Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is a particularly pleasant occasion to see together so many of the old faces, and hardly any other occasion would bring so many of them together. I have often thought that the State of Minnesota was fortunate in the character of the men who came here at an early day and into whose hands the forming of the state was committed. To none of those men can we look with more gratitude than to our distinguished fellow-citizen, Gov. Ramsey, who came here in 1849, as the first Governor of the Territory of Minnesota, and has continued in the most active manner through all the trying periods of the growth of the state. I am sure that every one here tonight will feel, as I do, rejoicing that he is with us, so strong and so hearty. And we hope that for many years we shall see him present on occasions like this, when the old settlers are brought together. I have been asked to speak to you on the agricultural history of Minnesota. The detailed history of agriculture in Minnesota would practically be the history of the state, and would take a great deal more time than you could spare or than I could give. We can, however, go back to the time when it was hardly considered that Minnesota was an agricultural state or that it ever was to be an agricultural state. I see here my good friend. Gen. Le Due, T think you may not all know that Gen. Le Due, in 1853, partly at his own expense and partly at the expense of the Territory, was charged with demonstrating to the rest of the country that Minnesota was not an utterly barren waste, that it was not a country limited to the raising of a few cranberries and some muskrat skins. I received a note from the General, the other evening, *An Address at the Annual Meeting of the Minnesota Historical Society, Jan. 18, 1897. 276 MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTIONS. and accompanying it a history of the first exposition in New York, written by Horace Greeley. Mr. Greeley, through his newspaper, the New York Weekly Tribune (which in its day was a good agricultural authority), had satisfied himself, and tried to satisfy its readers, that Minnesota was not an agricultural territory, that it had not the soil nor the climate requisite, that everything was too near where the late Sir John Franklin met with his great trouble. 'Gen. Le Due, to demonstrate that Minnesota was to be an agricultural state, was able to get a few ears of corn from Cottage Grove, possibly a dozen others from the Hon. David Gilman (raised by him, I think, at Sauk Eapids), and a few from the Fort garden at Ft. Ripley. Everything west of the Mississippi at that time was Indian country.