One of Austin's founders was also its first murder victim

Some say George Hormel put Austin, Minn., on the map when he began processing pork along the Cedar River there in 1891.

But more than 30 years before Hormel arrived, an ornery, Ohio-born entrepreneur in his 20s, Chauncey Leverich, actually mapped out the streets of Austin. Hormel's plant rose on the site of the old Leverich sawmill and dam on the Cedar, Austin's first business in the mid-1850s a few years before Minnesota became a state.

Described as a "brusque two fisted fighting man," Leverich gets credit for building Austin's first frame house and store. He was also Austin's first murder victim — his skull crushed by a wagon spring during an altercation with two drunken friends.

Differing accounts of the fatal fight fill files 165 years later at the Mower County Historical Society in Austin.

"Chauncey's story is an interesting one," said Sue Doocy, the society's research and archives manager. Her collection includes an 1850s tintype of Leverich discovered by his granddaughter in an attic years after he died.

"Leverich, powerfully built, with flowing black hair and beard, rough in appearance and manner and about 26 years old, was of unusual intelligence, full of drive and determination," according to one of the many biographical sketches Doocy shared.

Born in 1827, Leverich moved from Ohio to Iowa with his family when he was about 12 and appears to have inherited a somewhat sketchy character from his father, Joel. One Iowa history book from 1895 says "everybody dreaded" the elder Leverich, especially when he was drinking: "Whiskey seemed to make a demon of him." He was rumored to be a horse thief, and federal and state authorities brought him to court for counterfeiting; he was eventually acquitted.

His son landed in his own legal troubles in Iowa before moving to Minnesota in 1854. Chauncey was thought to be connected to a horse-thieving gang and charged with illegal alcohol sales in Iowa before heading north, though he was found not guilty.

He wasn't a glory seeker, though. People began calling his little settlement on the Cedar River Leverich's Mill after he bought a land claim from a fur trapper named Austin Nichols. When it came time to name the town, Leverich suggested calling it Austin, after Nichols, rather than himself. He thought Austin sounded better.

After two years in the fledgling town, according to a 1903 history published in the Austin Herald, "Leverich had ruled things with a high hand and was feared as a desperate man by nearly every settler in the berg. … it was generally conceded that the town could never prosper with this man as a directing spirit."

The reports of what led to Leverich's death varied wildly, frustrating that writer in 1903: "It would seem that an affair which was so marked and must have impressed every resident of the place so strongly would be clearly remembered. But that is not the case."

By the summer of 1856, Leverich had opened a grocery store and saloon, into which "money poured … like water." Two regulars, Horace Silver and William Oliver, "were suspected of furnishing the major part" of Leverich's liquor revenue. When their wives got word of their spending, "they did not make life entirely pleasant for their husbands." Angry that their drinking had gone public, Silver and Oliver trashed the saloon, smashing candy jars and tapping whiskey barrels. In the fight that followed, Leverich got conked on the head by a wagon spring and died three days later.

Another account says a cigar sparked the violent escalation, according to a wagon driver who had just delivered groceries from Wabasha. Leverich was puffing on a cigar in the bar near Oliver and Silver, who repeatedly knocked the cigar from his mouth with a chisel. The fight spilled outside, where one of the men picked up a spring attached to a heavy piece of wood that had broken off the driver's wagon, threw it at Leverich and struck him over the eyes.

A third version of the story says "liquor flowed freely" in Leverich's saloon on the warm August night of the altercation. Leverich threw out his buddies for their rowdy conduct. They hollered threats and banged on the walls of the saloon until Leverich came out and was struck by an iron bar.

Silver was fined $20 and Oliver $10 after pleading guilty to assault and battery charges. They left town before they could be charged with Leverich's murder. "So legal responsibility for Austin's first murder was never fixed," said a 1935 story.

Not yet 30 and with wife No. 2 pregnant with his fifth child, Leverich was buried behind his store. His remains were later moved to Austin's Oakwood Cemetery, where in 1956 a new marble gravestone was unveiled with a quote attributed to Leverich: "HERE I WILL PITCH MY TENT / & HERE I WILL FOUND A CITY."

It doesn't mention how his story actually ended.

"Although Chauncey Leverich was a man of rough exterior," the 1903 story said, "he was at heart good and his progressive spirit might have done much for the growing town."

Curt Brown's tales about Minnesota's history appear each Sunday. Readers can send him ideas and suggestions at mnhistory@startribune.com. His latest book looks at 1918 Minnesota, when flu, war and fires converged: http://strib.mn/MN1918.