Archive Dive: Duluth’s Jefferson Brothers

Meet Duluth’s Jefferson brothers, Ernest and Robert. One of them helped plat the original streets of Duluth, built the town’s first hotel, and then went off to war and never returned. The other never stepped foot in Duluth until after the war, where he had had lost a leg, but thrived in the Zenith City as a harness shop owner and went on to become a bit of a local institution, working as a lighthouse keeper and serving on the Duluth City Council and the St. Louis County Board of Commissioners. get to know Ernie and Bob better by reading about their remarkable lives in Heidi Bakk-Hansen’s profile of the brothers here.

Ernest Jefferson. (Image: Duluth Public Library)