Osborn Strahl (1818-1902) was born in Belmont County, Ohio. In 1838 he moved to Galena, Illinois and seven years later pioneered in the vicinity of Mauston and Stevens Point, Wisconsin. In 1847 he moved to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. During these years Strahl followed the lumbering industry. In 1850 he settled in the town of Elizabeth, St. Croix County, Wisconsin, which after subsequent divisions of towns and counties finally became Clifton. In 1860 he married Rebecca MacDonald. They had five children: Wm. Day, who moved to the Dakotas; Howard P., who lived in River Falls; Mabel, the wife of Joseph M. Smith, a banker at River Falls; and two other daughters. Brief biographical sketches about Strahl are in William Folson's Fifty Years in the Northwest (Pioneer Press Company, unknown place, 1888), p. 201; and in August E. Easton (editor), History of St. Croix Valley (2 volumes, H.C. Cooper Jr. and Company, Chicago, 1909), Vol. 1, p. 511.
