1/26/2012:
North Dakota’s second post office was established on this date in 1855 at St. Joseph by Indian trader Charles Grant. The first post office, at Pembina, was founded five years earlier. St. Joseph was an off-shoot of the Pembina settlement. Since the end of the eighteenth century, Pembina had served as “…the home base for the Metis bison hunters and freemen who challenged the trading monopoly of the Hudson’s Bay Company.”
The region of the northern Red River was controlled largely by the Hudson Bay Company, operating in Canadian lands north of the 49th parallel under the authority of the Crown. The company brought settlers to the Pembina area as employees, encouraging them to bring their families. At the behest of the Hudson Bay Company, a Roman Catholic mission was established in 1818 at Pembina to serve the settlers, although the Catholic mission mainly served the French Catholic Metis community.
The Metis traders competed with the Hudson Bay Company, and when the company learned that the site of Pembina was south of the 49th parallel, making it part of the United States, they ordered the Catholic mission to relocate. The mission moved north, but the settlers moved west in search of new trading grounds. American Fur Company agent Norman Kittson built a trading post at the site of St. Joseph in 1843. Today, the trading post still stands as the oldest building in North Dakota.
Father Belcourt, of the mission, decided to follow the settlers west, and relocated the church school to the same area. He established St. Joseph in 1845. At the time, Metis trader Charles Grant was working out of Pembina, but found the competition from the north, the flooding from the Red River to the east, and the dangers posed by the encroaching Sioux tribes to the south too much. After burying three young children in Pembina between 1850 and 1855, Grant and his wife relocated to St. Joseph, now a town of nearly one thousand. In addition to his trading partnership with Charles Bottineau, Grant established a post office and served as post-master to the area. In 1867, Grant left for Manitoba for unknown reasons, although his departure may have been related to the Riel Rebellion, in which Metis leader Louis Riel gathered followers along the Red River Settlement in Manitoba to oppose British rule in Canada between 1867 and 1869.
Dakota Datebook written by Jayme L. Job
Sources:
http://www.statehistoricalfoundation.com/?id=81
http://www.scribd.com/doc/52929840/Charles-Grant
www.nytimes.com/1861/07/12/news/an-indian-fight-battle-between-the-sioux-and-chippewas.html
http://56755.blogspot.com/2007/08/history-of-pembina-metis-cemetery.html
http://genealogytrails.com/ndak/earlysettlers.html