History: Renville County, Bird Island, Kingman, Sigel Twp, Brown County

Renville County

This county, established February 20, 1855, and organized March 1 and November 8, 1866, was named for Joseph Renville, a “bois brule, ” whose father was French and mother Indian, of whom Dr. E. D. Neill gave an appreciative sketch in the first volume of the MHS Collections. Renville was born at or near the Kaposia village of the Dakota, on the Mississippi a few miles below St. Paul, about the year 1779. After a few years at school in Canada, he became a voyageur for an English company in the fur trade of the Northwest. In the War of 1812 he received the appointment and rank of a captain in the British army and led a company of Dakota warriors against the U.S. frontier. He was employed by Maj. Stephen H. Long as the interpreter of his expedition to the Red River and Lake Winnipeg in 1823; and William H. Keating, the historian of the expedition, derived from him a large amount of information relating to the Dakota people. Afterward, having become an agent of the American Fur Company, Renville erected a trading house at Lac qui Parle and resided there until his death, which was in March 1846. He was a friend of Rev. Thomas S. Williamson, who came as a missionary to the Dakota of the Minnesota valley in 1835. “Renville warmly welcomed him,” wrote Dr. Neill, “and rendered invaluable assistance in the establishment of the missions. Upon the arrival of the missionaries at Lac qui Parle, he provided them with a temporary home. He acted as interpreter; he assisted in translating the Scriptures, and removed many of the prejudices of the Indians against the white man’s religion.”

BIRD ISLAND Township, Renville County

Settled in the spring of 1872, was organized October 21, 1876, and its city in sections 13, 14, 23, and 24 of the same name, platted in July 1878, was incorporated March 4, 1881, and was reincorporated on June 1, 1908, and separated from the township. The name was derived from a grove of large trees, including many of the hackberry, in section 15, about a mile west of the village and on the south side of the railway, surrounded by sloughs, like an island, whereby it was protected from prairie fires. This grove, named Bird Island for its plentiful wild birds, was a favorite camping place of Indians and trappers, and it supplied timber for the early settlers. The village developed when the Hastings and Dakota Railway came in 1878; the post office began in 1878.

Main Street Bird Island

KINGMAN Township, Renville County

Settled in May 1877, organized September 3, 1878, was named by S. T. Salter, the first township clerk, in honor of W. H. Kingman, his former fellow townsman in Winn, Maine, who removed to Wisconsin and purchased much land in this township but did not settle here.

SIGEL Township, Brown County

Settled in 1856, organized April 28, 1862, was named in honor of Franz Sigel, a general in the Civil War. He was born at Sinsheim, Baden, Germany, November 18, 1824; died in New York City, August 21, 1902. He came to the United States in 1852; settled in St. Louis, 1858, as a teacher in a German institute; organized a regiment of U.S. volunteers, 1861, of which he became colonel; won the battle of Carthage, Mo., July 5, 1861; was promoted to the rank of major general, March 1862, and took command of a wing of the Army of Virginia; was appointed to the command of the Department of West Virginia in February 1864; was U.S. pension agent in New York City, 1885-89. About the year 1873 Gen. Sigel visited New Ulm and this township.

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