Alexandria’s early days begin before the U.S. Civil War. Two young brothers,
Alexander and William Kinkead, came from Delaware westward following their 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 in
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 were eager to pursue their dreams as well.
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 autumn 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 its 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, 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.
An older Kinkead brother, George, joined William and Alexander in the fall of
1859. 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 provides 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 started 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 Kinkeads
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 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 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 and wouldn’t begin again until after the end of the 1860s.