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December 2021
History Break: History and Evolution of the Guitar
Join us for our December History Break on December 15th at noon for a musically inspired history break. Join Randall Ferguson an accomplished musician In a combination recital/lecture/demonstration format. Randall plays and talk about the history and evolution of the guitar, its design and music. Using both antique and modern instruments, his performance spans 500 years of acoustic guitar music. His repertoire ranges from renaissance court music to the exciting syncopated dance rhythms of Spanish flamenco. In his program, he…
Find out more »January 2022
Free Family Fun Day: Winter Time Fun
Join us for a winter themed Free Family Fun Day on January 8th from 12:00- 3:00 at the Goodhue county historical Center. What did past Minnesotans do for fun when the weather turned frigid? While snow and cold drove others inside, the people of Goodhue County were a hearty bunch. From sleds to skating, Learn about the historic winter activities used to combat cabin fever! there will also be some winter themed games and crafts to do around the museum.…
Find out more »History Break: Bully Wells: Territorial Tough Guy
James Wells, the colorful “semi-literate” Frontenac frontiersman, soldier and part-time territorial legislator, set up a trading post in 1831 with significant assistance from his well-connected mixed-blood wife Jane Duncan Wells. Controversy follows in Bully’s wake, be it in the Minnesota territorial legislature, the Big Woods, or the controversial “Half-Breed Tract.” Coarse, unrefined and untamed, Bully Wells is not a good fit in the late 1850s when “civilization” reaches America’s northwest borderlands and the tiny frontier hamlet of Red Wing. Kick…
Find out more »February 2022
History Break- Men in the Middle: Wacouta I, Iron Cloud and the 1851 Minnesota Land Treaties
Leaders of the Red Wing Mdewakanton, the Wahpekute and their fellow head men face a confounding dilemma during rancorous land concession talks with US representatives. Conducted at Mendota, treaty negotiations stall while Eastern Dakota chiefs ponder a dilemma. They could sell millions of acres of their Minnesota homeland and enrage militant followers pledged to shoot the first chief to sign such a treaty, or refuse to meet the demands of coercive American negotiators and further delay desperately needed annuity payments…
Find out more »March 2022
History Break: Red Wing’s Charles McClure and Minnesota Territory’s 1857 Constitutional Crisis
Present-day Minnesotans decry political partisan gridlock, but the divided government of today couldn’t match the legislative meltdown brought on by the 1857 debate over a state constitution. Bitterly separated by party loyalty and ideology, Republicans and Democrats refused to even meet. Assigned the job of creating a constitution for the new state of Minnesota, they came up with two—one from each party. But Charles McClure, Red Wing attorney and a promising emerging leader of the three-year-old Republican Party, helps bring…
Find out more »April 2022
History Break – Answering Lincoln’s Call: Hamline’s Men and Women during the Civil War Years
Among the first Minnesota volunteers to fight in the Civil War, students at Red Wing’s Hamline University become deeply involved in the disastrous conflict from the first combat losses of former classmates at Bull Run through the years of fighting that follow. A company of Hamline soldiers also take part in the tragic US–Dakota War of 1862, an internal “civil war” with the Minnesota Mdewakanton. Letters and diaries bring insight to the lives of women students on the home front,…
Find out more »May 2022
History Break: The Rise and Tragic Demise of Edward Larrabee Baker
Ed Baker, a young, well-educated and far-sighted entrepreneur, ranks with the most successful of Red Wing’s early founders and leaders, Sheldon, Lawther, Foot and Betcher. He was Red Wing’s mayor in 1861 when he left his thriving Main Street hardware wholesale business to fight and distinguish himself in the Civil War. Upon his return, involvement in Minnesota’s post-war economic boom, aka the King Wheat Era, enriches Baker and prompts him to make an aggressive investment. Baker masterminds construction of Diamond…
Find out more »June 2022
History Break- Silas Foot’s Big Idea: The Advent of the Duluth, Red Wing and Southern Railroad
In the 1890s, DRW&S has the potential to change Red Wing and Minnesota history with a groundbreaking railroad route. Foot envisions a northern railway passage that could bypass Chicago’s monopolistic grip on Midwest rail shipments, and enlists allies willing to make a new railroad happen. Backed by capital from Foot’s flourishing St. Paul shoe manufacturing plant and his Red Wing tannery, along with support from influential Minnesotans and Red Wing investors, the DRW&S comes to life. Lucius Hubbard, former two-term…
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