02EarlyDays

The first permanent settlement in Minnesota began with Fort Snelling in 1821. A chaplain was assigned to the fort in 1828. In 1847 the U. S. government initiated land surveys in the Wisconsin Territory, which extended west to the Mississippi River. Land became available in the White Bear Township for $1.25 an acre. People who built log cabins and farmed on public lands got rights to that land. At that time, the Sioux and the Chippewa Indians were still having battles not very far from here.

Villeroy Barnum was among the early settlers of White Bear Lake (see Plate). He purchased 175 acres in 1851 between Goose Lake and White Bear Lake. In 1853 he opened a small log cabin resort in what would later be called Cottage Park. In the early 1850s several settlers had built log cabins in White Bear Township. By 1856 a few visiting ministers provided religious services in local homes or resorts.

Plate. Map of White Bear Lake in 1867, showing the location of the first Church and the Aubrey’s home (click here or on image for higher resolution views)

The first Episcopal church in St. Paul, Christ Church, was built in 1850. The rector Dr. Van Ingen visited White Bear in 1858 to hold a service in the log cabin school house. The second Episcopal church in St. Paul was St. Paul’s Church, where the pastor was the Rev. Andrew Bell Paterson, who served there from 1857 until his death in 1876.

Dr. Paterson, born in New Jersey, had an extensive education, including law school at Yale and the Theological Seminary in New York. His wife Alice was the daughter of the president of Columbia College. They accepted the call to serve the Church in Minnesota, even though Mrs. Paterson had been ill during the winter of 1856-7. Rev. Paterson had visited St. Paul in 1849 and helped to raise the funds to build Christ Church. When the Patersons arrived in 1857, Mrs. Paterson worked with enthusiasm and unselfish dedication. Alice Paterson developed a warm friendship with Laura Aubrey of White Bear Lake (see Plates below). They often met for a visit at a place halfway between their homes.

Plate Photograph of Laura Aubrey (click here or on image for higher resolution views)

Plate. Painting of Laura Aubrey in the Church Parlor (click here or on image for higher resolution views)

In 1857 John and Laura Aubrey arrived in White Bear and bought several acres of land from Villeroy Barnum. John and Laura did not tell their neighbors that they were from titled families in England. John, born August 18, 1827, was baptized Aubrey John Dean Paul, son of Sir John Dean Paul, a baronet in Rodburgh, Gloucester. Aubrey, in January 1851, married Laura the daughter of Sir John L. Lester-Kaye. Sometime after 1855 the young couple departed England under a cloud of disgrace relating to the trial of his father.

Sir John Dean Paul was an English banker, who, with his partners, was tried at the Old Bailey Court in 1855. In a desperate attempt to prevent financial disaster, they had illegally converted certain Danish bonds. Although Sir John was personally innocent of any wrongdoing, it was nevertheless true that the bank had been guilty of improper transactions. The three partners were sentenced to exile in Australia for fourteen years.

The family disgrace prompted the son to leave England and go to Canada and then on to Superior, Wisconsin. In America, in order to conceal their real identity, John and Laura used the name Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey. A newspaper item in the St. Paul Advertiser of April 13, 1856 reads:

“The dwelling house and workshop of Mr. Aubrey, Superior City, Wisconsin was destroyed by fire 26^th last.”

While in Superior, John built a sleigh which they used to travel to White Bear Lake in 1857. At White Bear he engaged in hunting, trapping and fishing and also became a boat builder.

At the Minnesota Historical Society, in the Episcopal diocese records, there is a letter written by Rev. William C. Pope (see Plates):

“One day he (Mr. Aubrey) met in St. Paul a carpenter, named Ashton from Superior, who was looking for a job on the bridge then being built over the Mississippi. He told Ashton he wanted to build a house at White Bear, and proposed that he should come and live with him, and when Aubrey worked Ashton should work, and when Aubrey played Ashton should play. The bargain was made and then, walked to White Bear. The house was builded in a year.”

This house built in 1857 was the first “frame” house built in White Bear.

Plate. Rev. William Cox Pope, Rector, St. John’s, 1876 – 1879 (click here or on image for higher resolution views)

About 1857 a road from St. Paul to White Bear was established. It extended from where Hamm’s brewery was later built, to west of Lake Phalen, to east of Goose Lake, to the shore of White Bear Lake and then north to Bald Eagle Lake.

John Aubrey, the former heir to a vast estate, was quite content to live a rough life in the frontier – hunting, trapping and competing with the Indians in the pursuit of game. Mrs. Aubrey, who had an excellent education, received a regular income from her family and added to their income by teaching school. She started teaching in her home, and then after 1858, in the first log school house at 3rd and Murray Streets, which was about a mile north of their home.

Mrs. Aubrey also started a Sunday school in her home. After Mrs. Aubrey departed, Miss Charlotte Freeman became the teacher at the school.

In January of 1860, the residents of White Bear started a nondenominational Sunday school in the log school house. Preachers included a variety of clergymen, including Episcopalians such as Reverends J. V. Van Ingen, Andrew Bell Paterson, Bishop Henry Whipple of Minnesota (see Plate)

Plate. Right Rev. Henry Benjamin Whipple, First Bishop of the Diocese of Minnesota (click here or on image for higher resolution views)

and Bishop David Anderson of Manitoba. During 1860, Reverend Paterson baptized eleven children at the schoolhouse according to the rites of the Episcopal Church. Also in 1860, John and Laura Aubrey donated about three and a half acres of land just south of their home for the site of an Episcopal church. This is now the site of the Episcopal Cemetery (see Plate).

Plate. Episcopal Cemetery and the location of the first Church (click here or on image for higher resolution views)

When Mr. Aubrey selected the site for the church, he reasoned that at some future time a village would grow up at this location where the road from St. Paul came to White Bear. However, when the railroad came to White Bear in 1868, the depot was built about a mile and a half north of his location, and the village developed next to the depot.