Editing St. Hilaire, Minnesota (section)

==History==
St. Hilaire was platted in 1882 and incorporated as a village on the auspicious date of July 4, 1883.  Also on that date, St. Hilaire had rail service for the first time, as the [[Great Northern Railway (U.S.)|Great Northern Railway]] opened a branch line from [[Crookston, Minnesota|Crookston]], [[Minnesota]] through Shirley, seven miles north of Crookston, Dorothy and Ives Station, to St. Hilaire.

St. Hilaire received its name in one of three ways:
* A Frenchman named St. Hilaire lived in a shack by the [[Red Lake River]], selling items like [[gunpowder]] and [[tobacco]], and when an item was needed, residents would "go to St. Hilaire" for it, and the name stuck.
* A Frenchman named Arthur Yvernault bought land on which the townsite was then platted and named for his hometown in [[France]].
* It was named by Hon. Frank Ives for the French Statesman and author [[Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire]], who was born in [[Paris]], August 19, 1805, and died November 24, 1895.  Frank Ives was a judge in Crookston, MN, which was the county seat of Polk County (of which Pennington was then a part) and his son, Harry Ives, was the postmaster when the St. Hilaire post office began in 1882 while still part of [[Polk County, Minnesota|Polk County]].  Frank Ives owned land in St. Hilaire, but never lived there. This third possibility was favored by historian [[Warren Upham]], and by extension by the [[Minnesota Historical Society]].<ref>Upham, Warren (2001) Minnesota Place Names, A Geographical Encyclopedia, Third Edition, p436,437; MHS Press; {{ISBN|0-87351-396-7}}</ref>

Harry Ives was also the publisher of the St. Hilaire Spectator, the first newspaper to serve this community.  The Spectator was published from 1883 to 1942, when it closed and sold its subscription list to the Thief River Falls Times.