April 17, 1892: Death of William Wallace Kingsbury

On this day in 1892, Duluth pioneer William Wallace Kingsbury—namesake of Duluth’s Kingsbury Creek—died in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Kingsbury was born in Towanda, Pennsylvania, in 1828. He worked as a store clerk and a surveyor before coming to the Head of the Lakes in 1852 and built a cabin in Endion before staking a claim west of the town of Oneota near the creek that would later bear his name on land that is now part of Fairmount Park. He became a member of the Minnesota Territorial House of Representatives in 1857 and a delegate to the Minnesota State Constitutional Convention in 1857. Kingsbury was elected as a Democrat to the 35th Congress and served from March 1857 to May 1858, when part of the territory was admitted as a state (Kingsbury is sometime credited as a driving force behind Minnesota’s statehood). He did not run for re-election in 1858. Duluth pioneer William Epler recalled that “Kingsbury was a man of literary tastes, and had stocked his cabin library with many good books.” Kingsbury returned to Towanda in 1865 and engaged in the real estate and insurance business before becoming a commission merchant in Baltimore before landing in Tarpon Springs in 1887, where he was involved in real estate and mercantile pursuits until his death.

Lithographic postcard, ca. 1910, of a foot bridge spanning the rocky banks of Kingsbury Creek within Fairmount Park. (Image: Zenith City Press)