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Townships List of Places Towner |
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This information is predominately from the McHenry History 1885-1985, partially quoted below, along with edits and supplements from this writer.  According to some of the old timers who had lived here in the very early days, Newport was located on the west bank of the Mouse River just a few rods north of the Highway No. 2 bridge that spans the river about four miles west of Towner. "North Dakota Place Names" indicates it was in Section 10, of current Newport Township (T156-R76) and that the origin of the name is unknown. In addition to the Post Office, C. F. Anderson and Nels Jacobson operated stores, and the town even had a newspaper for a short time, but the Great Northern Railroad established its station at Towner in 1886, and Newport vanished quite abruptly. Now only the township and the school district carry the Newport name.
What makes Newport different from the other villages is that there is no record, outside of the Post Office, of when or by whom it was started. The only clue we have is the article in the October, 1898 issue of THE RECORD published by C.A. Lounsberry in Fargo:
"In the early days there were Indian trading posts at the point where Towner now stands. William Moorhead and others from Pembina and St. Joe, going there and spending the winter, taking the catch of furs to St. Paul by cart the next spring, and returning after the buffalo hunt the next fall. Moorhead used to tell many thrilling stories of adventure. He was located there during the Indian war of 1862, when the Indian massacres occurred in Minnesota. At this time all kinds of wild game abounded, including grizzly bear, the brown bear,
goats, and more recently, deer, moose, elk, antelope, caribou, foxes, wolves and wild fowl of every sort. Eastern hunters who have found rare sport in the vicinity of Towner for many years, have, however, somewhat reduced the quantity."
Support for the theory that Newport was, in fact, the old trading post mentioned by Lounsberry, comes from an article published in the MINOT DAILY NEWS sometime probably in 1935. The article tells of Joseph Bollig, [Obituary] a fourteen year old runaway from Eddysville, Iowa who came west alone to find his half-brother, Lewis Kendel, who, with Yankee Robinson, was picking up buffalo bones along the Mouse River. Bollig had worked his way to Creel City, (now Devils Lake) and from there had ridden with a settler going to his claim in the Turtle Mountains. When they reached Gilbertson's ford on the Mouse River the settler had stopped his team, set young Bollig down and told him to follow the river upstream if he wished to reach his destination. It was July 4, 1884 and the day was hot. As he followed the river it looked more and more inviting so at last, Joe took off his clothes and waded in. Shortly he was startled to hear rifle shots and see bullets skipping across the water. Joe left the water, snatched up his clothes and dropped down flat in the tall grass. His suspicion that Indians were after him grew when up the river a distance he saw figures clad in buckskin shirts. He lay still for a long time. Finally, his curiosity outweighed his fear and he crept cautiously up the river in the direction he had seen taken by the men in the buckskin shirts. Suddenly he saw a log shack and as he watched, he occasionally saw men in buckskin shirts go in and out. From his distance Joe could not tell whether they were white men or Indians and so he waited. Finally, late in the day, a woman with red hair came out of the cabin. Joe was convinced that no Indian woman had red hair and so he made himself known. He had found Newport.
The men there told him his brother and Yankee Robinson were about five miles upstream and Joe found them. He stayed at Newport for a few years and picked buffalo bones, then worked as a cowhand in McKenzie County and rode the range in Montana for a number of years. When the story was written he was manager of the St. Anthony and Dakota Lumberyard in Towner and was sixty-five years of age.
None of this would prove conclusively that Newport was the old trading post established more than twenty years before the first settlers came to the county, but the location is right, the cabin was old even in 1884, its location was well known and it was frequented by hunters and trappers. Today nothing remains of the site. Deterioration,
normal land usage and a hundred years of flooding by the Mouse River have obliterated any evidence of its once colorful and precarious existance.
As more settlers came into this part of the county, Newport grew and on September 3, 1884 a post office was established there with Charles E. Jones as
postmaster. New businesses opened and the village thrived until Towner was established on the railroad. Then the businesses moved across the river to Towner and the post office was closed on
April 23, 1887 with the mail being sent to Towner. In the meantime the Towner post office was established on December 11, 1886 with Robert McComb as the first postmaster.
Early 1890's recorded landowners in Section 10, were Fred Dompier [McHenry History 1885-1985, Page 450, Burial], Frank Loftus,
John Rosecrans [McHenry History 1885-1985, Page 473, Burial],
James Rosencrans [McHenry History 1885-1985, Page 473, Burial] [Note: Although John and James were brothers they spelled their surnames differently],
and William V. Williams.
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![Obituary]](obitsbolligjmrj19510111.jpg){kind=link}