Socrates Nelson (January 11, 1814 – May 6, 1867) was an American businessman, politician, and pioneer who served one term as a Minnesota State Senator from 1859 to 1861. He was a general store owner, lumberman, and real estate speculator and was associated with numerous companies in the insurance and rail industries. He was involved in the establishment of the community of Stillwater, Minnesota and was an early member of the first Independent Order of Odd Fellows lodge in Minnesota. He served on the University of Minnesota's first board of regents before being elected to the Minnesota Senate.
Nelson was a member of an 1848 committee that met in Stillwater to petition the U.S. Congress to create the Minnesota Territory. He took part in the early organization of the Minnesota Democratic Party. He was a county treasurer, territorial auditor, and county commissioner. As a senator, he voted in favor of a failed bill to legalize bringing slaves in to Minnesota temporarily and helped to repeal the Loan Amendment – intended to expedite the creation of railroad infrastructure – from the Minnesota Constitution. He was elected as a delegate for the 1864 Democratic National Convention.
After Nelson died in 1867 from tuberculosis, his achievements in Stillwater were memorialized. The Nelson School was named after him. A plaque at the Washington County Historic Courthouse commemorates his sale of the land on which the courthouse was built.
Socrates Nelson was born in Conway, Massachusetts, on January 11, 1814,[2] to Socrates Nelson and Dorothy Boyden.[3] He lived in nearby Greenfield and took a partial course at Deerfield Academy before returning to his hometown to become a merchant.[4][5][6]
When he was 25, Nelson moved to Illinois on a prospecting tour; he moved again in 1840 to St. Louis, Missouri, to sell goods and collect furs.[7][8] There, he met his future business partner Levi Churchill.[4]
In early 1844, he traveled up the Mississippi River to the mouth of the Chippewa River in the Wisconsin Territory and opened a trading post at a site known as Nelson's Landing or Nelson's Point, about three miles south of Wabasha, Minnesota.[2][9][10] The post was maintained for several years but later washed away.[2] On October 23, he married Betsey D. Bartlett[a] in Hennepin, Illinois.[12][15]