February 27, 1914: Captain Sellwood laid to rest

On this day in Duluth in 1914, Captain Joseph Sellwood was laid to rest in a family mausoleum in Forest Hill Cemetery. Sellwood was born in Cornwall, England, December 5, 1846, and went to work in the nearby copper and tin mines when he was 13 years old. He moved to the U.S.  when he was 19, finding work in an iron mine in New Jersey before striking out for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula copper country, finding work in the Ogema mine. In 1870 he switched to iron mining with the New York Mining company in Michigan and began taking on contracts for ore extraction on the Gogebic Range. He left Michigan for Duluth in 1888, opening mines on the Vermilion Range near Ely. Ten years later he was in charge of every mine owned by the American Steel and Wire Company, but when the creation of U. S. Steel was announced, he decided to strike out on his own, investing in developing mines. Over the course of his career, the “most able man in the Lake Superior district, if not in the United States,” owned interest in 12 mines and a steamship company; was president of Duluth’s City National Bank, the Bank of Ely, and the Bank of Two Harbors; and presided over the Cass Mining Company and the Bradford Mining Company, the Duluth & Iron Range Railway, and his son-in-law’s Liethead Drug Company. In Duluth he built the Sellwood Building in downtown Duluth and three homes at the intersection of Eighteenth Avenue East and Superior Street, one for himself and his wife, the others for his daughters and their husbands.

Captain Joseph Sellwood. (Duluth Public Library)