Historic Homes and Businesses in Carver - Carver County Historical ...

Charles Johnson‟s wife, Emily Christina Johnson, who was born in Sweden on Oct. 2,
1829, died on June 24, 1902. Charles Johnson died at the home of his daughter in
Minneapolis on Feb. 9, 1920 at the age of 86. Charles Johnson‟s funeral was held in the
Carver Town Hall with Masonic rites. The Johnsons are buried in Mount Hope Cemetery
in Carver. One of the Johnson‟s daughters was married to Herman O. Muehlberg, the son
of Capt. Herman Muehlberg, the editor of the Carver Free Press newspaper and Adjutant
General of the State of Minnesota.
200 Third Street West, Christian Bristle House. Built about 1875 for Christian and
Anna Elisabeth Bristle, who in 1869 purchased the lot the house sits on, as well as two
adjacent lots immediately to the west in 1879.
Christian Bristle was born in Baden in the German States on August 8, 1845, the son of
pioneers who brought their family to America in 1850. Christian Bristle came to the
Carver area in 1856 and stayed with relatives on a farm in Benton Township in Carver
County until 1862, when the 6‟4” Bristle passed as older than his 17 years and enlisted on
August 4, 1862 in company E of the Sixth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry. Bristle‟s
company was sent to fight in the Sioux Uprising of 1862. It was Bristle, while standing
guard duty out on a military burial detail, who first sounded the alarm at the Battle of
Birch Coulee as 500 Dakota Indians moved forward in a night time surprise attack on the
military force. Bristle later gave military service in the Civil War until mustered out on
Aug. 19, 1865.
About 1867 Christian married Anna Elisabeth Schoemakers (Shumaker) of McLeod
County, Minnesota. Anna was born Nov. 9, 1846 in Montfort, Limburg, in the
Netherlands. During the period 1870-1875 Christian and Anna Elisabeth Bristle lost
three daughters and a son to childhood illness, all before age two.
After the Civil War Christian tried his hand at clerking and then went into business with a
certain M. J. Ginter for eight years. In the summer of 1874 Ginter & Bristle finished
putting a warehouse addition on their store and received 100 barrels of salt from Duluth
“which they were selling cheap”. Ginter seems to have left the business sometime in the
1870s, perhaps being the same M. J. Ginter who later owned a Hennepin County grocery
store. In the early years Indians came to Carver every spring to gather ginseng and at the
same time traded regulary with Christian Bristle. Bristle until 1882 was part owner of a
general store and retail grocery called Bristle and Bengtson, his partner being Swedishborn
Andrew L. Bengtson (born about 1845). In 1880 the firm of Bristle and Bengtson
was listed among the highest tax payers in Carver County. On Jan. 7, 1886 Christian
Bristle advertised in the Carver Free Press newspaper that he dealt in general
merchandise, dry goods, notions, hats, caps, boots, shoes, crockery, stoneware, groceries,
with “Prices down to rock bottom. I will not be undersold. I also keep on hand a full line
of guns! guns! and gunnery materials, breech loading shotguns, ammunition, etc. etc. I
will sell at lowest market prices.”
After having some health issues Bristle quit the general store business and tried his hand
at banking for a time before owning and operating the Carver Celery Farm, part of which