Shelby Township was organized in 1858, the year Minnesota achieved statehood. The township's main inducement to settlement was its rich prairie loam, rendered still more attractive by the availability of wood lots along the Blue Earth River. By 1860, Shelby Township was the most populous in Blue Earth County. In addition to its 315 residents, it also sustained a small but thriving village known as Shelbyville, located in Section 35, about two miles south of modern Amboy. In the early 1860s Shelbyville hosted the county fair. The town included a hotel, church, schoolhouse, mill, two stores, a blacksmith shop, a wagon shop, and a post office.
Passages that mention Amboy, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Blue Earth County and biographies of its leading citizens1901 · page 287Read the page →
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Quiggle in Section 23, and on October 31, 1879, laid out the new townsite of "Amboy." The name was suggested by Eobert Richardson after "Amboy," Illinois — his former home. ■ An attempt was made to name the town "Jackson Lake" or "Jacksonville," but it failed. The location of this townsite recalls an interesting chapter in the railway history of our county. Back
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History of Blue Earth County and biographies of its leading citizens1901 · page 212Read the page →
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July 4, 1894, Amboy lost its mill and railway depot by fire. During this and the following year, a large number of co-operative creameries were started by the farmers all over the county In 1893 such a creamery had been started in Butternut Valley and a post office created in the vicinity, called "Butternut," with Christian Strom as postmaster. In August,
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Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Amboy, 1879 to 1910
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Nothing in the archives for these yearsWeddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (6), Wikipedia, the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
2024
2012
2005