On this day in 1871, George P. Tweed was born in Warsaw, Minnesota, the oldest son of eleven children born to Norwegian immigrants Evan and Anna Tweed. According to one biographer, Tweed “came to Duluth when about sixteen years of age…. At the age of eighteen, after leaving school, he entered the real estate and…

On this day in Duluth in 1872, the Duluth Minnesotian made the first historic record of a bridge over the Duluth Ship Canal with the simple statement, “The bridge over the ship canal on Minnesota Point remains undisturbed.” At the time this simply meant that shipping traffic on Lake Superior had yet to open, so…

On this day in the St. Louis Bay in 1914, the “half-decomposed” corpse of Peter Morgan, age 52, was found frozen in a block of ice floating in the water. Morgan lived with his widowed sister and his niece at 1112 Fisher Avenue in Superior. He had lived in Superior for 15 years and worked…

On this day in Duluth in 1886, the Duluth Weekly Tribune announced that the federal government was considering placing a fish hatchery at the mouth of the Lester River, at that time part of the Village of Lakeside. Dr. Sweeney, then president of the Minnesota Fisheries Association, was tapped to take the lead on the…

On this day in 1912, Duluthian William Silvey, went down with the Titanic after it hit an iceberg in the North Sea. He and his wife Alice had spent the previous winter in Europe and booked return passage on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. On that fateful night William Silvey put his wife in a…

On this day in Duluth in 1921, the Duluth News Tribune reported that Chicago landscape architect Edward H. Bennett said that “A visitor’s first impression as he nears the city is depressing…because of the marked contrast with the beauty of the residential area.” Bennet said the problem could be fixed with “more orderly development in…

On this day in Duluth in 1881, Josiah D. Ensign was elected mayor of the Village of Duluth, and it wasn’t much of a contest. Ensign had become president of the village, organized in 1877 after the city of Duluth went bankrupt, after Peter Dean resigned from the office in September 1880. In January 1881…

On this day in Duluth in 1930, Carl Meeske, president of the Rex Company, called the Fitger Company announcing that “all his men are quitting this evening” and asked Fitger’s to take over the company the next day. The Rex Company had been called Duluth Brewing & Malt prior to Prohibition. After the death of…

On this day in Duluth in 1887, Judge O. P. Stearns “delivered up the last of the old city bonds and coupons, and the old disgrace to the city was finally wiped out.” The previous month Duluth had regained its city charter, so getting rid of those old bonds was the last step Duluth required…

On this day in Duluth in 1880, pioneer Luke Marvin died in the city he helped shape from its infancy. Marvin had first come to Duluth from St. Paul in 1861 and shortly thereafter was appointed registrar of the U.S. Land Office. It took an entire week for Marvin, his wife, and his five-year-old son…