When the farmers of Traverse County founded Minnesota's first Farm Bureau, it signaled a new movement in Minnesota agriculture. In the century since its creation, the Farm Bureau has worked on the local, state, and national levels to support farmers and act as the "voice of agriculture" in America.

By the summer of 1862, it was clear that the Civil War would not be over quickly. In July and August, President Lincoln called for several hundred thousand additional men to enlist for the Union cause. In response, the Tenth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment formed between August and November of that year.

In 1864, the officers and men of the Eighth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment traveled from Fort Ridgley deep into Dakota Territory and then returned to Minnesota. Next, they headed to Tennessee. From there, the regiment moved to Washington, D.C., North Carolina, and finally, back to Minnesota. During that final year of the Civil War, the Eighth claimed to have covered more miles and experienced more variety in its service than any other regiment in the Union Army.

During a fifteen-year span beginning in 1837, a series of Christian missionaries moved into the Mdewakanton Dakota village of Red Wing. Their goals, in the language of the day, were the "education and civilization" of the Indians. Welcomed by some of their hosts and tolerated by others, these Euro-Americans attempted to convince the Mdewakanton to adopt the ways of the whites.

From 1906 to the 1960s, Danish-born brothers Valdemar and Soren Egekvist built a model of immigrant enterprise. They applied Old World skills in a New World economy. Their chain of Minneapolis bakery stores ultimately led to nationally distributed baked goods.

In the 1880s, Minnesota farmers saw the need for education but resisted "book farming," or learning how to farm by reading instructional text. Farmers' institutes, lecture series that traveled to rural communities and taught practical farming skills, were popular alternatives in the 1880s through the 1920s.

Founded in 1888, St. Peter Claver Church was the first African American Catholic Church in Minnesota. The parish was created by St. Paul’s African American Catholic community and an Archbishop who vowed to “blot out the color line.”

Before World War II, operating streetcars was considered a man’s job. A 1916 Twin City Rapid Transit (TCRT) report shows sixty-eight female employees out of a workforce of 4,300, and those few were telephone operators and clerical office workers.

Clay provided the basis for thousands of jobs in Goodhue County during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Stoneware, roof tiles, and clay pipes were all produced by area firms and widely sold.

The Farmers' Holiday Association was formed in 1932. The Midwestern organization successfully fought against farm foreclosures with novel strategies like penny auctions, but unsuccessfully lobbied Congress for a federal system that would pay farmers for their crops based on the cost of production.