The following appeared in the Rock County Herald on August 22, 1924:
(Continued from last week)
OLE-TIMER RECALLS THE DAYS OF THE EARLY ’70s
Collin Estey had the first pre-emption along the Rock river valley in Rock county. Mrs. Deborah Estey, her six sons, Amos, Collin, Orville, Al and Byron and two daughters. Ruth Estey Ferguson and Hulda, came here from time to time during the years 1867 to 1870. Mrs. Estey’s homestead was located where Ashcreek now stands, east of the Ashcreek post office.
Mr. DeForce clearly recalls the first Fourth of July celebration, held in 1873 in Amos Estey’s grove, one mile below Ashcreek. At that time Mr. DeForce was only ten years old and the settlers called on him to sing. He responded with the song, “Alcohol.” Between fifty and sixty people, almost all of the settlers then in the county, were present.
Luverne could boast of only a few business houses in 1873. These were Wold and McKay’s store, the only store in town, Hoffman’s blacksmith shop, Estey’s drug store and the office of George and P. J. Kniss and Martin Webber, bankers and real estate men in Luverne.
Wold’s store was located in the building at present occupied as a home by Carl Pederson, at the corner of Main and Oakley streets; Estey’s drug store in the present Skoland residence and the Kniss Bros. and Mr. Webber had their offices in the two buildings immediately west of the Skoland place, now occupied as homes.
The Luverne House, this section’s most pretentious hotel, occupied a site where the Weick feed yards were located, and Mr. DeForce recalls that while a heavy, fleshy man, whose name he is unable to recall, was engaged in painting this building, the scaffold gave way and he fell a considerable distance to the ground, badly fracturing one of his ankles.
The weather was warm, and following a consultation, Dr. Crawford and another physician who did not remain here very long afterwards, decided that the injured man might develop infection from the fracture, and decided to forestall this possibility by amputating the injured foot, instead of taking chances by attempting to reset the broken bones.
The result was that the physicians brought their patient to the drug store, and after borrowing an ordinary meat saw from the meat market across the street, laid their patient out on a table in the drug store, and proceeded to cut the injured part of the limb off. With each stroke of the saw the patient gave voice to additional anguish, but the doctors kept at work until they had completed the disagreeable task. The patient survived the operation.
Mr. DeForce takes pride in the fact that he joined the Baptist congregation of this city in the summer of 1876, and has always retained membership in this denomination. He was formally baptized one Sunday morning in Rock River, about one hundred feet north of the present Main street bridge.
Donations to the Rock County Historical Society can be sent to the Rock County Historical Society, P.O. Box 741, Luverne, MN 56156.
Mann welcomes correspondence sent to mannmade@iw.net.