SIGEL GRANVILLE DYER:

Sigel Granville Dyer was born in May 1877 in Bethel, Minnesota, the son of Stephen and Rocselana (Cooper) Dyer. In April 1898, he enrolled in Company B, 14th Minnesota Volunteers and was stationed in Knoxville, Tennessee at Chickamauga until September 1898. After the regiment returned to Minnesota, Dyer was sent to Leech Lake, where the Deputy Marshall had called for military support in enforcing a warrant for the arrest of two Ojibwe men for a liquor violation. Dyer's letter to his mother soon after arriving describes his duties as dull, but tensions on the reservation were already high due to a dispute over logging rights which the government had thus far failed to address. When a soldier's gun went off accidentally, the armed conflict later known as the Battle of Sugar Point erupted.

By 1900, Dyer was living in Minneapolis, where he worked for Northwestern Telephone Exchange Company (later Northwestern Bell) stringing telephone lines. He married Mary Theresa Thiede in 1905 and the couple had three children. Dyer retired from Northwestern Bell in May 1942 after over 42 years of service. He died 5 December 1950.

Biographical information was taken from the collection.

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Letter, written on birch bark by Sigel Granville Dyer in October 1898 to his mother from Camp Shafer (Farris, Minn.) where he was stationed as a member of the Minnesota National Guard, describing incidents and conditions relating to the "Leech Lake Uprising." Accompanying the letter are three volumes of biographical and genealogical material on the Dyer, Thiede, and other related families, compiled by Dyer's grandson, Joseph Pehoushek.

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Availability:

The collection is open for research use.

Preferred Citation:

[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. Sigel Granville Dyer Letter and Family History Materials. Minnesota Historical Society.

See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples.

Accession Information:

Accession number: 15,675

Processing Information:

Processed by: Lara D. Friedman~Shedlov, August 2002

Catalog ID number: 09-00323187

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This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.

Topics:

Ojibwa Indians -- Wars, 1898.

Sugar Point, Battle of, 1898.

Persons:

Dyer, Sigel Granville.

Dyer family.

Thiede family.

Organizations:

Minnesota. National Guard. Infantry Regiment, 14th.

Places:

Leech Lake Indian Reservation -- History.

Camp Shafer (Minn.).

Document Types:

Genealogies.

Bark letters (correspondence).

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