Ramsey County History – Fall 1969: “The Letters of Samuel Pond, Jr.: Students Cooked Their Food, Built Their Fires”

The Letters of Samuel Pond, Jr.: Students Cooked Their Food, Built Their Fires
Author: Samuel W. Pond Jr.

Samuel Pond was a student at the University of Minnesota in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Many letters he wrote to his brother Judson, back home in Shakopee, have survived and some are published here. He wrote of the ordinary events of his student life: his professors, the food, the sermons he attended, his fellow students (“I never saw a duller set”), his long walks over the city, the work going on to repair the St. Anthony Falls tunnel disaster. These letters cover just his first semester, November 1869 to February 1870.
PDF of Pond article