(Photo / CBS Minnesota)
BATTLE LAKE, Minn. (KFGO/CBS Minnesota) – A Battle Lake, Minnesota, man has turned his great-grandfather’s war mementos into a history lesson. Built in 1886, the Prospect House was once a resort hotel: a place where families would vacation, long before lake cabins were built.
“We could put up over 100 people at one time and feed all of them,” said Jay Johnson. “We had a restaurant, a convenience store, and the first lights in town; the first telephone in town.”
The third floor is preserved to show what the hotel looked like back then, but for Johnson, the real history is in the basement.
“The upstairs is wonderful. The Civil War stuff is priceless,” he said.
Twenty-five years ago, he discovered a large chest in the house that contained 200 of his great-grandfather’s Civil War letters. Union Captain James A. Colehour, also known as “Cap,” was the last Civil War survivor in Otter Tail County, and he left behind a treasure trove of artifacts.
“This collection just kept growing and growing and growing and growing, and at some point or another I said that this has got to be preserved,” Johnson said.
That’s why he opened the Civil War Museum at the bottom of Prospect House. Most of what you see, his great-grandfather collected and preserved.
“He enlisted in the Civil War for $13 a month,” Johnson said. “They really knew that their chances of coming home were poor.”
Cap was part of the first special forces, and after recovering from typhoid, he joined Wilder’s Lightning Brigade of Mounted Infantry. He even kept his riding saddle, which was designed by General George McClellan.
He fought in the Battle of Chickamauga in Georgia, one of the bloodiest battles of the war, where he got shot in the right shoulder.
“When he recovered from being shot through the right shoulder, he was shot through the left shoulder at Muscle Shoals, Alabama,” Johnson said.
Cap’s uniform shows just how big the bullet holes were in each shoulder. Johnson even has a bloody letter that his great-grandfather wrote to his family shortly after he was injured.
“I would call Cap an uncommon common man,” Johnson said.
Cap’s survival, along with his collection of letters, newspapers, guns and ammunition, helps tell what he went through. It’s 160 years of preservation in the Prospect House, and his great-grandson said there’s still more visitors can discover if they’re willing.
“A good share of museums you go to have great collections of old stuff, but they don’t have the story,” Johnson said. “I want them to learn the true story of the Civil War in an unbiased fashion.”
In 2013, the Prospect House was put on the National Register of Historic Places.
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