My mother wrote this. She grew up in St. Paul on University Avenue near Marion street and apparently my Grandmother who was born in the early 1900’s lived near the river until the family accumulated enough wealth to move to higher ground.
“The Mississippi River is an important part of my heritage.. My great-grandparents, Jean Baptiste and Louise St. Aubin, came to St. Paul from Montreal, Canada, in 1853 and settled in a house on the south side of the Mississippi River, a neighborhood known as the West Side Flats.
South of the flats, the woods crept up the steep incline of Cherokee Heights where the wealthy looked down at the struggling immigrant community. Across the river the fledgling city struggled to keep pace with the surge of new immigrants from Canada, Ireland and Germany. Railroad tracks converged from north and south on the river bank, and the clatter of locomotives blended with the horns of river boats.
My mother told many stories about life on the river. Some years the river exploded in foaming white fury against the shanties at Lilydale, tore through the homes of Italian immigrants on the Levee, crept into basements and turned yards into ponds. When they had fought the river for enough years and saved enough money, the St. Aubins moved to higher ground–Cherokee Heights, Frogtown, and houses up the hill east and west of Robert Street., but their stories of life near the river were passed on through generations.”
