March 19, 1891: Birth of Margaret Culkin Banning

On this day in 1891, future Duluth novelist Margaret Culkin Banning was born in Buffalo, Minnesota. Her family moved to Duluth in 1897 after her father became the Register of the Land Office in Duluth and the family moved to 2328 Woodland Avenue in Hunter’s Park. Banning graduated Duluth Central High School in 1907 and spent several years in the Convent of the Sacred Heart for a year before attending Vassar College, studying economics and creative writing and later earned a master in social work at the University of Chicago. In 1920, six years into her marriage with attorney Archibald T. Banning, she published her first novel, This Marrying, in 1920. She followed that up by publishing a new book about every year into the middle 1940s. In addition to her writing career, Banning was very active in the community, serving for many years on the Duluth Library Board and working on local projects. She became an activist for national causes and was busy with speaking engagements around the country. She also had a weekly radio program on NBC in the early 1940s. In 1935, she was selected as the first member of the Duluth Hall of Fame, and in 1976 contributed “Hunter’s Park as the Century Turned” the the book Duluth: Sketches of the Past, available at the Duluth public Library. Banning died in 1982. Read a much more complete biography of her here.

Margaret Culkin Banning. (Image: Duluth Public Library)