People

"Joseph B. Sartell was born in Pepperell, Mass., in 1826. At age 22, he left home and headed west. In Joliet, Illinois, he operated a sawmill for a number of years, and there met and married Lucinda Johnston. In 1853 Joseph arrived in Minnesota; a year later Lucinda joined him.

In Brockway Township, Joseph establish a homestead at Winnebago Prairie. When the Dakota Conflict flared up in Minnesota in 1862, Joseph moved his family to Clearwater, Minnesota, and back to Winnebago Prairie after the war ended. Between 1854 and 1871 nine children were born to the pair. The girls, Sybil and Elnora, died young, but the seven boys lived into maturity and all served in different capacities as partners in the milling and associated businesses.

An 1896 atlas shows a cluster of buildings owned by the Sartell family. In Section 21, LeSauk Township, the surveyor cites 205 acres owned by J. B. Sartell. That section also records a gray granite and red granite quarry on Sartell property. The Watab River broadens as it nears its mouth and that body of water shows one mill upstream and another at the point where the Watab connects with the Mississippi. Several houses, a shop, an office and a ferry at the Watab's mouth suggest a prosperous community of mill owners, workers, and families.

In 1868, Joseph and Lucinda moved from Winnebago Prairie to Two Rivers Township, Morrison County where Joseph worked in the lumbering and sawmilling businesses. Two years later, he was back at the Watab site where he stayed for the rest of his life.

In time four Sartell brothers joined hands to operate the milling business. They were: Egbert, Charles, Linton, and Winslow. The other brothers- William, Fred and Frank made up the Sartell Townsite & Reality Company that managed land holdings and real estate.

Until the early 1920's, the Sartell brothers used logging camps they owned in Morrison County to feed logs into their sawmills. Thomas S. Sartell, Joseph B. Sartell's great-grandson, quotes a story that says 18M logs passed thorough the town by water that year. (Thomas felt the reporter must have meant "board footage.")

The decade of the 1870's saw expanded logging operations along the Upper Mississippi River. Other enterprises entered into by the Sartell brothers included a grocery, a blacksmith shop, real estate sales, and a grist mill. The brothers also introduced a ferry service that connected the east and west banks of the Mississippi. With other families moving into the area, names like "Sartellville" and "Slabtown" appeared as names for the burgeoning community.

In November, 1888, fire destroyed the business office and all of the company's records. In 1905, a dam was completed across the river facing the mouth of the Watab on the west side. A Grand Rapids, Wisconsin, investor chose the site called Third Rapids to erect a paper mill. The 1905 dam was built of wooden beams, local granite, fieldstone, and 25,000 barrels of concrete. Between 1960 and 1964, the dam was totally rebuilt. A complex of buildings were later erected in yellow brick.

Married men who worked at the mill lived in Sauk Rapids or St. Cloud and commuted to work by way of a Northern Pacific locomotive affectionally called "Maude". On the west side of the river Max Alpine erected a wooden hotel that served unmarried mill workers. Equipped with running water, steam heat and electricity, the hotel often served as a space for dances.

According to a history by David DeZurik, early houses in Sartell were "modest wooden structures" except for those built for the mill owners. Though electricity and phone service were widely available most workers lived in houses without running water or bathrooms until these amenities had become widely available."

Where Rivers Merge. Stories from the History of Sartell, Minnesota, William Towner Morgan pages 8-9