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General Rosser's legacy.

Article Excerpt
What's the connection between Rosser Avenue, Brandon's "Main" street, and the Rural Municipality of Rosser near Winnipeg? What do the communities of Brandon and Stonewall have in common? How about the connection between The Battle of Little Bighorn and the creation of Manitoba's second city?

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It all starts with the railway. At the beginning of 1881 what we now call southwestern Manitoba was part of the Northwest Territories, as the western provincial boundary stretched only slightly past Portage la Prairie. It was, quite literally, not on the map. Specifically, it was not on CPR Chief Engineer Sanford Fleming's map, dated 8 April 1880, and submitted as part of his report on possible rail routes westward. He mentions that the regions thereabouts had "so far as known, have not been explored." (1)

Though perhaps not explored, the territory had been considered in an abstract way. Mr. Fleming, despite continuing to advocate for a slightly more northern route along the Little Saskatchewan Valley and skirting the Riding Mountains to the south, also envisioned a southerly extension that would cross the Assiniboine near the mouth of the Little Saskatchewan. He noted the agricultural potential of the region and that it might become a site for a future city that would "shortly become important." (2)

This largely unpopulated area was slowly developing the first tentative forays into agriculture with the noticeable beginnings of towns seen at Rapid City, Minnedosa (Tanner's Crossing), Millford (near the confluence of the Souris and Assiniboine Rivers), and Grand Valley (a few kilometres east of Brandon). These locations are mentioned in the George Wyatt's 1881 Guide for Settlers, which includes a list of post offices and charts with destinations for both steamboat and stagecoaches, (3) while the site that would later become Brandon was an undeveloped homestead.

Before the end of 1881, this unassuming patch of riverside prairie had become a bustling town with hotels, grocery stores, restaurants and various outfitters popping up like crocuses on the sunny side of a hill. Now, in any normal prairie town, activity of this sort would be taking place on Main Street; or on a main street by any of the other generic names: Front Street, Railway Street, sometimes even Commercial Avenue. Even Winnipeg has a Main Street.

Instead, Brandon has Rosser Avenue and it was named after the CPR's Chief Engineer who established the site: Thomas Lafayette Rosser. That's a considerably enduring tribute considering that the man worked for the CPR for less than a year and departed in the midst of accusations, recriminations and scandal. And also considering that two of Rosser's bosses, Alpheus B. Stickney (4) and William Cornelius Van Horne (5) find their surnames on less prominent avenues.

But then Rosser was not your ordinary railroad engineer. In fact, it is proper to refer to him as General Rosser, an American no less, southerner even, and a well-respected veteran of the American Civil War.

That said, the man liked naming things and in his short time in our province invoked his admiration for fellow countryman Stonewall Jackson by bestowing that name on an upstart town just north of Winnipeg and had his own name attached to a village and a municipality also near that city. He even had the village of Griswold, near Brandon, named after one of his American friends. (6) You might say that he left his mark.

In the spring of 1881 this former soldier, well into his second career as a Railway Chief Engineer, crossed the Assiniboine River at a point about 200 kilometres west of Winnipeg, bargained briefly with a Mr. Adamson and purchased the town site of Brandon for little more than a song. As with many other deals struck in the creation of railway towns in the era, potential profit for...

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