Remembering the 1857 fight for Dakota County's seat

If you think modern day elections are hard fought, consider the ballot-stuffing, hard-drinking, horseback-riding escapades that landed the Dakota County seat in Hastings in 1857.

"It was a no-holds-barred fight to get elected as the county seat," said Dick Darsow, a local historian who has written about the electoral shenanigans that brought county business to his hometown 155 years ago.

The tale of how Hastings outmaneuvered West St. Paul was revealed in an article in the West St. Paul Times written years later by Ramsey County Judge William Pitt Murray, a state legislator in the late 1800s. Darsow tracked down the 1893 Times article and other historical accounts to discover how Hastings flour mill owner William LeDuc and others lured enough votes from the nearby towns of Douglas Point and even Prescott, Wis., to ensure victory in the Dakota County race.

"There were a lot of financial rewards to having the county seat," said Darsow, 85, a volunteer at the Pioneer history room in Hastings City Hall. The ornate, dome-topped hall opened in 1871 and served as the Dakota County Courthouse for 103 years.

In the mid-1800s, before cars, phones and e-mail, "There was a fair amount of ballot stuffing, and, presumably, other forms of corruption, so being close to the seat of power and being able to directly interact with officials and staff was important," said Chad Roberts, executive director of the Dakota County Historical Society. Besides income generated by county business and employees, having the seat would bring better local roads and determine who had the most influence on county policy issues, Roberts said.

Darsow's account of the county seat battle appeared in the society's historical magazine, "Over the Years."

The election of 1857 (a year before Minnesota gained statehood) was held on a holiday, St. Patrick's Day, on March 17, to make it easier for people to vote.

LeDuc, who went on to become a Civil War general, found scores of Irish and other St. Paul men (women couldn't vote until 1920) walking across the frozen Mississippi River and the Ramsey County line to partake in the voting festivities. West St. Paul, which extended to the river's edge at the time, and local businesses provided free booze to voters. One avid ballot-caster, Patrick Garrity, changed his name and appearance to vote five times before election judges questioned him, noted Murray.

"When the votes were counted, the count was equal to three times the population" of about 200 men, the Times article said. "Revelry ran high on the flats and on the bluff. Tar barrels were ablaze and saloons were having a rich harvest. West St. Paul, the county seat, they hailed. ..."

As soon as LeDuc heard the count, "he mounted a fast horse (there being no telegraph, telephone or railroad in those days) and on reaching Hastings, sprang from his horse and exclaimed, 'West St. Paul has knocked the hell out of Hastings, we are short by more than 200 votes.'"

A quick conference was held and runners dispatched across the Mississippi River to Point Douglas in Washington County and on to Prescott across the St. Croix River. "All the boys" were invited to Hastings, where "free lunch and whiskey were the inducements," the paper said. The polls stayed open until 4 a.m. on March 18, by which time enough votes were tallied to put the county seat in Hastings.

"With such skullduggery, it was further to Hastings' credit that it avoided an election fraud investigation," the judge wrote.

The next decade brought two more county seat election challenges by Farmington and the now-defunct Pine Bend, Darsow said. Partly to tie the seat down, Hastings in 1871 erected a county courthouse and office building in French renaissance revival style, with a stained-glass dome.

More recent county seat challenges were made by South St. Paul (1946) and Rosemount (1971) before the new Government Center was opened on the western edge of Hastings in 1974.