Manuscripts Collection
Alexander Huggins and Lydia Pettijohn were married in Ohio in 1832. They came to Minnesota in 1835 under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) of the Presbyterian Church and served as missionary assistants under Thomas S. Williamson at the Dakota Indian missions at Lac qui Parle (1835-1846) and Traverse des Sioux (1846-1852).
In January 1852, Alexander Huggins apparently conveyed to townsite developers part of the land that was to become the town of Traverse des Sioux. He was appointed town postmaster in May. In August he requested his release from the missionary service and began farming near Traverse des Sioux. He died in 1866.
Alexander and Lydia had eight children: Amos Williamson Huggins (1833-1862); Jane Sloan Huggins Holtsclaw (1834-1920); Eliza Wilson Huggins (1837-1873); Mary Ann Longley Huggins Kerlinger (1839-1929); Eli Lundy Huggins (1842-1929); Rufus Anderson Huggins (1846-1862); Frances Gilliland Huggins (1848-); and Harriet Cordelia Huggins (1851-).
Amos Williamson Huggins married Sophia Josephine Marsh in 1856. The couple had one son and one daughter before Huggins was killed by the Dakota Indians during the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Another son was born in 1863 and named Amos Williamson Huggins after his dead father. Josephine remarried in 1869 and Amos eventually went to live with his aunt, Jane Huggins Holtsclaw.
Jane S. Huggins married James P. Holtsclaw "a few years" before the Civil War. James was killed in Mississippi in 1864.
Mary Ann Longley Huggins married John Murray Kerlinger in 1870. Kerlinger was born in Baltimore in 1828. He was at the Lower Sioux Agency at the beginning of the 1862 U.S.-Dakota War and served in the defense of Fort Ridgely. He later joined the Union Army, was captured, and was incarcerated in the infamous Andersonville Prison. After their wedding, the Kerlingers farmed for a time near Mankato but soon moved to California, where John Kerlinger died in 1897.
Eli Lundy Huggins joined the Minnesota Volunteers in 1861 and enlisted in the regular Army after the Civil War. He served in Alaska (1868-1869); was professor of military tactics at the University of Minnesota (1872-1875); was in the Indian wars in Montana with General Nelson A. Miles, becoming Miles' aide in Chicago; served in China (1900); and "made an honorable record" in the Philippines (1900-1901). He retired in 1903 with the rank of brigadier general and died in California in 1929.
Julia Laframboise, daughter of trader Joseph Laframboise and granddaughter of Dakota chief Sleepy Eye, came to live with the Huggins family about 1852. She continued her education in Ohio and Illinois and eventually returned to teach among the Dakota people in Minnesota. She died in 1871.
This sketch was taken from the Huggins Papers and from two books: Thomas Hughes'
The Alexander G. Huggins and family papers consist of historical background materials; correspondence and miscellaneous papers of Alexander Huggins and his descendants; and genealogical materials relating the Huggins family lineage from around 1631 to 1959.
Historical background material comprises both biographical miscellany and reminiscences. Correspondence and miscellaneous papers include letters, deeds, certificates, and other papers related mostly to the family during its years at Lac qui Parle and at Traverse des Sioux (1835-1860s).
Genealogical material consists of typewritten information about the Huggins family's ancestors in Massachusetts and in Hartford, Connecticut.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the
Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics,
persons or places should
Access to and use of reserve materials requires the curator's permission.
Copyright is reserved on a portion of the genealogical material.
Accession numbers: [no acc. no.], 1780A9, 1805, 1904A, 2897, 3091, 3103, 3151, 3296, 3314, 3316, 3335, 3440, 3600, 8803, 11221, 12292, 12973, 16116, 16125.
Processed by: John M. Wickre, March 1986.
Additions by: David B. Peterson, October 2007; Jennifer Huebscher, October 2008.
Digitized by: Patrick Blaine, June 2011.
Digitization of reserve material was made possible by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the vote of Minnesotans on November 4, 2008.
Catalog ID number: 001730072
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Chronologically arranged letters, certificates, deeds, and other items mostly related to the family at Lac qui Parle and Traverse des Sioux (1835-1860s). Family activities, religion and missionary work, the mission school, Indian religion and conversion of the Dakota to Christianity, crops, property, and financial matters are all discussed. Most of the correspondence is either to or from Alexander and Lydia Huggins and their children. The series includes original manuscripts, typed transcripts, and photographic copies.
Some notable items include the following:
[circa 1835-1846]: Pages from a very small volume listing names of church members and baptized children at Lac qui Parle. The list includes some names with unexplained dates [e.g., "Ruth Pond Oct. 14th, 1838"].
June 22, 1835: Authorization for Thomas S. Williamson and Alexander G. Huggins to locate a "missionary establishment" at Lac qui Parle, signed by Lawrence Taliaferro, Indian Agent, St. Peters.
1844-1864: Pages from a small volume listing "Expenditures etc. of the Traverse des Sioux station . . .," mostly 1844-1849.
March 15, 1851: Invoice of articles from Boston via New Orleans for delivery to A. G. Huggins, Traverse des Sioux, care of F. Steele, Fort Snelling. The list includes cloth, clothing, kitchenware, and other household goods.
August 11, 1852: Letter from A. G. Huggins to Reverend S. B. Treat requesting release from service with the ABCFM; listing principal possessions of the station (such as animals, furniture, and tools); and offering to pay $300 for the house he has been living in.
January 1, 1853: Twelve printed deeds from the Traverse des Sioux Land Company for lots in the City of Traverse des Sioux, seven made out to B. Thompson and five to A. G. Huggins. The deeds are signed by H. M. Rice, president, and Hugh McCann, secretary.
April 16, 1863: List of subscribers to a fund to procure a bugle for Company D, Ninth Regiment, Minnesota Volunteers.
March 20, 1868: Letter in the Dakota language from Catherine Totidutawin, Fort Wadsworth, Dakota Territory, to Jane Holtsclaw, with a 1910 English translation by Alfred L. Riggs. Totidutawin writes of her blindness, hunger ["day after day they knock off bark and eat it"], and other hardships.
September 18, 1871: Copy of Julia Ann Laframboise's will, for which Jane S. Holtsclaw was named executrix.
1885-1889: Letters and financial information (including tax receipts) from E. S. Pettijohn, St. Peter, Minnesota, to A. W. Huggins, Berkeley, California, regarding the operation and sale of the Huggins farm near St. Peter.
Typewritten genealogical manuscripts containing information about Huggins Family ancestors compiled by Dorothy Huggins Harding.
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This bound volume consists of photostatic copies of 281 small pages of manuscript reminiscences written by Mary Ann Longley Huggins Kerlinger. The manuscript was written in a 1911 diary, but the material itself is undated except for a 1925 date that appears near the end of the volume. Most of the volume deals with Huggins family life (1835-1862).
It includes information on the Huggins, Pettijohn, and Williamson families; their early experiences in North Carolina and Ohio; frontier life in Minnesota; Dakota Indian religion and conversion of the Dakota to Christianity; work with other missionaries such as Robert Hopkins, Thomas Williamson, and Stephen Riggs; and the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.
The volume's last section (pages 259-281) gives information on John Kerlinger, his part in the defense of Fort Ridgely during the U.S.-Dakota War, his army services during the Civil War, his incarceration at Andersonville Prison, and his 1897 death in California. The names and birth dates of John and Mary Kerlinger's children are on page 259.
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This folder includes reminiscences of Frances Huggins Pettijohn and Eli L.
Huggins, as well as photocopied portions of Thomas Hughes'
The Frances Huggins Pettijohn reminiscences (1888), apparently selections from a larger manuscript entitled "A Family History," discuss Huggins family missionary work (1835-1850s) and related subjects. Eli L. Huggins' material includes biographical information (circa 1900), reminiscences (1918), and a letter (1926). The reminiscences entitled "Boyhood Reminiscences of General Huggins" include information on the Huggins family, missionary work, Indians, food, the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, an oxcart trip from Traverse des Sioux to Lac qui Parle (1845), and a keelboat trip on the Minnesota River from Traverse des Sioux to Kaposia and return (1849).
The 1926 Eli Huggins letter was written to W. C. Brown in answer to Brown's
request for information on the early history of Nicollet County. Also in
this folder is a typewritten transcript of a 1928 speech by Brown on the
history of Traverse des Sioux. The speech incorporates information from
Huggins. Brown was a major contributor to Thomas Hughes'
These handwritten essays discuss such subjects as "Home" and "Whiskey." They appear in a format similar to a modern composition book.
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This leather bound pocket diary, handwritten in ink, details travel, events, and accounts from Fort Snelling and Lac qui Parle, Minnesota, and Fort Pierre, South Dakota.
In 1835, Thomas S. Williamson and Alexander G. Huggins organized the Dakota mission at Lac qui Parle on the Minnesota River. Huggins writes of Dakota customs (making "holes" in children's ears and Huggins's invitation to a "dog feast"); the interactive economy between the missionaries and the Dakota (buying deerskins, trading bread and butter for ducks, and exchanging shirts for buffalo tongue); the Dakota language (Huggins consulted with Wamdiokiya, or Eagle Help, the first Dakota man to learn English); prairie fires, buffalo hunts, and descriptions of Dakota guides and villages.
Two of Huggins's travels are documented: (1) a seventeen-day trip from
Fort Snelling to Lac qui Parle (1835). Huggins's family traveled with
Dr. Thomas S. Williamson's family up the Minnesota River, first on the
American Fur Company's Mackinaw boat, then by oxcart from Traverse des
Sioux to Joseph Renville's stockade at the lake. (2) a thirty-day trip
across the prairie from Lac qui Parle to Fort Pierre on the "Missourie"
in present-day South Dakota. Stephen Riggs accompanied Huggins on this
trip and published an account in his book
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Transcript
Manuscript diary fragments detailing events at Lac qui Parle, Traverse des Sioux, etc., kept by Alexander's son Amos, who was killed during the Dakota War.
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Transcript
This volume was kept by Alexander Huggins' daughter Mary Ann. It contains
manuscript entries by missionaries Stephen Riggs, Mary Riggs, Samuel W.
Pond, and other members of the mission and their children. It says
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Entire encapsulated page 3 of the
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Hand colored illustrations of people, animals, flowers, Biblical scenes,
scenes from foreign countries, a few Civil War scenes, etc. cut out of
newspapers and pasted into a book entitled
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Comprised of three carte-de-visite albums and loose daguerreotype, ambrotype, and tintype images of Huggins family members, relatives, and other Presbyterian missionary families.
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Contents: Unidentified child and women (pages 1-4); Harriet Newell Pettijohn Cook Libby (page 5); unidentified men and woman (pages 6-8); Jerome Pettijohn[?] (page 9); blank page (page 10); unidentified child and man (pages 11-12); Dyer Burgess Pettijohn (page 13); unidentified children and women (pages 14-18); Jane Sloan Pettijohn (page 19); unidentified men and woman (pages 20-22); Cousin Willie (page 23); unidentified young men and women (pages 24-29); blank page (page 30); unidentified woman and man (pages 31-32); blank pages (pages 33-34).
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Contents: artwork (page 1); Cook cousins Charles Walton, Luella Jane, Clive Newcomb, Erah Eudora and Adda (page 2); Alphin's children (page 3); Harriet Libby's children Ethel, Carol Lena, and Frederick Mark (page 4); Harriet Newell Pettijohn Cook Libby (page 5); unidentified men and women (pages 6-9); John Poage Williamson (page 10); Dr. Thomas S. Williamson (page 11); unidentified men and women (pages 12-17); Samuel Pond (page 18); unidentified men and women (pages 19-21); Jerome Pettijohn[?] (page 22); Mary Riggs[?] (page 23); blank page (page 24); G.A. Brown[?] (page 25); unidentified man and women (pages 26-29); blank page (page 30).
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Contents: Fannie (page 1); James W. Holtsclaw (page 2); Jane Huggins Holtsclaw (page 3); Jane S. Huggins (page 4); Jane Sloan Pettijohn (page 5); unidentified girl (page 6); Amos W. Huggins, Sr. (page 7); unidentified women and girl (pages 8-10); blank page (page 11); unidentified child (page 12); Fannie (page 13); blank pages (pages 14-16); Zenoa Alexander[?] (page 17); unidentified woman (page 18); blank pages (pages 19-22); Jonas Pettijohn[?] (page 23); blank page (page 24).
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