On this day in 1871, future Duluthian Adelaide Belle Sawyer was born in Wisconsin. Her family moved to Duluth in 1889, when she was 18. She quickly became involved in local theater, and by 1894 local newspapers were calling her “one of the most promising and brightest of the amateur performers of Duluth.” She was…

On this day in Duluth in 1933, 70-year-old Duluth police sergeant David Butchart was struck and killed by a car at 11:30 p.m. Butchart and other officers were stopping cars trying to find an automobile that was stolen while an eight-year-old boy was asleep inside—police were treating it as a kidnapping. The driver was found…

On this day in Duluth in 1892, St. Paul “Empire Builder” James J. Hill sold his Duluth morning newspaper, the Duluth Daily Tribune to Guilford Hartley and Luther Mendenhall, who already owned the Duluth Daily News. In about 1890 Hill offered Robert C. Mitchell, who founded the newspaper in 1870 as the Duluth Tribune, $47,000…

On this day in Duluth in 1931, the Duluth Superior Transit Company put new vehicles into service: “trackless trolley busses” powered by overhanging wires once used for traditional streetcars. The new busses rode on truck tires, not rails, and could maneuver within 14 feet of the overhead wires. The initial route of the busses, which…

On this day in Duluth in 1935, Ameila Earhart visited the Zenith City, staying at the Holland House Hotel and entertaining a large crowd at the Duluth Armory that evening. Donning a brown flying jacket and “slacks,” Miss Earhart was described by the Duluth Herald as “even more cordial than she has been pictured.” While…

On this day in Duluth in 1921, Jalmer “John” Heikkinen (also spelled “Hikkinen”), shot and killed Waino Pauttu at the People’s Hotel, a Finnish boarding house and the former Bethel building at Lake Avenue and Sutphin Street in Duluth’s Uptown, today’s Canal Park Business District. The two had been arguing over the affection of 16-year-old…

On this day in Duluth in 1900, Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan addressed a crowd of 5,000 at the Third Regiment Armory. While the Duluth Herald described the crowd as “the largest the Armory has ever held,” the Duluth News Tribune pointed out that Bryan had attracted a larger crowd at the Duluth Street…

On this day in 1854, the future creation of Duluth was set in motion with the signing of the Second Treaty of LaPointe on Madeline Island, which opened  the Minnesota Territory north and west of Lake Superior to settlement by U. S. citizens of European descent. Representatives of the U.S. government met on the island…

On this day in 1881, future Duluthians Chester Adgate Congdon and Clara Hesperia Bannister  were married in Syracuse, New York, in a ceremony performed by Reverend Charles W. Bennet. Clara was a native of San Francisco, and both had Methodist ministers for fathers. The couple had met as students at the University of Syracuse, and…

On this day in Duluth in 1873, the Duluth Minnesotian reported that Thomas Harvey of the Comstock & Harvey Brownstone Company had skipped town with $8,000 meant to pay laborers building the Banning Block and the Hunter Block in downtown Duluth. Comstock & Harvey had leased Michael Chambers’ brownstone quarry in Fond du Lac to…