Part I

Years ago, I received a letter from the Office of the Sheriff in Chautauqua County of Mayville, New York. The under sheriff was collecting information about sheriffs of that county to compile into a book. One of these sheriffs was Amos W. Muzzy who had once lived in Lynd.

He included the following obituary that was published in the Fredonia Censor, Fredonia, New York, on Sept. 25, 1872. “We have received intelligence of the death of this former respected citizen of our county. He died Sept. 9th, at the residence of his brother, in Iuka, Ill, in the 72nd year of his age. He was born in Oneida County, but removed to Chautauqua County at an early period, and located near the village of Panama, where he lived some 25 years. In the election of 1840 he was elected Sheriff of the County, and discharged the duties of his office with great fidelity. A correspondent says: As a civil officer he was thorough, fearless and indefatigable. As an official member of the M.E. Church, he was ever active, liberal and zealous. During the War of the Rebellion, he held a position under the Government at Washington, D.C. and was constant and unremitting in his labors for the sick and dying soldiers. In 1868 he emigrated to Lynd, Lyon County, Minnesota, suffering the trials and privations incident to the extreme frontier, with cheerful, patient endurance. The first Sabbath after his arrival there, he held religious services and continued them, when often with one or two exceptions his audiences were only Sioux and Dakotas. He was of more than average intelligence, gentlemanly in his deportment, and affable in his manners. He was a strong temperance advocate from his youth, an honorable politician, a kind and indulgent husband and father. As a Christian, his faith was steady and triumphant, his life buoyant, his love fervent, his entire life a light to those around him.”

I shared the following information about Muzzy as found in the C.F. Case, “History of Lyon County,” 1884; and the A.P. Rose “History of Lyon County,” 1884-1912.

The first trading post for Indian trade was established (in section 3, Lynd) in 1855 or 1857 by James W. Lynd. The first permanent settlement in Lynd was in June 1867, when A.W. Muzzy, James Cummings and E.B. Langdon took claims on Section 32 and 33. Here these first settlers found the remains of a building that had been burned, and where it is assumed that James Lynd had moved his Trading Post to.

The first birth in the county was a girl born in November of 1868 to the Ransoms. The first boy was born in Lynd to George Cummings in 1869. The first death was that of Mrs. Bowers, a daughter of Mr. Muzzy, on April 20, 1868. She died of consumption one week after arriving in Lynd.

The first religious meeting was a class meeting led by A. W. Muzzy in the winter of 1867 and 1868 at Lyman Tickner’s. A Methodist church was organized by Rev. C. F. Wright at Tickner’s in the fall of 1868. The Methodists of Lynd build the first church in the county in 1871 on land owned by Davidson. It was made of logs with floor and roof of native soil.

The first organized church in Marshall was that of the Congregational church in 1872 — while the Methodist, officially organized in 1873 is in reality the oldest church society in the city. Its organization was a continuation of the Methodist church of Lynd, which had come into existence several years before and the jurisdiction extended to Marshall. In the records of the Methodist church, on Sept. 26, 1867, “A. W. Muzzy, his daughter, Sophia, wife of Rev. C.F. Wright, member of the Red River Conference of the Methodist Episcopal church, and L. Langdon and family took possession of Lynd and vicinity in the name of the Lord by establishing religious worship. On the following Sabbath they instituted divine worship and maintained it regularly thereafter every Sabbath.”

(To be continued next week)