Faribault

Faribault, a city and the county-seat of Rice county, Minnesota, U.S.A., on the Cannon river, at the mouth of the Straight river, about 45 m. S. of St Paul. (Pop. 1890) 6520; (1900) 7868, of whom 1586 were foreign-born; (1905) 8279; (1910) 9001. Faribault is served by the Chicago Great Western, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul, and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railways. The city is attractively situated near a lake region widely known for its summer resorts. Faribault is the seat of the Minnesota institute for defectives, embracing the state school for the deaf (1863), the state school for the blind (1874), and the state school for the feeble-minded (1879); of three institutions under control of the Protestant Episcopal Church—the Seabury divinity school (incorporated 1860), the Shattuck school (1867; incorporated in 1905), a military school for boys, and St Mary’s hall (1866), a school for girls, founded by Bishop Whipple; and of the Roman Catholic (Dominican) Bethlehem Academy for girls. In the city are the cathedral of our Merciful Saviour (1868-1869), the first Protestant Episcopal church in the United States built and used as a cathedral from its opening; and the hospital and nurses’ training school of the Minnesota District of the Evangelical Synod. The city has a public library, and owns and operates its own water-supply system. There is a good water power, and among the city’s manufactures are flour, beer, shoes, furniture, rattan-ware, warehouse trucks, canned goods, cane syrup, waggons and carriages, gasolene engines, wind-mills, pianos and woollen goods. Faribault, named in honour of Jean Baptiste Faribault, a French fur-trader and pioneer who made his headquarters in the region in the latter part of the 18th century, was permanently settled about 1848, and was chartered as a city in 1872. A French millwright, N. La Croix, introduced here, about 1860, a new process of making flour, which revolutionized the industry in the United States, but his mill was soon destroyed by flood and he removed to Minneapolis, where the process was first successful on a large scale. Faribault was for many years the home of Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple (1822-1901), the pioneer bishop (1850-1901) of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Minnesota, famous for his missionary work among the Indians.

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