Dakota Datebook

June 28, 2022 — The first non-native people to settle in Granville, North Dakota, were William A. Christianson and his wife. Minnie, who came from Minnesota. Like many others, it was the Great Northern Railway that brought the Christiansons to the area. The depot was built in what is now Granville, and Christianson was the station operator.

Minnie may have had an even more important job. In addition to helping husband, William, “prove up” their homestead, she helped feed the railroad crews that were building the line, cooking over two hundred pancakes a day to get the laborers day off to a good start!

The train depot itself was named, “Granville,” which in old French means, “from a large town” after Mr. Granville Dodge, a railway engineer William Christianson later became postmaster of the town. One of his most important moves was to write a letter to Clayton Stubbins of Brit, Iowa, in 1899 convincing Stubbins to move to Granville.

Clayton, his father George, and two brothers did just that, filing for homesteads on much of the land surrounding Granville. In 1903, using prairie rock and bricks from the nearby Denbigh Brick Factory, Clayton and father George Stubbins built the Granville State Bank, a building that still stands majestically on the corner of Main and second street in town.

The first floor of the bank housed the bank and vault and the second floor was home to five Granville fraternal organizations.

Granville is known all over the world as the town that, for a time, became known as McGillicuddy City. The Sazerac Company was looking for a way to promote its line of McGillicuddy Schnapps and ran a national contest to name a town “McGillicuddy City.” Several towns were vying for the title because the winner of the contest would get $100,000 dollars to be used for a community project. Granville was the winner of the 1998 contest and the money was used mainly to build a community youth center for local children.