Sarah Josephine Gates was born in 1851. She moved to what is now Minneapolis, from Hubbardston, Massachusetts, when she was four years old. Her family’s homestead was located at what is now 2426 West Broadway. Gates was one of the first female students at the University of Minnesota. She married Charles Hammond Sanborn and the couple settled on a 100-acre farm near Crystal Lake in the 1870s. They had two daughters.
One might say the Sanborns never lived in Robbinsdale. Charles Sanborn died in 1892, a year before the village, and later city, came into being. The land Sanborn left behind was worth $48,000—about $1,586,848 in 2023 money—when he died in 1892. Sanborn did not have a will. After the probate dust settled, Sanborn’s widow built a home for her family at 2602 Thomas Avenue North. Her daughters, Charlotte and Helen, also graduated from the University of Minnesota. They became a teachers. One married a school principal; the other married the Dean of the University’s graduate school.
Between 1902 and 1914 Sarah Josephine Gates Sanborn worked with a variety of real estate partners to plat and sell off her family’s land in North Minneapolis.
On July, 10th, 1921, Sarah Josephine Gates Sanborn formed the Sanborn Holding company with Charlotte Sanborn Hellberg. Their properties became the Sanborn Terrace and Victory View Subdivisions. The Sanborns worked with the David C. Bell Agency and a few other developers to sell off their lots. David C. Bell Real Estate was one of the largest real estate investment companies in Minneapolis. The company was still in business in the 1970s. They had an office 3357 Lilac Drive.
If you look through covenants on the University of Minnesota’s Mapping Prejudice website, you’ll see that covenants were inserted into the deeds of Victory View and Sanborn Terrace properties. When the seller is listed as the Sanborn Holding Company, the language contained is often:
The said party of the second part hereby agrees that the premises hereby conveyed shall not at any time be conveyed, mortgaged or leased to any person or persons of Chinese, Japanese, Moorish, Turkish, Negro, Mongolian or African blood or descent.
Racial covenants like this can be found in the deeds of properties throughout the city of Robbinsdale. These discriminatory clauses were inserted to prevent people who were not white from buying or renting homes. These covenants were legally-enforceable and anyone who challenged them risked forfeiting their claim to the property. They were designed to keep neighborhoods segregated. Developers often worked with park commissioners to make land adjacent to racially-restricted neighborhoods into public green space. The use of racial covenants was legal in Minnesota until 1953
The Robbinsdale Historical Society and Robbinsdale Human Rights Commission are committed to researching and sharing the history of racial covenants and their impact on our community. Resources are available to promote a greater understanding and build networks of people who wish to get involved and address how racial covenants impact our cities today.
Just Deeds is acting now to help homeowners and cities by providing free legal and title services, along with access to online tools and volunteer opportunities.
Mapping Prejudice is a team of historians, geographers, librarians, digital
humanists, and community activists seeking to expose structural racism. You can see the 26,000 racial covenants Mapping Prejudice volunteers have found so far, and download shapefiles, spreadsheets, and static cartography on their website.
