At the center of Brooklyn Township, in an area referred to as Brooklyn Centre, was the Howe Store conveniently situated at 6900 Osseo Road. In addition to being a general store, it included a post office, and an upstairs auditorium for social gatherings and room for the township meetings. In the back was a shop for repairing wagons and providing miscellaneous blacksmith tasks.
This center was owned by Charles Reuel Howe who had migrated in 1852 from Maine to the Territory of Minnesota when he was less than four years old. The world he grew up in was very rustic; his perspective would have been rustic. And yet, he ensured that all his children went to college. Charles [LK11-R7L] and his wife Clara [ GZ7H-LHN ] had two daughters, and an adopted son. Maybe it should be said that it was a team effort between the husband and wife because it seems improbable that a self-sufficient frontier man would value college education.
So who was Mrs. Charles R. Howe? Her genealogy lists her maiden name as Butt, but, Clara was not included in her father's probate proceedings [George MRJB-7HY ]. And her listed mother [Mary Thorpe LZF3-XWR ], who survived George, appears--according to newspaper articles--to be a selfish, manipulative, lonely woman that Clara had nothing to do with.
Star Tribune
What kind of a woman makes a martyr of a young lady by making her promise to postpone marriage and be her caretaker in exchange for inheriting the house and assets? This scheme was applied a couple of times with "nieces/granddaughter" (she did not have any children of her own; no relationship verified), and NOT with Clara or her daughters.
So with red flags waving around Clara's family background, the disconnection was discovered in Clara's death certificate and obituary--both informed by her daughters. So although Clara 'Butt' was recorded in her marriage record, her birth surname was a spelling variation of Leimbach; German ancestry. And she, and her sister who's name was stated in the obituary, (and maybe other siblings) were adopted. Clara was 11 in the 1860 federal census in Indiana, and her sister Anna, age 7, in Illinois. They evidently kept connected.
At age 20, Clara was working as a domestic servant for a young family in Minneapolis; the John McLeod's.(1) The breadwinner was a lumberman who had been born in Scotland, and his wife....Mary Norris, from Brooklyn Township (2). Mrs. McLeod's connection to the Norris neighbors of the Howe family in Brooklyn Township is yet to be researched, but it seems highly probable that a connection existed and that is how Charles Howe and Clara Butt met.
(1) 1870 Federal census: https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MDH3-T8J
(3) Minneapolis city directories accessible via Hennepin County Public Libraries
(4) Star Tribune 17 Jun 1893, Sat · Page 5
Note: The artist of the Howe Store pen & ink drawing was Leone Howe.
