On This Date in Minnesota History: July 19

July 19, 1847 – The first schoolhouse in Minnesota was opened [by Harriet E. Bishop] in a former blacksmith shop. It “was a ‘mud walled log hovel... covered with bark and chinked with mud’ at what is now St. Peter Street and Kellogg Boulevard in the relatively isolated fur trading post of Saint Paul. Of the seven students in her first class, only two were caucasian. [Bishop] had to rely on a student who was fluent in French, Dakota, and English to translate for her classes (which she taught in English).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Bishop

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harriet_Bishop_engraving.jpg