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Christopher Andrews

"Nor can I here omit to mention the meeting of my friend, Col. A. J. Whitney, who is one of the pioneers of Minnesota.." Christopher Andrews, Minnesota 1856

Fuller House, St. Paul

October, 1856.

...It is estimated that 28,000 people have visited and left St. Paul during the present season. During July and August the travel diminishes, but as soon as autumn sets in it comes on again in daily floods. It is really a novel and interesting state of things one finds on his arrival at the hotel. There are so many people from so many different places! Then everybody is a stranger to almost everybody, and therefore quite willing to get acquainted with somebody. Everybody wants a bit of information on some point. Everybody is going to some place where he thinks somebody has been or is going, and so a great many new acquaintances are made without ceremony or delay; and old acquaintances are revived. I find people who had come from all sections of the country--from the east and the west, and from the south--not adventurers merely, but men of substance and means, who seek a healthier climate and a pleasant home. Nor can I here omit to mention the meeting of my friend, Col. A. J. Whitney, who is one of the pioneers of Minnesota, and with whom I had two years before travelled over the western prairies. A. S. Marshall, Esq., of Concord, N. H., well known as a popular speaker, is also here on a visit.

But what are the roads leading from St. Paul, and what are the facilities of travel to places beyond? These are questions which I suppose some would like to have answered. There is a road to Stillwater, and a stage, which I believe runs daily. That is the route now often taken to Lake Superior. This morning three men came in on that stage from Superior, who have been a week on the journey. The great highway of the territory extends as far as Crow Wing, 130 miles north of here. It passes St. Anthony and several important towns on the eastern bank of the Mississippi. In a day or two I intend to take a journey as far as Crow Wing, and I can then write with more knowledge on the subject....

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Future Civil War general, diplomat and state official, Christopher Andrews traveled through Minnesota and Dakota in the fall of 1856. This database is a collection of twenty-six letters he wrote during this trip.