It’s rather strange. that so many different names have turned up in Canosia’s oldest ledgers, especially when the local population was only 177 in 1900. There are well over 600 names in town records such as tax lists, censuses, town minutes, cemetery ledgers, school records and petitions to incorporate two adjacent townships. It’s evident that, for a time, a succession of migrants, loggers and speculators joined the few settlers who began to build this community.
 

     People came and went and we’ll never really know who they were or why they left. Some were driven out by the 1918 Forest Fire, or the influenza epidemic, or a baby died, or harsh winters and bad roads were too much to handle.
 

     There was also violence. One immigrant, living alone in Canosia, was murdered in 1919. His death is one of two known murders recorded on township ledgers.
 

     In the 1970’s and 1980’s, when we began talking to descendants of the earliest settlers, they were often quite frank in their description of the “old days.” They had heard all the old stories, some bad, some good, but they emphasized how much progress had been made in their lifetime.
 

     In the last century, 1900 to 2000, Canosia’s population has increased tenfold and if people were “movin’ on” anywhere, it was to the outskirts of Duluth, especially Canosia Township. Kathryn Adams
and the Canosia Historical Society