The only documented hanging held in Clay County occurred on September 20, 1889, when Thomas Brown was hanged for the murder of Moorhead Patrolman Peter Poull. Newspapers across the country reported on the sensational event; the Los Angeles Herald called it “a quiet execution.”

Izaak Maurits Kolthoff was a professor of analytical chemistry at the University of Minnesota from 1927 to 1962. He published over a thousand papers, wrote more than a dozen books, and created and edited the first comprehensive treatise of analytical chemistry. He also played a key part in the development of synthetic rubber during and after World War II. He is known as the “father of modern analytical chemistry.”

Nurses organized the Clara Barton Club at Westbrook’s Schmidt Memorial Hospital in 1948 with three goals. First, they aimed to study the health needs of their community. Second, they promised to keep themselves updated about new drugs and evolving nursing methods. Third, they pledged to support their hospital.

University of Minnesota professor Frank M. "Doc" Whiting brought a unique type of theater entertainment to the Twin Cities with the opening of the Minnesota Centennial Showboat in 1958. For more than fifty years the showboat presented a variety of student theater productions, from melodrama to Shakespeare, in a floating venue on the Mississippi River.

Between 1968 and 2001, supporters of Dr. Henry Schmidt Memorial Hospital in Westbrook combined work and pleasure to organize Hospital Days, an annual public event that raised money for hospital equipment and community amenities. People of all ages were invited to attend, participate in activities, and enjoy good food.

In 1859, the Hudson’s Bay Company built a trading post and steamboat landing near the meeting point of the Red and Buffalo Rivers in Minnesota. They named the post and the surrounding town Georgetown. The traders left the post during the US–Dakota War of 1862 but returned when the war ended. When the Northern Pacific and other railroad companies built lines through Clay County in the 1870s, the Hudson’s Bay Company abandoned its post at Georgetown.

South Dakota Hutterite families with roots in the Anabaptist Reformation of the sixteenth-century moved to Cottonwood County in 1994. There, they established the Neuhof Hutterian Brethren Colony and the Elmendorf Hutterian Brethren Colony south of Mountain Lake, Minnesota.

The Norwegians who made their homes along the Buffalo River in 1870 were among the first European settler-colonists to live in Clay County. The timing of their arrival, before the land had been surveyed, helped to draw other immigrants to the area.

The St. Paul Resettlement Committee formed in October of 1942 to assist with the relocation of Japanese Americans from the concentration camps established by the US government in March of 1942. It was one of thirty-five such committees that operated across the country during World War II.

Finished in the mid-1860s after years of logistical and financial challenges, the LeDuc Historic Estate in Hastings is an excellent example of the Gothic Revival style. It is also one of the few surviving homes designed by influential architect and horticulturist Andrew Jackson Downing.