The 1885 arrest of Cecelia Regina Gonzaga
After a police officer arrested Gonzaga, assigned a male at birth, for wearing women’s clothes, the officer took her into custody and questioned her at the Ramsey County Courthouse.
Each week, MinnPost brings you a highlight of our state’s past from MNopedia, an encyclopedia of Minnesota history written by experts and produced by the Minnesota Historical Society.
After a police officer arrested Gonzaga, assigned a male at birth, for wearing women’s clothes, the officer took her into custody and questioned her at the Ramsey County Courthouse.
Despite its short and oft-forgotten existence, the enclave was home to several generations of Irish working-class families and later immigrant groups.
In 1887, “the Black Pearl” won a fight staged on the banks of the Mississippi that made him one of the most famous boxers of the period.
Both the Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery in the area, but slavery existed there even so.
Francis pressed the limits of what an African American woman was permitted to achieve in early 20th century Minnesota.
Raised in a large Catholic family in north Minneapolis, Simms became a national celebrity for her leading role in the first all-Black performance of the Broadway show “Anna Lucasta.”
On Feb. 13, 1906, William Williams was the last person legally executed by the state of Minnesota.
Minnesota enacted its first major human rights law in 1967. That statute made it unlawful to discriminate against people based on race, color, creed, and national origin in unions, employment, education, public services, and public accommodations.
Beatlemania was in full throat that night at Metropolitan Stadium, where the screaming fans drowned out the group’s half-hour set.
Motivated by his desire for a reliable cafeteria breakfast where he worked, Charles P. Strite designed a pop-up toaster in 1919.
The winter of 1887–1888 was ferocious and unrelenting. But nothing prepared southwestern Minnesota for the January storm that came to be known as the Children’s Blizzard.
The stockaded structure, supervised by veteran trader John Sayer, was a place where employees of the North West Fur Company came together with Ojibwe and Metis hunters and trappers.
The festival in Walker began in 1980 as a way to bring tourists to northern Minnesota during the long winter months.
Established by fur trader and politician Henry Hastings Sibley, it sits on a bluff on the south side of the Minnesota river, just east of Historic Fort Snelling.
Madson designed an AIDS memorial in the mid-1990s, when few memorials for the disease existed and the epidemic was at its height.
Over a period of about six decades, the mill produced millions of board feet of lumber and provided construction material used in towns and cities throughout the state.
The Minnesota turkey industry began with small backyard flocks raised on family farms.
Robert Aaron Brown was a prolific St. Paul painter, mostly of watercolors, whose productive years were roughly 1930 to 1950.
An unusually close election in 1962 led to a recount in the race between Gov. Elmer L. Andersen and his challenger, Lt. Gov. Karl F. Rolvaag.
On Oct. 30, 1991, no one in Minnesota foresaw a blizzard. Local meteorologists predicted a few inches of snow. The snow began to fall in the early to mid-afternoon of Oct. 31 and fell steadily for almost three days.