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The Kinkead Saga
(Alexandria’s first beginning)
Alexandria, a thriving city on the edge of Minnesota’s western prairie, is noted for its location among hundreds of clear, blue Minnesota lakes. It is a favorite vacation spot for thousands each year, and it is one of the fastest growing communities in the western part of the state.
But what were the early days like? What took place here that made our town grow into the present community of Alexandria? For that answer we must turn back the clock…to the years preceding the Civil War. Two young brothers, Alexander and William Kinkead, came from Delaware westward following dreams of settling land in the Minnesota Territory. Their travels brought them along the Red River Trail at the time when Minnesota moved from territory to statehood. THE YEAR…1858!
The younger brother, William, was commissioned to help survey and establish a government road from St. Cloud to Fort Abercrombie in the west. The road would travel north of the Red River Trail. This provided an excellent opportunity to seek out land, and the Kinkead brothers did just that.
In the summer of 1858, the brothers left their cabin near what is now Glenwood and traveled north. They chose a large tract of land on the south shore of Lake Agnes to homestead. The state road would pass this way. The brothers formed a town site company with five men from eastern Minnesota, who were attracted to the beauty and future prospects of this area. By the fall of 1859, Alexander established a U.S. Post Office in his log cabin and served as the Postmaster. It was then that the town site was named after it’s postmaster, Alexander Kinkead, and given the name it bears today — ALEXANDRIA.
In 1859 the state road was cut through the timber by U.S. Government troops, creating a crude but direct passage from the river port of St. Cloud to Fort Abercrombie, near what is now the town of Breckenridge on the North Dakota border. That route, which is still heavily traveled today later became State Highway 52 and later, Highway 27. That route opened new doors for future settlement.
At first The J.C. Burbank Stage line only went as far as St. Cloud, and then Sauk Centre, but later, after the road was completed, it traveled a regular route with Alexandria as one of its stops. On its heels came a steady migration of settlers to what would become Douglas County, with the majority settling in or near the Alexandria town site.
In the fall of 1859 came George Kinkead, William and Alexander’s older brother. His young second wife, Clara, came with his two school-age children and a new baby in the following spring of 1860. Clara, who was only 24 at the time, looked on the trip as a great adventure. She had no idea of the difficulties that lay ahead of her. She used many different forms of transportation in order to arrive at her destination, including train, steamship, stage coach, and finally prairie schooner, since the stage coach line didn’t run as far as Alexandria at the time. Fortunately, for historians, Clara kept a diary of her trip and her life on the Minnesota frontier. That diary gives us a first-hand account of pioneer living conditions.
Clara had lived on the East Coast all of her young life, so when she finally arrived in Alexandria, she was shocked at the primitive living conditions. The Kinkead brothers were living in some of the first houses built on the town site, crude log cabins with fireplaces that served as both a cooking fire and a source of heat for their cabins. In her diary, she describes the furnishing that she found when she entered the cabin that was to be her new home, only a crude table and some stools. Nevertheless, she expressed happiness to finally have arrived, although her days of living in Alexandria were proved to be short. Clara’s dairy is in the Douglas County Historical Society’s archives.
By the time the Civil War broke out in 1861, the town was growing steadily. The absence of a railroad and telegraph communication distanced the settlers from the conflict to the South. The war, however, did have some effect on the area as some local men, including the younger Kinkead bothers, enlisted in the Army.
News of other struggles closer to home had an impact that would change the future of the new settlement. In August of 1862, the stage brought word that settlers had been killed by an Indian raid in the Dakota Territories and that the Indians had also declared war on the whites in Minnesota.
Reaction was quick, and virtually all of the new settlement fled by foot, horseback or ox cart to the more populous communities of Sauk Centre and St. Cloud. Fearing for their lives, they left behind their homes and belongings. Most, including George Kinkead, Clara, and their young family never returned. Not long after the Kinkead’s had moved into a new home on the prairie near St. Cloud, George was killed in an accident. George’s sister, Mary came to Minnesota to help Clara move her young family back East. Years later, looking back on her pioneer experiences, Clara wrote that she has no regrets about her life in Minnesota which she loved, but that she was thankful to be back near her childhood home in Delaware.
In November of 1862, the U.S. Army erected a stockade near the sight of the Kinkead cabin overlooking Lake Agnes. Alexandria was now a government post. The Fort was the center of commercial and social activity until the troops left in the spring of 1866, and it fell into disuse. The first chapter of Alexandria’s early settlement ended.