Socrates Nelson

Born in Conway, Massachusetts on January 11, 1814,[1] to Socrates Nelson and Dorothy Boyden,[7] Nelson moved to Illinois in 1839 on a prospecting tour and then to St. Louis, Missouri in 1840 to sell goods and collect furs.[8][9][4] In spring 1844, he traveled up the Mississippi River to the mouth of the Chippewa River in the Wisconsin Territory[8][4] and opened a trading post at a site – since washed away – known as Nelson's Landing.[1] He moved to Stillwater that fall and opened the town's first general store,[10][11][lower-alpha 2] and his family joined him soon after.[15]

That same fall, he married Betsey D. Barlett[lower-alpha 1] (born September 6, 1813) in Hennepin, Illinois, who had moved there with her parents following the death of her previous husband.[18] On September 22, 1848, they had two children – twins Emma and Ella Nelson – but Ella later died in infancy on October 23, 1849.[19][1] Along with Mahlon Black, Nelson was one of the first two men in Minnesota to be initiated into the Independent Order of Odd Fellows in 1849, co-founding Minnesota Lodge No. 1 in Stillwater;[20][21] that same year, he became a member of the Minnesota Historical Society – the year it was founded.[22] On November 1 of that year, Nelson was named a corporator of the Minnesota Mutual Fire Insurance Company.[23]

Nelson entered the lumber business on February 7, 1851, when the Minnesota Territorial Legislature organized the St. Croix Boom Company in Baytown on the St. Croix River, of which Nelson was one of the incorporators.[24][25][4] In 1852, Nelson and two others built the first lumber mill in South Stillwater, called the S. Nelson Lumber Company.[26] The mill operated from 1853 to 1858, when the company dissolved,[27] and would be rebuilt in 1873 as the St. Croix Lumber Company.[26][28] In early March 1853, he became one of the corporators of the Louisiana and Minnesota Railroad Company,[29][lower-alpha 3] the St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company,[32] and the Minnesota Western Railroad Company.[33] He would later become a corporator of the Stillwater & St. Paul Railroad on January 27, 1867.[34] Nelson was also a real estate speculator and sold much of his land to the government.[35][4] In 1885, his estate was valued at over $100,000, equivalent to $1,829,286 in 2019.[6]

A tablet commemorating the sixty-one delegates who attended the 1848 Stillwater Convention, one of whom was Socrates Nelson.

In 1846, Nelson was treasurer for St. Croix County, Wisconsin Territory, and in 1847, he was treasurer and a county commissioner.[36] He was one of sixty-one delegates at the August 26, 1848, Stillwater Convention,[37] whose petition to Congress led to the 1849 establishment of the Minnesota Territory.[37][38] A committee of David Lambert (its chairman), Nelson, and three others[lower-alpha 4] met in Nelson's general store during the convention's recess to draft a report of the convention's resolutions.[39]

On November 26, 1849, he was elected to serve as the treasurer for the newly formed Washington County, Minnesota Territory.[40] He was on the University of Minnesota Board of Regents from February 1851 (the first Board) to February 1859 and served as Minnesota Territorial Auditor from May 15, 1853, to January 17, 1854,[41][42] succeeding Abraham Van Vorhes.[43] In 1852, 1855, and 1856, he served as a commissioner for Washington County.[44] In February 1856, Nelson and four others platted and named the village of Baytown.[45][46] He also named Greenfield in May 1858 – after his former Massachusetts home – which was later renamed to Grant Township in 1864.[46] On October 4, 1858, Nelson – alongside Charles E. Leonard – was declared the Minnesota Democratic Party's Washington County nomination for state senator.[47]

Nelson served in the Minnesota Senate from 1859 to 1861, elected as a Democrat from the 1st district on October 12, 1858, along with Republican William McKusick.[48][2] During his term in the 2nd Minnesota Legislature, he served on the Railroad and Railroad Bonds Special Committee and the State Prison Committee.[48] On October 13, 1860, the Democratic District Convention met and nominated Nelson for the 2nd district; Republicans nominated Joel K. Reiner,[49][50] a physician who had previously served the 1st district in the 1st Minnesota Legislature.[51] Reiner would win the election held on November 6, 1860, defeating Nelson.[51][52]

Nelson later served on the Stillwater City Council from 1863 to 1865,[53] and in 1864, he was elected as a delegate for the 1864 Democratic National Convention.[54]

In 1859 and 1866, he was the president of the Old Settlers Association,[55] having been one of its charter members.[56] In April 1867, Nelson and Elizabeth Churchill – the widow of Nelson's former partner – offered to give the city of Stillwater an entire block of land for $5 (equivalent to $91 in 2019) with no strings attached for the construction of a courthouse; the city accepted, and today, the building is the longest-standing courthouse in Minnesota.[57][58] At some point later in his life, he would come to own an Indian pony mare named Lady Maguire.[59]

Nelson died of tuberculosis in Stillwater, Minnesota on May 6, 1867, at the age of 53.[1][8] Four years later in 1871, Emma married attorney Fayette Marsh, a former engineer who had studied law and moved to Stillwater to co-found a firm.[3] They had three children before Emma died on November 23, 1880, at age 32 of what was described as "a short but painful illness",[3][60] and Betsey died five years later of heart complications on October 8, 1885, at age 72, having been ill for two months prior.[18][16]

A plaque on the north portico of the Washington County Historic Courthouse commemorates the date when Nelson and Churchill sold the block of land for its construction.[58]

In 1885, the Nelson School, named after him, was constructed in Stillwater and opened on September 28 of that year.[61] To accommodate a growing student body, a new facility was opened at the same site on September 25, 1897,[35][62] and on October 25, 1979, the building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places.[63]

• 
  The Washington County Historic Courthouse in Stillwater, Minnesota.
• 
  The building of the Nelson School, named in Socrates Nelson's honor.

• Territorial era of Minnesota
• Economy of Minnesota

• Collated Statutes of the Territory of Minnesota, and Decisions of Supreme Court. Saint Paul, MN: Joseph R. Brown, Territorial Printer. 1853.
• Neill, Edward D. (1881). History of Washington County and the St. Croix Valley. Minneapolis: North Star Publishing Company.
• Folsom, W. H. C. (1888). Edwards, E. E. (ed.). Fifty Years in the Northwest. Pioneer Press Company.
• Boyden, Wallace; Boyden, Merrill N.; Boyden, Amos J. (1901). Thomas Boyden and His Descendants. Boston, MA.
• Holcombe, Return Ira (1908). Hubbard, Lucius F.; Baker, James H.; Murray, William P.; Upham, Warren (eds.). Minnesota in Three Centuries, 1655–1908. II. The Publishing Society of Minnesota.
• Holmes, Frank R. (1908). Hubbard, Lucius F.; Baker, James H.; Murray, William P.; Upham, Warren (eds.). Minnesota in Three Centuries, 1655–1908. IV. The Publishing Society of Minnesota.
• Easton, Augustus B., ed. (1909). History of the Saint Croix Valley. I. Chicago: H.C. Cooper, Jr. & Co.
• Burnquist, Joseph A. A., ed. (1924). Minnesota and Its People. II. Chicago: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company.

• Socrates Nelson at Find a Grave