Land Office Bank

Land Office Bank. . In early spring 1882, homesteaders Francis Rogers and Henry McCarten formed a party of settlers that entered Brown County, North Dakota to file land claims. Members of this party were the first settlers of Sargent Township. The township was platted in the southern part of Ransom County the following year at the proposed crossing point of the Northern Pacific Railroad's Wadena, Fergus Falls, and Black Hills branch line and the Dakota and Great Southern railway. Cogswell, North Dakota served as a homestead for early settlers in Sargent County since the McCarten-McGraw party arrived and it was platted in 1890. Many towns and businesses moved from the Sargent Township to Cogswell in 1890, and Cogswell was incorporated as a village in 1905., Herodotus H. Taylor moved to Sargent County in 1883 and secured farmland in the Taylor Township, named in honor of his father. He successfully cultivated the land until 1899, then he sold the land and retired to Forman, North Dakota. Taylor preferred keeping busy, however, and worked in an office of register deeds before he established the Sargent County State Bank in Cogswell in 1904. The structural design for the Sargent County State Bank was used by Carl Stenhjem and his team to achieve his dream of constructing a replica land office and bank at Bonanzaville., (Caption) , Photo of the Sargent County State Bank that Carl Stenhjem modeled Bonanzaville's Land Office Bank after.