The Ard Godfrey House

Ard Godfrey was a skilled millwright from the East Coast who was recruited by early settler and entrepreneur Franklin Steele in 1848 to build a dam and lumber mill at the falls of St. Anthony (now part of the city of Minneapolis) in what was then called the Wisconsin Territory.

Not long after lumbermen drove the first logs down the river to the new mill, Ard traveled back to Maine to fetch his wife and young children. The trip back to St. Anthony was delayed because shortly after Ard's arrival in Maine, they suffered the death of one of their children and Harriet Godfrey became pregnant.  

The Godfreys set out from Maine together.  When they reached Beloit, Wisconsin, Harriet and the children stopped to spend the winter with relatives.  Ard returned to St. Anthony  on horseback.  He arrived late in the fall of 1848 and began building a one and a half story wood-frame house for his family. Harriet and their children arrived in St. Anthony by riverboat in April of 1849. Ard was 35; Harriet was 32 and eight months pregnant. A month later Harriet gave birth to a baby girl they called Hattie.

The young family settled into their new house where they would live until 1853, when their growing family and new economic opportunities took them to Minnehaha Falls. Ard owned land there and built another house, a dam, a sawmill, and a gristmill.