"I came home from No. Dakota where we had completed building there.
Uncle John Foley asked me to ride with him to Gilman. Gilbert Grant had filed a plat of St. Francis and town of
Ronneby was going strong. John was mad at Grant who started Ronneby because there was a grain elevator,
some stores and a number of businesses. John would swear every time he met a load of grain or ties going to
Ronneby. He said Shull who was running the Foley Bros. store is not selling enough goods to buy salt. I am
ready to sell out everything in the store and you and I will buy a fine house in St. Paul. [Foley Bros. Headquarters
were in St. Paul.] There were no roads into Ronneby from the north, so they had to go through Foley. John called
Tim Foley and they met. He built the grain elevator with a 20,000-bushel capacity. William Hall
would get up at 4 am and go to every farmer within a ten miles each day and bought anything they had to sell.
He got back home at 8:30 and worked all day. John Foley came back a month later and said. "Willie you sure have them
coming, Its great" Then I said: "Now Start A Town" and Uncle John [Foley] replied, "go get Felix Parent and the
County Surveyor and we will start." We laid out a few lots in the Plat of Foley and the first year we made
$5,000 selling lots. When I bought the stock of Foley Bros. store, I sent for my brothers John and George Hall
and latter the rest of my family, mother and sisters came. I kept working for Foley Bros. as superintendent
of railroad construction until 1908 when I quit. In the meantime we built Hall Bros. store."
from letter telling of the start of the village
by Wm. Hall Sr.
Letter provided courtesy of Dennis Lewandowski and on file in the Benton Co. Historical Society
