During the 1860’s settlers to the Saint Charles area not only tamed the prairie for agriculture and commerce, but the settlers of this fledgling town and citizens of the young state of Minnesota sent their sons and husbands to help fight for the Union in the Civil War.
One of those early settlers in the area was Chauncey J. Hill of Saratoga. Hill was a 26-year-old freshly married pioneer who had followed his family to Minnesota from New York. He met a young neighbor girl, Sarah Downing, married her, and was starting up his own farmstead when he was called up into the Minnesota 9th Regiment, Company K.
He and Sarah corresponded during the war and those letters were maintained by family until they were donated to the Minnesota Historical Society in the 1960s. Some of those letters are being reprinted in The St. Charles Press over the next few weeks.
