~Some historical background:
Several new settlers arrived in the spring of 1870, and when the census was taken by Aiken Miner, of Jackson, in the summer of that year, the population of Rock county was found to be 138, of which 120 were American born and eighteen foreign born. In Rock county were nineteen farms………
The passing of the year 1870 marked the close of a most important era in the history of Rock county. At the beginning of the year 1867, there was not a building within the confines of the county; there was not a living person who might claim his residence therein; not an acre of land was under cultivation; it was a virgin country, many long miles from the nearest habitation. At the close of the year 1870, the county was inhabited by probably 200 people, who had made settlement and opened farms; the lands were surveyed and staked; the county was organized and the local government had begun. From a wild, uninhabited wilderness far out on the frontier, where only a few trappers had penetrated, it had developed within four years into a civilized, progressive and most ambitious community.
Source: An Illustrated History of the Counties of Rock and Pipestone, Minnesota, 1911
