GHENT, LYON COUNTY, MINNESOTA The state of Minnesota is named after the main river that flows almost entirely within its borders. Only the source at Big Stone Lake is located in South Dakota. Until the establishment of Minnesota in 1849 as ‘organized and incorporated area’, the river is called St. Peter and St. Pierre for about 150 years by the English and French explorers respectively. On March 6, 1852 the local legislature targeting an informal note to the president of the USA with the request that the various government departments in future only use the indigenous name for the river, as is the name for the region : Minnesota. On June 19 of that year, Congress passed a law in accordance with this request. Minnesota becomes the 32nd State of the US on May 11, 1858.

LYON COUNTY This county (Established by two laws on March 6, 1868 and on March 2, 1869) is named after  General Nathaniel Lyon, born in Ashford, Conn. on the 14th of July 1818, and died in the Battle of Wilson's Creek, Mo., on August 10, 1861. GHENT A small town in section 15 of Grandview (see below cadastral drawings), recorded in June 1878 by the Winona and St. Peter Railroad and incorporated on 15 May 1899. At first the city is called Grandview, but it gets the name Ghent in September 1881, like the eponymous town in Belgium, due to the Belgian colonists who have settled here in 1880-81 under the leadership of bishop John Ireland . The railways change the name of the post office (established in 1874 as 'Grandview') in Ghent as well, at the request of the inhabitants in 1874.

Cadastral drawings of Grandview June 1878.

Cadastral drawings of Grandview 2010.

On the cadastral map of Grandview from 1878, the area is divided into a number of sections of approximately one mile square (over 270 hectares) . The numbers of the sections are in the center of each section . According to Arthur P. Rose (b) William Bot lives in 1906 on the southern part of section 11 (NE of Ghent), after buying this land of B.F. Jellison when the family arrived in 1886. William Bot is the brother of Catharina Hero Bot (married to Jacobus Tjaarts Alma), introduced in the introduction of this website. Raymond Bot now lives on a part of section 33. The size, layout and numbering of the sections have not changed in over 120 years.

I can close this chapter no more fittingly than by reproducing an article written by Mrs. Fellows, of Lynd, and read before the old settlers' gathering in February, 1885. It  gives a very true idea of conditions in 1869: The time I first saw Lyon county, in the dark days of 1869, there were about a dozen in our settlement, scattered along the Redwood river in the timber. Another settlement, nearly as large as ours, was on the Cottonwood river, and another at Lake Benton. These constituted the entire population of our county. What was then one county has been divided into two, Lyon and Lincoln. The settlers lived in small, low, miserable log houses; indeed, some of them were originally Indian tepees, remodeled to suit the emergency. Some were without floors, except the solid earth with a covering of prairie grass; after it became dry and broken it was raked off and fresh grass cut and spread down. Of course, the floors needed no sweeping, and that was something saved, as there was a chance to economize in brooms. Economy, rigid economy, was the rule. A roof made of shingles was almost unknown. The houses were roofed, some with hay, some with earth, but the prevailing fashion was a shake roof. I fancy only the initiated have seen or heard of the shake roof. It consisted of flat, clumsy pieces of wood, all sizes and widths, and, as nearly as I can remember, about three feet long, split and shaped and smoothed with a broad-ax, overlapping each other shinglefashion, serving as a mere covering, keeping out the sun, but affording little protection. The wind and snow and rain and flies and mosquitoes and gnats and all other nice things had full liberty to come and go at will. And of all these things there was no lack. In those days there were blizzards, too, real genuine blizzards. The winds were not tempered to the shorn lamb, not by a good deal. After a blizzard what a picture our houses presented! Floors, beds, everything, were fancifully covered-decorations enough to have satisfied the most esthetic admirer of Oscar Wilde. Here and there and everywhere were festoons and wreaths and garlands and every imaginary thing of  "the snow, the beautiful snow", filling the house, above and below. We didn't enjoy it a bit, however. With the mercury frolicking among the lower twenties, the poetry of our natures was entirely frozen out. Even a board to make a door or case a window was of inestimable value. Flooring, not the best quality by a number of grades, sold for $50 per thousand. Thanks are due a Maine Yankee for introducing an improvement in our architecture. Sod houses made an appearance, and they were much better, being more economical. Here we lived, deprived of every luxury and most of the comforts and necessaries of life, trying to be happy and keep homesickness away, which would occasionally trouble us notwithstanding all efforts to prevent it. We were, so to speak, at the jumping-off place, as another leap would have landed us among the savages. We depended wholly upon Redwood Falls for everything we had, and that a poor trading place, indeed. A spool of thread, a sheet of note paper, a pound of tea or sugar, had to be hauled fifty miles. One of our great blessings was our postoffice with a weekly mail. By the way, the first postoffice in this county was a gigantic affair! It required but one box, fastened with a huge padlock, to prevent mail robbery.

Arthur P. Rose  (b) writes in his book (pulished in 1912) about the primitive conditions the first pioneers of Lyon County, Minnesota experienced:

Minnesota Counties (Lyon county indicated in red)