Isaac Staples, Then Compared to Now

By Robert Molenda

Given the technology around us, there have been days when many have not been able to get anything accomplished. Delivery of almost anything is “One-Day” service.  Travel to distant places is only a few hours by air, yet often the waiting and local travel to the airport takes longer than the flight !  Time is valuable, food and lodging are available in quantity and quality so that travel can be relatively unplanned without worrying about these necessities. Clothing and equipment are easily available, again with one day delivery on the most complex of things that we might order. We also take for granted the easy payment terms that are available via credit cards and electronic payments for all of the above items.  With all this convenience, sometimes we sometimes become impatient when something does not perform as it should. How about walking around with Isaac Staples in 1853?

With the above as background in the year 2020, I can only imagine what barriers stood in the way of people like Isaac Staples, John McKusick and Jacob Fisher.  Isaac Staples was born in 1816. That was just forty years after The USA became an independent nation. Staples came to Stillwater in 1853. He was thirty-seven years old at that time. The only way he could travel from Topsham, Maine was mostly by stagecoach and steamboat.  It took an incredible amount of time to travel this distance in the 1850’s. According to Phelp’s Traveler’s Guide Through the United States in 1850, the trip would have taken him no less than six weeks.  This was accomplished by a combination of rail, stage, canal and steamboat travel.  His backers in Maine were all lumbermen seeking where the next lumber bonanza might be uncovered. The steamboat came up the Mississippi River and into the St. Croix River near the present day city of Prescott, WI. In 1861, there were about 30,000 miles of railroad track in the USA.  Even though it took six weeks for the journey from Maine to Stillwater, many observers were worried about the “annihilation of time and space” due to the rapid nature of rail travel in the 1850’s. To be sure, there already was lumber activity along the St. Croix River. There was the first sawmill operating in Marine and the McKusick sawmill in Stillwater, itself. Minnesota was still a territory at that time and the city itself was the seat of government for St. Croix County, Wisconsin prior to 1846. The city was named after the Stillwater Lumber Company, founded by John McKusick and that was named after a town in Maine known by McKusick. 

Staples looked at the area and his experiences suggested that he acquire rights to land that had lumber. He also recommended building a most modern sawmill. He needed men to do the work, he needed to provide shelter, food, clothing and equipment for his workforce and for others in the St. Croix Valley. He travelled back to Maine and sold his plan to his supporters, among them Seymore Hersey.  Once again, he travelled back to the St. Croix Valley to acquire land for the sawmill and lumbering rights for timber.

The new sawmill was built to the south of downtown Stillwater, Minnesota, just east of the present-day location of the Oasis Café, at the foot of the St. Croix River.  The mill was steam-powered, the first in the St. Croix Valley. The boilers were fired from waste lumber from the mill. This all was in operation by June 1, 1854.  The name of the lumber mill was The Hersey and Staples Sawmill.  Isaac Staples was the resident officer while Hersey stayed in Maine.

Isaac Staples was also responsible for moving the “Boomsite” from Osceola to the location just a few miles north of Stillwater.  The boomsite was where the cut logs came down the St. Croix River and were sorted by workers so that the various sawmills along the river were assured of receiving the timber that each company had cut over the winter. The logs were identified before they were sent into the river. Each sawmill had its own “Brand” or “Logo” and it was used to identify their property. The boomsite was run by the surveyor general who was paid about 70 cents per thousand feet of each log for his services. This was a lucrative enterprise and involved estimating lumber from timber and reporting the harvest to the authorities and securing payment while providing services, paying taxes, hiring workers and keeping accurate records.  Staples was also involved in a clothing operation, a hardware operation, a butcher operation, a flour mill and later his own sawmill operation. He was involved in banking in both Stillwater and St. Paul. 

When we start feeling sorry for ourselves about how hard our jobs may be, just think about Stillwater and Isaac Staples in the 1850’s.  He accomplished a lot with much less technology and machinery than we have in 2020.  He had to market his lumber and products, and had to do this with the communications equipment available at the time. The telegraph and the telephone were very new.  Isaac Staples was not the only businessman in Stillwater who was doing some great things.  There were many other lumber barons, businessmen and political figures who added fuel to the growth of Stillwater in the 1880’s. 

In summary, many of these leaders knew that you just did not send men into the timberlands unless you could provide food, transportation, wages, clothing and equipment to do the job.  It did not do much good to your reputation if you established a lumber camp that did not have the best resources and a good cook, blacksmith, teamsters, administrators and business relationships at the end point that provided the cash to make the enterprise successful.  The integration of all the businesses associated with lumbering, I believe is the competitive edge that he had over his peers. Most visitors who come to Stillwater often wonder why the location was famous for steam engine manufacture, farm equipment, food provisioning, hardware, boat manufacture, transportation, clothing, footwear and outerwear. These were necessities!  Banking and communications were extremely important for the lumber industry. The lumbering phase of Stillwater was relatively short lived.  What came afterwards was far more important.  The integrated businesses were important to lumbering and they found their way into the other new businesses with the passing of time.