Name is often misspelled but should be Marion Ellsworth Carson. In his obituary, it is spelled M. Ellsworth Carson. Born 1863.
In May 1890, M. E. Carson blazed his way and cut a wagon road through the forests to the present site of Bemidji, from his trading post called Moose, twenty miles to the west, and from that point hauled in a wagon load of supplies with which he started in trade. In the meantime he built a small rude log in the immediate vicinity of where his prospective customers were dwelling in their teepees and wickiups on the lake shore. This building was located close to where the Mississippi River links Lakes Irving and Bemidji. (From Bemidji Pioneer, March 27, 1909)
Mary, Shaynowishkung’s daughter, Bahgahmaushequay was born in 1873, according to the Indian Census rolls. According to the 1900 census, she was born in May 1874. According to the 1905 Beltrami Census, she was born in 1869, and she is listed as black. According to her Texas death certificate she was born May 1873 in Cass Lake and is listed as white. On one of the Indian census rolls, she is listed as 1/2, but she was a full blood Ojibwe. She was born in the Cass Lake area.
There is no record in the Minnesota marriages for them, although there is a record for Michael Spain who married Jessie Carson (the Carson brothers’ sister) in 1890 in Becker County. so the marriage should have been recorded somewhere. On the 1900 census, their marriage is listed as 1893. Laura, her daughter, was born December 18, 1892. Based on her daughter’s birth, this would make her about 19 when she married Carson.
M.E. Carson was postmaster for Bemidji from 1894-1898. Daughter Myrtle E. Carson was born in 1895, according to Indian Census rolls.
Marion and Mary Carson settled west of the city limits. M. E. Carson ran on the Republican ticket against A. B. Hazen in 1902, so he must have been popular with the public. He did not win, but Carson was a public figure. M. E. Carson managed the Princess Grocery Company store when it opened for business on April 2, 1904. He was selected as an officer of the A.F. & F. M. chapter in 1902. Carson was one of three Bemidji delegates to the annual Modern Woodmen County convention in 1905.
They moved to Texas and they died in Texas.