In a roundabout way, Lincoln's assassination plays into Melrose's creation

It's 1,200 miles from Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., to Melrose, Minn., but the single shot from John Wilkes Booth's .44-caliber Deringer pistol not only killed President Abraham Lincoln, in a roundabout way it also played a part in Melrose's creation story.

Cousins Edwin and William Clark established Melrose in 1867 about 100 miles northwest of Minneapolis along what would become Interstate 94. Today, Melrose is home to about 3,500 people in Stearns County.

Two days before Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 at Ford's Theatre, Abe appointed Edwin Clark as the government's agent for the Winnebago and Ojibwe tribes in Minnesota. A preacher's son from New Hampshire, Clark moved west in 1857 just before Minnesota became a state — traveling by steamboat, train and horse-drawn carriage through heavy rain to his cousin's home in Mazeppa.

"I made two discoveries," he said. "One was that it was unnecessary to tote a Colt's revolver about in Minnesota, and the other that fine calf-skin boots made for service in Boston were not proper footwear for traveling over wild prairies."

Clark became one of Minnesota's first newspaper editors. When tough economic times dashed his publishing career, Clark headed back east to Washington, where Congressman Ignatius Donnelly helped him secure a clerical job at the House of Representatives.

Clark met Lincoln many times, attended both of his inaugurations and would have witnessed the Gettysburg Address, but the trains were full and he figured too crowded.

Heading to Minnesota and his $1,500-a-year tribal agent job, Clark turned around when he heard that the president was dead. He visited Lincoln's body lying in state in the Capitol rotunda — placing a flower on the slain president's lapel.

Not longer after that, he and his cousin put a grain mill along the Sauk River, built a sawmill and some stores and turned a rough collection of cabins into the growing town of Melrose. Eventually, they lured the railroad to extend the line from St. Cloud.

Roger Paschke, the president of the Melrose Area Historical Society, thinks it's a stretch to say Melrose might never have been founded if Lincoln hadn't been shot. Then Johnson wouldn't have demanded the $60 and Clark would have retained his Indian agent post.

"That was a tough job that involved trekking through tough winter weather, so I figure he wouldn't have stayed in that position too long," Paschke said.

A retired middle-school science teacher, Paschke, 78, has become an expert on his city's founding father — as has his wife of 56 years, Jean Paschke, who has written extensively about Clark. (Go to tinyurl.com/EdwinClark for one of her biographical essays.)

The Paschkes have lived in Melrose since the 1970s. They help out at the all-volunteer Melrose Area Museum, which is closed for the winter but open on Wednesdays in the summer. So what's a history buff to do to get through the long winters?

In many ways, Clark's life story is a sad tale. His newspapering career fizzled after an 1857 fire and an economic downturn crippled his anti-slavery, pro-temperance Minnesota Republican newspaper. (Through mergers, the Paschkes say it was a precursor to today's Star Tribune.)

Just a year after Clark got trains running to Melrose, the financial panic of 1873 prompted railroad bankruptcies — "leaving Melrose a [temporary] ghost town," Jean Paschke wrote. "Eventually, much of Clark's empire fell to dust."

He weathered the financial storms, and by 1887 built the so-called Brick Block on Melrose's Main Street — overseeing construction of the handsome stone Clark State Bank, a hardware store, apartments and other businesses.

All that history burned in 2016 when an upstairs cooking fire spread from an apartment to 11 businesses. No one was injured, but losses were estimated at $600,000.

Another financial panic, in 1893, wiped out Clark's Melrose holdings. Along with Ellen, his wife of 33 years, their two sons and daughter, Clark returned to Minneapolis — living on the 3000 block of Harriet Avenue S. Three other offspring died in childhood. And just months after moving, Ellen died in 1894.

The Godfrey House, now managed by the Woman's Club of Minneapolis in the St. Anthony Falls Historic District, first became a museum in 1914. Edwin Clark and his son, Walter, became live-in curators — showing visitors the house's collection of pioneer relics.

Edwin Clark was still living in the Godfrey House when he died in 1922 at 87. He was buried next to his wife in the remote pauper's section of Lakewood Cemetery. Twenty years ago, the Paschkes and other members of the Melrose Area Historical Society placed foot stones at their previously unmarked graves.