Ancestors & Family
John Sargent Pillsbury
In 1855, John Pillsbury was the first of our family to make his way to the Minnesota territory and find a future at St. Anthony Falls on the bank of the Mississippi. There with help from his family, he would start a hardware store, invest in a flour mill, and, one day become its governor.
John was born in Sutton New Hampshire, the younger brother of George A. Pillsbury. Today, John is remembered on a town plaque on state highway 114 as one of Sutton’s leading citizens for a lifetime of industry and public service.
As a young teen, he learned a painter's trade to make a living for himself and his family. At 17, he abandoned that for the mercantile life of sales and small business.
John first took a job as a clerk for his older brother George in the general store of Warner, New Hampshire. There he did well enough to enter into a trading partnership with his friend Walter Harriman, a Civil War veteran for the Union army and future governor of New Hampshire.
Looking West
During this time, he became convinced that there were better opportunities out west. With help from his brother George and what he’d saved, he set off for San Francisco. Finding the gold rush over and little prospect of money, he went north to Oregon before setting his compass on the Minnesota Territory and the growing settlement at St. Anthony Falls, the only natural waterfall on the Mississippi. After his journey taken by stage coach, train, and steam boat, he arrived immediately feeling at home among the milling activity that reminded him of the Merrimack River of New England. Many of its residents were New Englanders. When he saw St. Anthony Falls he was convinced a large city would grow there.
First though he made the long trip back to New Hampshire to earn money in the merchant and tailoring business he’d left behind. He also sought to convince others to go with him to find a new life in the upper Midwest. One “recruit” was Mahala Fisk, a school teacher from Warner he proposed to marry. Her brother their friend George Cross, her brother Woodbury, and two of John’s cousins soon decided to join in.
John and the others set off in the spring of 1855 to try their luck starting a hardware store in St. Anthony Falls. Mahala stayed behind to teach through the winter until the following spring when John came back so they could marry and return to make a new Minnesota home on the banks of the Mississippi.
Minnesota
John’s hardware venture soon prospered, and J.S. Pillsbury & Company became the region’s leading wholesaler and retailer of hardware and industrial equipment. That is until the panic of 1857, the financial panic that spread quickly across the country on account of the recent invention of the Morse code and telegraph. At the panic’s peak a fire burned much of the store’s inventory in one night, sparing the stone building. Undeterred they built it back up with the help of their customers.
John continued in the hardware business until 1875, when he sold out in order to spend more time in the milling business. To this end, he wrote his nephew (my great grandfather) Charles, who had spent six years in Montreal learning the grain business at a produce commission company. He asked Charles to join him to invest and work in a flour mill, saying “You can be its manager as well as co-owner.”
John remained active in lumber and other manufacturing or mercantile ventures related to his hardware business, all the while working with his brother and nephew to grow what became under Charles’ leadership the C.A. Pillsbury Mill Company flour mill.
Public Service
It didn’t take long, given his many engagements, for him to be asked to take a role in local government. First as a member of the city council of St. Anthony where he’d get re-elected for six years. Soon after as a Minnesota state senator for six two-year terms. A century later, my father would follow him, serving five terms in the Minnesota state senate after he retired from the Pillsbury company in the late 1960s.
Elected Governor
As governor, John was known to be practical, compassionate, and hardworking. He was said to be “particularly fitted for a new state struggling with “unwanted difficulties” such as the aftermath of the financial panic of 1873, local corruption, and an ongoing natural disaster of a plague of tens of thousands grasshoppers devastating farmers and their crops.
He proved to be a good mediator who resolved a sensitive railroad bond issue the isolated northern state needed. He was also an advocate for good government. He created the office of public examiner to detect and purge corruption in public office and the first state board of canvassers to supervise the counting of ballots, one of the early Minnesota leaders that laid the groundwork of the state’s civic culture and leader in voter turnout.
Governor Pillsbury may be most remembered for what he did for education and building the University of Minnesota, though farmers may still cite his role taking on the intractable five year grasshopper plague. Once elected, he went door to door, often incognito to hear directly from farmers on its impact of the annual invasion and what he could do to be their friend, coach, and source of support to get them through. Nothing seemed to work until the Governor, hearing their desperation, answered their plea for a day of prayer and solidarity . In what seemed to many like a miracle, the grasshoppers soon disappeared. What eggs were left behind were destroyed by an April storm and vigilant farmers.
University of Minnesota
As an elected official, John’s greatest passion was growing the University of Minnesota. In the state senate, and as governor he led the effort to save the struggling institution from early bankruptcy by lobbying for better management and paying off its debts including tapping his own personal resources.
In his retirement, the boy with only a common-school education would become president of the University's Board of Regents. His flagship project was the renowned hall of science that carries his name.
Horace Hudson's 1893 dictionary of Minneapolis says “Pillsbury's impulse always was to act; act now; act effectively; act for the greatest good."
It was said in public life, his ability, upright character, and genial ways won for him the esteem of all with whom he came in contact. He never paraded his doings. Were it not for the public press, a person might live next door to Governor Pillsbury for a decade without learning what he had accomplished or what he was proposing to do.