Star Tribune
How did Northfield become home to St. Olaf and Carleton colleges?
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Minnesota boasts many college towns. But Northfield is unique.
Located just beyond the Twin Cities’ southern exurbs, Northfield is home to two prominent private colleges — St. Olaf and Carleton. Those institutions have shaped the city from a historical milling hub into an education-focused rural center.
Darrell Swanson, a 1970 St. Olaf graduate, regretted leaving Northfield after he got his degree. After recently reminiscing about his time there, the Pequot Lakes resident asked Curious Minnesota — the Star Tribune’s reader-driven reporting project — how Northfield became home to Carleton and St. Olaf.
“Why would there be these two liberal arts schools founded in the 1800s in Northfield, Minnesota, of all places?” he asked.
The short answer: Religion.
Religious groups across the U.S. were largely responsible for founding private colleges and universities in the 1800s, in part because there were no set college plans or direction from the federal government, according to Tom Williamson, an anthropology and sociology professor at St. Olaf College. Northfield’s colleges grew out of a camaraderie among Congregationalists and Lutherans who settled in the town.
That cooperation has given the city outsized stature. Alumni of the colleges include Supreme Court justices, governors and senators, as well as Pulitzer Prize and Oscar winners. And Northfield attracts a fair amount of visiting dignitaries for a small city of 20,000.
Northfield’s religious origins
A treaty between the federal government and the Dakota people in 1851 opened up much of southeastern Minnesota to white settlement. Settlers raced to grab land and founded towns shortly after.
Among them was New York lawyer and abolitionist John North. He took a trip south from St. Anthony in 1855 to look at land along the Cannon River Valley, planning to harness the river’s flow to power new saw and grist mills. That same year, North gathered other settlers from New England in the area and platted Northfield.
North had designs for a college there, according to archivists at Carleton and St. Olaf. The idea didn’t gain traction, however, until the General Conference of Congregational Churches in Minnesota chose the city to build a school in 1864.
The conference of independent churches descended from New England Puritan churches. They had looked at multiple cities across the state for their school, including other southeast Minnesota towns such as Zumbrota and Mantorville, according to Tom Lamb, an archivist at Carleton College.
But Northfield was a growing burg, connected to St. Paul along the railroad in 1865. It also didn’t hurt that the city had the second-largest Congregationalist population in the state behind Minneapolis.
That was by design, according to Sean Allen of the Northfield Historical Society. North and his neighbors shared similar views on ending slavery and the evils of alcohol, so they chose to create Northfield rather than settle in nearby places with bars or liquor stores.
“It was generally considered to be a dry town,” Allen said.
The new school, Northfield College, evolved over time. It began as a preparatory program in 1867, with the first college students enrolling in 1870. The college was renamed Carleton College after a $50,000 donation by Massachusetts manufacturer William Carleton, which saved the institution from the brink of financial collapse.
Soon, Norwegian farmers and pastors in the community sought a college of their own. Congregationalists in town welcomed the effort. Carleton officials even helped their Lutheran counterparts found St. Olaf College in 1874.
From there, the two schools blossomed during the higher education boom in the 1880s through the 1920s. Colleges and universities in that era began offering specialized programs and enrollment across the country skyrocketed.
St. Olaf kept its reputation as a Lutheran school aligned with its heritage — the school was named after an 11th century Norwegian king who spread Christianity. The school also remained a dry institution well into the 20th century.
Carleton shed its religious identity in the 1960s, doing away with requirements to attend chapel after a group of students jokingly formed their own druidic society to skirt the rules.
“That was a big period of transition,” Lamb said.
An intense rivalry
The schools have largely helped one another over the years — they share a library, amid other resources. Their sports rivalry hasn’t been quite as cordial over the decades, even becoming bloody at times.
There would be downtown brawls in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s whenever the colleges played each other, often stemming from the tradition where students would turn an eagle statue on Bridge Square to face the opposing college, Lamb said.
Homecoming weeks were tough for both colleges. Freshmen would try to light the other school’s bonfire the night before it was set to be lit, often running into student guards who would catch them and shave their heads. Williamson’s father, a fellow St. Olaf grad, had his head shaved during his freshman year.
Things escalated to the point both schools had to sign a “peace treaty” in 1951, vowing to tone down their rivalry. Their competitive spirit took a slightly nerdy turn in 1977, when the two schools played the first game of metric football among U.S. colleges.
Northfield today
The colleges form the backbone of Northfield today. About three out of every 10 residents are students or faculty, according to each college’s records. The colleges help fuel the area’s vitality, but their dominance has its downsides.
“The colleges, they have such a large footprint in our community, but they don’t pay taxes,” Allen said. Each school instead contributes about $80,000 a year to Northfield.
Both schools continue to buy land for future growth. Yet Northfield also has become a draw for seniors looking to enjoy the vibrant college community in retirement. These factors have driven up home values and resulted in fewer housing options for would-be residents. Allen said many professors commute from the Twin Cities.
Aside from a Post cereal factory, there aren’t many large industrial employers in town where college students can start their careers.
“We just don’t have as much as a city our size needs to have, and so it’s something I know the city has been trying to improve on,” Allen said.
At the same time, Northfield arguably wouldn’t have grown without Carleton and St. Olaf drawing people to the area.
“I don’t know of any other small town … that would have two institutions like this,” Lamb said. “It is kind of a unique setup.”
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Anti-police brutality activists interrupted a Minneapolis City Council meeting Thursday to call for Police Chief Brian O’Hara’s firing, saying his department failed a Black man who begged police for help for months, to no avail, before he was finally shot in the neck by his white neighbor.
John Sawchak, 54, is charged with shooting Davis Moturi, 34, even though three warrants had been issued for his arrest in connection with threats to Moturi and other neighbors.
Activists showed up at the council meeting and asked for time to talk about the case. Instead, the council recessed and activists took the podium and castigated the city for failing Black people, even as state and federal officials are forcing the police department into court-sanctioned monitoring because of past civil rights violations.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network, said O’Hara needs to be held accountable.
“This is not the first time instance where the community has raised concerns about his poor judgment, poor leadership, blaming the community and excuses. It’s completely unacceptable for him to get away with it,” she said. “How many Black people’s doors have they kicked in for less?”
On Thursday the council voted to request the city auditor review the city’s involvement in and response to the matters between Moturi and Sawchak.
Mayor Jacob Frey released a statement in response saying he supports the council’s call for an independent review of the case, but O’Hara “will continue to be the Minneapolis police chief.”
Protesters also questioned why the public hadn’t heard from Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette, who called a news conference within hours to say he’s not going to fire O’Hara and the city leadership supports him.
A Girl Scout from Troop 58068 told the Woodbury City Council recently that they should allow backyard chickens in the city: They cheer people up, she said.
It turned out that chickens were on an upcoming agenda and, perhaps pushed a bit by the scout’s lobbying, the Woodbury City Council at their next meeting passed a new ordinance allowing for backyard hens.
The new ordinance went into effect on Oct. 23, the night of the council meeting, and will allow people who live on property zoned R-2, a “rural estate” district, to have backyard chickens. A typical city lot is zoned R-4 and those areas still cannot have chickens, the council said.
The city has received requests “here and there” for the last several years about backyard chickens, City Council Member Andrea Date said.
Backyard chickens come have home to roost — and never leave — in a host of other Minnesota cities that allow them, from Hopkins to Thief River Falls. It’s long been allowed in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and new cities started approving backyard coops during the pandemic, when interest spiked.
In Woodbury, it wasn’t until the question was included on the city’s biannual survey that city staff knew how people felt. The survey found less support for chickens on a typical city lot — just 13% of respondents said they strongly approve of the idea while 43% percent strongly disapproved — but a majority approved of backyard chickens on lots of 1 acre or more.
The city’s rules until recently only allowed chickens on “rural estate” properties of five or more acres.
The new ordinance allows up to six hens, but no roosters, on property less than four acres that meets the zoning requirements. Larger properties can have an additional two chickens per acre above four acres. The ordinance also sets a height limit for chicken coops of 7 feet. No license or permit is required in Woodbury for backyard chickens.
Star Tribune
Anonymous donor pays overdue bill for Fergus Falls home where town’s first Black resident lived
A $10,000 overdue special assessment bill threatening tax forfeiture of a historic Fergus Falls home was paid off this week thanks to an anonymous donor.
Prince Albert Honeycutt lived at 612 Summit Avenue East, renamed Honeycutt Memorial Drive in 2021. Not only was Honeycutt the town’s first Black resident — settling there in 1872 from Tennessee — he was the state’s first Black professional baseball player, first Black firefighter and first Black mayoral candidate.
He was an early pioneer and prominent businessman who owned a barbershop in town. Missy Hermes, with the Otter Tail County Historical Society, said Honeycutt and his wife were likely the first Black people in Minnesota to testify in a capital murder trial of a man who was convicted and hanged in Fergus Falls.
“In other places, you would never have a Black person testifying against a white person, especially a woman, too, before women could vote even,” Hermes said. “Obviously he was respected enough.”
Nancy Ann and Prince Albert Honeycutt with their children inside the now-historic Honeycutt house in 1914. Photo from the collections of the Otter Tail County Historical Society.
When dozens of people from Kentucky moved to Fergus Falls in April 1898, known as “the first 85,” Honeycutt helped integrate them into the community.
He died in 1924 at age 71 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls.
Up until 2016, several owners lived in the Honeycutt home. But the city bought and sold the house to nonprofit Flowingbrook Ministry for $1 to take over the tax-exempt property and operate the ministry.
Ministry founder Lynette Higgins-Orr, who previously lived in Fergus Falls, moved to Florida several years ago and little activity has been going on in the historic home since. But she said there are plans to make it into a museum.
