On the Land, Settlement, and Farm Life
There are heavy forests one-half mile to the west and rolling prairies to the east and south.  The bluffs are almost hills, and Northfield is more like a New England village than any I have seen in the west.  We have four churches, a bank, a weekly paper, 3 lawyers, 5-6 doctors, a dozen or more stores, 12-1500 inhabitants, where thirteen years ago Indians had a scalp dance and land was selling for $1.25 an acre.
 -Horace Goodhue, Jr. , as quoted by E. Hong, 6

When you reach the Cannon, which here runs north, you will find yourself in one of the loveliest of countries, an embryo of Eden.... The soil in the adjacent country is of excellent quality; choice sites for farmers are numerous, and upon the streams there are plenty of mill sites.  It is a charming and picturesque region, where the hunter and angler may find plenty of sport.... In fact, the most part of the country, so far as my knowledge extends, was made expressly for stirring enterprising farmers to grow rich upon.
-Report from settlers, in Carlin, 6

Mr. Elijah Nutting spoke of hogs running outside, wild (DAR, 72-73).

Mrs. Nancy Lowell spoke of the minimal separation between household and farmyard, telling of the time she awoke to a large ox munching on cud in her house (DAR, 80-81).

When Mr. Frank Sloeum came done from St. Paul to Cannon Falls in 1856 he only saw one fence post along the way.  Farmers drove through Cannon Falls frequently on their way to Hastings to sell their crops.  They came as far as Owatonna, making the 200 mile round trip by ox cart (DAR, 114-115).

J. Warren Richardson recalled the difficulty of installing fences on the land.  His father built the fences in the winter and he hauled the logs along the fence lines by sled.  As he drove along, Richardson had to chase away wolves (DAR, 285-287).

By the following spring, '55, when I was married and came to Minnesota some of the land had been broken, so small gardens were planted and potatoes and other vegetables raised.  I believe it was about the time of the civil war that butter sold as low as 5c a pound and eggs 3c a dozen.
-Mrs. Ann Alexander (DAR, 296).

Game is abundant enough to pay for hunting.... Fish are so plentiful and large that the whole of the truth sounds like a fish story.  All through winter anyone could go to our lakes, about four miles and get from forty to one hundred pounds a day.... Not much danger of starving.
-RA Mott, Faribault Herald, 1858 in Carlin, 8

All about is grass, grass to right of us, grass to the left of us, the frost-burnt grass of late autumn.
-Mary Etta Ackerman (1851-1933) in Carlin, p. 44

We had butter, potatoes, salt pork, and the inevitable flour gravy made with flour and water after the pork was fried.  Milk or water for us youngsters, tea for the elders.  Cornmeal mush or Johhnycake were occasional variations.  Dried apples and blackberries, and later dried peaches, were the only fruits available, and almost invariably they were wormy.
-Mary Etta Ackerman (1851-1933) in Carlin, p. 45

Many settlers chose Webster because the wooded area did not have winter storms, grasshoppers, fires of prairies according to Ludvig Broten (Swanberg 1976).
 

On Economy and Transport
When the Scott brothers brought one of the first saw mills to the county, the machinery has to by shipped from St. Louis.  It came by boat to Hastings and then it took 12 yoked oxen to haul the boiler from Hastings.  A new road was cut to from Cannon City to bring it the rest of the way.  (DAR, 284-285).

[Harold Thoreson] invites competition from the Grangers and every other class of buyers.  He is not to be undersold.  The largest stock and greatest variety of dry goods, groceries, and crockery in Rice County.
-ad in Rice County Journal for Thoreson's store (Hong p.?)

There was no butter, eggs, milk, or chickens to be had; no canned things or fresh vegetables.  My mother once bought a half bushel of potatoes off a man who came with a load from Iowa, paying $3.00 a bushel.  When she came to bake them, they turned perfectly black and had to be thrown away.   The man was gone.  Again my father bought half a hog from a man who brought in a load of pork, but my mother had learned her lesson and cooked a piece before the man left town and as it proved to be bad, my father hunted him up and made him take back his hog and refund the money.
-Mrs. Henry C. Prescott, 1855 (DAR, 288).

We have one flowering mill that cost thirteen thousand dollars 1 water saw mill 1 steam saw mill with other machinery attached to it....
the place is growing fast enough and is a very healthy place, & is a going to be a great Farming country. One thing I am afraid the winters will be a little long for me.
most all Yankees  one colored family, two or three Dutch no Irish, Indians pass through frequently  If you had my 160 acres of land where yours is as good as it now is it would fetch you $100 per, Acre.
I know you like the country we do not have to dig stone nor cast manure to raise crops it does not cost any thing to pasture cattle here you can cut hay where you please to winter them on but it will not be any longer than people get their/land/fenced
-excerpts from Letter from EJ Doolittle to Jason Allen, Vernon, Vt. September 26, 1857 in Carlin, p.42

When Mrs. Ann Alexander arrived in Northfield in 1854 with her family, they brought 12 teams of oxen, cattle, sheep, and pigs.  Everything that they consumed their first year was brought from Hastings, 28 miles away, which kept a man and ox cart on the road all the time.  A barrel of pork barely lasted a week.  By the spring of 1855, some land had been plowed and small gardens had been planted with potatoes and other vegetables (DAR, 296-297).

However, our sojourn on the banks of the Cannon was not long, for it was soon evident that the Eastern farmers had staked their claims on a gravelbed.  Disposing of these first claims, they secured land farther back from the river.  Father was one of the first to go.
-Mary Etta Ackerman (1851-1933) in Carlin, p. 46
 

On Native Americans
Miss Sara Faribault spoke of good relations with Native Americans during her childhood.  She and other settlers went to the sacred stone of the local tribe often, watching the rituals that occurred there.  Misunderstanding between whites and Native Americans was common, however (DAR, 232-233).

Mr. Elijah Nutting spoke of maple sugar produced by the Native Americans and bought by the settlers, and the positive relations that settlers had with Native Americans in Faribault in 1852 (DAR, 72-73).

Native American boys were some of the settler children's good friends, spending time shooting bows and arrows and other games, according to J. Warren Richardson (DAR, 284-287).

I saw many Indians and they were the terror of my childhood....
-Mary Etta Ackerman (1851-1933) in Carlin, p. 46