William Hood Dunwoody (March 14, 1841 – February 8, 1914) was an American banker, merchants, miller, art patron and philanthropist. He was a partner in what is today General Mills and for thirty years a leader of Northwestern National Bank, today's Wells Fargo.[1]
Dunwoody sold American flour to British bakers, creating an export market and environment in which Minneapolis, Minnesota, became for a time the world's center of flour milling.[2][3] By 1901, he was one of sixteen millionaires in Minneapolis.
Of Scottish descent, Dunwoody was a Quaker[5] but worshiped as a Presbyterian at Westminster Presbyterian Church.[2] In 1684 his maternal ancestors John and Ann Hood and their family emigrated from Castle Donington in Leicestershire to Pennsylvania. Dunwoody visited the area in 1893, when he and the genealogist he hired tried and failed to find a Quaker meeting place.[6]
He was born March 14, 1841, in Westtown, Chester County, Pennsylvania, about eleven miles from Philadelphia,[7] to James and Hannah (Hood) Dunwoody, who were farmers.[8] He had two brothers—Evan, who lived in Colorado Springs and survived him, and John, who died in Minneapolis.[2] Dunwoody went to local country schools, and at fourteen he attended an academy in Philadelphia. He then worked for five years with his uncle Ezekiel Dunwoody, who owned a grain and feed business in Philadelphia. Then as senior partner at age 23, he started his own business, Dunwoody & Robertson, and became a flour merchant.[9]
He and Kate L. Dunwoody (née Patten) married in 1868; they had no children.[8] They made a permanent move to Minneapolis in 1869, when Dunwoody was 28.[9]William Channing Whitney[10] built their first home at Mary Place & 10th Street in 1882, and they later donated the house to the Woman's Boarding Home.[2]
Whitney built their second home in 1905.[10] Called Overlook, the Tudor Revival house had 42 rooms.[10] After a 20-year battle between the neighborhood association and a developer,[11] it was demolished in 1967.[10]
Minneapolis flour milling
The Arctic and Union mills are at left (pictured in 1878).
To start, Dunwoody represented businesses in the east as a flour buyer.[12] In 1871 his business was organized as Tiffany, Dunwoody & Co., under which he owned and managed the Arctic mill; Dunwoody also owned and managed the Union mill and was a member of H. Darrow & Company.[9][12]
Dunwoody distinguished himself by organizing the Minneapolis Miller's Association, under which millers for a time cooperated in buying wheat.[12] The organization became the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce.[2]
Washburn, Crosby Co. advertisement, late 1880s
He agreed with Cadwallader C. Washburn that flour could be sold directly to the United Kingdom and in 1877 Washburn arranged his trip there.[12] Through "clouds of insults, uncertainties, and rumors," "Dunwoody made his quiet way."[13] Eventually in 1878 English bakers realized that American flour made more loaves per barrel than English flour.[13] Dunwoody overcame "most determined opposition", successfully arranged for direct export,[12] and set patterns of business that persisted for years.[13] Exports to the United Kingdom and continental Europe increased from a few hundred barrels in 1877 or 1878 to four million barrels in 1895.[13][2] By 1900 exports peaked at about one third the output of Minneapolis mills.[14]
Vicinity of the Dunwoody home in Minneapolis. A townhouse project replaced the house in 1981, a decade after it had been demolished.[11]
He became a silent partner in Washburn-Crosby & Company[15] (which became General Mills) with Washburn, John Crosby and Charles Martin.[12] There he oversaw the development of the production of "new process" white flour.[10] The prevailing motto of the time, reflecting Dunwoody's influence and the company's deep conservatism, was, "Addition, division, silence."[16] A reserved and shrewd capitalist,[17] he served a time as vice president of the company and was sometimes in demand because of his banking connections.
In 1888, after Washburn had died and Dunwoody himself was ill,[2] he traveled to Philadelphia to recruit James Stroud Bell (father of James Ford Bell, who founded General Mills in 1928). After the Pillsbury company was sold to foreign investors, in 1889 Dunwoody helped Bell stop an English syndicate from buying their company.[18] Then United States Milling Company of New York started to speculate and succeeded in buying the rival Northwestern Consolidated. In 1898 Dunwoody bought 75% of his company from the surviving Washburn brothers, preventing a takeover and making the company operators its owners for the first time.[19]
Other affiliations
Dunwoody was vice president of the Minneapolis Loan & Trust Co. (formally merged with Northwestern in 1934[20]), and at various times president and chairman of the board of Northwestern National Bank (today known as Wells Fargo).[21] He was an organizer of the Minneapolis chamber of commerce and president of the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts. He was president of the St. Anthony & Dakota, vice president of the Duluth and the St. Anthony Elevator companies,[12] and president of the Barnum Grain Company. He was a director of the Great Northern Railway.[9]
Death
Dunwoody was ill for six months, reportedly from a heart ailment, and died at his home (104 Groveland Terrace, Minneapolis) on February 8, 1914.[2] Kate Dunwoody died the following year. They are buried in Lakewood Cemetery.[22]
Of a total of $4.6 million in gifts in his will, Dunwoody gave $2 million to build an industrial trade school for young people, with a focus on handicrafts, useful arts, the milling arts, and construction of milling machinery.[23] He felt the milling business was threatened by young people's tendency to enter the "office end" of the business after they graduated from high school.[23] Kate Dunwoody gave an additional $1.6 million on her death in 1915.[1] In 1998 the institute was accredited by The Higher Learning Commission to award bachelor's degrees.[1] Today known as Dunwoody College of Technology, it occupies a campus near downtown Minneapolis. As of 2015 Dunwoody offers workforce training and continuing education, and programs in applied management, automotive, computer technology, construction sciences and building technology, design and graphics technology, engineering, radiologic technology, and robotics and manufacturing.[24]
^Some sources say it was built by a great grandfather named James Hood. Deferring to the historical society, that it replaced an earlier school, in: "Hood Octagonal Schoolhouse". Newtown Square Historical Society. Retrieved August 21, 2015.
^ abcdeMillett, Larry (2011). Once There Were Castles: Lost Mansions and Estates of the Twin Cities. U of Minnesota Press. p. 259. ISBN9781452933115.
^ abTwo different addresses have been reported. This paper by Landscape Research LLC says it was 104 Mount Curve Avenue. An obituary in Commercial West from 1914 says it was 104 Groveland Terrace. Larry Millett says in Once There Were Castles: Lost Mansions and Estates of the Twin CitiesISBN1452933111 that the house was at 104 Groveland Terrace "(also 1200 Mount Curve Avenue)". Landscape Research LLC. "The East Isles Neighborhood:Historic Context Study"(PDF). East Isles Residents Association. Retrieved August 20, 2015.
^The Dunwoody Obelisk in section 10 is part of a tour of Lakewood Cemetery, in "Lakewood Cemetery: A Self-Guided Tour"(PDF). Lakewood Cemetery. Archived from the original(PDF) on March 3, 2016. Retrieved August 21, 2015.
^ ab"Dunwoody left $8,000,000". The New York Times. Minneapolis. February 15, 1914. p. 8. Retrieved January 20, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
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