Annual Message Of Governor J.s. Pillsbury To The Legislature Of Minnesota: Delivered January 4, 1877...
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Annual Message Of Governor J.S. Pillsbury To The Legislature Of Minnesota: Delivered January 4, 1877
Minnesota. Governor (1876-1882 : Pillsbury)., John Sargent Pillsbury
Pioneer Press Co., 1877
History; United States; State & Local; Midwest; History / United States / State & Local / Midwest; Minnesota; Travel / United States / Midwest / West North Central
John Sargent Pillsbury was an American flour-miller and governor of Minnesota.
Background
He was born on July 29, 1828 at Sutton, New Hampshire, United States, one of five children of John and Susan (Wadleigh) Pillsbury.
On his father's side he was descended from William Pillsbury (or Pilsbury) who came to Massachusetts as early as 1641, settling first in Dorchester and then in Ipswich; on his mother's side he was also of Massachusetts Puritan stock.
Education
After a common-school education, he started to learn a trade.
Career
He abandoned trade to become a clerk in his brother's general store. Soon after reaching his majority he opened a store of his own in partnership with Walter Harriman; two years later he was a merchant tailor and cloth dealer in Concord. In 1855, after a tour of the West, Pillsbury settled at St. Anthony, Minn. (now a part of Minneapolis), as a hardware dealer, in partnership with his brother-in-law, Woodbury Fisk, and George A. Cross. Moderate success was interrupted by a fire which destroyed a season's stock and by financial panic which prevented rehabilitation for some years.
In 1875 he sold his hardware interests in order to devote more time to the lumber and real-estate businesses which he had developed, and especially to the milling enterprise in which, in 1872, he had embarked together with his nephew, Charles A. Pillsbury, and his brother George A. Pillsbury. About 1875 another nephew, Fred C. Pillsbury, joined the firm. Their milling business grew to be the most extensive in the world for a period, and the products of the Pillsbury Mills were known wherever men used wheat. Their energy and ability in realizing the opportunities of a relatively unexploited region built up for each of the partners a considerable fortune.
For six years (1858 - 64) John was a member of the city council of St. Anthony. He helped organize the first three regiments which Minnesota sent to serve in the Civil War and the battalion recruited in 1862 to deal with the Indian uprising. In 1863 he was elected one of the Hennepin County state senators, and, reelected, served 1864-68, 1871, 1874, 1875.
With no special effort on his own part he was nominated for governor by the Republican party in 1875 and elected to the office for three successive terms, serving as chief executive from January 7, 1876, to January 10, 1882. It was during this period that Minnesota, in common with other states of the Northwest was plagued with the "grasshopper scourge" which destroyed, season after season, all vegetation over wide areas. Pillsbury was energetic in personally investigating the seriousness of the situation and in securing relief, as well as in coordinating the activities of several states.
His most lasting public service was one he rendered the state university. In 1851 Congress had granted two townships of public lands for a university; this land was mortgaged to erect a building which, in turn, bore a mortgage when it was completed in 1857. The crash of that year found the embryo university laden with debt and its regents in despair of ever extricating it. In 1862 the legislature was ready to sell the land to satisfy the creditors. It was at this point that Pillsbury, made a regent in 1863, resolved that something should be done to save the institution. In 1895 the legislature made Pillsbury regent for life. For nearly forty years, in the midst of his manifold interests, the university engaged the best of his abilities. He took a personal interest in its plant, its faculty, and its students.
During the last decade of his life, when he had withdrawn to a considerable degree from active business, he rarely let a day pass without visiting the campus to consult with President Cyrus Northrop, and he continued to follow in every detail the life of the institution he had rescued.
He died in Minneapolis at the age of seventy-three.