February 17, 1955: Death of Duluth’s A. G. Thomson

On this day in 1955, Adam Gentles Thomson died of a heart attack at his winter home in Miami Beach. Thomson was born in Duluth in 1888 to Helen and Alexander D. Thomson, an important figure in Duluth’s grain trade and wholesale industry. Thomson—known in newspapers as A. G.—attended Duluth public schools before heading east to boarding school at the Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. In 1911 he was graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University. His graduation from Yale did not go off without a hitch: He found himself trapped on the top floor of the Tontine Hotel in New Haven, Connecticut, when it was engulfed in flames; he was staying at the hotel while waiting commencement exercises and escaped unharmed. After graduating he went to work for his father in the grain trade. When his father passed away in 1921, he assumed the presidency of A. D. Thomson & Co., grain traders, and became the chairman of Kelley-How-Thomson, hardware wholesalers. A. D. Thomson closed up shop in 1937, but Thomson remained a member of the Board of Trade until 1949, maintaining an office in the Alworth Building. Thomson’s home at 2617 East Third Street is now the A. G. Thomson House Bed & Breakfast. There’s much more to the life of A. G. Thomson, and you can read it all here.

A. G. and Clara Thomson on horseback outside their home, date unknown. (Image: Ancestry.com)