Staff photo by Fritz Busch New Ulm historian and author Terry Sveine presents highlights of New Ulm pioneer Francis Baasen’s career at the Brown County Historical Society Museum Annex Thursday. Sveine’s book, “The Life and Times of Francis Baasen” is available at the Brown County Historical Society Museum.

NEW ULM — Historian and author Terry Sveine said very few people knew who Francis Baasen was when he started doing research on him in 2010.

“In my opinion, he is the most publicly accomplished guy in New Ulm history,” Sveine said Thursday at Lunch and a Bite of History in the Brown County Historical Society Museum Annex.

“In the end, you can see all the things he’s done and judge if he is or not,” Sveine said.

His digging into the Baasen family history began in 2007 when Sveine and about two dozen others formed the Luxembourg Heritage Society of Southern Minnesota.

Looking for topics for the group’s newsletter, he found a book “Luxembourgers in the New World” with a paragraph describing Francis Baasen as an “accomplished Luxembourg-American.”

Sveine said he found more information about Baasen that kept growing and growing. He was a pioneer settler, the first lawyer in New Ulm in 1855, elected to the Territorial Legislature as a Brown County representative in 1857, the first Minnesota Secretary of State, a First Lieutenant and Regiment Quartermaster for the 1st Minnesota volunteer infantry, Judge of probation, County and Election Judge, Justice of the Peace, Court Referee, New Ulm City and Brown County supervisor, New Ulm postmaster, co-founder of the Grand Army of the Republic Hecker Post in New Ulm and Minnesota National Guard Assistant Adjutant General. He also helped form the New Ulm Battery and Holy Trinity Catholic Church.

Sveine’s book includes Baasen’s interaction with Minnesota Gov. Alexander Ramsey after the Civil War began in April 1861.

“Baasen led the 80-man New Ulm militia (a military force raised from the civilian population to supplement a regular army in emergency) of about 80, and offered himself and the militia for the war,” said Sveine. “The offer was denied because the army quota was filled, but Gov. Ramsey wanted their weapons. Baasen tore up his (military executive class) commission on Ramsey’s desk, saying he ‘would not be a tin soldier.’

After the Civil War, Francis Baasen returned to New Ulm to continue his legal career. He married Mary Belland Martell in 1869 in New Ulm. The couple had five children. They moved to near what is now Redstone quarry, now New Ulm Quartzite Quarries near Courtland.

Sveine said Baasen later owned a ferry, general store and kiln. He served six years on the Nicollet County Board of Commissioners.

Baasen died at 71 at the Minnesota Soldier’s Home in Minneapolis in 1901 after stubbing his toe and catching gangrene.

Sveine said the reason Baasen isn’t more famous is after his wife died in 1929, his family didn’t stay here. Baasen was buried in New Ulm but a gravestone for he and his family members is in Milwaukee, where most of his family lived.

Finding sources on Baasen’s life and times was the biggest challenge for Sveine in writing a 419-page biography on him.

“I used 57 newspapers and books or other publications to write it,” he said.

The book is available at the Brown County Historical Museum.

Sveine said he would like to continue writing about New Ulm history with biographies of lesser-known people from New Ulm’s past.