Socrates Nelson

Later in 1844, Nelson took a steamboat farther north to the recently settled town of Stillwater and opened its first general store, known as Nelson's Warehouse. Betsey joined him soon after. The Churchills remained temporarily in St. Louis, and the two parties traded goods via the Mississippi River – Nelson's furs for Churchill's merchandise. The Nelsons had twin daughters, Emma A. and Ella, on September 22, 1848. Ella died in infancy on October 23, 1849. He was among the first members initiated into the Independent Order of Odd Fellows in 1849, which became Minnesota Lodge No. 1 in Stillwater in 1852, when he was a trustee.

Business ventures

Nelson was an important settler of the St. Croix River valley. When arriving in Stillwater, he initially built a store and established a mercantile business, which he ran for eleven years. Realizing that land development, rather than fur and trading, would be more prosperous, Nelson and Churchill laid claim to large tracts of land near the St. Croix River in 1845 and purchased the land from the United States General Land Office in 1849. By the summer of 1847, Nelson was shipping rafts of white pine lumber hundreds of miles downriver to St. Louis, and in the summer of 1848, he and Churchill together purchased an area of timberland. Nelson entered the lumber business in earnest on February 7, 1851, as one of the corporators of the St. Croix Boom Company organized by the Minnesota Territorial Legislature. In 1852, Nelson and associates David B. Loomis and Daniel Mears (Nelson, Loomis and Company) platted what is now Bayport. The steam-powered sawmill operated from 1853, the year Nelson left the mercantile business, He operated the mill infrequently over the next ten years and sold the property in 1868.

alt=The Washington County Courthouse is a red brick building. Atop the building is a dome with multiple windows. There is a staircase leading up to the courthouse entrance. The entrance sits under an archway and consists of two wooden doors. Riding a boom in real estate speculation and soaring land prices, Nelson and Churchill deeded of land in January 1857 to St. Paul real estate salesman Robert F. Slaughter, half of which Slaughter deeded in turn to Hilary B. Hancock. Along with their wives, the four platted the area of nearly 500 lots on June 15, just months before the onset of a worldwide financial crisis known as the Panic of 1857. Amid a collapsing real estate market and with speculation screeching to a halt, the value of the now-platted and mostly unsold land plummeted to practical worthlessness. Months after the Panic began, Levi Churchill died and ceded his estate to his wife Elizabeth. Demoralized by deflated land prices, Slaughter and Hancock forfeited their claim to the lots. In early April 1867, hoping to spur development and drive demand for nearby lots they owned, Nelson and Elizabeth Churchill offered to sell the city of Stillwater an entire block of land for a token amount of $5 with no strings attached for the construction of a courthouse. and the courthouse building prompted development of the area, which Nelson would not live to see.

In other business ventures, Nelson was a corporator of the Minnesota Mutual Fire Insurance Company in 1848. In 1853, he became one of the corporators of the Louisiana and Minnesota Railroad Company, the St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company, and the Minnesota Western Railroad Company. In 1854, a stock company consisting of Nelson and others published Stillwater's first newspaper, the St. Croix Union – a Democratic-leaning, weekly periodical which was printed until 1857. On January 27, 1867, Nelson became a corporator of the Stillwater & St. Paul Railroad.

Political career

alt=A tablet commemorating the 1848 Stillwater convention. To the top left and top right are the years 1848 and 1948. The text reads: "Birth of Minnesota – On this site, in the frontier river settlement of Stillwater, sixty-one delegates from the vast unorganized wilderness west of the St. Croix assembled on August 26, 1848 to hold the Minnesota Territorial Convention. In this convention the name Minnesota was selected and the spelling agreed upon, a petition was drawn, memorializing Congress to set up a territorial government, and H. H. Sibley was dispatched to Washington as the delegate of the convention bearing the petition." Below this is smaller print, reading: "This tablet erected by the Stillwater Territorial Centennial Committee – August 26, 1948".

In 1846, Nelson was elected treasurer for St. Croix County, Wisconsin Territory, and in 1847, he was elected treasurer and county commissioner. That year, he was appointed master in chancery for the county by Territorial Governor Henry Dodge.

When the state of Wisconsin was carved out of the Wisconsin Territory in 1848, some portions of eastern Minnesota (including Stillwater) were not accounted for, and left without representation in Washington, D.C. Nelson was one of a seven-person committee that met at the Stillwater convention on August 26, 1848, and gathered sixty-one signatures for a petition to Congress that led to the 1849 establishment of the Minnesota Territory. A group of citizens organized elections for a congressional representative from the Minnesota Territory, That same year, he was elected treasurer for the newly formed Washington County, Minnesota Territory.

From February 1851 to February 1859, Nelson served on the University of Minnesota's first board of regents; he was part of the 1856 building committee that solicited plans for necessary buildings. He was Minnesota Territorial Auditor under Governor Willis A. Gorman from May 15, 1853, to January 17, 1854.

Nelson was a commissioner for Washington County in 1852, 1855, and 1856. In 1858, he organized Baytown Township on the south side of Stillwater. He was elected as a Democrat from the 1st district on October 12, 1858, and served in the Minnesota Senate from 1859 to 1861. During his term in the 2nd Minnesota Legislature, he was on the Railroad and Railroad Bonds Special Committee and the State Prison Committee. Section 10 was expunged soon thereafter during the 1860 presidential election. On March 5, 1860, he was one of five Democrats in the Minnesota Senate to vote in favor of a failed bill to legalize bringing slaves into Minnesota temporarily.

On October 12, 1860, the Democratic District Convention met and nominated Nelson for state senator from the 2nd district; Republicans nominated Joel K. Reiner, a physician who had previously served the 1st district in the 1st Minnesota Legislature. Reiner won the election held on November 6, 1860, defeating Nelson as part of a string of legislative gains for Minnesota's Republican Party.

Nelson served on the Stillwater City Council from 1863 to 1865. In 1864, he was elected as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, where he voted for George B. McClellan.

Later life and legacy

alt=A light-red-brick building. A bay window sits above the entrance, while two stone signs to the left and the right, respectively, read "Nelson" and "A.D. 1837". The building has two chimneys and a window at the top middle.

Nelson served as president of the Old Settlers Association in 1859 and 1866. The association accepted as members only persons who were residents of the territory before 1850; Nelson was a charter member when it was founded in 1857. In 1866, he was a trustee for the local society of Christian universalists.

In 1867, after being ill for several months and bedridden for several weeks, Nelson died of tuberculosis in Stillwater on the morning of May 6 at the age of 53. Most of the city's businesses closed that afternoon in observance of his death. Nelson's estate was valued at around $100,000 when he died. His daughter Emma died on November 23, 1880, and Betsey died on October 8, 1885; the estate was valued at under $1,000 by September 1901 due to extravagant spending by Emma's alcoholic husband.

A plaque on the north portico of the Washington County Historic Courthouse commemorates the date when Nelson and Churchill sold the block of land for its construction. Nelson Street, perpendicular to the St. Croix riverfront in Stillwater, is named for him.