lord Bacon to be the author of the plays in question. The book has excited much controversy, and, as was to be expected, much adverse criticism. Mr. Donnelly was married in Philadelphia, Sept. 10, 1855, to Miss Catherine McCaffrey of that city. They have three children living. FRANCIS M. CROSBY.--The ancestors of Mr. Crosby were of Revolutionary fame. He was born in Wilmington, Windham county, Vermont, Nov. 13,