Minnesota’s Territorial Legislature voted in 1857 to move its capital from St. Paul to the village of St. Peter, about 60 miles southwest.
But the man tasked with sending that legislation to the governor for a signature absconded with it instead. He disappeared on a weeklong bender and returned just as the session ended 162 years ago this week with the bill unsigned. Or so the story goes.
That man was Joseph Rolette, a colorful fur trader from the Red River Valley. His antics are often credited with saving the capital for St. Paul by preventing its removal to St. Peter.
It’s a great story — and much of it factual — but the truth is more complicated.
“It’s a myth that Joe Rolette saved the capital for St. Paul,” said William Lass, a Minnesota historian who has researched and written about the episode. “But once those things are ingrained, it’s darn hard to root them out.”
The credit for keeping the capital in St. Paul, Lass says, belongs instead to a lesser-known Territorial Supreme Court justice.
THE MYTH OF JOE ROLETTE
When Minnesota Territory was established in 1849, St. Paul was designated its capital. The growing city was easily accessible by riverboat, and it was among the territory’s largest population centers.
But as Minnesota prepared to enter the union as the 32nd state, other capital contenders sprang up. St. Peter emerged as the most serious challenger.
The effort to move the capital to St. Peter was driven almost entirely by the St. Peter Land Company, a real estate firm that owned nearly all the property in the tiny town. Among the company’s shareholders were some of Minnesota’s most influential men — including Gov. Willis Gorman.
Gorman and his associates saw an opportunity to raise the value of their land by swiping the seat of government from St. Paul.
“It’s a power grab on the part of the company,” Lass said.
The cause found very little support among the citizens of Minnesota, but the company’s offer to donate a parcel of land for the new Capitol building — and a sizable sum of money toward its construction — earned the favor of some in the Legislature.
A bill for the removal of the capital to St. Peter was introduced in February 1857, during the final legislative session before Minnesota would become a state. The bill narrowly passed the House of Representatives and the Council, predecessor of the state Senate.
On Feb. 27, the official copy of the removal act was entrusted to Rolette, according to early Minnesota historian J. Fletcher Williams.
“Jolly Joe,” as he was affectionately known, had represented the Canadian border region of Pembina (most of which is now in North Dakota) for five terms in the Legislature. The buckskin-clad councilor traveled the 400 miles to St. Paul each year by dogsled.
As chairman of the committee on enrolled bills, Rolette was tasked with reviewing the document and forwarding it to Gorman for his signature. But Gorman never received the bill and Rolette disappeared.
Most early Minnesota histories agree that Rolette locked the bill in the safe of a local banker before retiring to an upstairs room at the Fuller House hotel, where he spent the next seven days boozing and playing cards with a discreet group of friends.
When Rolette was not at his desk on Feb. 28, the men of the St. Peter faction panicked.
In desperation, one of them demanded a “call of the Council,” a legislative maneuver that forced absent members to report to the chambers — but it also prevented those who were present from leaving.
All this did was freeze the proceedings of the Council while they waited for Rolette to return. The Sergeant at Arms was dispatched to search for him, but he seems to have made at best a half-hearted attempt.
Back in the Council chambers, cots were set up and food delivered for the legislators. This state of affairs continued for five days and nights until one of them got the bright idea to ask another member of the Enrollment Committee to draft a second copy of the bill for Gorman to sign. Which he did.
With only a couple of days left in the 60-day session, the call of the Council was suspended so it could finish its other work.
As the clock struck midnight on March 7, the president of the Council brought down his gavel to close the session.
“The moment the doors were thrown open, in stalked Jo. Rolette, and commenced rallying his brother members, in his vivacious and pointed style, on the good joke he had played on them,” Fletcher writes.
St. Paulites celebrated Rolette as a hero, carrying him through the streets — and according to pioneer historian T.M. Newson, paying him a cool $3,000 for his service to their city. (Newson also alleges a reward was paid to the Sergeant at Arms, who had such a hard time finding Rolette.)
The St. Peter faction was predictably outraged, but they believed the substitute bill they drafted in Rolette’s absence carried the force of law. They sought a court order to force state officials to move their offices into the new “Capitol” they soon built on the bank of the Minnesota River in their little town.
Minnesota Territorial Supreme Court Justice Rensselaer Nelson took up the case in spring 1857. Nelson sided with St. Paul, ruling that the Capitol removal act was invalid because the bill signed by Gov. Gorman was not the officially enrolled copy that Rolette had carried off.
But all of this was irrelevant, Nelson added. He pointed out that the 1849 Organic Act, which established Minnesota Territory, stipulated that the Capitol could only be relocated by a vote of the people.
So, even if Rolette had gotten the original bill signed by the governor, it too would’ve been invalid.
“He performed a nice little stunt,” Lass said of Jolly Joe. “But Rolette did not save the capital.”
Over the years, Rolette’s high jinks were mythologized by generations of Minnesota storytellers — including some at the Pioneer Press. Below is a comic by staff cartoonist Jerry Fearing, which no doubt contributed to Rolette’s legend. For an enlarged version, click here.
