Lucien Galtier is sometimes said to have proclaimed the final phrases at the dedication of the log cabin chapel of Saint Paul on November 1, 1841.

[5] Narrated by the "Old Year" of 1849, the poem reflects on the transformation of the small settlement of Pig's Eye into the City of Saint Paul.

Describing various struggles in Europe, the narrator expresses thankfulness for America, despite the presidency of Zachary Taylor.

One, is the mart of all the tropics yield; The cane, the orange and the cotton field; And sends her ships abroad and boasts Her trade extended to a thousand coasts: The other, central for the temperate zone, Garners the stores that on the plains are grown; A place where steamboats from all quarters, range, To meet and speculate, as 'twere on 'change.

The third will be, where rivers confluent flow From the wide spreading north thro' plains of snow The mart of all that boundless forests give To make mankind more comfortably live, The land of manufacturing industry, The workshop of the nation it shall be.

Propelled by this wide stream, you'll see A thousand factories at Saint Anthony: And the St. Croix a hundred mills shall drive, And all its smiling villages shall thrive; But then my town—remember that high bench With cabins scattered over it, of French?

When the Wisconsin's wedded to the Fox, By a canal and solid steamboat locks; When freighted steamboats leave St. Paul one day And reach, the next but one, Green Bay, When locomotives regularly draw Their freighted trains from distant Pembina And o'er the bridge, rush, thundering, at St. Paul, And at Dubuque, to breathe, scarce make a call But hurry onward to the hot Balize, By flying farms, plantations, houses, trees- When from the Cave to Pig's Eye shall extend A levee lined with steamboats to each end; When one great city covers all The ground from Pig's Eye to the Falls, I then will claim St. Paul for mine, The child of 1849.