Ramsey County History – Fall 2000: “Two Horses and One Buffalo Robe—The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office and Its 150 Years: All Frailties of Human Nature”

Two Horses and One Buffalo Robe—The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office and Its 150 Years: All Frailties of Human Nature
Author: Anne E. Cowie

The long 150-year saga of the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office commenced when the county lines extended northward to Lake Mille Lacs and the present-day Aitkin County. After statehood in 1858, when Ramsey County had been shrunk to a fraction of its original size, the writer chronicles its colorful history, from the first county attorney, Billy Phillips, to the most recent. Often the incumbent county attorney was a principal in the history of the U.S., often the office was a stepping-stone for advancement to higher political office. The backdrop to these accounts of the county attorneys is the Civil War, the prominence of the “O’Brien Dynasty,” the Dakota Conflict of 1862, front-page murder trials, kidnapping of wealthy offspring of the financial elite, and the era of gangsters finding peace and quiet in St. Paul. A botched hanging of a murderer led eventually to the abolition of the death penalty in Ramsey County.

PDF of Cowie article