Sumner Thomas McKnight Sr. was New York native, real estate tycoon

Taken together, the men who joined forces in 1873 to incorporate the Northwestern Lumber Company were titans of industry, if only just. Gilbert Porter was a native of the same New York county as Mr. Moon, being born at Fredonia, New York in north Chautauqua County and spending his boyhood in Lapeer County near Detroit, Michigan, before coming to Eau Claire in search of fame and fortune around the time that Sawdust City (Eau Claire, Wisconsin) was just getting formed. Moving from a stint as editor of the Eau Claire Free Press into the lumber business, Porter clerked for the _rm of Chapman and Thorp (yes, THAT Thorp) and joined forces with a young Mr. Moon to form Porter and Moon, later to become the Northwestern Lumber Company with Sumner Thomas (S.T) McKnight Sr. on board as the third partner. After Porter died of an illness at Hannibal Missouri, Mr. Moon assumed the Company’s presidency in his place, serving with both ability and distinction until he too died November 5, 1898, in Eau Claire. Portions of Mr. Moon’s story has been explored elsewhere. So what of the third company partner S. T. McKnight Sr., last of the original three founders?

After Mr. Moon died in 1898, Mr. McKnight Sr. took over as the _rm’s president for a time, having begun his life as a native of Truxton in Cortland County, New York, and if _ndagrave.com can be trusted lost his father Thomas McKnight the very day that he was born, April 2, 1836. Thomas McKnight died at age _fty and is buried in the Truxton Rural Cemetery, far away from his wife Harriet, who died 37 years later at age 83 and is buried at Hillside Cemetery in Fond du Lac County Wisconsin. In spite of the early loss of his father, however, tragedy didn’t stop a young McKnight Sr. from going west, _rst to Wausau, Wisconsin where he learned the lumber trade at just 20 years old, and from there to found S. T. McKnight and Company, with sales yards at Hannibal, Missouri.

In 1873 Mr. McKnight joined forces with Messrs. Porter and Moon to form the Northwestern Lumber Company, with ma- jor operations at Porter’s Mills, in Brunswick township of Eau Claire, County. Porter’s Mills (also called Porterville) had three sawmills at one point, the _nished product _oated downriver to the sales yards at Hannibal. Today, meanwhile, the town is Porter’s Mills is no more, being covered in forest and used as a rock quarry. Users of the Chippewa River State Trail south of Eau Claire can pass through what remains of the former metropolis,

which isn’t much in residential terms. Back to McKnight Sr. as the object of our vignette.

With logging coming to the Stanley Country and to Wolf Pond “the same year or just after Gettysburg played out (per the Stanley Centennial book), McKnight Sr. and others set to work building the Stanley Country into what it is today, aided by the moving of Company operations from Porter’s Mills to present day Stanley in 1891, together with many, many families. Mr. McKnight moved to Minneapolis the same year that the arrival of the railroad in Stanley meant that log drives would soon be on their way out, in 1887.

That said, as lumbering was nearing its end the Northwestern Lumber Company did not abandon the area, but instead turned to real estate, of which McKnight Sr. was an investor. Selling off the cutover districts to immigrant farmers from overseas meant

that rather than shipping food into town (as in the olden days), the area in part could grow its own, and thus be self-sustaining. The pioneer age in short, was coming to an end. McKnight himself would live to the age of 72, dying of heart disease on August 3. 1908 at his mansion on the Minneapolis “Golden Mile” at 2200 Park Avenue, while according to a newspaper clippings uploaded to _ndagrave.com by Shevlin Moore McCann, McKnight Sr. was then “one of the wealthiest men in the Twin Cities,” even building early skyscrapers like the multi-story McKnight building. Today the McKnight Mansion property has transformed into a center for “American Indian Services,” as a sign outside says. Down the street the uniquely named “Straitgate Church” stands proud. In the distance at the mansion, the skyscraper _lled horizon of Minneapolis can be seen, gleaming in the Sun on a bright day.

As to the last will and testament of Mr. McKnight, $56,000 of his many millions would reportedly go to charity, with the rest

going to support family near and abroad, immediate and extended. The Y.M.C.A. (the acronym then standing for “Young Men’s Christian Association”) received $3,000, according to a death notice from that time period. The McKnight family would not go away with the patriarch’s death, but instead go on to accomplish many things, before joining the father at Lakewood Cemetery just off Lake Harriet southeast of the mansion. Together with Mr. McKnight Sr. are wife Eugenia McKnight, daughters Nellie Manvill, Harriet and Carolyn, and son S. T. Jr. together with his wife, among others—all of them a long way from Truxton in Cortland County, New York.

Of the family, S. T. McKnight Jr. would obtain most remarkable distinction, as per the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library website, S. T. McKnight Jr. would serve as a Minnesota state lawmaker for District 31 from 1923 to 1928, and again from 1929 to 1931, with son Henry Turney McKnight Sr. serving Minnesota Senate District 31 from 1936 to 1966, and in District 33 from 1967 to 1970. Both the son and grandson of Mr. McKnight Sr. (the lumber company partner) attended and obtained degrees from Yale University, the son dying at age 75 in 1959 and the grandson dying age 59, in 1972. Among the grandson’s other roles were serving as a regent of Augsburg College and developing the town of Jonathan, Minnesota, described as a “town within a town” within Chaska, Minnesota, during the mid-1960s and beyond, reportedly working to help preserve agricultural

land and aid conservation.

In the meantime, the local legacy of the younger McKnight’s grandfather, S. T. McKnight Sr., can be seen in part today from Church Street to Fourth Avenue at the western edge of Stanley.

Kept on _le at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in its Special Archives section, this vintage 1895 map of Stanley shows the now discontinued ‘Gilman Street triangle’ featured in the center and also lists “Willar- Street.” Jotted on the back in cursive are the signatures of James Tilly Barber, Company vice-president at the time along with S. T. McKnight Sr., listed as the Company secretary. Images courtesy UW-Eau C Shown up top, the historic S. T. McKnight mansion at 2200 Park Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota is pro_led on that city’s website and was once part of the “Golden Mile,” where rich city men went to relax from their businesses. Below it, the now “McKnight Street” is a local testament to lumber and real estate baron S. T. McKnight’s involvement with the Stanley- Boyd Country, looking out toward the old lumber and stockyard area of town.

Page 10 • Stanley Republican • December 31, 2020