09/26/2022
Pull up a stool and I’ll tell you a tale about a treasure lost, found, and returned to its rightful owner. The story starts 104 years ago in June, 1918 when a gentleman by the name of Joseph Edward Felix Peloquin (such a distinguished name) was drafted into the army at age 36. He had been working as a foreman at a coal distributer in St. Paul, Minnesota when the government came calling and said your services are needed.
He reported to Fort Snelling near St. Paul where he probably received his uniform and not much else as he was inducted on the 21st and by the 28th he was in Camp Grant, Illinois, where training began in earnest. Initially in the 161st Depot Brigade, by July 15, he was off to Camp Robinson near Fort McCoy, Wisconsin and assigned to Battery D of the 332nd Field Artillery, 86th Division. In mid September the division was shipped off to England and from there forwarded on to France for further training, which is where they were sitting when the war ended a few months later, the division having never saw any combat.
By February he was back at Camp Grant and discharged from the army. Once in civilian life again, he moved to Arkansas where he managed a farm for a doctor. Joseph passed away in 1978 and is buried at Fort Snelling National Cemetery in Section O, Plot 4508.
Story #2: Fast forward to about 2008 and I’m toes deep into studying Fort Snelling’s history and I discover where the post’s final rifle range used to be down in the mosquito infested Minnesota River bottoms. In use from 1909 to 1946, it’s now been forgotten by the public and military historians alike and heavily abused by public works projects. The target area countless soldiers used to shoot at are buried under even more countless tons of soil used to build the shoulder of highway 5 when it was rammed through the area in the 1950s. Another portion was lost in the 1960s when highway 494 was built to carry traffic over the rivers, lakes, and swamps that are a large part of the Twin Cities landscape fabric.
And, as if that wasn’t enough of an injustice, the Army Corps of Engineers also dug a new river channel through the heart of the rifle range to straighten some of the sharpest turns and make it easier for barge traffic to reach the Cargill grain terminal in Savage, MN, just a few miles upriver from the range.
Alarmed at all of the injustices the range suffered over the decades, I grabbed my bicycle and headed out to see what was left and record the history of the site and its changes. There aren’t any roads in the area, but there are plenty of bike paths for nature lovers and bird watchers to enjoy. Locking my bike to a tree, it’s a short hike out of the woods, along the riverside, and to the range, which is now a small island. Unfortunately, the original river channel that the 19th century steamboats used to take up the Minnesota River as far as Mankato is still there—no water flowing through it thanks to an earthen dam installed at the western tip, but it’s still a muddy morass to cross to the tip of the island.
Once there, I took a look around and saw something sticking out of the riverbank, threatening to drop into the current after the next spring flood ate away the dirt and sand holding it in place. Picking it up and cleaning it in the muddy river water, I could see it had a name stamped into it: Joseph E. Peloquin. How it got there, I have no idea as Joseph was never stationed at Fort Snelling. Perhaps he got some rudimentary rifle training before shipping off to Camp Grant, but I guess we’ll never know for sure.
Taking it home it was lovingly cleaned up and at first I thought the eagle was a cap badge from an enlisted man’s hat, but experts far wiser than I assured me it’s a bridle rosette from a 1904 McClellen saddle, a piece of decoration to jazz up the soldier’s harness. A word a caution my devoted readers: we’re not talking about a bridal item as that’s an entirely different horse altogether.
For several years the little disk sat on my fireplace mantle in a place of honor, to be brought out and showed to other WWI enthusiasts on the off chance they could shed more light on the subject. As I got better at using Ancestry and I traced down a possible granddaughter in Hastings, Minnesota. Steeling my courage, I searched Facebook under her name and, finding a match in Minnesota, I sent her a note asking if, by chance, she was related to one Joseph Edward Henry Felix Peloquin (he had so many names one could almost mistake him for royalty). To my surprise and delight, she wrote back and said yes indeed that was her grandfather. We chatted back and forth a bit and then lost touch for several years.
That was in 2013. Fast forward to June of 2022 and my wife and I are sitting in a taco bar in Denver and my phone vibrates with a new message from Nikki, Joseph’s granddaughter. Gosh, would I like to get together sometime and have a bridle shower. I replied with an enthusiastic yes on the condition that we do it soon as my health is quickly failing and it’s unlikely that I would be able to make the trip to the cemetery if we did it later in the fall. Susi (my wife) pulled up a couple of poems for the occasion, Nikki (the soldier’s granddaughter)brought along a few WWI photos from Joseph’s album plus his beautifully decorated helmet that has my Camp Grant historian buddy drooling, and I asked my friend Ken if he could pop out in his WWI uniform to add a little color. The attached video shows our little ceremony.
I have to say it’s heartwarming to see a long lost artifact make its way back to the family where it belongs. This makes all the endless hours of research so worthwhile.
