Township History

Princeton had its first permanent settlers in 1854 and was named in honor of John S. Prince of St. Paul, who with others, platted the village in the fall or winter of 1855.  The plat was recorded April 19, 1856.

Prince was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, May 7, 1821 and came to St. Paul in 1854 as agent of the Chouteau Fur Company.  Later, he was engaged in insurance, real estate, and banking.  He was a member of the constitutional convention of Minnesota in 1857, served as mayor of St. Paul from 1860-62 and 1865-66.  Prince was president of the Savings Bank of St. Paul for many years.  He died in St. Paul September 4, 1895.

Princeton Township was organized May 23, 1857.  The village separated from the township on March 3, 1877. Major industries were brickmaking and a potato starch factory.  The Parent County was Ramsey.

Brickton, a village in Princeton Township, section 17, began development in 1889.  The five brickyards located in the area had a capacity of 5,000,000 bricks annually.  The area became well-known for its cream colored "Princeton" brick.  Brickton also had a station of the Great Northern Railway and a post office from 1901 to 1928. Its large brick industry ceased in 1929 in part because the clay resources gave out and the transportation costs became too high.

Long Siding, an unincorporated railway village in section 7 of Princeton Township (originally named Long's Siding), was named for Edgar C. Long, a lumberman and landowner. It had a Great Northern Railway station, a creamery built in 1904, a dance hall in 1907, and a number of other businesses; the post office operated from 1903 to 1954 and as a rural branch until 1959.

The ten southern townships of Mille Lacs County, Dailey, Mudgett, Page, Hayland, Milaca, Borgholm, Milo, Bogus Brook, Greenbush, and Princeton, were known as Monroe County until Mille Lacs County was established in 1860. The county was named for the large lake, called Mille Lacs, meaning a thousand lakes.  Mille Lacs is the source of the Rum River, the primary waterway in Princeton Township.

The name of Rum River, which Carver, in 1766, and Pike, in 1805, found in use by English-speaking fur traders, was indirectly derived from the Dakota. Their name of Mille Lacs, Mde Wakan, translated into Spirit Lake, was given to its river but was changed by the white men to the most common spirituous liquor brought into the Northwest, rum. The map of Maj. Stephen H. Long's expedition in 1823 has the names Spirit Lake and Rum River. Nicollet's map, published in 1843, has "Iskode Wabo or Rum R.," this name given by the Ojibwe but derived by them from the white men's perversion of the ancient Dakota name Wakan, being in more exact translation "Spirit Water." More frequently, as noted by Gilfillan, the Ojibwe name for Rum River was taken from their name for the lake and meant simply the Great Lake River.

A major contributory of the Rum River is the West Branch of Rum River, which receives Stony Brook, Estes Brook (named for Jonathan Estes of St. Anthony) and Prairie Brook.  Other major bodies of water in the township are Mud Lake (crossed by the north line of section 1), Fogg Lake (at the southeast corner of section 17 – named for Frederick A. Fogg, an early homesteader), and Silver Lake (one mile east of the City of Princeton).