Pugnacious Ignatius Donnelly was Minnesota populist and political dynamo

He was a real estate developer turned Republican politician with plenty of bravado and a comb-over hairdo.

"I have already acquired a large fortune," Ignatius Donnelly said in 1857, at the ripe age of 26. "What shall I do to occupy myself the rest of my life?"

By his later years, Donnelly was convinced the American people were "demoralized" by a "vast conspiracy" that put the nation on the verge of "political and material ruin."

Comparing Donnelly to Donald Trump pretty much ends there, though. Consider: The value of foreign immigrants was the topic of Donnelly's first oration on the U.S. House floor in 1864 after being elected to Congress following two terms as Minnesota's lieutenant governor. As an advocate for busting up national banks, creating graduated income taxes and eight-hour workdays, he was more aligned with a modern-day Bernie Sanders.

Before his death in 1901 at 69, Donnelly ran for office more than a dozen times and wrote several lengthy books about everything from philosophy to the lost civilization of Atlantis to his assertion that Francis Bacon actually wrote Shakespeare's plays. He's remembered as one of Minnesota's most eccentric leaders and thinkers.

The son of Irish Catholic immigrants, Donnelly was born in Philadelphia in 1831. His writing career began with a published poetry book at 19. Politics quickly overcame his word-smithing and, just after high school, he joined the Democratic Party and a prestigious Philadelphia law office as a clerk. His boss, Benjamin Bristow, would become the nation's treasury secretary and its first solicitor general.

When Donnelly lost his first campaign for the Pennsylvania Legislature, he moved with his wife, Kate, to the Minnesota Territory in 1856 where he joined the Republican Party. On the banks of the Mississippi River, 20 miles downriver from St. Paul and a few miles west of Hastings, Donnelly became a founder of the territorial boom town known as Nininger in Dakota County. The town was named after John Nininger, another Philadelphia businessman and brother-in-law of former territorial governor Alexander Ramsey.

They promised their buddies back east that the town would soon boast the $30,000 Mammoth Hotel, housing lots for a thousand residents, sawmills, a grist mill, saloons, doctors, factories and good schools. Some of those utopian dreams came true, although the boom town would quickly go bust following the financial panic of 1857.

The get-rich-quick scheme saw founders such as Donnelly and Nininger investing $6 for the original lots and selling them off for as much as $100 by December 1856. In one case, Donnelly and Nininger paid about $28 each for 101 lots and sold 17 of those parcels within two months to a New York speculator for nearly $150 apiece. All told, Donnelly controlled about 1,000 acres in Dakota County just before Minnesota became a state in 1858.

Donnelly became the editor of a land speculating propaganda sheet called the Emigrant Aid Journal, a newspaper placed in reading rooms of Atlantic Ocean steamships. He took out ads in at least two dozen eastern newspapers and printed thousands of cards that were distributed in barbershops and hotels across the East Coast.

While Trump used reality TV to promote his brand, Donnelly arranged mass meetings and used his oratorial skill to wow crowds at the Broadway House in New York — later printing his speech in pamphlets.

Minnesota, Donnelly and his partners insisted, offered "the finest lands the sun of heaven ever smiled upon," and a healthy climate that could cure tuberculosis and other maladies. Everything from elk to buffalo was abundant and 42 pigeons, they said, were once dropped with a single shotgun blast. Donnelly offered memberships to his Minnesota Emigrant Aid Association for 25 $1 installments with free farm implements and train tickets to Nininger among the perks.

But the financial meltdown of 1857 dried up the needed capital. Steamboat companies and postal officials decided to service Hastings instead of Nininger. And an early legislative attempt failed that would have allowed the town to collect taxes to finance the improvements.

By the winter of 1858, Nininger was incorporated as a town, not a city, and Donnelly won the race for town council president, 113 to 3. But his attempt to make Nininger the Dakota County seat came up short, with Hastings wresting that honor away from Mendota.

At its peak, Nininger featured between 500 and 1,000 residents, two sawmills, six saloons, a dance hall, two factories, eight general stores — and Donnelly's $8,000, two-story house was the town's largest.

But as soon as it blossomed, Nininger disappeared. Failing to secure railroad service was among its pitfalls. The grand hotel was never built. No steamboat arrived. It remains a township in Dakota County but Donnelly's big home is gone, too, finally collapsing from decay in 1939.

The 1857 financial panic hit Donnelly particularly hard. His correspondences from the late 1850s show him juggling lawsuits and dodging debts. He lost an 1858 Minnesota state Senate race, but went on to win races for lieutenant governor and Congress and launch a national populist third party in 1892 in his 60s, only to lose races for governor and vice president on his People's Party ticket.

Throughout his topsy-turvy career, the pugnacious Ignatius Donnelly remained upbeat, telling his Republican supporters in 1858: "If, then, we have failed to accomplish political success, let us not be cast down, but, comforted by the assurance that we have done our best, gird up our loins once more, and prepare ourselves again to fight the good fight."

Curt Brown's tales about Minnesota's history appear each Sunday. Readers can send him ideas and suggestions at mnhistory@startribune.com. A collection of his columns is available as the e-book "Frozen in History" at startribune.com/ebooks.