---

National Bank Notes > Minnesota

---

---

Redwood Falls, First NB, M5826
Fr. 574 $5 1882VB
Grade: VF+    

---

REDWOOD FALLS is a city in Redwood and Renville Counties and is the county seat of Redwood County. First settled in the spring and summer of 1864, Redwood Falls was platted October 1865 and incorporated as a village March 9, 1876. The name is taken from the falls of the Redwood River. The city is located in an area first opened to white settlers in 1851; the U.S. government built a sawmill at the falls of the Redwood River in 1855 and later a gristmill. Col. Sam McPhail platted the town in 1854 and built the first house; the post office began in 1864. The Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad came through North Redwood in 1884. Richard W. Sears, the founder of the Sears and Roebuck Company, was the first depot agent for North Redwood. The story of the birth of Sears and Roebuck begins with a Redwood Falls jeweler refusing an order of watches he claimed never to have ordered. Sears got permission to sell these watches to other agents and soon learned that the mail order business could be profitable. He quit the railroad shortly thereafter and set up in Minneapolis as a watch business. In 1887 he took watch repairman Alvah R. Roebuck on as a partner, moved the business to Chicago and put out a mail order catalog. Sears and Roebuck became a multi-million dollar business by the turn of the century, and a billion dollar business by the 1960s.

---