Fourth Generation

269. Robert Milton DOUGHTY was born on 17 January 1847 in Springfield, Sangamon County, Illinois. He died on 28 May 1912 at the age of 65 in Pipestone, Pipestone County, Minnesota.

Civil War Pension Index Card
Robert M. Doughty served in Company C, 30th Wisconsin Infantry. Filed for invalid pension, 25 Feb 1880. His widow, Nettie C. Doughty, filed from Minnesota, 15 Jul 1912.

1879
ROBERT M. DOUGHTY, the genial boniface of Doughty's hotel, Holland, is one of Pipestone county's very earliest settlers and has been an interested observer of and an active participant in many of the events of transformation from a barren waste to the present land of fruitful acreage. He was born near Springfield, Illinois, on January 17, 1847, and is
one in a family of nine children. His parents, Robert and Lydia (Adams) Doughty, were natives of Indiana, in which state they lived until 1854, the date of the former's death. The mother and her children then moved to Savannah, Illinois, and a year later to Winona county, Minnesota. Mrs. Doughty was later a Pipestone countyresident and died in 1897, at the age of seventy-eight years, at Claremont, Minnesota
Robert M. Doughty of this review became a resident of Pipestone county in 1879, coming at that time via the prairie schooner route from Olmsted county, Minnesota. He filed a homestead claim in February, 1879, to the southeast quarter of section 26, Fountain Prairie township. His first abode was a crude 14x24 feet dug-out, covered with reeds, coarse grass and hay, for there was not a stick of lumber to be found. In the fearful blizzards of the winter of 1881 Mr. Doughty lost all his livestock. His dug-out was buried in mammoth snow drifts, and it was only after the most laborious effort that an egress to the outer world was made by means of steps hewn out of the icy whiteness. The only fuel available through the long and dreary winter was twisted hay, and the only bread making material was ground in a coffee mill.
Settlers were few and far between in those formative days of the county. During the first few years Mr. Doughty's nearest neighbors were Ed. Giles, the present postmaster of Holland; Matthias Hick, a Mr. Hines and Pat Sweeney. The lumber with which he built his first "real" house was hauled from Marshall, Lyon county. until the Southern Minnesota railroad was
built to Pipestone Mr. Doughty's nearest trading point was Tracy. Not a tree or sign of habitation was there in the fourteen miles which intervened between the claim of our subject and the infant village of Pipestone.
Mr. Doughty worked zealously in the improvement of his Fountain Prairie homestead, and after residing upon it for seven years, he sold at a good profit and then bought the northeast quarter of section 12, Grange township, the land upon which the village of Holland is located. He lived on the place two years and then disposed of the same to the promoters of
the Holland townsite. Mr. Doughty next invested in a half section of Aetna township land, upon which he lived for eighteen years, or until 1902, when he built and assumed the control of Doughty's hotel. He sold his Aetna township property in 1908, but he still owns a farm in Rock township, the northwest quarter of section 18 - land he purchased over twenty years ago. Fountain Prairie township was not organized until the year following Mr. Doughty's settling there. He was one of the organizers of the school district of his locality and served as its first treasurer. He was a member of the Aetna township board fourteen years.
Robert M. Doughty was married at Rochester, Minnesota, on December 10, 1870, to Nettie C. Franklin, a direct descendant of Benjamin Franklin. She was born in Livingston county, Michigan, July 4, 1857, and is the daughter of Shuble K. and Chloe (Mason) Franklin. Mr. and Mrs. Doughty are the parents of the following five living children: Charlie A., Gertrude L. (Mrs. Patrick Sullivan), of Pipestone; Lydia (Mrs. J. W. Watt), of Burk county, North Dakota: Robert E. and May D. (Mrs. Leonard Avery), of Aetna township. One daughter, Nettie (Mrs. Henry Mortensen), died January 29, 1908.

Robert Milton DOUGHTY and Nettie Mae Chloe FRANKLIN were married on 10 December 1872. Nettie Mae Chloe FRANKLIN was born on 4 July 1857 in Livingston County, Michigan. She died on 26 March 1950 at the age of 92 in Marshalltown, Marshall County, Iowa.

Robert Milton DOUGHTY and Nettie Mae Chloe FRANKLIN had the following children: