USA > Minnesota > St Louis County > Duluth > Duluth and St. Louis County, Minnesota; their story and people; an authentic narrative of the past, with particular attention to the modern era in the commercial, industrial, educational, civic and social development, Volume III > Part 43
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Michael G. Kraker acquired some schooling in the old country, also at Ely, and from the age of eleven lived at Tower, Ely and Virginia. From school he became a clerk, learned business by actual working expe- rience, and continued in the employ of others for a number of years after reaching his majority. It was in 1905 that he entered business on his own account as a member of the mercantile firm of Saari-Campbell & Kraker at Sparta. This business about 1908 sought a new location when the village of Gilbert was established, and from the first has been the leading mercantile enterprise of that now prosperous city. The old firm was reorganized in 1918 and the Kraker Mercantile Company was incorporated. Since then Mr. Kraker has been president and executive head.
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A prosperous business man, he has responded liberally to the demands of citizenship, and was one of the men of Gilbert who took active lead in securing the community quota for war loans, Red Cross and other measures during the World war.
September 2, 1906, Mr. Kraker married Blanche Jeglosky. They have four children : Edward M., Florence B., Marion Jane and Ralph F. The family are members of the Catholic Church.
RICHARD WEBB, of Hibbing, who died December 1, 1920, was one of the best known characters and figures in the Minnesota iron range. His numerous friends and acquaintances generally knew him as Capt. Richard Webb. He had been in the mining industry in some phase or other from boyhood to his death, and for upwards of a quarter of a century had been on the ranges of northern Minnesota, his last business being as mine instructor for the mineral right or "fee" owners.
Captain Webb was born near Tavistock, England, February 20, 1850, son of John and Elizabeth (Whitford) Webb. He was a little past fif- teen years of age when he accompanied his father and an older brother, Edward, now deceased, to Canada. For the first two years he was employed in the Bruce Mine about fifty miles from Sault Ste. Marie. In the meantime two other brothers, John and Paul, and still later their mother joined the family in Canada. In 1868 they all moved to Negaunee, Marquette County, Michigan, where the family had their home about twenty years.
Richard Webb began life with very limited schooling. Before he was nine he was working in mines in England, and there is hardly a phase of the great mining industry with which he was not practically familiar. He was a common miner in Michigan, and while there met and in 1872 married Elizabeth Jane Long.
About 1884 he moved to Wisconsin and became captain of what is now the Carey Mine at Hurley. In Wisconsin he was employed in mines operated or controlled by the great Cleveland capitalists and mine owners, Pickands. Mather & Company. In the service of this organization he was sent to Hibbing in 1895 to open the Sellers Mine. This mine was operated by a subsidiary corporation of Pickands, Mather & Company known as the Sellers Ore Company. About two and a half years later the Sellers Mine was transferred to John D. Rockefeller and his asso- ciates. In 1898 Captain Webb entered the service of M. H. Alworth and others to look after their interests in the Minnesota iron ranges, and remained in the service of the same group of men. His specific duties involved the keeping of maps of all developments of the mines, showing what ore was taken out, what remained, and keeping track of the vari- ous grades of ore. His duties as inspector also extended to safeguarding merchantable ore from destruction. Captain Webb was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and affiliated with the Masonic fraternity. He was a Republican.
His first wife died in August, 1904, and in 1906 he married Miss Anna T. Roscoe. Captain Webb by his first marriage had thirteen chil- dren. Six of these reached mature years: Elizabeth Jane, who is the widow of I. T. Colmer and has three children of her own, Earl, May and Richard, and also an adopted child, Myrna, daughter of a deceased sister : Richard J., a resident of the copper country in Michigan ; Anna, who died at the age of sixteen : Carrie, who was married to James Phillips and died in 1912, leaving three children, Florence, Howard and Myrna ; Edward J., a resident of Chisholm, Minnesota ; and William Harry, who lives at Hibbing.
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RICHARD TREVARTHEN, master mechanic of the Eveleth district for 1
the Oliver Iron Mining Company, and president of the village of Leo- nidas, is a native of England, having been born in Cornwall April 20, 1861. Thomas Trevarthen, his father, was an iron master in his native country and there married Elizabeth Reed. Realizing that better condi- tions prevailed for the laboring man in the United States than anywhere else on the face of the globe, in 1867 Thomas Trevarthen brought his wife and eight children to this country, and some two years after his arri- val renounced his allegiance to the English crown and took out his naturalization papers. Upon his arrival he located in Marquette, Michi- gan, where he resumed mining, and was so engaged until killed in an accident about the year 1890. His widow survived him until 1914.
Richard Trevarthen, the sixth born in his parents' family, has no recol- lection of his native country. He grew up in Marquette County, Michi- gan, where he received a common school education, and at the age of fifteen years began learning the machinist's trade with the Oliver Iron Mining Company, having been in the employ of that company ever since. From Marquette County he went to Iron River, Michigan, and was there seven years, at which time he had been promoted to master mechanic. For a short time following this he resided near Bessemer, Alabama, as assistant master mechanic of the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Com- pany, but soon returned to Michigan and became assistant master mechanic of the crushing plant at Escanaba for the Oliver Iron Mining Company. In 1904 he was transferred to Eveleth, Minnesota, to fill the position of master mechanic, and has lived here and occupied this posi- tion ever since. He is regarded as one of the most capable men in his calling, and has the confidence of his associates, the esteem and respect of his superiors and the friendship and good will of his men.
Mr. Trevarthen has taken an active and constructive interest in civic affairs, and was the first president of the village of Leonidas, a position which he fills at this time and the duties of which he discharges in a highly efficient and conscientious manner. He is a popular member of the Oliver Club, and his fraternal connection is with the local lodge of the Independ- ent Order of Odd Fellows. In 1884 Mr. Trevarthen was united in mar- riage with Miss Ellen Roberts, and they are the parents of two children : Fanny E., the wife of Oliver Black, residing in Arizona ; and Richard George. Richard George Trevarthen enlisted early after the entrance of the United States into the World war, as a member of the Engineer- ing Corps, and went to France with the American Expeditionary Forces. He was wounded in the Argonne Forest, shortly prior to the signing of the armistice, following which he returned home and was honorably dis- charged, and is now in the service of the Oliver Iron Mining Company, in the Eveleth district.
RT. REV. JAMES MCGOLRICK, the first bishop of the Catholic diocese of Duluth, has often been characterized as the best loved man of the city. He lived a life of extraordinary usefulness and his memory is revered in thousands of homes in Minnesota.
Bishop McGolrick was born May 1, 1841, in County Tipperary, Ire- land, and died at Duluth January 23, 1918, at the age of seventy-seven. He was a son of Felix and Bridget (Henry) McGolrick. He was edu- cated for the priesthood and was ordained a priest by Bishop Moriarity of Kerry at All Hallows College in Dublin June 11, 1867.
That was his preparation for a service of half a century beginning on the northwestern frontier at St. Paul in 1867. He became assistant to Father Ireland, later the eminent archbishop. Subsequently Bishop Grace
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instructed him to build a church for the people of West Minneapolis, and aided by several carpenters the young priest built a frame dwelling popu- larly called the "shed," but dedicated as the Church of the Immaculate Conception. Father McGolrick was pastor of that church from 1868 to 1889, and in that time saw it grow and flourish as a great instrument for good.
Father McGolrick came to Duluth January 9, 1889, and was conse- crated the first bishop of the Duluth diocese December 27, 1889. In June, 1917, he celebrated the golden jubilee of his priesthood and he died shortly after the twenty-eighth anniversary of his appointment as bishop.
Besides the huge amount of administrative detail that he handled so efficiently while bishop, he is best remembered as a wonderful friend of children, and Duluth regards as a real monument to his life and character the St. James Orphans' Home. He selected the site and obtained the money for its construction, and the service it performed for homeless children doubtless afforded him the deepest satisfaction of any of the constructive work he did during his long career as priest and bishop.
CHARLES FREDERICK MCCOMB, M. D. One of the oldest established members of the medical profession in Duluth, Doctor McComb has been in continuous practice in that city since 1883.
He was born at Stillwater, Minnesota, August 7, 1857, a son of James D. and Eliza J. (McKusick) McComb, both of Scotch ancestry. His father, a native of Pennsylvania, lived in Iowa and subsequently became a territorial pioneer in Minnesota, and for many years was in business at Stillwater. For two terms under appointment of the Gover- nor he was surveyor of logs and lumber. He and his wife both died at Stillwater.
Doctor McComb was reared in his native city, spent two years in the Minnesota State University, and after beginning his study under Dr. P. H. Millard at Stillwater entered Rush Medical College at Chicago in 1877, graduating in 1879. For three and a half years he practiced at Rush City, Minnesota. Then following a polyclinic course in New York City he located at Duluth, where his time and abilities for nearly forty years have been taken up with an extensive general practice. He has always been a deep student and has kept in touch with his profession through fre- quent courses of post-graduate study.
His professional honors are many. He has twice been president of the St. Louis County Medical Society; was the first president of the Interurban Academy of Medicine; was president in 1887 of the Minne- sota State Medical Association; was a member of the State Board of Health under three governors and is at present a member of the Advisory Commission of the State Sanatorium for Consumptives and a member of the American Medical Association. He served as coroner of St. Louis County for two terms in the '80s, and in 1912 was appointed county coroner and has held that office continuously by election.
Doctor McComb was formerly a member of the Minnesota Naval Militia. March 6, 1918, he was ordered to report for active duty on board the battleship Iowa, where he served as medical officer or past assistant surgeon, with rank of lieutenant, until March 31, 1919, when the Iowa was taken out of commission. He was then transferred to the Philadelphia Navy Yard and was released from active duty April 30, 1919. He was later promoted to rank of lieutenant commander.
Doctor McComb is a member of the Episcopal Church and a Repub- lican in politics, and is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner. In 1905 he married Miss Helen Jensen.
ASTOTU TILDEN
Lafayette Blick
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WILLIAM J. KAISER. The career of William J. Kaiser has been one in which the homely virtues of industry, fidelity and steady application have combined with the acceptance of opportunity in effecting the work- ing out of a worth-while or well-merited success. In early boyhood he started his struggle with the world in a humble capacity connected with the mining industry, and gradually has worked his way to the superin- tendency at Eveleth of the Adams, Spruce and Leonidas Mines for the Oliver Iron Mining Company.
Mr. Kaiser was born at Ishpeming, Michigan, July 13, 1886, a son of Louis and Rosa (Locher) Kaiser, the former a native of Switzerland and the latter of Michigan. In 1876 Louis Kaiser, the founder of his line in the United States, came to this country at the age of nineteen years, and, having a brother residing in lower Michigan, went to that part of the state. After a short stay he removed to the iron ore country of Upper Michigan and for twenty-nine years was connected with the Lake Angeline Mine operated by the Jones-Laughlin interests. He worked in various positions, and, being a man of industry, was eventually pro- moted to the position of pipe foreman. In 1908 he moved to Hibbing, Minnesota, which community has since been his home.
William J. Kaiser is one of twelve living children in a family of fif- teen. He completed the sixth grade in school work at Ishpeming and later attended three winter terms of school at Hibbing, but his entrance upon the arena of independent work occurred when he was twelve years of age, when he embarked in mining as the tender of trap doors while living at Ishpeming. Later he became a skip tender, running a motor, and spent one year as a hoisting engineer, all in Michigan. At Hibbing he entered the service of the Oliver Iron Mining Company and worked for a time as locomotive brakeman and steam shovel fireman, finally becom- ing night foreman at the Burt Mine, a position in which he continued for over three years. Next Mr. Kaiser became day foreman of the com- bined Burt and Sellers Mines, and about 1912 became shift boss at the Harold Mine, serving as such about eighteen months. Next he was made captain at the Mississippi Mine at Keewatin, but later returned to the Harold Mine as mining captain. Following this he again became day foreman of the Burt-Sellers Mines, and in 1918 was made assistant sup- erintendent of the mines at Buhl. In December of the same year he was transferred to Eveleth as assistant superintendent of the Adams, Spruce and Leonidas Mines, and on January 1, 1920, was advanced to the super- intendency, which position he has since held and the duties of which he has discharged with entire capability and to the satisfaction of his supe- riors, who have every confidence in his ability and judgment.
Mr. Kaiser is a Roman Catholic in religion and a Republican in poli- tics. On May 27, 1908, he was united in marriage with Miss Eva Villen- euve, of Ishpeming, Michigan, of French parentage, and they have three children : Lawrence J., William L. and Audrey.
LAFAYETTE BLISS, Educator, Magistrate and Good Citizen. By
B. D. Pearson.
Lafayette Bliss, municipal judge of Virginia, although highly respected in that capacity because of eminent fairness in the disposition of the problems of that important court, is best known to the people of this sec- tion as an educator of unsurpassed ability. a reputation that is by no means confined to St. Louis County, nor even Minnesota. In matters of education Judge Bliss was far in advance of his contemporaries. His school system was frequently studied by men and women of note and given high praise in leading influential magazines and newspapers of the
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United States, besides being the goal of progressive and forward-looking superintendents and other school officials everywhere. Certainly he was a pioneer in education on the Iron Ranges. The better the school system, the nearer it approaches the Bliss standard, it seems.
It is a matter of note and interest that the Bliss family, on the paternal side, has been American since 1636, when settlement of its ancestors was made in Hartford, Conn., in the heart of New England, the birthplace of much of this country's history. It follows that the colonial forebears of Judge Bliss were active and powerful in the events of their day. The maternal inheritance is Scotch-Irish. His father, William A. Bliss, left Yale College in his junior year and became one of the pioneer citizens of Chicago. It is of record that in preparing to build a house in the future metropolis of the west he transported the requisite lumber on a raft across Lake Michigan. For many years he was a leading manufacturer in Chicago, but in the great fire which swept the city in 1871 he met with losses that left him in straitened financial circumstances.
Judge Lafayette Bliss was born in Chicago and received his early, education in the public schools there. When but eleven years old he was forced to depend entirely upon his own resources, owing to the fact that his father's affairs some years before had become involved by losses suf- fered in the historic Chicago catastrophe. He entered school before he was five years of age and such was his precocity that he had finished the seventh grade before his eleventh birthday. Through his own earnings, made in all sorts of work, he defrayed the expenses incident to pursuit of a higher education, when thirteen years old entering the academy of Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, studying there for three years. Previously he had attended public schools in Kenyon, Red Wing and Hastings, in this state. After the academy term he completed a four- year course in Carleton College and was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts, finishing the classical-scientific course. While an undergraduate at that institution he won several eagerly-sought prizes in debating and oratorical contests. For two years he was editor of The Carletonia, the college paper, was active in athletics and literature, and founded the Adelphic Literary Society of Carleton College.
Upon graduation from Carleton College Judge Bliss engaged in the teaching profession, achieving noteworthy success wherever the field. He served as superintendent of schools in Henderson and Waseca, Min- nesota, and in 1900 made his first visit to Mesabi Range of Northern Minnesota, in the capacity of state summer school inspector. Genuinely interested in the possibilities of the iron-mining region, he welcomed the overtures which led to his appointment, in 1904, as superintendent of public schools in Virginia, St. Louis County. During the nine-year period of his superintendency the Virginia schools attained an unusually high standard, that favorable and enviable situation that is only observed when the head dedicates his life to the work, with no thought of the monetary reward. In educational circles of Minnesota he gained the reputation of conducting the "best and most effective school in the state." Out of an intimate experience with all the phases of real education he has gained so thorough a knowledge of the essentials that enter into the building needs that his advice has frequently been sought by architects of country- wide repute. While serving as a school superintendent he supervised the erection of some nineteen school structures in this state and, in this connection, the Technical high school, the North Side school and the Homestead school, all in the Virginia district, are examples of near-
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perfection, respectively, in high, grade, and rural school buildings. Noth- ing better appears yet to have been developed.
Post-grade courses in pedagogy and the sciences he studied at the University of Wisconsin, receiving high merit there. He has conducted several state summer schools for teachers, and for two years was inspec- tor and lecturer in connection with the activities of the teachers' training schools of Minnesota. He has served as president of the Minnesota High School Council, secretary of the Minnesota Educational Association and chairman of the Classical Conference of the National Educational Association. Judge Bliss has made careful surveys and studies of sev- eral of the great school systems of the eastern states, the resources thus acquired having been put to service in his own school organizations.
In school work Judge Bliss proceeded upon the premise that civiliza- tion is an art that can only be possessed by virtue of intensive work; that it is at once a restraint and an impetus, and so bound up with good citizenship that the two are inseparable. Not least among the virtues he impressed upon school children-the voters of tomorrow-by reason of that premise may be numbered courtesy, morality and a wholesome regard for public and private property. There was always a high morale in a Bliss school organization. Body-building, mind-building, spirit-building, truth-discovering, opinion-forming, man-conserving, thought-expressing, society-serving, wealth-producing, comrade-seeking and life-refreshing activities were the essentials of the Bliss-supervised institution. Body- building activities were not fostered for a few. Athletics for the whole was the practice. and there was always a fine spirit of co-operation between the various school departments ; it was insisted upon, it had to be.
The opinion-forming attribute Judge Bliss impregnated in students by frequently conversing with them, by shaping the school courses to include the reading of proper literature, poems, novels, and constructive litera- ture. History and biography had a high place as aids in the development of fair-mindedness, judgment and a broad outlook on the practical things of life. A pupil might be lame in reciting history but strong in ability to form sound opinions based on his reading. He would be graded accord- ingly. To be on the right side of the big questions and to gain the abil- ity to form sound opinions, were motives in the broad plan.
Discernment of the truth was helped by studying science in the right way, physiology, physics, botany, chemistry, physiography, and biology. These sciences were studied in the Bliss school in a way to produce alert- ness of mind, thoroughness, skill in observing, skill in experimenting, and in manipulating apparatus, soundness in interpreting results ; in fine, an application that gives the ability to see the truth and stick to the truth.
Thought-expressing he developed by the study of Latin, English, the modern languages, mathematics, particularly geometry. Technical Eng- lish grammar and logic were considered very important in building up truthfulness 'and accuracy, which is more important than the studies themselves.
Wealth-producing directions include manual training, which should develop manual skill, initiative, diligence, perseverance, honesty and organizing ability.
Spirit-building, in the Bliss code, is made up of loyalty to high ideals, in efforts to do the best possible work, in trustworthiness, and power to will to do the right. What the world needs most today is loyalty to well-determined principles.
Society-serving impulses are developed in the young by teaching obedience, respect for law, faithfulness in office, interest in the com- munity (not merely a selfish interest), and punctuality.
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The man-conserving quality he induced by inculcating a spirit of generosity, the spirit of helpfulness and homemaking.
Contributing to the comrade-seeking ability, for example, the so-called "gang spirit," are the elements of co-operation, courtesy, agreeableness, and frankness, all of which if not developed in the right way become per- verted, selfish and anti-social.
Play-interest, as Judge Bliss conceives it, should develop a sports- manlike spirit, courage, self-control, and resourcefulness, providing the means are proper, all of which contributes to the life-refreshing char- acteristic.
Judge Bliss is known as the originator of the night schools of the Mesabi Range, which were started in 1904. They were the result of an earnest desire to advance the true Americanization of the foreign ele- ment of prospective citizenship in this section and, under him, at one time, in one year, had an enrollment of 700 students, a valuable service to the community. In night school direction the same inflexible principles that were the fabric of the day-school theme, governed. According to the dictum of the Judge, the aim of school education should not be to impart knowledge merely, but to open the minds of students, to arouse interest, aspiration, create enthusiasm, and develop determination of the right sort, accuracy of observation and of judgment.
The aim was always at vital orderliness, discipline, self-control, evolv- ing all the way through a course of study, patience, power of adjust- ment, and habits of social team work. Intellectual and moral integrity he determined to be of higher worth than mere smartness not based on character.
As an educator, Judge Bliss had a peculiar genius both in initiative and in execution. He had vision. He it was who first pressed for industrial training in Minnesota and on the Range. He started the first school gardens and made the school farm possible. Under his direction the school boys cleared the "State Eighty," known as the school farm, of trees, underbrush and stones. His school took the first prize at the State Fair, for the most complete exhibition of work in all departments of education, a beautiful silver urn, appropriately inscribed. This exhibit from the Virginia school was selected by the State Education Department to represent the state of Minnesota at the World's Fair in Nagoya, Japan, where it was given the highest award. The beautiful Public School grounds for which the Range is noted, with flower beds, and well- kept lawns, were first started in Virginia, under the leadership of Judge Bliss, as he believes that environment has quite as much to do in the train- ing of a child as has heredity. His genius for initiative also made him one of the pioneer leaders in securing public parks, municipal light and water, paved streets, white ways and other city improvements, but in all these matters he planted his feet firmly against extravagance and waste.
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