immediately after the admission of Minnesota, Henry Masters, a lawyer, native of Maine, was made governor. He held the office until his death one year later, on the fifth day of September, 1859. No record is left of his executive acts. Samuel J. Albright was elected as Masters's successor. Albright was a newspaper man and promoter; he was speaker of the House of Representatives and preferred that position to the governorship, and so declined to qualify as governor, and the legislature elected Judge W. W. Brookings to fill the vacancy. Both Masters and Brookings were governors only by common consent, as Congress had not yet organized the territory; but Judge Brookings continued as the nominal governor of Dakota until the appointment of Governor William Jayne, by President Lincoln, in April, 1861.
Governor Brookings was a lawyer and a man of large ability. He came to Dakota with the Dubuque colony in the summer of 1857, and was soon made the general manager of the companies' interests. He was a man of great energy, and being misinformed that the Yankton Indians had relinquished their lands to the government, he started in the winter of 1858, from Sioux Falls, to claim the town site at Yankton. When he started, the weather was warm, the snow had melted, the streams were swollen, and he soon became thoroughly wet. Before night, however, a terribly cold storm set in. He found himself freezing, and the nearest point for help was back at the settlement at Sioux Falls. He turned back with all haste, but before he reached the Falls he was very badly frozen, and it soon became evident that the only
