This week in state history

Historic Minnesota events that took place this coming week.

Sept. 28

1935 Joan Growe is born in Minneapolis. She would serve as Minnesota’s secretary of state from 1975 to 1998, the first woman elected to statewide office without first having been appointed. A member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, she would champion voter and election reform, including such programs as vote by mail and motor voter registration.

Sept. 29

1837 Dakota leaders sign a treaty in Washington selling their lands east of the Mississippi River for about $500,000 in cash and goods. This treaty, along with the Ojibwe treaty of the same year, opens eastern Minnesota to settler-colonists.

1983 James Jenkins and his son Steven Jenkins (now Steven Jenkins Anderson) lure Ruthton bankers Rudy Blythe and Toby Thulin to their 10-acre dairy farm, which had been repossessed by Blythe’s bank, and kill them both. The murders spur a nationwide manhunt, ending with Steven Jenkins’s surrender and James Jenkins’s suicide in northern Texas. Steven Jenkins, barely eighteen years old at the time, professes his innocence but is convicted of the murders. Seventeen years later he would admit in an interview that he had killed the bankers.

Sept. 30

1854 At La Pointe, Wisc., on Madeline Island, a number of Ojibwe bands sign a treaty transferring Minnesota’s “Arrowhead” region to the U.S. government for about $400,000. Signers for the Grand Portage band include Little Englishman and Like a Reindeer; Balsom and Loon’s Foot sign for the Fond du Lac Band; and Hole-in-the-Day and Berry Hunter sign for the Mississippi River band. Henry C. Gilbert and David B. Herriman represent the United States, and Henry M. Rice and Richard Godfroy act as witnesses.

Sept. 31

1892 The Oliver Mining Company is organized to work the Iron Range. It would eventually own nearly all of the mines in the range.

Oct. 2

1950 The “Peanuts” comic strip by St. Paul’s Charles Schulz begins national syndication in seven newspapers.

1968 Congress passes the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, naming the upper St. Croix River one of eight rivers protected by this legislation. The lower fifty-two miles of the river are preserved on October 25, 1972.

Oct. 3

1997 International passenger ship traffic returns to Minnesota when the Columbus, carrying a load of German passengers, visits the Duluth-Superior harbor.

This column is derived from MNopedia, an online project that has a “This Day in Minnesota History” feature on its website. Developed by the Minnesota Historical Society and its partners, it is a free, curated, and authoritative resource about state history. The information here is culled from “The Minnesota Book of Days,” published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press.