St. Peter, Minnesota

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 6.24 sq mi (16.16 km²), of which 6.06 sq mi (15.70 km²) is land and 0.17 sq mi (0.44 km²) is water.[6]

St. Peter was founded in 1853 by Captain William Bigelow Dodd, who claimed 150 acres (0.61 km²) north of what is now Broadway Avenue. He named the new settlement Rock Bend because of the rock formation at the bend of the Minnesota River. Daniel L. Turpin platted and surveyed the town site in 1854. In 1855, a group of St. Paul businessmen interested in promoting the town formed the Saint Peter Company, and the town was renamed St. Peter. The president of the company was Willis A. Gorman, Territorial Governor of Minnesota. Many of St. Peter's streets were named after streets in New York City, including Park Row, Chatham, Broadway, Nassau, and Union. Dodd was originally from Bloomfield, New Jersey. His second wife, Harriett Newell Jones, a native of Cabot, Vermont, was living in New York at the time of their marriage at the Church of the Holy Communion in New York City, which helped fund the church in St. Peter that shares its name.

The Broadway Bridge connects St. Peter to the east via Minnesota State Highway 99

In 1857, an attempt was made to move the Territory of Minnesota's capital from St. Paul to St. Peter. Gorman owned the land on which the bill's sponsors wanted to build the new capitol building, and at one point had been heard saying, "If the capitol remains in Saint Paul, the territory is worth millions, and I have nothing." At the time, St. Peter, in the territory's central region, was seen as more accessible to far-flung territorial legislators than St. Paul, which was in the extreme east of the territory, on the east bank of the Mississippi River. A bill passed both houses of the Territorial Legislature and was awaiting Gorman's signature. The chairman of the Territorial Council's Enrolled Bills Committee, Joseph J. Rolette of Pembina, took the bill and hid in a St. Paul hotel, drinking and playing cards with some friends as the city police looked fruitlessly for him, until the end of the legislative session, too late for the bill to be signed. Rolette came into the chamber just as the session ended. Today, St. Paul is the state's second-largest city (after neighboring Minneapolis), while St. Peter is a relatively small rural town.

The Church of the Holy Communion is one of several St. Peter structures on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1851 the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux was signed between the Sioux (Dakota) and the U.S. Government one mile (1.6 km) north of St. Peter. The Nicollet County Historical Society-Treaty Site History Center is near the site of the signing. But the treaty's promises were not kept. The Dakota became angered and the Dakota War of 1862 began in Cottonwood County. In August 1862 the Dakota attacked the German settlement of New Ulm. A company of volunteers from St. Peter, headed by Dodd, St. Peter's founder, went to New Ulm's defense. Dodd was killed on August 23, 1862, and briefly buried in New Ulm. On November 11, 1862, Dodd was buried with high military honors in St. Peter on the grounds of the Church of the Holy Communion, Episcopal, on land he donated to the church. Dodd, his wife Harriet and two children are buried behind the present stone church built in 1869–70 at 118 North Minnesota Avenue.

In 1866, the legislature established the first "Minnesota Asylum for the Insane" in St. Peter. It was later known as the St. Peter State Hospital, and is now called the St. Peter Regional Treatment Center.

On July 1, 1892, the Sontag Brothers, John Sontag and George Contant, and their partner, Chris Evans, tried to rob a train between St. Peter and Kasota along the Minnesota River. The bandits acquired nothing of value, but their activities came under the review of Pinkerton detectives, and both were apprehended in June 1893 in what is called the Battle of Stone Corral in California.[10]

Governors

St. Peter is known as the home of five governors:

• Territorial
  • Willis Arnold Gorman (1853–1857)
• State
  • Henry Adoniram Swift (1863–1864)
  • Horace Austin (1870–1874)
  • Andrew Ryan McGill (1887–1889)
  • John Albert Johnson (1905–1909)

The John A. Johnson House is listed on the NRHP.

The best-known of these, Johnson, was born in St. Peter to Swedish-born parents on July 28, 1861. Because of family circumstances, he offered to help his mother raise the family. He left school at a young age and held a variety of jobs. In 1887, he was hired as editor of the St. Peter Herald, the local newspaper. In 1899, he was elected to the State Senate, and served until 1903. In 1904, he was elected Minnesota's 16th governor. He was reelected in 1906 and 1908. He was considered as a possible candidate in the 1912 presidential election, but died as the result of an operation for intestinal adhesions in Rochester, Minnesota, on September 21, 1909. Drs. William James Mayo and Charles Horace Mayo, who came from Le Sueur and were friends with Johnson, performed the operation. After lying in state in the Capitol rotunda, his body was taken to St. Peter for burial. The funeral, held at Union Presbyterian Church, was St. Peter's largest ever, and he was buried near his parents in Greenhill Cemetery. He was survived by his wife, Elinore "Nora" Preston Johnson.

The Old Main building at Gustavus Adolphus College

St. Peter is the home of Gustavus Adolphus College, a private liberal arts college affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and founded in 1862. The public high school is St. Peter High School. There are two parochial schools in St. Peter: John Ireland Catholic School (K-6), which is associated with the Church of St. Peter, and St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran School (K-8), which along with the church is associated with the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. Veritas et Lux Preparatory School is a private non-denominational (K-12) school.

The first class graduated from St. Peter High School in 1880. The first superintendent of St. Peter Public Schools was Andrew Ryan McGill, who served from 1865 to 1868. McGill was Minnesota's 10th governor from 1887 to 1889.

Scholarship America is based in St. Peter.

Community health care is provided by St. Peter Community Hospital. In 2009 St. Peter Community Hospital was renamed River's Edge Hospital. That same year the construction of a new clinic was begun adjoining the hospital. There is now the River's Edge Clinic and the St. Peter Community Clinic, part of the Mayo Health System.

St. Peter is home to the Minnesota Security Hospital, where those the state declares mentally ill and dangerous are committed.

Benedictine Health Care Center, formerly known as St. Peter Community Health Care Center, is part of the River's Edge Hospital complex. Near the hospital Pheasants' Ridge is an assisted living facility that has a section for patients suffering from memory loss due to Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Other health care facilities in St. Peter include Grandview Good Samaritan Center on Sunrise Drive.

River Valley Birth Center opened in St. Peter in the summer of 2014. It is the region's first free-standing birth center.

• Alice A. Andrews — pianist, composer, associated with the Andrews Opera Company
• Horace Austin — sixth governor of Minnesota
• Henry N. Benson — Minnesota Attorney General
• Eugene Saint Julien Cox — mayor of St. Peter, state legislator, district court judge
• Anne Martell Denver — wife of singer John Denver
• Olive Fremstad — opera singer at Metropolitan Opera
• Willis Arnold Gorman — second governor of the Minnesota Territory
• Camilla Hall — Symbionese Liberation Army member
• James M. Hinds — the first congressman assassinated in office
• Gideon S. Ives — lieutenant governor of Minnesota, mayor of St. Peter
• Carl M. Johnson — politician, farmer, and businessman
• John Albert Johnson — 16th governor of Minnesota, presidential candidate, newspaper editor
• Verne C. Johnson — politician and lawyer
• Andrew Ryan McGill — 10th governor of Minnesota, newspaper editor, state senator
• James M. McPherson — Civil War historian and author
• Steve Neils — football player for the St. Louis Cardinals
• Milt Nielsen — baseball player for the Cleveland Indians
• Allen Quist — former state representative and gubernatorial candidate
• Benjamin H. Randall — politician
• Rick Rude — professional wrestler
• Myer Skoog — inventor of the jump shot
• Doug Swenson — politician, lawyer, and judge
• Henry A. Swift — third governor of Minnesota, lieutenant governor of Minnesota, state senator
• John H. Tolan — politician and lawyer
• Earl Witte — football player for the Green Bay Packers

• St. Peter Sandstone
• The Arboretum at Gustavus Adolphus College, on the campus of Gustavus Adolphus College

Wikimedia Commons has media related to St. Peter, Minnesota.

• St. Peter, Minnesota Official City Website
• St. Peter Public Schools Official Website
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "St Peter" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 37.