Bio of Russell, Morris C. (b.1840) Wabasha Co., MN
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This bio comes from "HISTORY OF WABASHA COUNTY" 1884.
Check out Barbara's site for more great information on this book:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~mnwabbio/wab1.htm
There are also some pictures and information from descendents for some 
of the bios on her pages.

Russell, Morris C., editor "Sentinel," Lake City. After repeated
solicitation on our part, Mr. Russell kindly consented to furnish us the
following brief though very interesting account of his experience on the
northwestern frontier, or early days in Minnesota, which at the same time
illustrates the experience of very many of our worthy pioneers, both
living and dead, and is given as a sample of the brave spirits who
redeemed this grand commonwealth from a state of nature, and spread out
its fields of golden grain, bred cattle on its thousand hills, and reared
its numerous cities, towns and villages with their prosperous churches,
colleges and schools. He says:
"I was born in Venango county, Pennsylvania, February 22, 1840. My
father was Samuel Russell, and my mother was a Miss Matilda Raymond, whose
brother, A. W. Raymond, owned large iron mines and blast furnaces, over
which my father, although owning a large farm in the vicinity, was, most
of the years I was at home, the manager for my uncle Raymond. The Raymonds
were from Connecticut stock, although the branch which were within my
knowledge came from New York State into Western Pennsylvania; and my uncle
A. W. Raymond, and his large family of sons and daughters and their
descendants, are all alive at this writing, and all live near each other
in Venango county, the old gentleman at Franklin, the county seat. My
father was one of a family of seven sons, all born in this country,
although my grandparents on my father's side came from the north of
Ireland. My father married twice, his second wife being a Miss Susan
Smith, from Bangor, Maine, who came into western Pennsylvania as a school
teacher. I am the youngest child of the first family, being the twelfth
child and seventh son. My mother died when I was an infant, and I do not
recollect her. I was raised, up to the time I left home at fourteen, by my
stepmother, who is one of God's noble women, and who still lives in
Jefferson, Iowa, with her youngest daughter, though very feeble and aged.
By his second marriage my father had nine children-twenty-one in all. Up
to my fourteenth year I went to the old log schoolhouse three months each
winter, where I learned to read in the New Testament, and could spell most
of the easy words in Cobb's spelling-book; also gained a trifle of
knowledge about geography, and could 'cipher' a little before leaving
home, but never 'learned grammar' any. This comprised all the
book-learning I ever had in school, and constituted my collegiate course,
if I except a year spent in the Franklin 'Spectator' office as a
'printer's devil.' From ten to fourteen I worked on the farm, in the ore
mines, and about the iron furnace, one year as 'under clerk' in my uncle's
large supply store, where the hundreds of miners, furnace men,
woodchoppers, teamsters and charcoal artists, who carried on the colliery
department, bought all the supplies of every kind for themselves and
families. All labor was employed by my uncle for half cash and half out of
the furnace store. I never knew, however, of very much cash changing
hands, but the 'furnace store' was a big thing as a mart of trade; men who
had large families, as nearly all of them had, to support by chopping
white oakwood-as an illustration-for forty cents per cord, never had much
"cash" due them on settlement day. My business capacity and my education
fitted me admirably for my part of the duties-i.e., drawing the endless
jugs of molasses, fish-oil, measuring out tar, sweeping the store,
replacing broken glass in the gristmill and the many other buildings about
the ironworks, and doing ten thousand things which the higher operators
about the place could not do without smearing their hands or their linen.
About March 1, 1854, I succeeded in getting father's consent to go to
Minnesota Territory, at that time a remote region, difficult of access,
and of which but little was known in the east. Four years before, in 1850,
my two eldest brothers, Aaron and Edward, had gone to that territory, and
in 1852 were followed by my brother Samuel, and brother-in-law, F. M.
Ward. After two months of untold hardships, privations, suffering and
adventure, a green and used-up youth landed in St. Paul from the steamer
Hamburg, the boat having, during all her voyage, been but little less than
a floating palace of death. She had several hundred passengers, who died
off by scores with cholera, their remains being buried in greater or less
numbers at every wood-pile and landing. Those not sick spent their time in
gambling and carousing night and day. We buried half-a-dozen one dark
rainy night in the lonely wilderness where we took on wood, placing them
all in one shallow hole in the wet ground, by the weird light of tar
torches. At another landing, I remember, among the dead carried ashore
were eight members of one family. This was at LaCrosse landing, where they
were laid side by side on the ground, seven boys and their father, and we
left the only surviving member, the wife and mother, sitting among the
dead, wringing her hands in agony and despair. Most of the principal towns
now on the river were located about this time, or not long previously, but
were composed of only a few wooden structures, scattered about over their
respective sites, with not enough in a line to indicate which way the
street ran. There were "prairie-seas" spread out on every hand, which,
with the wild Indians and their numerous villages, were sights
emphatically new and picturesque in the eyes of a boy who had never seen
either before, nor even a railroad nor steamboat before starting on this
long, tedious and eventful journey, which alone would make an interesting
volume if faithfully written, with all its incidents, sights and
experiences.
"St. Paul was a singular-looking, rough and tumble sort of a town.
The central portion was reached by a set of rough, wooden stairs, leading
from the steamboat landing up the side of the hill, upon reaching the
summit of which one landed almost in the front yard of the Central House,
one of the leading hotels of the town. The Merchant's was a frame affair,
on its present site. The amusement center was the old People's Theatre, a
square, ugly-looking structure, made of slabs set up endwise. The
autocrats of the territory were the government officials first, the
steamboat officers next, and the Indian traders and 'sample-room'
proprietors third. In those days all the rivers were navigable. The
Minnesota river was navigable for large boats some three or four hundred
miles above its mouth most of the season, and as the Minnesota valley was
just beginning to attract immigration, the steamboat business boomed for
several years, when, about the time it began to permanently 'dry up"
railroads came into the country and relieved the exhausted streams of the
traffic they no longer could discharge by reason of the absorption and
evaporation caused by settling and opening up the country and its surface.
The first legal execution in the territory took place that year. The
'subject' was a Sioux Indian, who was hanged for shooting at a white man,
and killing the woman who was seated beside him in the wagon. The murder
took place in the woods in the Sand Creek bottom, Scott county, near where
Jordan is now located. The man shot at by the Indian was a German named
Jacob Schroder, but the name of the woman who was killed, I do not
remebmer. I knew Schroder personally many years after, and the last I knew
of him he resided in Shakopee, where he probably still lives, if he lives
at all. This and the two following seasons I ran on the Minnesota (then
called St. Peter) river, on different ones of the early steamboats, the
Montello and the Iola (which belonged to my two elder brothers), the
Globe, the Time and Tide (which belonged to Capt. Louis Roberts, an early
settler of St. Paul, who died only six or seven years ago, and was a noted
character), on the Black Hawk, Greek Slave, Clarion and others. These
first boats carried up into the great valley of the Minnesota the early
settlers and their goods, the government supplies to Fort Ridgely, and the
annuity goods to the Indian agencies at Red Wood and Yellow Medicine. At
times the water was too low for the steamboats to run above the rapids,
when the freight and passengers would be transferred to flatboats, which
were 'polled' up the river, a distance of two hundred miles, by French
'pollers,' at a speed of about twenty miles a day. This portion of my
early-day experiences-my flatboat experience for three years through a
country swarming with the wildest of wild Indians, the Sioux, eight years
before the terrible outbreak and massacre of 1862-was the most romantic
and eventful time in my frontier life, its stirring incidents, if properly
recorded, being sufficient in number and thrilling enough in character to
constitute a volume. The most noted men of that time whom I can now recall
were: Gov. Alex Ramsey, Gen. Sibley, Maj. Joseph R. Brown (Sioux Indian
agent), Willis A. Gorman, Samuel Pond (the venerable missionary), Maj.
Murphy, Messrs. Borup and Oaks, Wm. Constance, and the prominent 'river
men,' while the greyhaired old Col. Abercrombie, of the regular army, was
in command of Fort Ridgely. Of course there were men in all the scattering
communities along the Mississippi river, further south in the territory,
who were then, and since have been, prominent men, but of whom I knew but
little in those early times, save by reputation. I and my brothers
flatboated the first piano into the Minnesota valley that ever found its
way up that river above Shakopee. It belonged to Col. Stoever, now of
Henderson, and it was consigned and 'delivered in good order and
condition' to a new landing called Kasota, not far above St. Peter. The
boat crew, after the strange instrument had been landed safely, all drew
an extra pint of whiskey from the government barrels of that article were
on board, and drank to 'the health of the first piano and its jolly,
rollicking owner.' This reminds me that the crews always used to levy upon
the government whiskey, which always constituted a fair proportion of
every cargo, for their supply of 'firewater.' They would tap a barrel
whenever they ran short, draw out two or three buckets full of whiskey,
and replace it by similar quantity of river water. We used to deliver at
the fort and at the agencies a good many barrels of tolerably weak
whiskey; some of it wouldn't have hurt the nerves of a child. At the close
of the third year I returned home and spent the winter, returning to the
northwestern frontier again early in the spring, this time all the way by
river, making probably one of the longest continuous river journeys ever
made in the country; nearly the whole length of the Alleghaney river, to
Pittsburgh, thence the length of the Ohio river to Cairo, up the
Mississippi to St. Paul, thence ascending the Minnesota river to Redwood
agency, in all between three and four thousand miles. During the years
intervening between my return and the outbreak of the war of the
rebellion, save one summer spent in Iowa, and one year in the newspaper
business at Belle Plaine, Minnesota, I ran on the upper Mississippi, St.
Croix and Minnesota rivers, clerking, piloting, etc.; spending the winters
in the heart of the big woods, on the Minnesota river, where my brothers
had a settlement, engaged in cutting steamboat wood and getting out
various kinds of timber, among the rest the timber for the St. Paul
bridge, which we four brothers cut and banked in the winter and rafted to
St. Paul in the spring. We were to take our pay in city bonds, which our
St. Paul agent, after considerable trouble, collected for us; but before
he had turned them over to us he became involved in some scandal, and when
about to be arrested he, having our bonds in his pocket, ran to the new
bridge and jumped into the river far below, from the highest span, and
neither he nor our money was ever heard of again, excepting a skeleton
found a few years afterward in the river above Hastings, which was
supposed to be that of the rascally suicide, Gray. On one of the long,
tedious rafting trips with this timber from the Big Woods to St. Paul, the
raft became windbound on the lower Minnesota river, by strong headwinds
common in the spring, and the crew, of which the writer was a member, came
near starving to death. We subsisted for a week or over on nothing more
than roots, bark, etc., gathered along the shores, and small box of
spoiled herring. Parties who had gone to St. Paul by land at last came to
our relief up the river in canoes, bringing provisions. The first meal
consisted of cheese, bread, etc., and a pint of whiskey each. The repast
had a very revivifying effect, and the hilarity that followed we
attributed to the cheese. I was personally and thoroughly acquainted with
all the leading as well as subordinate chiefs of the Sioux nation,
including Little Crow-the leading spirit in the massacre of 1862-Standing
Buffalo, Blue Blanket, Old Shakopee, Cut Nose, Other Day (the friendly
Indian who saved sixty-two whites during the massacre), Little Dog and
many others; also all the thirty-eight who were hanged on one scaffold at
Mankato. All these chiefs have often spent a night beneath the friendly
roof of our Big Woods cabin in those early days, and partaken at our rude
table with us. I also know Hole-in-the-Day, the great chief of the
Chippewa nation, and many of the principal chiefs of the Winnebago nation,
Big Bear being a particular friend of the writer. Of the latter tribe I
saw, at one time, four hundred canoe loads, with an average of five to the
canoe, all in one body. I also witnessed the last great and bloody battle
that took place between the Sioux and Chippewa nations, who have been the
bitterest enemies from time immemorial. It occurred in the open river
bottom of the north side of the Minnesota river, not far below Shakopee,
and was attended by all the shameless and nameless atrocities common in
Indian warfare. The Chippewas, after a most determined battle of several
hours, were cut to pieces and put to flight.
"For aught I have ever known to the contrary, I was the first white
that became a permanent resident of the territory and state who had
neither parent or guardian with him. The summer before referred to as
having been spent in Iowa, I again entered upon an apprenticeship at the
printing business, in the office of the 'Tipton Advertiser,' Judge Spicer,
editor. The summer was pretty badly broken up, however, owing to the fact
that I became a member of a militia company, the Tipton Guards, commanded
by that old Mexican veteran Capt. Hammond, in which, owing to my 'main
strength and awkwardness,' I presume, I was made a sergeant. During the
summer we served through what was known as the 'Iowa Horse Thief War,'
immediately following the conclusion of which we were ordered to the
frontier to quell the Indians who had broken out in what passed into
history as the 'Spirit Lake Massacre.' Before reaching the bloody ground,
however, the order was countermanded, much to our relief. After this, I
resigned from the company, and also threw up my position of 'printer's
devil' in the 'Advertiser' office, and returned to Minnesota-two wars in
one summer being more than I had contracted for, even 'in my mind.' At
eighteen, in company with Horace Baxter, another boy about my own age, and
the only brother of Col. L. L. Baxter, now of Fergus Falls, I leased the
'Enquirer' office at Belle Plaine, and after conducting it a year sold our
lease to Judge J. L. Macdonald, now of Shakopee, and Baxter and myself
went to Portage City, Wisconsin, with a view of buying out the 'Badger
State' office at that place. Before negotiations were closed, however, my
gallant and gifted young partner was killed near Kilbourn City by falling
between the cars. After this I traveled several months through various
western states, in order to perfect myself in the art of printing, by
'getting the sytles' in various localities, when I returned to Minnesota
and was employed in the old 'Pioneer' office most of the time until the
war of the rebellion broke out. I walked to Fort Snelling from Belle
Plaine, at which latter place I resigned my position of first lieutenant
in what soon afterward became Co. A., 4th Minn. Inf., because the company
voted not to join in any regiment that was likely to be ordered south.
When the vote was announced, in my boyish and enthusiastic rage I tore my
sword from its scabbard and flung it through the air; it fell point first,
and I turned impetuously away, leaving it sticking in the prairie, and, as
before stated, walked without stopping fifty miles to the fort, arriving
just in time to get into Co. K, 2d Minn. Inf., with which I served nearly
a year in Kentucky and Tennessee, and was finally discharged on account of
disability received in the line of duty, and from being over-zealous in
seeking out and performing hard duty, and consequent exposure in the
inclement weather of a southern winter in the field. I would say here,
however, that the 4th Minn. Inf. soon followed the Second south, and no
braver men nor better soldiers ever wore the blue of patriotism than the
members of the Fourth, and the members of Co. A afterward had the
privilege of seeing and doing far more for their country than did their
pettish lieutenant who threw his sword away at Belle Plaine. Upon my
return to Minnesota, although in feeble health, I was just in time to go
as a volunteer scout for Gen. Sibley in the Sioux war, consequent upon the
awful massacre that deluged the Minnesota valley with blood, and during
which probably two thousand helpless men, women and children were put to
the scalping-knife and tomahawk along our western border. Five of us,
mounted on powerful horses, Sheriff Frank McGrade, of Scott county, Garry
Du Co's (recently returned from the 1st Minn. Inf., disabled, like myself)
two farmer brothers, named Kearney and myself, were ordered to go all
through the county north of the valley and ascertain the true conditions
of things, and join Sibley and his army at St. Peter and report, he moving
up the south side of the river, hastening to the relief of Fort Ridgely,
New Ulm and other points. This scouting expedition was a memorable
experience, and braver and nobler men never lived that the four who
accompanied me. When we started from Carver, on this expedition, we
numbered forty horsemen, but in that first terrible night's ride through
the dark woods all had turned back save we five before midnight. We,
however, kept on, and scoured the whole country through to Hutchinson,
swinging around through the prairie country, and reporting to the general
as directed. We met no hostile body of Indians, fortunately for us, but
saw much of their devilish work. Very much worn out, with five ruined
horses, we returned home in safety. Since that time I have followed the
printing and publishing business continuously, three years in Nashville,
Tennessee, the remainder of the time in Minnesota. I established and
conducted for five years the first newspaper on the Northern Pacific
railroad, east of teh Rocky Mountains, the 'Brainerd Tribune.' I am now,
and expect to be, a resident of one of the prettiest little cities,
richest counties and proudest states in all the sisterhood, Lake City,
Wabasha county, Minnesota.