St. Peter, Minnesota

St. Peter was founded in 1853 by Captain William Bigelow Dodd, who claimed 150 acres (0.61 km2) north of what is now Broadway Avenue.His second wife, Harriett Newell Jones, a native of Cabot, Vermont, was living in New York at the time of their marriage at the Church of the Holy Communion in New York City, which helped fund the church in St. Peter that shares its name.One mile north of where St. Peter was founded, was Traverse des Sioux, a trading site used by native Americans from before contact, that later became a major transhipment point for the fur trade, bringing furs from the Red River Valley and the watershed of Lake Winnipeg into the Mississippi River Valley.Traverse des Sioux had been a trading area and a ford over the Minnesota River that had been used by native Americans before the contact period.Today, St. Paul is the state's second-largest city (after neighboring Minneapolis), while St. Peter is a relatively small rural town.Dodd, his wife Harriet and two children are buried behind the present stone church built in 1869–70 at 118 North Minnesota Avenue.The bandits acquired nothing of value, but their activities came under the review of Pinkerton detectives, and both were apprehended in June 1893 in what is called the Battle of Stone Corral in California.He was considered as a possible candidate in the 1912 presidential election, but died as the result of an operation for intestinal adhesions in Rochester, Minnesota, on September 21, 1909.The funeral, held at Union Presbyterian Church, was St. Peter's largest ever, and he was buried near his parents in Greenhill Cemetery.On March 29, 1998, a tornado struck St. Peter, killing six-year-old Dustin Schneider, injuring dozens more, and damaging much of the town's housing, commercial, and civic buildings.The town's three trailer parks were largely spared with no mobile homes destroyed and just two seriously damaged.The first superintendent of St. Peter Public Schools was Andrew Ryan McGill, who served from 1865 to 1868.St. Peter is home to the Minnesota Security Hospital, where those the state declares mentally ill and dangerous are committed.Near the hospital Pheasants' Ridge is an assisted living facility that has a section for patients suffering from memory loss due to Alzheimer's disease and dementia.Other health care facilities in St. Peter include Grandview Good Samaritan Center on Sunrise Drive.