Jun 15, 2019

Pig's Eye

While researching an ex-husband's line for a third cousin, I ran across this interesting information:

Newspapers.com
2001 Jun 12, The Bismarck Tribune, P21, Bismarck, North Dakota
Monument dedicated to founder of St. Paul
Descendants of notorious whiskey runner ‘Pig’s Eye’ establish memorial

Hamilton (AP) – A monument to descendants of Pierre ‘Pig’s Eye’ Parrant, known as the notorious founder of St. Paul, Minn., has been dedicated in northeastern North Dakota.  The graves of Adolph Carl and four of his children are shaded by oak trees near a bend in the Tongue River.  They and several other children of neighboring settlers were buried in the tiny private plot before 1900.  Adolph Carl married Eleanor Parrant when he was an Army soldier stationed at Fort Pembina in 1873, and she worked as a maid there.  Eleanor was the daughter of Pierre “Pig’s Eye,” Parrant, the whiskey runner, fur trader and voyageur known as the founder of St. Paul.  Lillian Gilbertson, of Minneapolis, bought the granite monument and had it installed Friday.  She is Adolph Carl’s great-granddaughter, and Pig’s Eye’s great-great granddaughter.  A dedication service Saturday at the grave site included a military rifle salute.  Gilbertson, 81, was born just north of the grave site, on the farm homesteaded by Carl, a German immigrant who became a prominent citizen of the Hamilton area before his death in 1890.  Adolph and Eleanor Carl’s first child, Charles, was born in 1874 and became Lillian’s grandfather.  “My grandfather always said he was the first white child born at Fort Pembina,” she said.  Gilbertson says she is proud to be Pig’s Eye’s descendant, despite his reputation.  Historian I. Fletcher Williams' description of Pig’s Eye, quoted in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, has typed him: “a coarse, ill-looking low-browed fellow with only one eye.  He spoke execrable English.  His habits were intemperate and licentious.  The eye was blind, marble-hued, crooked, with a sinister white ring glaring around the pupil, giving a kind of piggish expression to his low, sodden features.”  Pig’s Eye was accused of stealing from John Jacob Astor’s fur company in St. Louis, Mo., and of selling whiskey to Indians and soldiers at Fort Snelling in 1832.  Authorities chased him away from the fort, so he ended up making and selling whiskey at Lambert’s Landing in what is now the heart of St. Paul.  His presence caused the place to be called Pig’s Eye Landing until it was changed to St. Paul.   


Pig’s Eye also followed the oxcart trails between St. Paul and Winnipeg, stopping off in Pembina, Gilbertson said.  Some believe he may be buried nearby.  Janell Norman, an amateur historian and genealogist in River Falls, Wis, who believes she is a descendant of Pig’s Eye, said he is buried in a cemetery near Pembina.  After Adolph died, his widow, Eleanor, moved to Milwaukee, where she is buried.  Laura Stearns, Gilbertson’s grandmother and Pig’s Eye’s granddaughter, played piano around the region in the early 20th century, for silent movies as a young girl in Langdon, and later in Minneapolis-area bars, Gilbertson said.  “When she played in St. Paul, the reporters would write that Pig’s Eye’s granddaughter is still selling whiskey in St. Paul,” Gilbertson said.  She said she bought the monument for Carl’s grave site because the tiny private cemetery had hardly any marker.  “My grandmother always said an unmarked grave is a disgrace,” Gilbertson said.  “She had a sister in the Bathgate cemetery in an unmarked grave.  When I was little, I would ride with my grandmother in a buggy by that cemetery, and my grandmother would cry.  So I wanted to mark Adolph’s grave.”

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