JEREMIAH RUSSELL, one of the frontiersmen of what is now the state of Minnesota, was born in Eaton, Madison county. New York, on the 2d of February, 1809. He was educated in the district school, and Academy at Fredonia, learning also, when quite young, to set type, in the office of the "Fredonia Gazette," the first paper published in Chautauqua county. After being employed for some time in a printing office at Geneva, and other places, and clerk in a store at Palmyra, Wayne county, several years, he, in 1835, came west, and traveled over the Territory of Michigan, and the state of Indiana; visited Chicago and Milwaukee in the latter part of the same year; then went into the Lake Superior country, and for two years, was superintendent of a mining company. In 1837, he went to St. Croix, Wisconsin, and made a claim with Franklin Steele and others; in 1839, had a contract for doing the blacksmithing for the Indians at Lake Pokeguma, and still later, at La Pointe, on Lake Superior. In 1848, Mr. Russell came to Crow Wing, Minnesota, acting as agent for C. N. W. Borup and C. H. Oakes, Indian agents and fur dealers, and in the fall of 1849, he was placed in charge of the American Fur Company's post, about two miles above Sauk Rapids. About four years later, he moved down the river, and settled on the west side, opposite the present site of Sauk Rapids, and in 1857, removed to the village of Sauk Rapids, which has been his home ever since. Mr. Russell was Treasurer of Benton county in an early day, and has also held the offices of Auditor and Justice of the Peace. He was a member of the first Territorial Legislature, in 1849. The wife of Mr. Russell was Miss Sophia Oakes, daughter of Charles H. Oakes. They were married on the 20th of September, 1843, and have had seven children, three of whom are deceased.

History of the Upper Mississippi Valley (1881) p. 349 [Sauk Rapids]

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