Greenleaf Township, Meeker County, Minnesota

Greenleaf Township is a township in Meeker County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 726 at the 2000 census.

Greenleaf Township, Minnesota
Township
Greenleaf Township, Minnesota Location within the state of Minnesota
Coordinates: 45°2′N 94°34′W
Country	United States
State	Minnesota
County	Meeker
Area
• Total	39.0 sq mi (100.9 km^2)
• Land	35.8 sq mi (92.7 km^2)
• Water	3.2 sq mi (8.2 km^2)
Elevation	1,165 ft (355 m)
Population  (2000)
• Total	726
• Density	20.3/sq mi (7.8/km^2)
Time zone	UTC-6 (Central (CST))
• Summer (DST)	UTC-5 (CDT)
FIPS code	27-25730[1]
GNIS feature ID	0664343[2]

Greenleaf is an unincorporated community in Meeker County near Litchfield and Cedar Mills. The community is located along Meeker County Road 18 near State Highway 22. The first settlers in the area were three brothers: William, Herman, and Charles Kruger. Then two men, by the names of Isaac Orcutt and UNK Pratt broke sod on their claimed land in 1856. They had just plowed 3 acres when they took a break to eat in their lean-to shed. While they were eating, some Indians killed one of their two oxen team, so they couldn’t plow anymore. Discouraged, they gave up, left their claims and went to Forest City.

Greenleaf was founded in 1858 by William Henry Greenleaf, Dana E. King, and Bennet M. and Judson A. Brink. The McGannons, Henry and John, also came in 1858. Greenleaf was platted on August 27, 1859 by William Greenleaf, who had come to Minnesota in 1858, and the township was named for or by him. When Greenleaf arrived, he immediately built a mill dam to power his flour and saw mills. Nearby Lake Willie was named after U. S. Willie, a lawyer who lived a year or two in Forest City and died there. A post office was established in Greenleaf in 1860 and he was legally appointed postmaster in 1861 and 1864. The post office remained in operation until it was discontinued in 1906. Greenleaf Lake was also named for William. Greenleaf was located within Ellsworth Township and Greenleaf Township. Ellsworth was named at the suggestion of Indian Uprising hero and the first “mayor” of Litchfield, Jesse V. Branham, Jr., who came to the area in 1857 along with George C. Whitcomb. Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth was the first Union officer killed in the Civil War in Alexandria, Virginia. He was a friend of Lincoln and when Lincon heard of Ellsworth’s death, he said, “My boy! My boy! Was it necessary this sacrifice should be made?” Lincoln had Ellsworth’s body brought to the White House to lay in state.

Ellsworth Township was first settled in 1856 by Dr. Vincent P. Kennedy in June, Thadden R. Webb in July, and Dr. Russell Whiteman. The first child born was named George R. Whiteman, and he was born to Dr. Whiteman in 1857. The second births were twin boys, Frankie and Frederick, to William H. Greenleaf and his wife Maria in June 1860. The two boys were stillborn. The second death (actually third?) was a man named Halstead in 1862. The first schoolhouse was built in 1859, and the first teacher was 16 years old Lydia B. Angier. The first lawyer was Mark Warren, who came to Rice City in about 1860. Ellsworth was originally attached to Rice City in 1858, before it was organized as a separate township on September 1, 1868. The first sermon preached in Greenleaf was by Rev. J. C. Whitney, a Presbyterian minister.

The U.S. Land Office was in Forest City, but in 1866, it was moved to Greenleaf. There, it was run by William Henry Greenleaf. The land office was moved, but not the building, so Greenleaf had to find a room for it. Colonel Jacob M. Howard, Jr., who was an important man in Litchfield’s history, came to Meeker County in 1867. The Civil War veteran bought a farm in Greenleaf. Still keeping his farm in Greenleaf, Jacob moved to the three-year-old village of Litchfield in 1872. He then built the first independent elevator in town on the railroad line. He bought and shipped grain but wanted to do more. Jacob sold the Greenleaf farm in 1879 so he would have the $19,000 he needed to build the grand Howard House hotel at the corner of North Sibley and Depot Street West, which everyone always knew as the Litchfield Hotel. Col. Howard never ran the hotel. He always leased it out, but he could be found “holding court” many a day in the basement tavern.

William Henry Greenleaf was born in Allegheny, New York, on December 7, 1834, and he was the son of William and Elmira (Sanford) Greenleaf. When he was eight years old, in 1843, he moved with his parents to Jefferson County, Wisconsin, and they settled on a farm. When William had grown to seventeen, he attended school at the Fort Atkinson Academy studying civil engineering. In 1856, during the troubles in Kansas, he made a trip to that territory with a group of men raised by a Professor Daniels, for the assistance of the Free Soilers. Greenleaf returned to Wisconsin, where, in 1857, he was employed as a surveyor on the Wisconsin Central railroad.

In the spring of 1858, he came to Meeker County and located upon section 30, Ellsworth Township. He also took up a homestead on section 25, in what became Greenleaf Township. On September 27, 1859, he married Cordelia J. DeLong (1837-1928), the daughter of Hiram and Maria DeLong. Maria was a niece of the revolutionary general, Ethan Allen. William and Maria had four children: Charles Albert, born on October 27, 1861, married Hattie D. Campbell, and died in 1937; Jessie A., who married H. S. Branham, then a man named Meyer, she died in 1925; and twin boys, Frankie and Fred, who died in childbirth in June 1860.

While a resident of Greenleaf Township, William was awakened at four in the morning of August 18, 1862, and was told of the Acton Massacre. He took his wife and ten-months-old child to St. Paul for safety and then he went to Hutchinson, where he helped defend the stockade against the Indians. He stayed there that fall. He then went to Minneapolis, where he made his home until March 1864, and then returned to Meeker County. In the spring of 1870, he moved to Litchfield and he had a general store at 229 North Sibley. It was in a thirty-two by fifty-foot two-storied building, costing $1700 to build. Greenleaf sold it to B. L. Perry and Company in the fall of 1870. In the fall of 1870, Greenleaf was elected to be a representative in the State Legislature. In 1871, he represented Kandiyohi, McLeod, Meeker, Monongalia (defunct), and Wright counties. From 1872 to 1882, he represented only Meeker County.

In April 1871, Judge John M. Waldron and Capt. James Clinton Braden sold their general store business at 310 North Sibley to L. S. Weymouth and Greenleaf. Weymouth sold his interest in the grocery business to a man named LaCross in August 1871. Greenleaf eventually bought out LaCross and changed the store over to a hardware store. In 1874, he was appointed receiver of the United States Land office in Litchfield and continued in that office, having been reappointed in 1878, until 1879, when he resigned. In August 1874, Rosa Mary Stanton put a new building on the front of the lot at 242-244 North Sibley and William Henry Greenleaf rented it for the Greenleaf Real Estate Office. The Greenleaf hardware store moved to 207 North Sibley in March 1877. W. P. Todd, a brother of J. G. Todd who had a dry goods store in town, bought the twenty-five by sixty-foot two-story building from Greenleaf in September 1877, who moved to another Sibley location.

Oren Wilbert “Bert” Topping bought the old office of the Flynn & Bros. farm machinery business and moved it to 221 North Ramsey in September 1884 after he had bought lots 23 through 26 of this Block 60. Oren was born in Greenleaf, Minnesota, making him a rarity among early Litchfield businessmen. Most were from out of state. In 1878, Greenleaf purchased the lumber yard of M.J. Flynn, and in 1880 he bought the lumberyard of H. B. Brown and consolidated the two. In 1882, he added his son, Charles Albert, to the business in a full partnership. More than likely, he added his son to run the business while he was “politicking”. Because from 1882 to 1886, William was sent to the State Senate.

There was an old wooden building at the corner where the Nelson Buick dealership had once been. It housed the Clough Brothers lumberyard, which started in September 1882. Clough’s was sold to William Henry Greenleaf and Son (Charles Albert) in the spring of 1884. By now you know about Albert Spence, Litchfield’s only black resident who came after the Civil War. Most people don’t know about the second black person in the county. “Black Jenny” was Jenny Gardner and she was originally a housemaid for the Harmon Pennoyer family in Greenleaf. The Pennoyers had vacationed in the south in October 1886 and had convinced Jenny to come back up north to work for them. Farm kids around the Greenleaf area had never seen a black woman, and Jenny was very black, so they would go out of their way to go by the Pennoyer place and peek in on Jenny working in the house. She’d see them and say, “Run along, you chiluns.” Black Jenny moved to Litchfield from Greenleaf, to run a laundry.

Rankin’s Hardware at 201 North Sibley had been the Rankin & Greenleaf Hardware, which started in April 1883, at another location. Rankin had bought out Greenleaf in November 1884. In May 1889, Charles Albert Greenleaf and William Grono moved their real estate business into a corner room at 109 North Sibley. From July 1889 to July 1893, the popular Brightwood Resort was across the lake on the south shore of Lake Ripley. Hiram Branham and Charles Albert Greenleaf owned and ran the resort. The Greenleafs, father and son, leased an elevator in September 1889. William Henry Greenleaf and his son Charles moved an office for their lumberyard to 214 North Sibley in the front in March 1895.

Charles Greenleaf and William Grono moved their real estate business to 236 North Sibley either in late 1894 or early 1895 and Grono moved out in 1897. There was an elevator across Sibley Avenue, south of the tracks, which Chauncey Sage Butler built in 1874 with his partner Isaac Hines. It failed in 1877 and James B. Atkinson, Sr. bought it. Michael J. Flynn and Brother (Daniel) bought it in 1880. It was bought by William Henry Greenleaf and Son and managed by H. H. Hine in September 1897. Charles Albert Greenleaf took over the lumberyard from his father in September 1897. Charles was Litchfield’s twentieth mayor in 1899 and he sold his Greenleaf Lumber Company in June 1900 to Fred A. Kopplin. William Henry Greenleaf moved his real estate office into a room at 212 North Sibley in March 1902. The Greenleaf mansion was the sole house in the entire block on the site where the Meeker County Hospital was constructed in 1950. William Henry Greenleaf died on October 28, 1917.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the township has a total area of 39.0 square miles (101 km²), of which 35.8 square miles (93 km²) of it is land and 3.2 square miles (8.3 km²) of it (8.13%) is water.

Greenleaf Township is located in Township 118 North of the Arkansas Base Line and Range 31 West of the 5th Principal Meridian.

Demographics

As of the census[1] of 2000, there were 726 people, 298 households, and 232 families residing in the township. The population density was 20.3 people per square mile (7.8/km²). There were 478 housing units at an average density of 13.3/sq mi (5.2/km²). The racial makeup of the township was 98.62% White, 0.14% African American, 0.14% Asian, 0.55% from other races, and 0.55% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.10% of the population.

There were 298 households, out of which 25.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 71.8% were married couples living together, 2.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 22.1% were non-families. 18.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 5.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.44 and the average family size was 2.75.

In the township the population was spread out, with 21.6% under the age of 18, 5.6% from 18 to 24, 25.1% from 25 to 44, 32.2% from 45 to 64, and 15.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 44 years. For every 100 females, there were 109.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 110.7 males.

The median income for a household in the township was $46,190, and the median income for a family was $51,458. Males had a median income of $32,917 versus $26,146 for females. The per capita income for the township was $21,973. About 1.8% of families and 1.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 0.9% of those under age 18 and 4.2% of those age 65 or over.

References

1. "U.S. Census website". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved 2008-01-31.
2. "US Board on Geographic Names". United States Geological Survey. 2007-10-25. Retrieved 2008-01-31.