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By Tim Ruzek

At a camping site along the Cedar River north of Austin, people gathered in July 1905 for a picnic in honor of Allie McIntyre.

Allie was friends with the Teeter sisters Addie and Clo, whose parents owned the popular, wooded campsite on their farm two miles from Austin’s city limits at the time.

About 15 years ago, part of this site — the Royal Manor neighborhood started in the late 1950s —was annexed into Austin. After the major flood of 1993, some homes there were removed by the county via flood mitigation.

During her visit, Allie mailed a friend a postcard featuring Austin’s new Carnegie public library that opened four years earlier. This friend and fellow Austin native, Nettie Haley, lived in Devil’s Lake, N.D., where Allie taught before moving to Minneapolis.

This column started after I found this postcard being sold online, leading to research on the Teeter farm.

“Dear, Nettie – Received your note while visiting with Margie. Came to Austin from there and have been camping for the past two weeks along the river back of the Teeter farm. Our family varies in size from 8 to 20. Will go home next week and will write you more then. Love to all. – Allie”

A day before Allie sent the postcard (Aug. 5, 1905), the Austin Daily Herald wrote her camping party. At the time, the Teeters lived on Austin’s northwest edge in the Burr Oak Grove, just north of Lansing Avenue (1st Dr. N.E.) but still owned the farm. They hosted these campers at their Austin home one evening.

“One of the jolliest parties of the season is reported at the (Michael) Teeter home Monday evening when Mr. and Mrs. Teeter and their daughters entertained the camping party of Teeters’ Grove,” the Herald wrote.

After sending her postcard, Allie camped for another week before returning to Minneapolis.

Mr. Teeter had owned this farmland and grove since 1865, when he bought 330 acres from one of the Austin area’s first white settlers, Samuel Clayton, who settled in 1854.

Growing up in Canada, Teeter came West with all possessions in a carpet sack but, according to an 1884 book on Mower County history, “by hard work and industry, Mr. Teeter has accumulated a nice property.”

His land was one of the farms along the road from Austin to Ramsey, a village at the juncture of two railroads near Ramsey Dam.

In 1873, this farming neighborhood was grouped into the “Cedar River Grange” led by Teeter. It was one of 19 granges started in Mower County under a farmers’ association to sponsor social activities, community service and political lobbying.

Called a “pioneer man of endurance and vision,” Teeter farmed and worked as a carpenter, creating some of Austin’s best buildings. He was married in 1855 but his wife died soon after; he remarried in 1856 and had eight children.

The Teeters hosted many groups, including of Austin’s leaders and merchants, particularly in the 1890s and early 1900s. Groups often loaded onto a wagon load of grain to head “northward to the dense forest thickets on the upper Cedar near Teeter’s farm place.”

In 1894, the Herald noted one camping party heading to Teeter’s grove for a few weeks of camping just after another party left camp.

In 1901, the Teeters hosted about 40 people in their farm’s grove for a sixth annual multi-family, neighborhood picnic the Herald described as “uncommon.”

Church, lodge and society picnics along with camping groups like the Austin Camping Association were frequent but “a reunion of neighbors over mutual sandwiches and coffee pots is a fine way to promote cordial and congenial feelings,” the Herald wrote. “Affairs of this sort should increase in number.”

A group in 1893 with Austin’s mayor, a judge and local businessmen made such a wagon trip for an afternoon picnic and was “enlivened with song and merriment.”

For dinner, the group enjoyed 40 pounds of steak broiled in onions with roasted corn, aromatic coffee and other food before returning to the city “full and happy, realizing that such social outings are better than medicine for tired bodies and minds, and that a good deal of enjoyment may be crowded into one, brief summer afternoon.”

Teeter started building his Austin home in 1892 to be closer to the city. Austin wasn’t far from the farm, though, maybe a little too close for Teeter’s comfort.

During the 1887 summer, Teeter frequently ran news notices warning people to “keep out of the woods on my place on the east side of the river or I will prosecute.”

In 1905, he posted in the newspaper about “no trespassing” for “hunters, fishermen, campers and all others.”

At age 69 in 1893, Teeter auctioned off his horses, farming tools and furniture. A month later, he renting out his farm and had built a large barn there, where he and his wife lived until their Austin home was ready.

Teeter moved in 1910 to Minneapolis a year after his wife died. In 1914, he sold his farm’s remaining 240 acres, west of the Cedar, the same year as the last newspaper note about camping on his land.

Teeter died in 1922 just after turning 98. The Herald described it as “the passing of a Grand Old Man.”

“For nearly a full century, he had lived and been a vital part of the life about.”

If you have a story idea or would like to send Tim Ruzek a comment, reach out to tim@mowerdistrict.org