Richfield

The Riley Lucas Bartholomew House was constructed of sawed lumber. In 1852 when Fort Snelling was greatly reduced in size, the area that would become... the city of Richfield became available for settlement. General Riley Lucas Bartholomew came to the area and filed a claim on the shores of Wood Lake. He proceeded to build the two-story section of the home with local lumber, using white pine for the floors. His wife, Fanny and two children joined him in the spring of 1853. Soon after building the house, two additions were added by moving two single story dwellings from near Minnehaha Falls and adding them on to the house. Bartholomew went on to become influential in local politics as a member of the Republican Constitutional Convention which framed the Minnesota Constitution in 1857. He also represented District Four in the Minnesota Senate. The Richfield Historical Society operates the house as the Bartholomew House Museum.
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Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state on May 11, 1858. Known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes", the state's name comes from a Dakota word for "sky-tinted water". Those waters, together with forests, parks, and wilderness areas, offer residents and tourists a variety of outdoor recreational... opportunities. Minnesota is the 12th most extensive and the 21st most populous of the 50 United States. Nearly 60% of Minnesota's residents live in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area known as the "Twin Cities", the center of transportation, business, industry and education, and home to an internationally known arts community. The remainder of the state consists of western prairies now given over to intensive agriculture; deciduous forests in the southeast, now cleared, farmed and settled; and the less populated North Woods, used for mining, forestry, and recreation. Minnesota is known for its relatively mixed social and political orientations, and has a high rate of civic participation and voter turnout.
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