James Davenport Skinner
Oddly, James Davenport Skinner’s birth date remains unknown. I write ‘oddly’ because his father was a widely-known minister and a founder of the New York’s Union Theological Seminary. Although many births in the 19th century went unrecorded, typically those of prominent families are known. Indeed, the birth dates of all Skinner’s siblings are well documented. Yet, James’ birth is not known and in later government records Skinner variously reported his birth year ranging from 1827 to 1833. What we know for certain is that Skinner was one of four children born to Frances Louisa Davenport and Reverend Thomas Harvey Skinner D.D. and he was born in Philadelphia while his father served at the Fifth Presbyterian Church at 288 Arch Street.
In 1832, most likely after Skinner’s birth, his father joined Massachusetts’ Andover Theological Seminary and was then appointed to New York City’s Mercer Street Church in 1835. In 1842, Skinner’s father helped found New York City’s Union Theological Seminary, where he subsequently taught until his death in 1871. Consequently, most of Skinner’s childhood was spent in the bustling center of New York City, close to Washington Square Park.
Portrait of Reverend Thomas H. Skinner painted about 1836-37 by Samuel Finley Breese Morse in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and Thure de Thulstrup's "Mount Washington Collegiate Institute in Washington Square Park in 1856.
Early on, Skinner seems to have developed an inability to stay put. Although Skinner entered Yale in May of 1846, he left in February of 1849 before completing his senior year. For the next two years Skinner studied law in the office of Fessenden & Ketchum, New York City before spending 1852 traveling in Europe. By 1854, Skinner had returned to New York and begun a new career. He was listed in the 1854 New York City directory as a draughtsman. The following year, he was listed as an engineer and lived at his father’s house at 62 Bleecker Street. Hence, Skinner did not acquire his engineering experience at Yale but through on-the-job training in the office of Erastus Washington Smith. It was a fortunate opportunity for Skinner as Smith was a prominent engineer who designed steamships, the Harlem River Bridge, and was later Consulting Engineer for the Brooklyn Bridge. The June 1855 New York Census found Skinner living with his parents, sisters, and their families, in a household with eleven family members and four servants. Yet, Skinner seemed eager to follow a new path.
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Skinner apparently left New York City before 1856, but Saint Paul’s 1856 Business Directory only lists three engineers and surveyors, none of whom were Skinner. The first known Minnesota record of Skinner is from the following year. The 1857 Saint Paul city directory included James D. Skinner, civil engineer, who had an office over the post office and boarded at the Fuller House on the corner of Jackson and Seventh. However, like many early Minnesotans, Skinner attempted to ply multiple trades. In the April 8, 1858, edition of The Weekly Pioneer, an advertisement listed Skinner as an agent for the First Class Insurance Company of New York, with an office in McClung’s Frame Building in Saint Anthony.
Only five months later, on September 5, 1858, Skinner departed Saint Paul as the leader of a five-man expedition to select the new state’s Salt Spring and Capital Lands. The expedition returned on November 26. While only a footnote in the state’s history, Skinner’s eighty-three-day excursion would eventually support the state’s third geological survey, indirectly lead to the founding of the Bell Museum, and over a century later provide scholarships for Indigenous scholars at the University of Minnesota – Morris and an endowed chair in American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota – Duluth.
Skinner's First Class Insurance advertisement in the April 8, 1858, edition of The Weekly Pioneer and Democrat.
Only five months later, on September 5, 1858, Skinner departed Saint Paul as the leader of a five-man expedition to select the new state’s Salt Spring and Capital Lands. The expedition returned on November 26. While only a footnote in the state’s history, Skinner’s eighty-three-day excursion would eventually support the state’s third geological survey, indirectly lead to the founding of the Bell Museum, and over a century later provide scholarships for Indigenous scholars at the University of Minnesota – Morris and an endowed chair in American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota – Duluth.
Land Speculation
Undoubtedly inspired by his Salt Spring Lands Expedition experience, upon his return to Saint Paul, Skinner embarked wholeheartedly on a career as a land speculator. Although like many new Minnesotans, Skinner had dabbled in land speculation when he first arrived in the state. In August of 1857, Skinner and another land agent, Amasa Mason, were the losing defendants in a lawsuit filed over 240 acres of Chisago County land. A month later, in the 1857 Minnesota State Census, Skinner also listed his occupation as land broker, rather than surveyor or insurance agent.
Significantly, in that same census, Skinner was living only three doors away from Alexander Ramsey, Minnesota’s first territorial governor and second state governor, as well as George Lorenzo Otis, Minnesota Representative. Other neighbors were prominent bankers and civil engineers. Consequently, Skinner’s elite social circle undoubtedly played a role in his selection for the 1858 Salt Spring Lands Expedition.
Although Skinner purchased another 640 acres of land in Mille Lacs County towards the end of 1857, it was not until after the 1858 expedition that land speculation became his primary focus. Usually with partners, but occasionally on his own, Skinner purchased over 4,280 acres of land in Anoka, Chisago, Sherburne, Mille Lacs, and Pine counties by the end of 1860. Yet, apparently Skinner was not wildly successful as a land speculator. In December of 1902, twenty-one years after his death, a probate court petition filed in Pine County sought to claim some of Skinner’s old lands as they were still vacant and unclaimed. Within a few years of his return from the Salt Spring Lands Expedition, Skinner abandoned his short-lived career in land speculation and returned to surveying.
Engineering and Surveying
As his land speculation ventures faltered, Skinner returned to his roots and began working as a railroad engineer and surveyor. By June of 1863, Skinner was second engineer on Charles A. F. Morris’ Saint Paul Railroad Company’s survey of a branch line from Saint Paul to Winona. He continued to work with that railroad until 1870, having become its chief engineer by 1867. At the beginning of his railroad career though, Skinner still hedged his bets with side trades. In the 1863 Enrollment List of the Second Congressional District of Minnesota, Skinner reported his profession as lawyer rather than engineer.
On January 7, 1871, in the wake of the 1869 Eastman Tunnel Collapse, the Star Tribune reported that Skinner, then formerly Chief Engineer of the Saint Paul and Pacific Railroad, was examined in district court on a case involving ‘the action of water upon tunnels such as the one under consideration’. Ultimately, the court decided his work excavating rail lines through sandstone exposures had little relevance to the case under consideration.
By 1873, Skinner began collaborating with the Army Corps of Engineers, as the December 7, 1873, Star Tribune reported a survey party under Skinner’s charge had mapped the river from Coon Rapids to Anoka and would eventually reach Sauk Rapids. For that work, Skinner reported to Major Francis Ulric Farquhar, the 3rd District Engineer of the Army Corps of Engineers at Saint Paul. Major Farquhar was also the engineer who completed repairing the apron and dikes at St. Anthony Falls.
Skinner continued his association with the Army Corps of Engineer through 1879, when the July 4, 1879, Dodge Center Press reported he was overseeing survey crews as part of a project to ascertain the feasibility of establishing a system of reservoirs for holding water for navigational purposes. This work contributed to the eventual construction of six headwaters dams in north central Minnesota which led to further dispossession of Ojibwe lands. Those dams were forced upon the Ojibwe and caused major disruptions to their lives and resource base. Only fifteen years after their completion, the Army Corps of Engineers abandoned the downstream levee river navigation system in favor of lock and dam construction, completely negating the reason the headwater dams had been built.
Dodge Center Press July 4, 1879 article on Skinner's work with Army Corps of Engineers.
Winnibigoshish Dam under construction in 1884 (Library of Congress).
In 1880, the September 25 Star Tribune reported Skinner was employed on a survey for the people of Crookston, to determine the costs and probable benefits of water power that might be created by straightening the Red Lake River’s channel.
Death
However, the following spring, Skinner fell seriously ill. With the immediacy of city daily newspapers at the time, the April 23, 1881, Star Tribune reported that ‘James D. Skinner, a well-known civil engineer, who has been dangerously ill for several days, was last night not expected to live until morning’. That fear was realized just before midnight.
1881 – April 24 – Star Tribune
Death of James D. Skinner, C. E.
James Davenport Skinner, who died about midnight of Friday, at his rooms on Wabasha street opposite the old capitol, was an old settler, having come here as early as 1853 or ’54, and was well and favorably known to all classes of citizens. He was about 49 or 50 years old, and was born in Philadelphia. His father, Rev. Thomas Skinner, was a distinguished Presbyterian clergyman of great ability and highly respected. At his death, the New York clergy published a book in commemoration of his virtues and as a tribute to his memory.
Deceased was a civil engineer by profession and at one time chief engineer of the old St. Paul & Pacific railroad, and as such was employed in the construction of that road from Minneapolis westward. For several years past he has been employed as an assistant in Major Allen’s office. He was educated at Yale College, and was a many of very prominent character, a high order of natural abilities, combining a very retentive memory with a highly-cultivated taste. He possessed a general knowledge of literature and also a taste for music, which made him a connoisseur and critic of no mean order.
His brother-in-law, Frederick Rhinelander, a wealthy gentleman living in New York city, and a descendant of one of the old Knickerbocker families, has been telegraphed to, and until he is heard from no disposition will be made of the remains.
The following day, April 25, the Star Tribune reported that ‘The body of James Davenport Skinner was sent yesterday to relatives in Newbury Lake, New York in charge of Major Pond’. The official cause of death was rheumatism, but not the chronic joint pain now associated with that term. In the 19th century, rheumatism was a common name for rheumatic fever which, in adults, matches the description of Skinner’s dangerously ill several days. Skinner’s body was sent to his relatives in New York and buried in New York City’s Marble Cemetery next to his older half-sister, Martha Ann Skinner Elliot, who had died in 1865.
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Skinner's obituary in the April 24, 1881, edition of The Saint Paul Globe (link to text).
Epilogue
However, Skinner’s wanderings were not yet done. A few months later on January 6th, 1882, his brother-in-law, worried that the family’s plot would be inadequate for their own needs, had Skinner’s body disinterred and relocated to a solitary gravesite in Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery.
A decade before Skinner’s death, the lands he chose as salt spring lands began to be used to support Winchell’s Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota. And almost a century and a half after Skinner’s death, proceeds from those lands still provide scholarships for Indigenous students at the University of Minnesota Morris.
Other Party Members
To fill out the expedition staff. Governor Sibley hired Robert Boyle and William C. Johnson as co-commissioners at the same $3/day rate that Skinner received. While Allen Schringer and William E. Beall were hired as surveyor’s chain-and-axe-men for $1.50/day. In a reflection of nineteenth century Euro-American society, even this five-person expedition had a social stratification beyond its pay grades. Expedition receipts show that Skinner, Boyle, and Johnson were outfitted with shirts, rubber coats, leggings, and caps from Saint Paul’s Fuller & Mendelson while Schringer and Beall had to furnish their own gear. Sibley also furnished the first three men with muskets, while once again, Schringer and Beall were on their own.
Announcement of 1858 Salt Spring Lands Expedition (from September 16, 1858, Rochester Democrat) and Fuller and Mendleson receipt for outfitting the expedition's 'gentlemen' (Minnesota Historical Society).
Initially, Skinner was supposed to hire his own teamster along with a guide/interpreter although Skinner seemed to put more emphasis on his successful quest for a teamster.
However, with his past experience as a trader, Sibley was fully aware of the crucial roles an interpreter might play and emphasized to Skinner that his guide had to be ‘sufficiently conversant with the Indian languages, to be able to explain to any roving bands of Savages, you may chance to fall in with, the objects and aims of your expedition.’
However, Skinner’s efforts to find a guide faltered and with the threat of winter’s approach, Skinner left Saint Paul on September 5 with only one teamster and his survey party. Within a week, Skinner regretted his decision when he belatedly realized his party were woefully inexperienced in living rough. Fortunately, on September 25, Sibley hired and sent along a well-known Metis guide, Pierre Bouttineau, to serve as Skinner’s guide and interpreter. Bottineau was fluent in eight languages and knew the region well, so his addition was a significant benefit. His value was such that Sibley hired Bottineau as the survey’s co-commissioner at $5/day, significantly more than Skinner’s salary. To offset that expense, the cost-conscious Sibley had Bottineau deliver orders terminating Boyle and Johnson’s service, which may well have made their initial meeting a bit awkward when Bottineau caught up to the party west of Otter Tail City.
Consequently, Boyle’s and Johnson’s time with the expedition was limited. The receipt for their return stage fair was dated October 13. Boyle was paid for 48 days on the expedition while Johnson, apparently hired two days after Boyle, was paid for 46. Beyond that, not much is known of them, at least in Minnesota records, which is sadly common for the first generation of Minnesota’s Euro-American.
Receipt for stage fare for Boyle and Johnson (Minnesota Historical Society).
Receipts for payment to Boyle and Johnson for their service on the 1858 Salt Spring Lands Expedition (Minnesota Historical Society).
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle was born in Ireland in 1825 or 1826, and arrived in Hamilton County, Ohio prior to his June 23, 1850, marriage there to Sarah Ann Cottrell, who was only 16 at the time. Initially they lived with another couple in Cincinnati’s third ward. A daughter, Ella, arrived the following year and sometime prior to 1857, the Boyle family joined the rush of early settlers to Minnesota Territory, becoming one of the first residents an early alderman of Hastings in Dakota County.
In the Sept. 21, 1857, Minnesota Territorial census of Hastings, shortly after that city’s founding, Boyle simply listed his occupation as ‘Gentleman’. That same month, he lost the Democratic nomination for the office of Registrar of Deeds for the county so Boyle’s involvement in the Salt Spring Lands Expedition may have been born of financial necessity. If so, his abrupt dismissal upon Bottineau’s arrival may have created some difficulties.
Although there is no listing for the family in any Saint Paul City Directory, the U. S. Census of 1860 recorded that Robert, Sarah, and Ella were living in Saint Paul’s 2nd Ward that year, with Boyle employed as a bookkeeper. If honestly reported, the family’s financial situation had improved as Boyle claimed $5000 in real estate and $450 in personal estate. However, by 1863, the family was back in Hastings, where Boyle was listed in the Hastings 1863 Civil War Registrations, although his name was later removed from the registrar.
Birdseye views of Hastings in 1867 and San Francisco in 1875 during Boyle's time in both cities.
At some point, the Boyles left Minnesota to try their luck in San Francisco, California. The 1875 California Voter Registrar of San Francisco’s 10th Ward lists Robert Boyle, age 48, as a bookkeeper. It further notes that he had been naturalized in Saint Paul, Minnesota, but had lost his papers. At the time, the family was living at 632½ Minna Street, a few blocks east of City Hall. By 1886, Robert Boyle (age 61) was living at 402 Ninth Street in the same 'South of Market' San Francisco neighborhood. However, he was listed as a laborer rather than a bookkeeper and claimed to have been naturalized in Washington, D. C. Two years later, Boyle was living at 415 Sutter. He again claimed to have been naturalized in Washington DC but had lost his papers. The switch in his supposed naturalization from Saint Paul to Washington, D. C. and the recurring story of lost papers suggest Boyle was never officially naturalized.
William C. Johnson
William C. Johnson of Stillwater had run successfully for county accessor on the democratic ticket in 1853 and in 1855 was unanimously chosen to be the Sargeant at Arms for the state legislature and at some point, served as justice of the peace in Marine Mills. In 1856 and 1857, Johnson was elected and served as sheriff in Stillwater, Washington County, but was defeated by the Republican candidate in the election of 1857. Only a few months later, Johnson was assigned to be the second Warden of Minnesota’s Territorial Prison, but politics and possibly corruption interfered. The prison’s first warden, Francis Roach Delano, purchased and installed machinery for woodworking in the prison, using inmates as unpaid labor to manufacture wood products. Although this was most likely illegal and became the subject of a grand jury investigation, the regulations controlling the territorial prison were lax but did require inmates to be kept busy from sunrise to sunset. Territorial Governor Samuel Medary was approaching the end of his term as Minnesota was about to become a state, so he apparently chose to drop the investigation and appointed Johnson as the new prison warden after Delano’s term ended on March 4, 1858.
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Minnesota State Prison in Stillwater photographed around 1878 by James Sinclair (Stillwater Public Library).
However, when Johnson arrived at the prison, Delano’s deputy refused to turn over the keys and control of the prison until the costs of Delano’s woodworking machinery had been reimbursed. Rather than pursue the matter, Johnson made no further attempt to assume the prison appointment. Hence, he was available a few months later when the Salt Springs Land Expedition set out. Sometime after his abrupt termination from that expedition, Johnson apparently relocated to Dover, Minnesota as a W. C. Johnson ran for accessor there in 1869 and 1870.
Adam Scheringer and William E. Beall
Even less is known of the two men hired as the expedition’s ‘Chain and Axemen.’ Scheringer and Beall both served for the entire expedition with Skinner. However, since their pay was half that of Boyle and Johnson, the two ended up with less. As a further indignity, despite Beall’s pay receipt clearly stating they were paid from September 5 through November 26 inclusive (eighty-three days), both were only paid for eighty-one days for a total of $121.50.
Receipts for payment to Scheringer and Beall for their service on the 1858 Salt Spring Lands Expedition (Minnesota Historical Society).
In the 1857 Minnesota Territorial Census, Adam Scheringer, age 21, was living in Cottonwood County and working as a cook and baker. Scheringer had been born in England, but it is unknown when he arrived in the United States. The 1857 census is the only record of Scheringer I could find linked to Minnesota.
William E. Beall was born in Virginia, around 1836. From August of 1856 to January of 1857, Beall and his partner, Isaac A. Banker advertised themselves as real estate dealers with an office at the corner of Broadway and Sixth in downtown Saint Paul, above the McCloud and Brother Hardware store. Although Banker would continue on as a real estate dealer in Saint Paul and in Washington County, the partnership with Beall appears to have ended several months before the Salt Springs Land Expedition began.
On June 13, 1860, Beall and William Garig, a daguerreotype artist, drowned while fishing together on Long Lake near Shakopee during rough water. Their bodies were not recovered. At the time, Beall was still seeking to make his fortune as he went to Shakopee to join a group traveling to Idaho’s Salmon River gold mines. He ran into Garig before the party left and the two decided to change the high winds on the lake as a last adventure in Minnesota.
Advertisement for William E. Beall's real estate business with a partner (from January 3, 1857, St. Paul Weekly Minnesotian) and article on his June 1862 death (from June 20, 1862, The Weekly Pioneer and Democrat).
‘Unnamed’ Teamster
The last member of the Salt Spring Land Expedition was a teamster whose name was never mentioned in Skinner’s official records of the expedition. He joined the expedition eighteen days after it started when the mules Skinner brought from Saint Paul could not manage the swampy terrain and oxen were brought in to replace them. In my first drafts of these pages, I simply mentioned the teamster was one of all too many people who were instrumental in the state’s establishment, but whose names were unrecorded. Upon reflection though, I realized that approach followed the elitest social patterns of Sibley and Skinner, where men of higher status were named but those of lower status were not; where three men received weatherproof coats while two others did not.
Consequently, I scoured the expedition’s records in the Minnesota Historical Society’s archives and was fortunate to find a receipt for the teamster’s reimbursement with his name. I then set out to see if I could give him a story, a small place in Minnesota history, only to discover I need not have bothered. Skinner’s hired teamster was already well known in Minnesota history, it was only that his connection to the Salt Spring Land Expedition had been overlooked.
Receipt for payment to Robinson Jones as teamster for the 1858 Salt Spring Lands Expedition (Minnesota Historical Society).
Robinson Jones was around forty-five years old when Skinner approached him in Acton and asked him to salvage the expedition. Jones had been born in New Hampshire and only a few years earlier had left his first family in Maine to start life over in Minnesota. Shortly before the expedition set out, Jones became one of Acton’s postmasters. On January 14, 1861, Jones married a widow, Ann Baker, who had grown children of her own, including Howard Baker, Acton’s other postmaster. After their marriage, Robinson and Ann adopted a fourteen-year-old girl, Clara Wilson.
If things had turned out differently, Jones’ sixty-three days as a teamster for the 1858 Salt Spring Lands Expedition might easily have been his only brush with history. However, on Sunday morning, August 17, 1862, Robinson, Ann, Clara, Howard, and Viranus Webster, a friend of Howard, were killed by four young Dakota men; Sungigidan, Kaomdeiyeyedan, Nagiwicakte, and Pazoiyopa. The murder of the Jones family sparked the 1862 U.S.–Dakota War. A six-week conflict that led to the deaths of hundreds of Dakotas and white settlers. On both sides many victims were women and children. The conflict’s many legacies include Minnesota’s only mass execution and its only concentration camp. The war resulted in the forced exile of most Dakota people from Minnesota with the loss of all their reservation lands.
Lithograph of the Jones' family murder at Acton (National Museum of American History) and the wife and children of Dakota leader, Little Crow, at Fort Snelling concentration camp (Minnesota Historical Society).
However, that brutal war did not really begin with the death of the Jones family but was the culmination of years of prior conflict. And while delayed annuity payments and Dakota starvation were proximal causes of the conflict, its ultimate causes were the two broken 1851 treaties that resulted in the theft of most Dakota land, including three-fourths of the salt spring lands Skinner claimed for the state in 1858.