Anonymous donor pays overdue bill for Fergus Falls house where town's first Black resident lived

A $10,000 special assessment bill threatening tax forfeiture of a historic Fergus Falls house was paid off this week thanks to an anonymous donor.

Prince Albert Honeycutt lived at 612 Summit Av. E., dedicated Honeycutt Memorial Drive in 2021. Not only was Honeycutt the town's first Black resident — settling there in 1872 from Tennessee — he was the state's first Black professional baseball player, first Black firefighter and first Black mayoral candidate.

He was an early pioneer and prominent businessman who owned a barbershop in town. Missy Hermes, with the Otter Tail County Historical Society, said Honeycutt and his wife were likely the first Black people in Minnesota to testify in a capital murder trial of a man who was convicted and hanged in Fergus Falls.

"In other places, you would never have a Black person testifying against a white person, especially a woman, too, before women could vote even," Hermes said. "Obviously he was respected enough."

When dozens of people from Kentucky moved to Fergus Falls in April 1898, known as "the first 85," Honeycutt helped integrate them into the community.

He died in 1924 at age 71 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls.

Up until 2016, several owners lived in the Honeycutt home. But the city bought and sold the house to nonprofit Flowingbrook Ministries for $1 to take over the tax-exempt property and operate the ministry, according to city documents.

Ministry founder Lynette Higgins-Orr, who previously lived in Fergus Falls, moved to Florida several years ago and little activity has been going on in the historic house since. But she said there are plans to make it into a museum.

"We're in the process of getting it nationally recognized right now. It's locally recognized as a historic site, and so it's just to keep his memory and his legacy alive," Higgins-Orr said in a phone interview.

An online fundraiser was created to pay off a special assessment, catching the attention of media and the anonymous donor. Higgins-Orr said the fundraiser is ongoing to cover repairs and improvements for the museum.

The city assessed homes in 2019 for street and utility reconstruction projects. But no payments had been made on the Honeycutt house. The original principal amount of the assessment was $7,980, but it accrued penalties and interest that brought the total amount owed to roughly $10,000.

Bill Sonmor, Fergus Falls finance director, said the house would have been tax forfeited back to Otter Tail County and auctioned off to new owners.