Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota, Part 91

Author: Holcombe, R. I. (Return Ira), 1845-1916; Bingham, William H
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Chicago : H. Taylor & Co.
Number of Pages: 1190

USA > Minnesota > Hennepin County > Minneapolis > Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota > Part 91

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Mr. Morse did not seek to augment his business to any great extent through the storage of household goods. His energies were employed in getting trade that reaches farther and tends at once and directly to aid in building up the city of Minneapolis as a jobbing center.

Many of the jobbers in this city who are now carrying on an extensive business in Minneapolis were started here by his enterprise. It was his custom to visit the leading factories in the Eastern and Middle States and get them to begin trading liere by using his facilities. Seventy-five to eighty

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HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

per cent of the agricultural implement houses now operating in this section, began business in the Northwest in this way. Four-fifths of the companies now composing the International Harvester Company began their operations in the Northwest through the Morse warehouses. At the present time, seventy- five to one hundred companies, foreign to this city, keep ex- tensive stocks of goods in these warehouses. Mr. Morse began with storage room for agricultural implements, and as the trade in them became established, he furnished space for stocks of groceries, hardware and other merchandise. Many manufacturers sent carloads of goods to his warehouses and then put agents in the field to sell them. When their trade was sufficiently developed, they established wholesale houses of their own in this city. Numbers of the companies which have large establishments in Minneapolis now, were first in- duced hy Mr. Morse to enter the trade territory of Minneapolis. In this way, a very large jobbing trade was started here, and the story of it is creditable alike to the city and the man who initiated the enterprise; and the enterprise, itself, fur- nishes strong proof of both his business capacity and his strong and intelligent devotion to his home city and its residents.

Willard W. Morse was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on July 5th, 1864. He is a son of Willard and Lydia (Whit- comb) Morse, natives of Sharon, Massachusetts and Newport, New Hampshire, who moved to Michigan in 1857 and to Minneapolis in 1882. The father was a merchant and soon after his arrival in this city started the Minneapolis Rubber Company, which continued in business five years. After the expiration of that period the elder Mr. Morse engaged in various lines of merchandising until his death in 1897. The mother is still living and makes her home in this city. They had two children, their son Willard W. and their daughter Minnie F., both of whom are residents of Minneapolis.

The son obtained a high school education and started his business career in the employ of his father's rubber company. In 1886, in association with Harry B. Wood, also of Kalama- zoo, he started the Security Warehouse Company. The partnership lasted until 1894, when Mr. Wood moved to Cali- fornia, where he has ever since had his home, and since then Mr. Morse has been the sole proprietor and director of the business of the company. He owns his own warehouses, some fourteen in number, all located on North First Street and all supplied with trackage of the C. St. P. M. & O. Ry. Co. In 1886 there was but one warehouse and was located at No. 700 North First Street. This was the first general storage ware- house for merchandise ever opened in Minneapolis. Now the warehouses contain sixteen acres of floor space and the busi- ness employs regularly about 100 persons, and in husy sea- sons many more.

Mr. Morse has long taken an earnest interest and an active part in the organized social life of the community and all undertakings for its advancement and improvement as a member of the St. Anthony Commercial Club and the Civic and Commerce Association. He does not, however, confine his efforts for the betterment of the city to the projects these organizations have in charge, but opens his hand freely and employs his faculties industriously in behalf of all work for improvement, morally, mentally, socially and materially, and all his efforts are guided by intelligence and inspired by a broad and discriminating publie spirit.

On May 15th, 1888, Mr. Morse was united in marriage to Miss Bertha F. Alden, of Minneapolis, a daughter of Albert

M. Alden, a pioneer merchant here, who was in business in this city from 1864 to his death some ten years ago. Mrs. Morse was born in Spring Valley, Fillmore County, Minnesota. She and her husband are the parents of four children, Wil- lard A., Guilford A., Mildred and Priscilla A. All the mem- bers of the family attend Plymouth Congregational church and are actively interested in the work of that organization. They are also esteemed throughout the community as enter- prising, progressive and serviceable members inspired and directed by lofty ideals of citizenship, and they richly deserve the universal regard and good will hestowed upon them.

REV. JOHN HOOPER.

For many years in his young manhood the voice of this now venerable minister of the gospel was literally that of "one crying in the wilderness," in appeals to men to "repent, . believe and he born again." He came to this state as a pioneer Methodist Episcopal minister in 1855, and carried the message of salvation to men and women in their crude and lowly homes on the frontier, preaching wherever he could find a roof to cover him and his hearers, and under the blue canopy of heaven when no other covering was available. He is now (1914) eighty-six years of age, and during sixty-eight of the number, twice the average duration of human life, he wa's an active force in the Christian ministry.

Mr. Hooper was born in County Cornwall, England, on April 27, 1828. His parents emigrated to the United States when he was but three years old, and lie was reared to the age of twenty in his native land by an uncle. When he was seven he began working in a tin mine at a wage of five shillings a month, boarding himself, and he continued his laborious and meagerly recompensed toil for thirteen years, but without much improvement in wages or conditions. At the age of fifteen he joined the Methodist Episcopal church, and two years later began preaching in humble quarters and the open fields, as was the custom of his class in England in those days.

In 1848 he too came to this country and joined his parents in Cleveland, Ohio. One year later he moved to Grant county, Wisconsin, near the Illinois line, and there served as a supply preacher until he could join the conference of his denomination and become a regular circuit rider. In 1855 he was sent to Minnesota on a mission, the whole territory now embraced in this state and Wisconsin then being under one organization. He was assigned to a mission at Caledonia, now the seat of government in Houston county, but then almost nothing but a name in the wilds. There was but one congregation organized in the locality at the time, but in the two years Mr. Hooper passed there he organized several others. There was also only one schoolhouse in his territory and he was obliged to preach often in private dwellings. For the purpose of securing a house for regular meetings he hewed timber in the woods and helped to put it together in the erection of a rude church. He also conducted camp meetings, being the only evangelical worker in the region, as other denominations had not yet begun their circuit work in that section of the state.

Mr. Hooper attended the first Methodist Episcopal confer- ence in Minnesota. This was held at Red Wing in 1857, and presided over by Bishop Swift. The conference sent him to North Minneapolis, his circuit embracing all the territory for

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HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

many miles north of Bassett's creek, and he also had charge of the church interests at Harmony, now Richfield, and those at Brooklyn Center. He secured the nucleus of a congregation at each place, the number at the first being seven. Of this number only one, Mrs. Abisha Benson, of Minneapolis, is now living. There was not a school house or M. E. church building in his territory, and for about one year he preached and worked as best he could.

At the end of the year he was transferred to Princeton, where there was a church edifice, and where he remained two years. His next appointment included Sauk Rapids, where there was a school house, and Little Falls, where there was a church. He next passed another year at Brooklyn Center and one more at Richfield, preaching three times every Sunday, attending to pastoral duties during the week. acting as local elder, and working on a farm he rented to provide a living for himself and his family.

In the course of a short time Mr. Hooper bought eighty aeres of land on what is now Penn avenue but then lying far beyond the boundary of the city. This land he transformed into a good farm, and when the city grew out to it laid out a part of what is now one of its main streets, Penn avenue already mentioned. The school house on that street stands on what was a part of his farm, and the bountiful crops which once enriched and beautified the rest of it have been succeeded by acres of solid masonry in which many varied industris are now housed and conducted, and by a multitude of homes in which prosperity and comfort abound.

Rev. Mr. Hooper preached his last sermon thirce years ago, having been engaged in the ministry for sixty-eight years. He is now a member of the new Calvary church in this city. When the general conference of the denomination to which he belongs met in Minneapolis in 1911, he was called before the conference as being probably the only charter member of the first Minnesota conference of the church who was then living.

Mr. Hooper cast his first political vote for candidates of the Free Soil or Abolition party in Ohio. He afterward became a Republican and later a Prohibitionist. He has occupied his present residence sixteen years. On July 21, 1853, sixty years ago, he was united in marriage with Miss Mary M. Atkinson of Wisconsin. Four of the children born of their union are still living, one daughter, Ida M., being the wife of Edwin Peteler, as told in a sketch of his father, Colonel Francis Peteler, on other pages of this volume. The others are also residents of Minneapolis and, like their parents, the children all have and well deserve a strong hold on the regard and good will of the community in which they live.

JUDSON C. HIGGINS.

Judson C. Higgins, until recently a leading grocer of Minne- apolis, has passed fifty-two years of his seventy-five in con- tributing to the advancement and welfare of the city. He was born in Benson, Rutland County, Vermont, November 21, 1838. His father wa's successively a farmer, a merchant. and a postmaster, and came to Minneapolis in 1860 and became associated with Daniel R. Barbee in the loan business. They borrowed money in the East at six per cent, investing it here on mortgage loans at five and even six per eent a month. He died here in 1867, aged sixty-five, in the old Elder

Whitney home, on Fourth street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues.

Judson C. Higgins came to Minneapolis in 1861. He had taught school in his native county and was accustomed to hard labor and simple living. He bought a wood saw and sawhorse, and during his first winter in Minneapolis earned his living by sawing stove wood at sixty cents a cord. He was married in the East, March 24, 1861, to Miss Emeroy Knapp, and they started at once after marriage for their new home.

Early in 1862 he bought a yoke of oxen and for several month's engaged in teaming, buying other teams as his pa- tronage increased. He hauled freight from St. Paul, sup- plies to the lumber woods, etc.

Early in the Indian outbreak of 1862 lie volunteered to haul supplies for Capt. Richard Strout's company and 20 citizens that had been ordered to Meeker County. Nine teams were so engaged in hauling camp outfits and other necessaries. He was out for 30 days. He was in the fight with Little Crow's Indians near Acton, and when the whites retreated he, with his two horses, went to Hutchinson, in company with the troops. Before daylight that morning while in camp at Acton postoffice, Captain Strout had been warned by three white men that the Indians were in force near him and he at once started for Hutchinson. Two miles out the whites came upon the Indians in ambush in a wheat field, 150 in number. The savages, on horseback, attacked the party, attempting to surround it, but the whites charged them and escaped. The Indians followed Strout's command for four or five miles, or to near Hutchinson, riding along at a con- venient distance and firing into the command from both sides. Three white men were killed, twenty were wounded, and five teams were lost. The Indians attacked Hutchinson the next day.

Mr. Higgins continued teaming until 1867, hauling sup- plies to the pineries, logs to the saw-mills, and lumber for Ankeny, Robinson & Petit from the yards to the planing mills. He also did considerable hauling for other firms. Early in 1867, he met Mr. Ankeny and entered the employ of Ankeny, Robinson & Petite, made a success of his work, and remained with the firm until 1870, becoming head manager of the yards, and having charge of the measuring and shipping.

In 1869 Mr. Higgins and Morris Gleason decided to engage in the grocery business. Mr. Higgins borrowed $2,100, at 12 per cent interest, to begin business. Mr. Gleason dceided to remain with the lumber firm, but Mr. Higgins opened the grocery under the name of Higgins & Gleason, according to announcements already made. The store was at No. 127 Washington avenue south, in a locality recommended by Anthony Kelly. There were then five or six grocery stores in the city, but Mr. Higgins made the venture. He pur- chased the building, opened the store, and within the first year his business became so extensive that he was able to pay back the capital borrowed, employed four or five men and used three teams. At the end of four years he found himself $25,000 to the good financially, but with his health breaking down from overwork. He then sold the store to his clerks.

In the meantime he had bought the adjoining building on the corner of Second and Washington Avenues, and had formed a partnership with E. S. Corser in the purchase of 300 or 400 acres of railroad land near Crookston, which they intended to farm. They sent two carloads of horses and

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HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

other things needed to the land, erected buildings for a super- intendent, and took all other necessary steps to begin opera- tions, when Mr. Higgins became sick from drinking alkali water and retired from the undertaking, selling his interest to Mr. Corser and Lester B. Elwood, and returning to Minne- apolis.

For some years thereafter he was engaged in the grocery trade and as a shoe dealer, a portion of the time with Robert Anderson. He finally sold his grocery establishment and bought Anderson's interest in the shoe store, which he con- ducted for some time, eventually turning it over to his son, the present proprietor.

The senior Mr. Higgins still owns the two store buildings, and a number of other pieces of. desirable property. He has lived in his present home at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Sxith Street thirty-two years, though it has recently been leased for business purposes for a term of one hundred years. Since Mr. Higgins bought this property, in 1862, it has increased in value seven fold. In 1887 he paid $99,000 for his store property, a lot of 66 feet front with the same buildings on it that are now there, and borrowed a large part of the purchase money. This lot was bought in earlier years for $1,100. For himself and wife he is now building a resi- dence at 3624 Nicollet avenue.

Mr. and Mrs. Higgins had seven children: Lucy A. is the widow of the late Henry Waterman; Lottie E. married a Mr. Goden and died young; Chauncey, is in charge of the shoe department of the Donaldson store; Albert J. is in the commission house of Gamble & Robinson; Anna L. is the wife of Grant Collender; Fannie L. died at the age of eleven; Beatrice M. is the wife of Charles B. Peteler.

STEPHEN CROSBY HALL.

Thirty-five years of active and useful existence in three states ending suddenly and tragically by accident, make up the life story of the late Stephen Crosby Hall, who was engaged in the lumber industry from early manhood, and became one of the most extensive operators during a fruitful business activity. He lived in Minneapolis only four years, but long before this he was as well known in its business circles as though here dwelling and operating.

He was born in Penn Yan, New York, August 16, 1834. He met with a fatal accident August 3, 1888, while employed at his sawmill on the bank of the river. He made a misstep and fell a distance of about twenty-six feet striking some timbers, thus ending an active career at the age of fifty- four years. He was the son of Deacon Jonathan and Anna (Whitaker) Hall, originally of Passaic, New Jersey. One of his sisters became the wife of Rev. Luther Littell, a prom- inent Presbyterian minister of Orange county, New York.

In his youth he was much inclined to mathematics, and made a specialty of that branch of learning to become a civil engineer, a knowledge of which was of vast use a few years later when living in the wilds of Michigan. At nine- teen he was employed as a clerk in New York city, and two years later moved to Michigan, locating on White river in the great pine forest. For a number of weeks he carried the mails to and from his locality in a carpet bag until a regular route was established and a postoffice selected. White- hall was chosen as the name, and it was formed by combin-

ing the name of the river with that of Mr. Hall and his brother. It is now a city of some 2,000 inhabitants, and has become a widely popular resort, and was for some years the chosen home of the renowned Alexander Dowie.

Mr. Hall was soon employed in surveying, in which he acquired an expert knowledge of timber and where the best of it was. About one year and a half later he erected a saw- mill, but which he soon sold. He acquired title to a 2,000- acre tract of land in what surveyors reported to be an im- passable marsh. This he drained and converted into one of the finest farms in Michigan, and which has in recent years been exchanged for valuable property in Minneapolis.

In addition he soon began to acquire pine lands, making his own investigations, selections and surveys. While doing this he slept in the woods many nights, depending on fires to protect him from the wolves with which the forests abounded and which especially in winter were often ravenous. He then began extensive logging operations, having 1,500 acres of pine later increased to 300,000 near Houghton lake. By employing 200 to 300 men and one-third as many horses he was enabled to put 15,000,000 feet of logs into the lake in a single season.

In the seventies he operated several sawmills, being asso- ciated with Thompson Bros. & Company, of Chicago, the output of the mills going largely to that city. The Steamer Stephen C. Hall, which he built at Grand Haven and which was engaged in this traffic, was named in his honor. He was president of the Bay State Lumber Company of Menom- inee, Michigan, and also of the S. C. Hall Lumber company, his son-in-law, Thomas H. Shevlin, being its manager. His operations led him to buy Minnesota timber lands, interests which induced him financially to move to Minneapolis in 1884.

Mr. Hall was for a time a partner with Colonel James Good- now in the North Star Lumber company; and, in 1886 the Hall & Ducey Lumber company was incorporated, he being the president and manager. This company became one of the largest operators in Minnesota, cutting regularly 40,000,- 000 feet of lumber and doing a business aggregating three- fourths of a million dollars annually. The Hall & Shevlin company, he being president, was organized in 1886, erect- ing a new mill with a capacity of 40,000,000 feet. In 1888 the pay roll of the two companies averaged $18,000 a month.

Mr. Hall was a member of the Minneapolis Lumber Ex- change, which at his death showed its estimate by passing strong resolutions. Busy as he was, he made it his duty to take an active part in all projects designed to improve the community and promote the general welfare. He served as supervisor and county treasurer in Michigan, where he was also president of a Congregational church society and an ardent supporter of foreign missions, even going so far as to support a missionary in Japan at his own personal ex- pense. The Young Men's Christian Association in Minne- apolis enlisted his most helpful interest, as did also West- minster Prebyterian church, and he was a liberal contributor to the needs of both, being especially so in the erection of the church edifice which stood on Nicollet avenue between Seventh and Eighth streets. As he was diffident and retiring, shrinking from public notice, knowledge of his charities and public benefactions became public only after his demise.

On April 8th, 1862, Mr. Hall married Miss Alice Clark, of Grand Haven, Mich. She is still a resident of Minneapolis; three of their four children are also living. Alice A., married Thomas H. Shevlin and died in 1910. Emma is the wife of

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HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

Charles A. Bennett, of Los Angeles, California. Hattie is the wife of Edwin Shevlin of Portland, Oregon; and Stephen A. Hall, who died in 1914. He married Miss Cecilia A. Kent. They had one child, Stephen A., Jr., the third generation of the name, a high school student.

At the death of her husband Mrs. Hall assumed the heavy responsibility so suddenly thrust upon her, and taking upon herself the management of his large interests, directed them with admirable judgment and ability. She gradually changed extensive outside holding's into Minneapolis properties, and has crected some very important buildings, including those at the corner of Nicollet avenue and Eleventh street and the corner of Hennepin avenue and Seventh street. The Colonial Realty company has been formed to look after the various properties, she being its president and the owner of nearly all its stock. Earlier she was a zealous church woman and the prime mover in many important charities. She was also devoted to art, literature and social organizations. In later years, however, business responsibilities have over- shadowed the social, artistic and esthetic inclinations en- gendered by her education, culture and early environment, though still no really worthy cause is allowed to pass without some consideration from her.

EDWIN HAWLEY HEWITT.

Edwin Hawley Hewitt of Minneapolis, one of the most widely known and most highly approved architects of the Northwest, has made his own way to success and prominence by arduous effort, close and analytical study, and a judicious use of all the means for the development of his art faculty which he has found or made available for his purposes.

Mr. Hewitt was born in Red Wing, Minnesota, March 26, 1874, a son of Dr. Charles N. and Helen R. (Hawley) Hewitt. His father, a renowned physician and surgeon, was born in Vergennes, Addison County, Vermont, and was graduated, with the degree of A. B., from Hobart College, Geneva, New York, and with that of M. D. from Albany Medical College. He served throughout the Civil War in the medical service of an engineer corps in the Union army, becoming chief of a division in the Army of the Potomac.

After the close of the war Dr. Hewitt located in his pro- fession at Red Wing. He organized the first Minnesota State Board of Health and served as chief State Health Officer for 25 years. He was also for many years a member of the faculty of the University of Minnesota, and a lifelong asso- ciate and friend of its first President, Dr. William W. Folwell. Edwin Hewitt's grandfather was also a physician and sur- geon, and a graduate of Yale University, and he too served in the Civil War. The mother's father was a distinguished phy- sician of Ithaca, New York, and also a graduate of Yale.

Edwin H. Hewitt received his early education from his father, who instructed him and directed his studies until he reached the age of fifteen. He then went to Potsdam, New York, where he studied two years. After his return to Red Wing he followed a course of study preparatory to entering Hobart College, his father's alma mater. He passed one year at Hobart, and in 1895 entered the sophomore elass of the University of Minnesota, and from this institution he was graduated in 1896 with the degrec of A. B. The next year he devoted to the study of architecture in the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology, in which he was a member of the sophomore elass. This gave enlargement and definiteness to the knowledge of his chosen profession which he had gained by previous study and practical work, during his vacations, in the office of Cass Gilbert, the eminent architect of St. Paul and New York.

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Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota, Part 91

Author: Holcombe, R. I. (Return Ira), 1845-1916; Bingham, William H Publication date: 1914 Publisher: Chicago : H. Taylor & Co. Number of Pages: 1190

Author: Holcombe, R. I. (Return Ira), 1845-1916; Bingham, William H
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Chicago : H. Taylor & Co.
Number of Pages: 1190