Title

Slide 13 Site of the "Lost Regiment"

Creation Date

1965

Description

Slide 13 Site of the "Lost Regiment"
This is the tamarack swamp where about 100 men (a Company rather than a Regiment) perished in a snow storm in November 1862. They had started with full equipment, including two cannons, hauled on ox carts, from Fort Ambercrombie, in the Dakota Territory, headed for Fort Snelling, at St Paul. They did not arrive a Lyman Prairie on November 9 or 10. Scouts sent out in the spring of 1863 found them all dead. A group of soldiers were sent out to bury the dead in July, 1863, and they buried the decomposed men and animals in four long mounds, boat-shaped, about 100 feet long and 4 feet high. All has decayed through the years, and no traces are found now. Three men of burial party returned to the area to settle after being mustered out of the army. They were, John Krapes, father of Alfred Krapes, John Jeffers, father of the late Dr. Jeffers, and Henry Frost, who was a Grove Lake pioneer. They used a cart in hauling provisions which had been left by the illfated company. Alfred Krapes recalls how he found when a boy two muskets and two double-barrelled revolvers, and an officer's sword and case, protruding from the bog.
"Taken from the script in 1965"