John W. North - Founding Northfield, Minnesota

Founding Northfield, Minnesota

On August 17, 1855, North purchased 160 acres (65 ha) of land from three farmers: Daniel Kuykendahl, Daniel Turner, and Herman Jenkins. The entire tract of 320 acres (130 ha) was platted in the fall of 1855, and the plat of the Original Town, comprising most of what is now the First and Second wards and a small tract across the river south of the section line now marked by Fourth street, was filed in the office of the register of deeds March 7, 1856. The town was named Northfield, Minnesota.

In the summer of 1855 North started work on the dam and a $4,000 saw mill which began sawing lumber about the first of December of that year.

North’s wife, Ann Loomis North, and three children aged four months to four years, joined him in Northfield in on January 3, 1856. A fourth child, son John Greenleaf North (b. October 11, 1856 in Saint Anthony, Minnesota), was born later that year. The North's eventually had six children together.

The Norths founded many of the early societies in Northfield. A college-bred man, John was keenly interested in the organization of the Lyceum Society, which was formed October 1, 1856, and of which he was the first president. A number of the early Northfield settlers had known the Norths in Syracuse, New York, including Ann's brother and sister-in-law, George (1835–1894) and Kate A. Loomis.

When John North suffered financial failure in the Panic of 1857, his business interests were purchased in 1859 by his friend, Charles Augustus Wheaton, who had moved to Northfield from Syracuse on the advice of the Norths after the death of Wheaton's first wife.

The connection of John North with the community he founded lasted only about six years and he left well before the historical event that brought the most notoriety to the town—the infamous attempt by the James-Younger Gang to rob the First National Bank of Northfield in 1876.