Stearns County MN history

Stearns County borders the Mississippi River, the largest waterway in Minnesota, and was included in many explorers' travels, including the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805.

In the treaty of 1825 at Prairie du Chien, this river was designated as a part of the boundary agreed upon to be a dividing line between the country of the Ojibways and that of the Sioux.

One of its villages or hamlets, named MAINE PRAIRIE CORNERS, founded in 1856-6, is on the site of a stockade and fort constructed in 1862 as a refuge from the Sioux outbreak. It was called Lake Henry by the expedition of Woods and Pope in 1849.

The first large influx of immigrants, most of German Catholic descent, began to arrive in the 1850's and some settled in St Cloud while others settled in St Wendel, St Joseph, St Augusta, Wakefield and Collegeville townships.

The County Seat, St Cloud, traces its roots back to 1853 and settlements then followed along the Watab and Sauk Rivers in Le Sauk and St Joseph townships.

What is now Stearns County was officially established on February 20, 1855.

In 1856 the County Board took action to establish fees.

Edwin E. Payne was its first settler, coming in 1857 and making a homestead claim, on which in the same year he platted and named the first village site.

VERDALE was a large township or district, organized in 1858, originally including St Martin, Spring Hill, Lake Henry, Zion, and Paynesville.

Beginning in the 1860's through the end of the century, County government functions focused on road construction, bridge building, and school funding.

In 1861 the County Board allowed for a special fee of $25 to be paid to the St Cloud Guards to buy ammunition and "have it ready for use when called for."

Stearns County opened its first Courthouse on July 12, 1864.

GETTY township was organized in 1865. "John J. Getty, in honor of whom the town is named, was undoubtedly the first permanent settler.

The murdered brothers were ten seven years old, and they were greatly mourned by their grandmother, Queen Clotilde. Its present name dates from 1867, when Grove township, formerly a part of Oak Grove, was separately organized, as before noted.

1298).NEW PAYNESVILLE, platted as a village on the Soo railway, was organized in 1890, being situated about a mile east of the previous village of Paynesville.

FREEPORT, a Great Northern village in Oak township, incorporated in September, 1892, was named by settlers who came from the city of Freeport in Illinois.

St Cloud has always been the County Seat for Stearns County, but an unsuccessful attempt was made in 1913 to move the County Seat to Albany, a more centrally located village.