Built in 1852 the Prescott house at 4458 Snelling Avenue South, was the third oldest house in Minneapolis when it was demolished to make way for public works vehicle storage in 1980. Philander Prescott was born September 17, 1801, the son of a doctor and a native of Phelps, New York. In the spring of 1819 he headed west, stopping a few months in Detroit, Michigan, before continuing on to Fort Snelling. He married in 1823 Na-he-no-Wenah (Spirit of the Moon), also known as Mary Keeiyah, daughter of Man-Who-Flies, a Dakota subchief who lived near Lake Calhoun. She was born around 1802 and died on March 29, 1867 at Shakopee, Minnesota. Naginowenah was 21 years old and Philander was 32. They would be married for 40 years and had nine children. Five survived into adulthood. During his life on the frontier Prescott served as a government interpreter of the Dakota language including for the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux. He worked as a miner, a trapper, and on a steamboat on the Mississippi River. Prescott also ran trading posts in several locations, and farmed. From 1839 to 1862 he operated a trading post along the St. Croix River – its location became the town of Prescott, Wisconsin, named for him. In 1854 Prescott and the family left the stone house at Fort Snelling. Naginowenah, now 52, and Prescott, 63, established a homestead about a half mile from Minnehaha Falls. They had four children still living with them: Hiram, age 22, Lawrence Taliaferro, 16, Julia, 13, and Sophia, 10. Their house sat on the main route from Fort Snelling to St. Anthony Falls, at what is now Forty-Third Street and Minnehaha Avenue in South Minneapolis. Prescott He was killed at the Lower Sioux (or Redwood) Agency during the Dakota War of 1862. He is buried in Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery in Minneapolis as are his wife and son.
