CLONTARF Township, which received its first settler in June 1876, was organized January 16, 1877. "The town was named by Bishop Ireland. The inhabitants are mostly Irish, a colony having settled here in 1878". This name is from the town and watering place in a suburb of Dublin, Ireland. The site was chosen in 1876 by the Catholic Colonization Bureau to develop as its second colony in Minnesota. The city of Clontarf was platted in 1876, incorporated as a village on November 17, 1881, reincorporated on April 21, 1904, and separated from the township on April 7, 1916. The Great Northern Railway came in 1870. The post office began in 1876, with postmaster Dominick F. McDermott, who came from Ireland in 1834 and to Minnesota in 1856.