Alonzo P. Foster, member of the Territorial Legislature, farmer, stock fancier, town builder and educator, was for many years a commanding figure in Wabasha County life. He was a man of good principle, sound judgment, and one of those men who are of benefit to any community in which they live ... Alonzo P. Foster was born in Orange, Orange County, Vermont, May 5, 1816, son of Lemuel and Cloe (Powers) Foster, and descended through several notable New England families from Scotch ancestry. He was the youngest of nine children, all of whom lived to an advanced age, and all of whom he survived. His parents were early settlers of Orange, where with great industry and economy, and with many privations they conquered the forest and secured for themselves and their children a farmstead of stony, ungenerous soil. The father dying while the subject of this sketch was yet in his early youth, and the elder brothers going forth in their early manhood to seek homes of their own, it fell upon Alonzo, as he attained suitable years, to assist his mother and the other children, in wresting a living from the backwoods farm. Being strong of limb and of industrious habits, he succeeded in this endeavor and in time came into the possession of the place ... Mr. Foster married Harriet Thompson, a native of Orange County, Vermont. She died in 1851, leaving one daughter, Ella, who married Thomas G. Bolton.
History of Wabasha County, Minnesota
Franklin Curtiss-Wedge, Compiler,
(H. C. Cooper, Jr. & Company, Winona, Minnesota, 1920), p. 259-260