Geneva, Minnesota

Geneva is a small farming community in Freeborn County, north of Albert Lea. Immigrants settled here in the eighteen fifties, drawn by the fertile prairie land, and a post office has been operating since eighteen fifty-five. The town was platted in eighteen fifty-seven and named after Geneva, New York.

That practice of transplanting familiar eastern place names onto the Minnesota prairie was common throughout this era, a way of making a new country feel a little more like home. Freeborn County itself was created in eighteen fifty-five and named for William Freeborn, a territorial legislator and early Minnesota merchant.