| Notes |
- History of Fillmore County, Minnesota
Volume II
H.C. Cooper Jr. & Co. (1912)
Henry S. Bassett was born April 21, 1841, in Ingersoll, Oxford, Canada West.
His father, Gilbert Bingham Oscar Bassett, was born in Middlebury,
Vermont, February 19, 1817, and died June 8, 1878, in Carimona, Fillmore
County, Minnesota. He was a citizen and subject of the United States at the
time of his son's birth. Gilbert Bassett's parents, Elnathan Bassett and Lydia
Bassett, were both born in New England of colonial and revolutionary stock.
Elnathan's father was a soldier in the Continental Army during the
Revolutionary War and himself a soldier in the United States Army in the War
of 1812. Lydia Bassett was the daughter of Daniel A. Buck, of Vermont, who
when a mere boy in the Continental Army at the battle of Bennington lost his
arm. He was afterwards for many years congressman from that stat
Mary Smith Bassett, the mother of the subject of this sketch, was born
in Ancaster, Canada West, August 1, 1816, and died July 29, 1911, at
Washtucna, Wash. Her father, Samuel Smith, was born in New Hampshire and was a
soldier in the regular army during the War of 1812. Her mother, Luvia Graves
Smith was born in the state of New York. The family of Gilbert and Mary
Bassett consisted of six boys and four girls, of whom Henry was the thi
eldest child. Only four of this family are now living, who in the order of
their ages are Henry S. Bassett, of Preston, Minn.; George W. Basset
Washtucna, Wash.; Gilbert B.O. Bassett, of Helena, Mont.; and Samuel S.
Bassett, of Spokane, Wash. George married Alice C. Lancaster; Gilbert, Sarah
Andrews, and Samuel, Kate Hopp. Caroline A. Bassett, one of the daughters of
the family, married John B. Palmer. She died in Carimona, February 9, 1893,
leaving surviving her husband and four children, C.H. Palmer, of Benchland,
Mont., E. L. Palmer, of Preston, Minn.; Virginia Palmer, of Ostrander, Minn.,
and Fannie Vailer, of Fresno, Cal. Mr. J.B. Palmer and his daughter are now
residing in Ostrander, Minn. Mary Bassett, the youngest daughter, marri
William Harkness, of Walla Walla, Wash. She died in 1900 at Spokane in that
state, leaving surviving her husband and four children, William Charles, Mary
and Marjorie Harkness.
Gilbert and Mary Bassett, with their family, then consisting of Henry
and two daughters, moved from Canada West in 1844 and settled in Scott county
in the territory of Iowa. At that time there was no railway westward out of
Chicago and from that point the family made the journey to Rock Island, Ill.,
by state and team. The country at that time was new, and few white
inhabitants, and these as a general thing cultivated but a few acres, made
their own clothing and depended for a living principally upon wild game, of
which there was an abundance. many Indians were still in the country. There
was a trading post or so but no real stores, or mills, or roads in the country
and no schools or churches. It was then the western frontier of the States.
Though Gilbert Bassett was a printer by trade, he never worked at that
business while living in Iowa, but during that time was principally engaged in
farming and in mercantile business and a portion of the time in operating a
daily line of four and six horse stages from Dubuque west to Independence in
that state, for at a time, 1850-52, there was no railway running west from
Dubuque. In 1853 he with his son Henry and a daughter came to Minnesota, then
a territory, to look up a location. Late in December of that year the family
started in teams from Delhi, Iowa, for Forestville, in Fillmore county,
Minnesota, the place selected for the new home. The family was delay
their journey by cold weather and now storms for some time in Burr Oak, Iowa,
but finally arrived in Forestville, on January 4, 1854, where a dwelling had
been purchased and a store opened by Mr. Bassett. His son, Henry, then
thirteen years old, walked and drove the cows on this journey. Forestville was
not then platted as a village. Winona and Brownsville in Minnesota a
Decorah, Lansing and McGregor in Iowa, were their nearest market place
After the family settled in Minnesota, Mr. Bassett continued in the mercantile
and farming business. A district school was established in Forestville in 1855
and maintained about half of the time which Henry attended most of the time
until December, 1858, when he went to Crawfordsville, Ind., to attend Wabash
College, located at that place. Prior to his going to Minnesota he had
attended private and district schools to a very limited extent, so when he
entered upon his college course his education it may be said was mostly
acquired by his study outside of the schools. He had a good knowledge of
frontier life, farming and mercantile business as carried on in a new country,
and managing and caring for horses and other stock was physically stron
active and able to undergo great fatigue and exposure. Desiring to obtain a
collegiate education, as above stated, he went to Wabash College, where he
took up a regular classical course and studied from January, 1859, to early in
May, 1861, when, on account of the Civil War then just under way, he returned
to his home in Minnesota, in order that he might obtain his father's consent
to enlist in the army. He had tried to enlist in Indiana, but being under age
and not having his father's consent, the authorities would not accept him.
During the time he was a student at Wabash College he supported himself by his
manual labor, cutting cord-wood, digging ditch, sawing wood, or doing whatever
other work came to hand. After his return home he was obliged to delay
entering the army until August 4, 1862. But in the meantime he aided his
father in his business and taught a school of seventy scholars during t
winter of 1861 and 1862 in the village of Fillmore. Having helped to raise men
enough to form a company he entered the army August 4, 1862. About half of the
members of the company were from Fillmore county and half from Houston county.
The men rendezvoused at Fort Snelling, where they were organized as Company K
in Sixth Regiment, Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, with W.H. Woodward as
captain, W.W. Braden, first lieutenant, and H.S. Bassett, second lieutenant.
Within a few days after the company was organized and before the different
companies composing the regiment could unite, the Indian outbreak on the
frontier and the massacre of the white settlers in the western part of the
state occurred. Mr. Bassett served with his company in the campaign und
General Sibley against the Indians for the relief of Fort Ridgley, the release
of the white prisoners and protection of the frontier that year. In 1863 he
was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant and took part that year in the
second campaign against the Indians. During that year he was for some time
adjutant at Fort Snelling under Colonel Morgan. In the spring of 1864 t
regiment was sent south to Helena, Ark., where during most of the summer of
that year, Lieutenant Bassett served as assistant provost-marshall of t
district of eastern Arkansas. In the winter of 1864 and 1865 his regiment was
sent to St. Louis, Mo., where, until February, 1865, it was on duty. In that
month it was sent to New Orleans and placed in the Second Brigade of the
Second Division of the Sixteenth Army Corps, commanded by Gen. A.J. Smith.
Company K, with the regiment in this corps, formed a part of the forces under
General Canby in the capture of Spanish Forst, Blakeley and Mobile, and in the
campaign against Montgomery, in the spring of 1865. During these campaigns
Lieutenant Bassett was in command of his company, its captain being absent on
detached service. The company under the command of Lieutenant Bassett returned
to the state after the war closed and was mustered out at Fort Snelling,
August 19, 1865. Mr. Bassett, after his more than three years' service in the
army, was still unwilling to give up his college course. After resting at home
for about three months, in January, 1866, he entered the University of
Wisconsin and again took up his studies. In May he returned to his home in
Minnesota to assist his parents to fit out for their journey to the territory
of Montana. His parents and five of their children that month set out from
Forestville in teams for Helena, Mont., where they arrived in September, 1866.
Henry taught school in the village of Carimona during the fall and winter of
1866 and 1867. In the fall of 1867 he returned to the University of Wisconsin
and resumed his studies. A military department had been established in the
university, and at the request of the authorities of that institution he
organized the students subject to military drill into companies, drew arms and
equipment for them from the state and superintended their drilling and
training during the four years he remained in the university thereafter. He
not only took up and continued his regular classical course of studies in the
university at this time, but also the studies of the civil and military
engineering departments, and graduated on June 21, 1871, receiving his diploma
and degree from each of the three departments.
He returned to his home in Fillmore county and in the fall of 1871,
upon the Republican ticket, he was elected probate judge of that county. He
continued to hold that office by election from January 1, 1872, to January 1,
1882, when he voluntarily declined to be a candidate for re-election and gave
his attention wholly to the practice of law, having been admitted to practice
at the bar in 1874. July 12, 1882, he married Mrs. Georgiana A. Smith, at the
home of her parents, in Blue Earth county, Minnesota. Mrs. Smith, at the time
of her marriage with Mr. Bassett, had one son, Everett R. Smith, who continued
to live with them until his marriage to Mae O'Brien some years ago, since when
he and his wife have lived in their own home adjacent.
Mrs. Georgiana A. Bassett, daughter of Rev. R.S. Armstrong, a
Congregational minister, was born at Lisbon, St. Lawrence county, N.Y., in
1843, and received her education in the Academy of Potsdam, in that state. She
engaged in teaching at the age of seventeen and followed that profession
principally until she married Mr. Bassett in 1882. She spent some years in
California, crossing the Isthmus of Panama on a pack horse in going to and
returning from that country in the early sixties with her husband, Mr. Smith.
She and her parents and family came from the state of New York and settled in
Minnesota in 1868, where she has resided ever since. Her home has be
Preston in Fillmore county since 1879. She was an able and successful teacher,
enterprising and public spirited and has taken an active part in all
educational enterprises of her village, and other matters for the social and
moral betterment of her village and the community. For the last fifteen years
and more she has given much of her time to horticulture on the home far
where she lives adjacent to the village of Preston, where she has a fine fruit
orchard.
Mr. Bassett was appointed by Governor Johnson judge of proba
Fillmore county, in April, 1907, to fill out the unexpired term of Judge
Farrington, who died while holding that office, and served as such probate
judge until January 1, 1909.
During his residence in Preston he was for ten years a member of the
board of education of the high school. He has also served the village as mayor
and village attorney. Since December, 1872, he has been engaged in the study
and practice of his profession, the law, in the village of Preston.
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Bassett Family Association Database
1841 - Deceased