Paul Emil Preuss was born April 30, 1872 at Graudantz, Germany, the son of Ernest and Augusta Preuss. He came to the United States at the age of 19 with his parents and four brothers. The family settled in Wausau, Wis., where Paul went into the general merchandise business. In 1902, he married Augusta Girdwood and a few years later, in 1906, the couple moved to Perham with their daughter Evelyn.

They first lived in the red brick house that stood across the street from Matz and Greiff garage and opened a general merchandising store in the Thoelke Building, on the corner of Main Street and First Avenue SW. Later they moved their merchandise to the Bauck Block at the corner of Main Street and 2nd Avenue SW.

In 1916, Mr. Preuss bought the cement block building across the street (now Boedy’s Appliances). It had been used by the Perham Holding Company to store beer and other commodities by the Schroeder Brewery. In 1930, Paul sold out the store. He rented the building for awhile and then in 1935, he opened Paul’s Tavern. After he retired, he rented the building to Ray and Vera Herr for 10 years. The building was finally sold in 1973 to Sturdevant’s.

Paul and Augusta bought the Davison house in 1914 and lived there until Paul was unable to care for himself and had to go to the nursing home. In 1971, the home was sold and a grocery store (now Service Foods) was built in that location.

Paul and Augusta were parents of eight children: Evelyn was born in Wausau in 1906. She married Herman (Babe) Weickert; Lauretta, born in 1908 and married LeRoy Atkinson; Ethel, born in 1913 and married Robert Morris; Florence, born in 1915 and married C. K. Howell; Dorothea, born in 1919 and married David MacMillan; Gertrude, born in 1920 and married Wesley Harvey; Paul Jr., born in 1922 and married Mary Lou McAdams; Geraldine, born in 1925 and married Eugene Jeszewski.

Information for this column came from the East Otter Tail County History books, available online at www.HistoryMuseumEOT.org. Lina Belar is the founder and former director of the Friends of the History Museum of East Otter Tail County.

John Drahmann

John B. Drahmann and his wife Elizabeth came from Ohio in 1881 and settled in the very young town of Perham, where he established a general merchandise business that lasted for nearly 100 years.

John was born February 24, 1854 in St. Henry, Ohio. His wife, (Mary) Elizabeth Goecke, was born Oct. 25, 1853 near Maria Stein, Ohio where her father was a cabinetmaker and builder of fine altars, some of which are in use today. They were married in 1877.

After coming to Perham, John went into the general store business, buying out his brother, Henry Drahmann. Henry Drahmann and Henry Kemper, another early settler, had built a small store near Rush Lake in 1867.

They moved it to Perham when the coming of the railroad in 1871 made it obvious to them that the small settlement would soon be a bustling community. Later that wood frame building was replaced by a sturdy, large, yellow brick structure which became known as Drahmann’s Department Store. At various times, John B. Drahmann was also postmaster, newspaperman and mayor of Perham.

John Drahmann and his wife Elizabeth had five children, all born and raised in Perham. When he died in 1907 at the age of 53, the business was taken over by his sons, Vincent and Leo. Vincent managed the grocery business and was also very active in community affairs. He was chairman of the Perham Public School Board and first president of the Perham Advancement Club, which later became the Perham Chamber of Commerce. He spent long hours in committee meetings and was instrumental in getting adequate roads built in the Perham area.

About 1920, he and his brother Leo, who managed the dry goods department of the store, went into the potato raising business on the prairie just outside of Perham. Growing, storing and shipping potatoes became a thriving side business for the Drahmann brothers.

Drahmann’s business finally closed in 1964 after being in existence for 97 years. The brick building which had housed Drahmann’s Department Store since 1898 and the nearby Merchant’s Hotel which was built in 1900 were both torn down in 1976.

Catherine Drahmann

Catherine Drahmann, one of Vincent’s daughters, is still a resident of Perham. She was librarian of the Perham Public Library from 1978 to 1994 and a very active volunteer for the East Otter Tail Historical Society and later the History Museum of East Otter Tail. She was given a Volunteer of the Year Award at this year’s Leadership Banquet.

One of her volunteer activities included compiling the East Otter Tail History Books, which are now fully searchable online at www.HistoryMuseumEOT.org.

Lina Belar is founder and retired executive director of the Friends of the History Museum of East Otter Tail County.

Louis Schmidt was a native of the village of Brucken in the Province of Hanover, Germany and the son of Dieterich Schmidt, a blacksmith. For more than 200 years, the blacksmith trade in the Schmidt family had been handed down from father to the eldest son. Since Louis was the second oldest son and not in successional order to continue the blacksmith trade, he chose the wagon maker trade as his career.

After finishing his apprenticeship as a wagon maker, he obtained work in a large French carriage factory and soon became an adept mechanic. Before long, his employer certified him a master craftsman, which entitled him to start business on his own.

In the 1880s, America was still sparsely settled and known to the rest of the world as a Utopian country with wonderful opportunities. The steamship companies put on an enormous and attractive advertising campaign offering very low fares to the New World, especially to the United States.

Encouraged by these opportunities, Louis immigrated to the United States in 1889, ending up in Perham, a thriving town surrounded by virgin forests where both hard and soft wood were in abundant supply. It was a perfect location for a wagon shop.

In the summer of 1889, Louis bought a wagon shop next to the Henry Tiedjens Blacksmith Shop. In 1890, his brother, Henry Schmidt, the blacksmith, immigrated to the United States and also located in Perham.

The following year, Louis built a three-story brick veneer building on Main Street next to what is now known as the Bauck store building. The Wagon Shop was then moved into the first floor of this new building. In this building, he made the original furnishings for the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church of Perham, including the altar, pulpit, baptismal font and pews (some of these items are now located at the Pioneer Grounds north of Perham).

Henry Schmidt, who had learned the blacksmith trade in the old country, was a skilled mechanic. After working for Henry Tiedjen for a short time, he purchased the Tiedjen Blacksmith Shop. Henry was kept very busy with general blacksmithing and doing the iron work on the wagons, sleighs, and farm implements manufactured by his brother, Louis.

Both the woodworking and blacksmithing businesses flourished, and by 1887 their facilities were inadequate to handle the volume of business. A new and larger brick building was built and equipped with the latest machinery to give their customers better and faster service. This establishment was known as Schmidt Manufacturing of Wagons and Sleighs, Blacksmithing and General Repairing.

From “East Otter Tail County History Book, Vol. I 1977,” available at HistoryMuseumEOT.org.

Lina Belar is the retired executive director of the Friends of the History Museum of East Otter Tail County.

Mason’s History of Otter Tail County, which was published in 1916, has this to say about the history of Dent: The town was surveyed in 1903, the population was 104 in 1904 and 214 in 1910. The Dent Bank came into being in 1908 with L. 0. Oberhauser as president, and E. J. Stoll and Charles Higley involved.

Information submitted for the 1994 edition of the East Otter Tail History Book has quite a bit more. Most of that information came from a copy of the Dent Messenger’s first edition, published on Aug. 4, 1905. This 8-page tabloid was published and edited by A.T. Mills. Only two of the pages were locally printed and oriented. The other six were preprinted elsewhere and contained state and national news.

This initial edition reveals that Dent was served by the Soo Line, which ran three trains each way daily except Sunday. Apparently one eastbound and one westbound were mixed trams – a freight with passenger cars at the rear. Editor Mills, who was also a notary public, wrote that Dent contained the following: Four general stores, one hotel, two restaurants, a livery barn, four saloons, a farm implement house, harness and shoe shop, a blacksmith and wagon repair shop, feed mill, planing mill, one large and several small lumber yards, a heading mill, furniture store, meat market, millinery shop, feed store, barber shop, a newspaper, one doctor, an elevator, several wood yards, a fire department with chemical engine, and a skimming station.

Advertisements reveal that Ray Gadway was the Dower Lumber Company manager, F. I. Miller, barber; Mrs. Millie Oleson, Millinery; Stender and Jonas hardware and furniture; bankers. N. J. Schafer, T. H. and H. S. Frazer, general merchandise, Robinson and son; butcher, Frank Ehrmanntraut; hotel-restaurant Engelman & Dalton; general dry goods and groceries, Schumaker and Bessler, and that Editor Mills was also in the real estate business.

Village officers were listed as Peter Schumaker, president; E. I. Miller, secretary George Patridge and Joe Besleri justices.

Information from City of Dent Messenger, 1905 submitted for the East Otter Tail County History Volume II 1994, now available at www.HistoryMuseumEOT.org

In June of 1988, a 39-year-old man was killed when he was blown out of the back of a vehicle traveling just north of Perham. An article by Chuck Johnson appeared on the front page of the June 16, 1988 Enterprise Bulletin.

Thomas Yelton, from Remington, Ind., was in the back of the 1972 El Camino, which he and his fiance, Diane Mostoe of Frazee, were using to move furniture. According to a spokesperson from the Otter Tail County Sheriff’s office, the man had apparently been lying on a mattress to hold it down when a gust of wind blew the mattress and him out of the vehicle.

The Perham Rescue Squad responded to the accident, which occurred about four miles north of Perham, but Yelton was dead at the scene. He had struck his head when he hit the ground.

A copy of the article describing this tragic accident was one of the last requests I received while still director of the Friends of the History Museum of East Otter Tail County. But the story surrounding this tragedy didn’t end there. When I called to let the person who had requested the article know that it had been found, she told me the rest of the story.

Apparently, over the years some people had been spreading the rumor that Yelton’s fiance, who now lives in Arizona, had killed him. These rumors had made life miserable for the poor woman and her daughters. Her friend finally decided to try to get the facts. This good Samaritan, who I hesitate to name without her permission, finally found her way to the History Museum of East Otter Tail County and made her request.

When I spoke with her the other day, she was effusive in her gratitude, saying this would make a tremendous difference in the life of her friend. Grateful praise should go to this unknown friend who went to the effort to discover the real story behind the gossip.

And gratefulness should also go to the unsung heroes everywhere who do all they can to preserve the past and the truth it contains. History saves lives.

Lina Belar is the former executive director of the Friends of the History Museum of East Otter Tail County and a pioneer in making local historical resources available online. For more stories, visit www.HistoryMuseumEOT.org.

Bob Riestenberg was a senior in high school in 1939 when he played his first dance job in the Bluffton Hall with Chuck Olson on accordion, Jim Mahoney on drums, Eggs Walz on banjo, Fred Weber on sax and himself on clarinet. It went so well that from there on, as he says, “I was hooked.”

In those days, Fred Lieske rode around the country on his Indian motorcycle giving music lessons. Bob states: “Eventually I worked into his band playing sax, clarinet and trumpet. Among the local greats was Mike Reed on drums who always wore white arrow shirts and a permanent smile. He was loved as a bartender in the day and musician at night. Tuck Ross from Dent played drums with us for a while and Fred would announce the band as ‘Two musicians and a drummer.’ Tuck wasn’t too skillful but he was faithful. LeRoy Atkinson helped us out on drums if we were stuck and it was refreshing to experience a new style of playing and his fellowship.”

For a number of years, Bob played in the army band touring all of Japan’s U.S. military camps.

“After that, I sort of freelanced and one of my favorite groups was the Variety Play Boys, which were Al Koplin on accordion, Gene Poser on drums, Jimmy Love guitar and myself on sax and clarinet. Jimmy Love was a great front man who could work the crowd along with Gene Poser and this developed into a following of fans.

“The most recent and seasoned trio I played with was the Bea Wisted band, which included the late Joe Thomas. All the bands were fun to play in after a hard week’s work. It was a way to relax, but still create and enjoy the fellowship of the members.”

Bob Riestenberg continues to create. His recent book, “Round Barns and Other Tales” has been published and is available locally. He will sign copies of his book at the Holiday Open House of the History Museum of East Otter Tail County in Perham on Tuesday, Dec. 11 from 3-6 p.m.

Stories by and about Bob Riestenberg are available on-line, along with many other interesting pieces of local history. Visit www.HistoryMuseumEOT.org.

Compton Township, which is located along the eastern edge of Otter Tail County, not far from the town of Wadena, was first commissioned as Grant Township and then named in honor of Captain James A. Compton on July 29, 1875.

Compton Township is drained by Oak Creek and Bluff Creek, which flow into the Leaf River and to the Mississippi watershed. There are just seven miles of railroad – the Northern Pacific, in Section One, and the Fergus Falls-Wadena branch of the Northern Pacific in the southwest part of the township.

There is no lake or town in the entire township.

Many of the first settlers were immigrants from Scotland and Sweden. Most of the Scots who came to Compton were members of the Furness colony, which was organized in Barrow, Furness district, England in the early 1870s by the Northern Pacific Railroad. They intended to settle on land owned by the railroad in the Red River Valley, but got only as far as Wadena. James Robb, William Anderson, John Stewart and James Strang were among the colonists from Scotland who came in 1873. George Stewart joined his brother in Compton after spending six years as a marine engineer in China.

Swedish immigrants included Nels Lifquist, who came to the United States in 1873. He found employment with the construction crew that did the grading of the railroad from Wadena to Fargo. Favorably impressed with the prairie of Compton, he returned to Otter Tail County after the crew reached Fargo and filed on a homestead. He prepared a dugout in a side hill of sod and slabs and sent for his family. John Veden, who had descendants in Compton, met his future wife on the ship when he came from Sweden in 1856. He settled at Parkers Prairie in 1869 and moved to Compton about the time of the grasshopper scourge.

Mr. and Mrs. Olaus Anderson came from Sweden with their five children and settled in Compton in 1878, arriving there by covered wagon from Carver County. Indian wigwams dotted the land where they settled near the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Others who settled at Compton included Ben Burton, who arrived in 1866. Burton was born in New York State and moved to Illinois as a young man. He was married and the father of six children when the family moved to Compton.

Frank Ranson, a veteran of the Civil War who took a homestead in Section 18 of Compton, was the first blacksmith in that part. Mary R. Wilson was the first teacher of District 62, which had more than 50 pupils from 1886 to 1889.

John Monroe was born in Kentucky and moved to LeSueur County with his parents in 1865. He came to Compton in 1878. He found small shanties and hard living while looking for land. He and three other men stayed with Mr. and Mrs. A. M. Darling in a 10 by 12 shanty. When bedtime came, tables and chairs were piled outdoors and the men slept on “shake-down” on the floor.

Information from this article is available at www.HistoryMuseumEOT.org.

Paddock Township is located in the extreme northeast corner of Otter Tail County. It was established in 1882 and named after L.A. Paddock, who had moved into the area in 1880 to set up a sawmill.

The Red Eye River, which flows through the township, supplied power for the mill. A large sleigh, drawn by 13 span of oxen, brought in the sawmill’s steam boilers.

Once the mill was in operation, the area began filling with Finnish settlers. There were no roads; only a suggestion of a trail through the forest, and travel through the swampy areas was treacherous. Eventually several Finnish families, including those of Gustav Saari and Anna Kaisa Nevala, began the hard lives of pioneers, which were not lacking in either work or adventure.

One story, by Jacob Lalli, told of the mutual relationship between the Finns and the Indians, two peoples so different from each other, in the Minnesota wilderness:

“Once, on a winter evening some 60 years ago, our neighbor, John Maunu, fell into the icy river on his way home from a hunting trip, and he would have drowned if the Indians had not heard his cries and come to his aid. They took him to their camp, wrapped him in furs and fed him hot drinks all night long. In the morning they gave him his dry clothes and escorted him home. And to the day of his death, Maunu insisted that there was nothing to the talk that the Indians were eager for scalps.”

The first Finnish children born in Paddock were twin boys, August and John Kuha, born on February 3, 1883. Paddock had a general store and a post office, and a half mile to the east of them Andrew and Isak Koski built a flour mill along the rapids of the Red Eye in 1887. A fire destroyed the mill two years later. There were also other sawmills in the area, and it was thanks to them that the forest disappeared rapidly from the pioneers’ lands. Before their disappearance, however, the forests helped contribute to a certain notoriety achieved by the Paddock Finns.

In those days, there was more than an abundance of wild rabbits in these forests, but only the Finns seemed to use them for food. Their hunting of rabbits assumed major proportions when a New York Mills shopkeeper, Olli Pajari, offered to pay 5 cents per rabbit, for within a few days Pajari had a whole wagon full of them from Paddock. For a long time after that, when someone saw a rabbit in the woods, they would say, “Go to Red Eye, you’ll get eaten up there.”

Information from “The History of the Finns in Minnesota,” at the History Museum of East Otter Tail County online at www.HistoryMuseumEOT.org.

Glendalough State Park was formerly known as the Glendalough Game Farm. It had been founded in 1915 by the W. J. Murphy family, who owned and operated the Minneapolis Tribune.

The game farm started out with only two cabins and one permanent dwelling, which was located on the north shore of Annie Battle Lake. Eventually the farm consisted of over 2,200 acres, with 650 acres under cultivation. Two hundred acres were set aside for what was actually termed the game farm area, where approximately 25,000 game birds per year were raised. At least 5,000 of these birds were released into the wild each year, for conservation purposes, with the hopes of improving hunting in the area. The game birds that were released each year were pheasants and ducks, along with a few geese, including what they called Canadian honkers, which were in danger of extinction.

The farm also raised some deer in the game area, where they were free to roam, as well as a large flock of turkeys each year, which helped to keep it self sustaining. The whole farm itself was part of the state game reserve and no hunting was allowed on the farm.

One of the managers of the farm was the late Axel Hansen, a well known Minnesota farmer, dairy cattle judge and writer for the Minneapolis paper. The farm, with its beautiful sugar sand shores of Annie Battle provided retreats for many guests of the owners of the farm, including President Dwight Eisenhower and President Richard Nixon.

In 1975, the Battle Lake Chamber of Commerce awarded the game farm a special plaque for the contributions they had made to the conservation program, “which the farm well deserves, for they are unexcelled in this area and probably in the state for contributions in providing for the American hunter, better hunting.”

From “East Otter Tail County History, Volume I, 1977,” now online at www.HistoryMuseumEOT.org

According to Mason’s History, published in 1916, “Otter Tail County was not formally organized until after the close of the Civil War, and consequently did not contribute any soldiers to that memorable conflict.”

It’s true that there were a few people living in this area prior to 1862, but the county is credited with no enlistments, either by volunteers or draft. Despite that, it is estimated that over a thousand of the men who fought in that struggle came to Otter Tail County after the war was over. The Grand Army of the Republic, an organization comprised exclusively of veterans of the Civil War, had a local post in Fergus Falls that enrolled 264 veterans.

One of the most remarkable histories of a veteran from that era survives in the letters and stories of James Allison “Cap” Colehour, who settled finally in Battle Lake. Born in Pennsylvania and raised in Illinois, when the war broke out he enlisted in the 92nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry and volunteered for a three-year term of service, or the length of the war. A year later, he was transferred to the Mounted Infantry.

James served in many battles during the war and was injured several times. After the war, he dictated the story of his war experiences to his son James in a manuscript labeled “Outline of Our Daddy’s Wanderings During the Early Sixties or Three Years with Old Glory Amid Hardships, Joys and Privations.”

During the war, James wrote many letters back to family members. Those letters, along with artifacts from Colehour’s Civil War years, are now preserved in the Prospect House and Civil War Museum in Battle Lake. Beginning Nov. 1, a traveling exhibit from the Civil War Museum will open at the ITOW Veterans Museum in Perham, along with other displays and programs about the 1800s.

Information for this article came from Mason’s History of Otter Tail County and the Prospect House and Civil War Museum in Battle Lake. For more, visit www.HistoryMuseumEOT.org.