Where can you find the mythical home of Paul Bunyan, the world-famous Mayo Clinic, and the country’s largest shopping center? If you answered Minnesota, you’re right.The state’s diverse regions range from the cosmopolitan Twin Cities (Minneapolis and the capital, Saint Paul) to the port of Duluth to the fertile farmland of the Red River Valley in the northwest and the Iron Range in the northeast. “The Land of 10,000 lakes” is a top destination for fishing, swimming and boating. Perhaps a legacy of its heavily Scandinavian and German heritage, its “Minnesota nice” culture denotes residents who are courteous and mild-mannered. And, fortunately for genealogists, Minnesotans have been superb record-keepers. Here’s how to find your ancestors from the state.
Diverse Native American tribes settled in present-day Minnesota beginning thousands of years ago. The Dakota (Sioux) and Ojibwe (Chippewa) had well-established hunting and gathering societies by the time of European contact. Through a series of conflicts, land sessions and treaties with the US government, most of the Dakota were exiled and the Ojibwe restricted to reservations by the 1850s and 1860s.
French explorers journeyed into modern Minnesota in the 1670s while hunting for the famed Northwest Passage. René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, claimed the vast “Louisiana” for France in 1682. Early European settlements include Fort Beauharnois and those along the Grand Portage trail (which was an important hub for the fur trade).
WINNING MINNESOTA
The United States acquired Minnesota in various ways. It won the northern and eastern regions from Great Britain as a result of the American Revolution; Congress organized the land as part of Northwest Territory in 1787. Then the state southwest of the Mississippi River was part of 1803’s Louisiana Purchase, and northwestern Minnesota was ceded by Britain in 1818. That year, the boundary between the United States and Canada was set at the 49th parallel—except for the “Northwest Angle” on the shores of the Lake of the Woods, the “bubble” above Minnesota that remained disputed territory until 1842.
US settlement in the region was initially sparse. What is now Minnesota was variously part of Louisiana, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa Territories, so look for early settlers in records under those jurisdictions. Minnesota Territory in its own right, formed in 1849, reached all the way to the Missouri River. Abundant, inexpensive farmland and the timber industry attracted settlers from New England and New Brunswick. Increasing interest in the land led to Minnesota becoming its own state in 1858.
The new state became a destination for immigrants from Europe, especially Scandinavia. A board of immigration, founded in 1867, promoted Minnesota through pamphlets, brochures and maps that advertised public lands available for homesteading. Norwegians numbered about 50,000 by 1870, then 120,000 by 1880. Swedish immigrants were concentrated in the Twin Cities and counties north of Minneapolis. By the 1890s, 40% of Minnesota’s population was foreign- born, compared to 11% nationwide.
THE IRON RANGE
While most people think of Minnesotans as Scandinavian, the state’s largest ethnic group is German. German immigration to Minnesota also surged in the 1860s and 1870s. Many Germans headed for farming areas in the southern and central parts of the state. Today, many residents of New Ulm, Minn., about 90 miles southwest of the Twin Cities, can trace their ancestry back to 19th-century German immigrants. (Indeed, the city in 2000 was proclaimed “the most German town in America.”) Minnesota has attracted immigrants from other countries, too. Saint Paul was an Irish enclave. Many of the city’s police officers have been Irish since the 1850s, and nine out of 10 of its mayors from 1932 to 1972 were Irish. Job opportunities in Minnesota’s cities and the discovery of iron in the Iron Range attracted immigrants from central and southern Europe between 1890 and 1920. Jewish immigrants from various countries went first to Saint Paul and Duluth and later to the Iron Range. More-recent immigrants hail from Mexico, Southeast Asia, Somalia and Ethiopia.
Minnesota required the recording of births and deaths in 1870, though some counties began earlier and compliance was sporadic in the early years. A state-level vital records act in 1907 mandated birth and death records. As a result, the state department of health has birth records from 1900 and death records from 1908. The Minnesota People Records Search has indexes to birth records from 1900 to 1934.
MARRIAGE RECORDS
Each county began keeping marriage records soon after the county’s creation, as early as 1849. Even today, marriage registration in Minnesota is handled at the county level; the state government has just an index from 1958 forward. The Minnesota Official Marriage System (MOMS) logs county-level m arriages f rom t he m id-19th century to the present; order records from the county in which the marriage took place. Many of the big genealogy sites have Minnesota vital records indexes. Some of them cover o¤cial government records, while others index other sources. Find a listing on the FamilySearch Wiki, which also has county-specific guides. Note that not all collections are searchable, so you may need to browse by place and year.
FamilySearch, in particular, has early county vital records, some extending up to 1925 and beyond. (Run a Place search for the county.) If FamilySearch doesn’t have the records you need, order copies from before 1900/1908 through the county vital records office, and later records (with some restrictions) from the department of health.
Minnesota was included in decennial federal censuses as a territory in 1850 and as a state beginning in 1860. (Early residents
can be found in the 1830 and 1840 censuses as denizens of Michigan, Wisconsin or Iowa Territories.) Though the 1890 federal census has been lost for all but one Minnesota family, both Ancestry.com and FamilySearch have the 1890 veterans census for Minnesota. Luckily for genealogists, Minnesota also took territorial (1849, 1853, 1855 and 1857) and state censuses (1865, 1875, 1885, 1895 and 1905).
The Minnesota Historical Society has territorial and state censuses from 1849 to 1905, and state records are also on Ancestry.com, FamilySearch, Findmypast and MyHeritage. Ancestry.com’s collection includes the territorial
censuses from 1849 to 1857; FamilySearch, Findmypast and MyHeritage have just the 1857 territorial count.
Ancestry.com, FamilySearch and MyHeritage have various naturalization records and indexes for Minnesotans dating from 1849 to 1989. Note that, prior to 1906, applicants could have filed for naturalization in any court; the process was federalized after that year.
Wills and estate records name heirs and associates and give you a sense of your ancestor’s social status. FamilySearch has many Minnesota wills through 1985, and Ancestry.com has wills and probate records for many Minnesota counties up to 1925.
Minnesota was among the first Union states to commit troops to the Civil War effort, and contributed some 22,000 men (one-eighth of the state’s population). Find information related to service through the Soldiers and Sailors Database, and consult the 1890 census of veterans for information about servicemembers (or their widows) still alive that year. Minnesota People Records Search includes veterans’ graves from 1857 to 1975.
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