Minnesota Ancestor Project
Edna Clara Cargill
Minnesota's Grain Family--Cargills and MacMillans
It is impossible to tell the story of the Cargills and MacMillans without telling the history of the company they built, the Cargill Company. Edna Clara Cargill married John Hugh MacMillan, and a partnership was born.
Born in Albert Lea, Minnesota, the granddaughter of a sea captain from the Orkney Islands, Edna married John Hugh MacMillan and had two sons, John Hugh MacMillan Jr. and Cargill MacMillan. The two brothers ran the company along with their cousin Austen Cargill for many years. Austen passed away in 1957, John in 1960, and Cargill in 1968. The company eventually passed on to the next generation and was led in its growth and expansion by Whitney MacMillan from 1976-1995. Edna’s descendants had created one of the largest private companies in the world.
Ruth Thompson Cathcart
Minnesota to Manhattan and Back
Ruth Thompson was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1893. Her father Horace, born in Georgia, came to St. Paul as a child with his parents. His father, also Horace, founded the First National Bank of St. Paul with his brother in the 1860s. Horaceplayed a role in the capture of the James Younger gang after their raid on the first national bank in Northfield.
Ruth attended the Spence school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, but she never forgot her Minnesota roots. She married Alexander Cathcart in 1916 and they raised three children in St. Paul. She was known for her generosity to employees of the family’s agricultural interests. For more about Ruth and her family, click above.
Marion Eleanor Cross
Marion Eleanor Cross, the daughter of attorney Norton M. Cross and Martha V. Ankeny, ensured the legacy of the NSCDA-MN scholarship for International Students at the University of Minnesota by creating an endowment in her will. Granddaughter of Judson Newell Cross, Civil War veteran and champion of the Forest Reserve Law and his wife Clara Steele Norton, Marion authored several books related to the history of Minnesota explorers and businesses.
Ard Godfrey
Ard Godfrey Family: Sawmill Pioneers
Ard Godfrey, who built the first sawmill in St. Anthony Falls, is the ancestor of Minnesota Dame Barbara Burwell. Ard was born in Orono, Maine in January, 1813 and came to Minnesota in 1847. He and his wife had seven surviving children, including daughter Harriet, who was the first white child born in St. Anthony Falls. Daughter Harriet's diaries are still used in educational curricula about life in pioneer days in Minnesota. The family home is a museum today - it is considered the oldest wood frame house in Minneapolis. Follow the family through the generations in the attached History Sketch.
Carrie Griffith
Joseph Milton Griffith came to America and made his fortune in lumber, gold mining, brooms and lutefisk, marrying Carrie Sharp, descendant of a Colonial ancestor and a Revolutionary War hero. Carrie braved the Wild West to be with her husband, whose exploits included saving the citizens of Virginia City, Montana from the Plummer gang before coming to Minnesota and operating the largest lutefisk importing operation in the United States at the time. His son Joseph continued the family business and married an educated lady of Colonial descent, Fanny Nowlin. Read the family’s story and its ties to one of our current Colonial Dames.
Nancy Anne Finch Heeter
Ancestor of Minnesota Dames Nancy and Kitty Bergerson, Nancy Anne grew up in Duluth as a member of a timber family that supplied logs for the Calhoun Beach Club, Mendota Bridge, and a reconstructed fort at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. She developed her own interests and leadership skills through the Girl Scouts and at college at St. Scholastica before moving to the Twin Cities. Read more about Nancy by clicking the title above.
Seth Kenney
Descended from Colonial ancestor Richard Lyman, the Kenney family came to Minnesota in the 1850s and made advances in Minnesota agriculture, including sorghum and apples. Seth Kenney was compared to Oliver Kelley in his impact on agriculture.
But the story doesn’t end there - family members served in the Revolutionary War and Civil War.
Mary Lyman Alexander was a “real daughter” of the American Revolution, and the experiences of her grandson George Kenney as a prisoner of war behind Confederate lines in the Civil War inspired him to become a physician.
Margaret Plumer Lamberton
Born in Pennsylvania, Margaret Plumer Lamberton came to Minnesota with her husband Henry in 1855 and was a co-partner and vice president of the family bank, Winona Deposit Bank, in the 1860s. Henry went on to become the mayor of Winona. Their home, the Lamberton House, was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places. When Margaret died in 1902, all the banks of Winona closed to allow employees to attend the funeral. Read more about Margaret’s life and adventures here.
Robert Bruce Langdon
Builder, Businessman, State Senator
The life of Robert Bruce Langdon (1826-1895) in Minneapolis was part of the phenomenal growth and prosperity of the young metropolis at the headwaters of the Mississippi. Mr. Langdon was born on November 24, 1826 in Vermont, and married Sara Smith, also of New Haven, Vermont, on February 28, 1859.
They had five children, three of whom survived into adulthood. Both daughters, Caroline Langdon Brooks and Martha Langdon Truesdale, were Minnesota Dames, as was daughter in law Mabel Shaw Langdon, who married Robert and Sara’s son Cavour Langdon.
While not descended from a registered Colonial ancestor, his descendants share ancestry from Governor Thomas Dudley of Massachusetts, William Swayne of Connecticut, and Ryer Ryerson of New Jersey.
Anna Gale Lindley
Mother of Dames through the Decades
Anna was born in Minneapolis in 1868. In 1884 she graduated from the "new" Central High School and later graduated from Smith College. She married banker Clarkson Lindley in 1895 and they had three daughters and one son. She served as NSCDA-MN Historian from 1920-1923. Two daughters and a granddaughter also joined NSCDA-MN. Anna was a founder of the Woman's Club of Minneapolis, the Stevens Square home for aged women and was a board member of the Minneapolis Symphony. She was descended from Isaac Gale of Massachusetts.
Dorilus Morrison
Born in Maine in 1814, Dorilus Morrison moved to Minnesota in 1854 with his wife Harriet and children. He served as Minnesota State Senator, as the first mayor of Minneapolis, the first President of the Minneapolis School Board and served on the Minneapolis Park Board in addition to his business pursuits in banking, railroads and lumber. The Minneapolis Journal’s obituary called him “A man of nerve in business, clear-headed and cool always, and as bold as a lion, physically and mentally…” For more on Dorilus and his descendants, including several Colonial Dames, click on “As Bold as a Lion” above.
Franklin Peavey
The farm implement company F. H. Peavey and Company began in 1874, accepting grain in payment for farm implements. Its founder, Franklin Peavey, grew up in Eastport, Maine and carefully saved his earnings from his job as a newspaper boy. On the day the Civil War ended, young Frank set out for Chicago and points west with his savings. After his great success in the grain transportation and storage industry, he remembered his beginnings and and held an annual banquet for the “newsies” where he matched the funds they put into the bank as savings.
The creation and growth of the Peavey grain business is a fascinating story. He is pictured above with his mother Mary, daughter Lucia Peavey Heffelfinger, and grandsons Frank and Totten.
Bert Sheldon
Bert, born near Owatonna, had a career in banking and insurance that took him to the rough-and-tumble forest camps near Cloquet and to Minneapolis. He founded the Imperial Elevator Company and worked for Marsh & McLennan. Fay graduated from Oberlin college and taught math in Iowa, Idaho and Alaska before moving to Minnesota. Read more about their adventures in the attached document.
Elizabeth Quane Skelley
Her Story: Elizabeth Gleason Quane Skelley
As a pioneer, Elizabeth Gleason traveled with her family as a child from New York to Illinois, then continued her journey to Minnesota as a young married woman of 23. She lived alone with her three children ages one to five in a log cabin while waiting for her husband to join her. In the U.S. Dakota War of 1862, her husband Jerry Quane was killed, and she raised their five children on the $12 monthly Civil and Indian War widow's pension. Many years later, she found happiness again with James Skelley, who had served with Henry Hastings Sibley thirty years before. This is her story.
Jacob Henry Stewart
Jacob Henry Stewart was born in New York in 1829 and became a physician, moving to St. Paul in 1855. He signed up as surgeon for the First Minnesota volunteer infantry and was taken prisoner at the Battle of Bull Run. Jacob survived his captivity in a Confederate prison and went on to become Post Surgeon at Fort Snelling, a Minnesota State Senator, and four time mayor of St. Paul. He is the ancestor of several Minnesota Dames.
Virginia Perin Stryker
Strykers: Military and Legal Service to the Nation
John Edwards Stryker moved to Minnesota from New York as a child and went on to graduate from Yale and study in Berlin, Germany, before returning to St. Paul to practice law, becoming a US District Attorney and taking cases to the US Supreme Court. He married Virginia Langdon Perin, daughter of US Army surgeon Glover Perin, who came to Minnesota when her father was stationed at Fort Snelling. Together they raised a Minnesota family, including Glover Perin Stryker, a lieutenant in World War I who fought in the decisive battle of Argonne Woods.
Charles A. Wheaton
Wheaton/Birdseye Family: Freedom and Education
The Winston family, to which several of our Minnesota dames belong, has roots back to colonial ancestors Governor Thomas Dudley of Massachusetts and Ryer Ryerson of New Jersey. More recently, we find an interesting branch in the Birdseye/Wheaton family of Pompey, New York and later of Northfield, Minnesota. Ellen Birdseye Wheaton kept a diary of household life with her twelve children and businessman husband, and only mentioned obliquely the role she and her husband played in the Underground Railroad. Read the attached story to learn more, and to follow the family’s beginnings in Minnesota.
Hannah Ellis Williams
Hannah Williams traveled with her six children from Wales to New York in 1851 and later Iowa, loading a lumber wagon drawn by oxen and with her four sons walking beside her, settled in Olmsted County, Minnesota. Less than ten years later she had purchased a 160 acre farm near Rochester. Through the generations her family prospered and grew, and her grandson Carleton Williams married another farm girl, Nina Carver, whose ancestors reached back to Colonial governors John Webster of Connecticut. Read more about Hannah’s strength and fortitude here.
Frank H. Winsor II
Frank H. Winsor: A Banker’s Perspective
From his beginnings in booming Mitchell, South Dakota through the dust bowl years and into the modern age in Red Wing, Minnesota, Frank Winsor II watched fortunes made and lost. In his early years he went from the wilds of Montana and Oregon to New York City, but returned home to Mitchell and took up banking. The bank, like many others, failed. Frank, with a wife and four young children, took a job with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation helping other troubled banks. He rebuilt his fortune in Minnesota, and wrote about advances in banking from pens dipped in inkwells to modern technology. Read more about this Minnesota ancestor.
For more History Sketches