Pioneer Park Tour
August 3, 2009
Carol Weir, Tour Guide
Carol Weir,
The Annandale Soo Line Depot
The
Annandale
Depot was built in 1886. The first passenger train rolled through Annandale
December 9, 1886. At that time, tracks were laid as far as Glenwood. The depot
had two waiting rooms, one for men and the other for women and children. The
women’s waiting room has very high ceilings and bead board walls. Each of the
waiting rooms has a potbelly stove. The station master’s office is between the
two waiting rooms with a ticket booth opening to each side. The outhouse was
demolished in a train accident in 1947 and an indoor bathroom was added at that
time. The baggage room has been made into the Pioneer Park gift shop. According
to the Soo Line Technical Society, the final regularly scheduled passenger train
through Annandale was March 25, 1967. The Annandale Depot closed in 1971 and was
moved to Pioneer Park in 1972.
There is a display of the August 12,
1922, train accident involving a freight train, a passenger train and an oil
truck. A wall display listed the ten people killed and the 32 people injured in
this horrific accident. The dead were listed as follows:
Fred Lamer, 34,
Maple Lake, oil truck driver
Christian Wallace, 52, Minneapolis, freight train engineer
Robert Becker, 44, St. Paul, baggageman on passenger
train
Arni Thompson, 72,
Cambridge, passenger in oil truck
Emil Myllykangas, 19, Annandale
Bert
Clark, 36, St. Paul, salesman
Albert Zollner, 64, Adrian, farmer
Raymond
Ulrich, 20, Horicon, Wisconsin, going to N. D. harvest field
Edmund Ulrich, 18, Horicon, Wisconsin (brothers)
Unidentified
man, clothes torn completely off, no means of identification
Soo Line
Caboose 101 on display at Pioneer Park was built by the Pullman Palace Car
Company in 1884 and was retired by the Soo Line Railroad in 1974. It was first
numbered 50 and about two years later it was renumbered 101 (Soo Line Technical
Society).
Crow River Apostolic Lutheran Church
The
Crow River Apostolic Lutheran Church of French Lake (also known as Riverside
Church) was organized in 1885 by members of the Cokato Apostolic Church, who
lived in French Lake Township and wanted a closer meeting house. Nels O. Nelson
donated one-half acre of land and Jacob Ojanpera, Esaias Kostamo and Matti
Mukkala were designated to arrange laying the foundation for the church. The
construction work was done by the French Lake congregation, and the church was
completed in 1887. The wood floor boards are laid diagonally and the interior
walls and ceiling are of embossed tin. The exterior walls are also sided with
tin. There are 21 hand-made rustic Norway pine pews. One bench faced the back,
and was used for the nursery. Sunday school was also held in the church. A wood
burning stove heated the church. In 1895 Nels Raisanen donated a pump organ. A
bench at the front of the church was for the luukaris (three male song leaders
with strong voices). The first electric lights were turned on in 1937. In the
1940s services were conducted in both Finnish and English.
The ministers
were generally the same as served the Cokato church: Isak Barberg, Caleb Wuollet
(from 1883 to1903), Jacob Wuollet, William Lahtinen (until his death in the
sinking of the Titanic in 1912), John Oberg, Niilo Saastamoinen, Matt Koski,
John N. Nelson, Adolph North and Peter Nordstrom (starting in 1947). The church
was actively used until the early1950s when Crow River Apostolic members
returned to the Cokato Apostolic church. Services were one Sunday a month
towards the end. After the church became inactive, it was at times used for
worship services or funerals. The Crow River church was moved to Pioneer Park in
December 1975.
Lars Lappi donated one-half acre west of the church for a
cemetery. A cemetery of approximately 63 graves (many unmarked) is located on
the west side of where the Crow River Apostolic Church was located in Section
22, French Lake Township, about one mile south and 1.7 miles east of French Lake
Corners on present-day Osborn Avenue. The Riverside Cemetery and the Crow River
are nearby.
The following 32 men and their families were Crow River
Apostolic Church charter members: Matt Nurmi, Henry Nurmi, Lars Lappi, Nels O.
Nelson, Aaron Hendrickson, Paul Matta, Joseph Niemi, John Palm, August Triffana,
John Sillanpaa, Joshua Sikkila, Lars Stromback (Rombak), Matt Lantto, Isaac
Lantto, Isaac Yliniemi, Samuel Bukkila, Levi Luukinen, John Hartija, Matt Jutti,
Herman Front, Andrew Huro, John Leinonen, John Buranen, August Tryki, Peter
Gunnary, Henry Alatalo, John Josephson, Peter Kanginen, Andrew Kurtti, Abram
Dorma, Henry Heikela, and Matt Niemela
District 114, Albion Center School
At
one time there were 5,000 one room schoolhouses in Minnesota. The District 114,
Albion Center schoolhouse south of Annandale in Albion Township was built in
1902 and closed in 1970. There are 26 desks in the schoolhouse, a set of wall
maps, black boards, and a wood burning stove. Photographs of presidents and the
alphabet in upper and lower case cursive line the walls.
Art Geisinger
said that he attended grades 1-8 at the Albion Center schoolhouse. His teacher
for all eight grades was Florence Hackbarth. He had the job of getting water for
the Red Wing crock from the neighbor each school day. Art also pointed out the
bar in the doorway that students could use to chin themselves to wear off
energy. There were two outhouses out back.
Art said that the school was
located one mile north of Albion Center and 1.4 miles south of Wright County
Roads 37 and 6 on the southeast corner of present-day County Road 6 and 30th St.
N.W. (diagonally across from the Albion Township building). The District 114
School was moved to Pioneer Park about 1975.
1902 Farm House
There were three buildings (house, barn and granary) when Pioneer Park acquired
55 acres of the farm in 1972. Part of the house is a log cabin built in the
1800s. French language newspapers (some from the 1880s) were on the walls for
insulation. The 1902 addition had a parlor, downstairs bedroom and two upstairs
bedrooms. Pioneer Park reconfigured the 1902 downstairs layout into a parlor and
kitchen, and added a summer kitchen for display purposes.
On the 1879
Corinna Township plat map, the Section 29 land was owned by the railroad. Viola
(Ponsford) Ridgway, wife of Annandale's Dr. Alfred Ridgway, owned the farm in
1901. In 1901 the farm was 114.92 acres with land on both sides of the railroad
tracks. Mrs. Ridgway rented it to Edward Fieldseth (1871-1939) and his wife
Josephine Aronsen (1876-1951). The Fieldseth's 1897 wedding certificate and
portraits are displayed in the house. They lived on the farm with their children
May, Edward, Alice, Lillian, Florence, Willard and Susie until 1919 when they
moved to Fair Haven. Rosenfeld family members lived in the house about 50 years
until 1970, first Charlie and Augusta Rosenfeld and then Walter and Violet
Rosenfeld. Mrs. Ridgway (1871-1965) sold 55 acres of the farm to the City of
Annandale in 1962. Lundeen Ford purchased the land on the north side of the
railroad tracks from Mrs. Ridgway in 1962 and built the new Lundeen Ford
building in 1973.
Note: When the Rosenfelds lived there, the driveway to
the farm entered from a gravel road to the south. There was a farm road to get
to the farm land on the north side of the tracks. The Rosenfeld's kitchen was in
the log part of the house and a door entered the kitchen from a covered porch on
the south side.
The 1869 District 71 Schoolhouse was adjacent to the
farm on the west property line.
Notes by Secretary
Annandale History Club