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.
Sketch from Wikipedia
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.”
