Franklyn Curtiss-Wedge, The History of Renville County, Minnesota (1916)

From the research file (research/dwyer/Dwyer_Master_Research.md, October 2026), read through a transcription and search snippets. The biography of Edward Tisdell (pp. 1117-1118): his father Henry came to Renville County in 1870 and homesteaded 160 acres on section 16, Birch Cooley Township, farming it until 1910, when Edward rented it. The biography of Joseph Chisholm (pp. 1122-1123): born at St. Paul 20 Mar 1865, son of George Chisholm, a bricklayer who died in 1866, and Bessie (Tisdell) Chisholm, who died in 1868; raised by his mother’s sister Mary A. Quill of Cedar Lake. This is why the “George” in Henry Tisdell’s 1870 household is probably an orphaned nephew, George Chisholm.

Volume I (https://archive.org/details/historyofrenvill01curt), read in the Dwyer-Tisdell research pass (research/dwyer/Dwyer_Tisdell_Connections.md, October 2026), has a second family biography, of Thomas H. Tisdell (pp. 386-387), which differs from volume II in places: “Henry Tisdell was born in Ireland in 1837 and came to America in 1852. In 1859 he was married at St. Louis to Elizabeth Connelly, who was born in London, England, in 1840, came to America as a young girl, lived in Cohoes, New York, for a while, and in 1854 came to Minnesota to keep house for her brothers. After their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Tisdell lived for a while in Savage, Minnesota. Later they came to Birch Cooley township, where they homesteaded land in section 10 and purchased land in section 16. … Their first house, built with sloping walls, in the form of a letter A, had the appearance of a roof set on the ground. With the years they prospered and became leading people in the community. In 1910 they retired. Then they moved to Northfield, Minn., residing there until May, 1913, when they moved to Lakeville, Minn., at which place Mrs. Tisdell died, July 10, 1913, at the age of seventy-three years.” Thomas H. Tisdell was born in Dakota County on 7 Feb 1865 and married Ellen Lorden, daughter of Dennis and Mary (Connelly) Lorden, on 28 Jan 1896.

Section 16 of every Minnesota township was state school land, sold by the state rather than open to homestead entry, which may explain the two volumes’ accounts of the farm (vol. II: a homestead on section 16).