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Note: N171 1900 Dupont Avenue South: John Franklin Calhoun Residence; 1900 Dupont Guesthouse; Built in 1896; Classical Revival in style. John Franklin Calhoun (1854-1922,) the son of David Calhoun and Caroline Matilda Cunningham Calhoun, great grand son of David Calhoun (1757-1834) and Eleanor King Calhoun, was born in Hopewell Township, Licking County, Ohio, moved with his family to Illinois, received a common school education in Mercer County, Illinois, was a "printer's devil" with the Keithsburgh, Illinois, Observer in 1867, then was employed in a carpenter shop, then was employed by a clothing store, was employed by a dry goods concern, engaged on his own in the mercantile business, married Clara Zenora Edwards, the daughter of the Hon. John Edwards, a member of the Indiana Legislature, in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1879, came to Minnesota in 1881, was engaged in loaning money on real estate, then was a broker and financial agent, was a member of the Minnesota State Senate representing Hennepin County (District 40) from 1903 until 1911, was a member of the first Chamber of Commerce of Minneapolis, was a member of the Minneapolis Club, was a member of the Minneapolis Commercial Club, was a member of the Commandery of the State of California, was a Mason, officed at the Oneida Block in 1907, and resided at either 1762 Hennepin Avenue or 1611 Dupont Avenue in 1907. John Franklin Calhoun and Clara Zenora Edwards Calhoun were the parents of three children, John Edwards Calhoun, Frederick David Calhoun and Beatrice Zenora Calhoun. The Commandery of the State of California was comprised of United States officers of the Civil or Spanish War, and lineal male descendants of American officers of the Colonial or Revolutionary Wars, from 1607 to 1783, and of United States officers of the War of 1812, Mexican, Civil or Spanish War.
(from Thursday Night Hikes: Kenwood Architecture Notes, Part, Observations on Architectural Styles, Part, Kenwood, Assembled by Lawrence A. Martin, St. Paul, Minnesota, Webpage Creation: November 20, 2001)
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“John Franklin Calhoun (Republican) is a broker and resides at 1611
Dupont Avenue South, Minneapolis. He was born in Licking county,
Ohio, in 1854; came to Minnesota in 1881. He is essentially a "self-made
man;" received a common school education; at the age of thirteen years
was a printer's devil for a short time, and has since shifted for himself.
Married. Is now serving second term in senate. “ - Legislative Manual of the State of Minnesota By Minnesota Secretary of State 1907
Member of The Society of American Wars
JOHN FRANKLIN CALHOUN.
J. F. Calhoun, a prominent broker of Minneapolis, comes of a very ancient Scotch family. The name of the original family in Scotland was spelled Colquhoun. The ancient family home was on the shores of Loch Lomond. The family possessions in Scotland date back to the time of Alexander H. of Scotland, in the Twelfth century, but the family is of much more ancient origin. Mr. Calhoun's great grandfather, David Calhoun, occupied a homestead of four hundred and twenty acres, which was a part of Braddock's battle field, near Pittsburgh, and is now a part of Homestead, Pennsylvania. David Calhoun served in the war of the Revolution. He was a member of Captain James Rogers' militia company, and of Colonel Timothy Greene's Hanover rifle battalion. During the Revolution he participated in many notable engagements, including the battle of Brandywine, the battle of Camden and the battle of Guilford Court House. He saw Lord Cornwallis deliver up his sword at Yorktown. When the war of 1812 broke out Mr. Calhoun, though then fifty-five years of age, enlisted with the Pennsylvania Volunteers under General Richard Crooks. On his mother's side, Mr. Calhoun also comes of Revolutionary stock. His mother's mother, Orpha Bingham, was the only daughter of Chester Bingham, who served in the Revolutionary war. Mr. Bingham was a
descendant of Deacon Thomas Bingham, of Norwich, Connecticut, who married Mary Rudd on December 12, 1666. The weeding ceremony was performed by Governor John Winthrop, on the banks of a little rivulet, on the boundary line between Massachusetts and Connecticut, which was afterwards called Bride's Brook. The story of Bride's Brook became a matter of history, and it is said, in legal authority, has established the boundary line between the two states. The Bingham family is traced back for twenty generations, and is supposed to have been of Saxon origin. J. F. Calhoun is the son of David and Caroline Calhoun. He was born in Licking County, Ohio, on April 28, 1854. While he was still a small child his parents removed to Illinois, and the only schooling which he ever received was obtained at a little school house in Mercer County of that state. At the age of thirteen he left his home and went to the neighboring village of Keithsburgh, to which he walked barefooted with a straw hat on his head and not a cent in his pocket. After repeated applications for work he at last obtained employment as a printer's "devil" in the office of Theodore Glancey, publisher of the Keithsburgh Observer. This situation, which furnished him an income of three and one-half dollars a week, was broken up after a very few days, when the paper went into the hands of the sheriff. Young Calhoun next got employment in a carpenter shop, where he was employed in turning a grind stone, and remained in this position for eight months. He then went into a clothing store, and after a while obtained a better position in a large dry goods house, where he worked for eight years. When he left this position it was to engage in the mercantile business on his own account. In 1881 Mr. Calhoun moved to Minneapolis and engaged in loaning money on real estate. During the past fifteen years he has done a large business, both in buying and selling Minneapolis and Northwestern property and placing loans for Eastern clients. He has been identified with many of the enterprises of the city, and has taken a prominent place among the business men in his line. Mr. Calhoun was a member of the first Chamber of Commerce of Minneapolis. Since 1885 he has been a member of the Minneapolis Club and he has been a member of the Commercial Club since its organization. In the Masonic body he has been prominent, taking all of the degrees, including the thirty-third, and last degree. He was married on January 20, 1879 at Galesburg, Illinois, to Miss Clara Zenora Edwards, daughter of the Hon. John Edwards, who was a member of the first Indiana legislature. They have three children, John Edwards, Frederick David and Beatrice Zenora.
(from Progressive Men of Minnesota. Biographical sketches and portraits of the leaders in business, politics and the professions; together with an historical and descriptive sketch of the state. The Minnesota Journal, Minneapolis, 1897)
1860 Census - John Franklin (6) is living in Keithsburg, Mercer Co., IL. with his parents and siblings. John’s father, David, is a farmer.
1870 Census - John (16) is still living with his parents on the farm in Keithsburg. No occupation is listed for John.
1883-84 Minneapolis City Directory
Calhoun J F clk Dale, B M & Co. b 60 S 10th
1884-85 Minneapilis City Directory
Calhoum J F salesman Dale Barnes Morse & Co r 60 S 10th
1885-86- 87 Minneapolis City Directory
Calhoun J Frank (Calhoun & Long) r 60 S 10th
Calhoun & Long ( J Frank Calhoun and E H Long) dry goods 228 Central Av S
1888-89 Minneapolis City Directory
Calhoun, John F (Calhoun & Long), r 615 9th av s e.
Calhoun & Long (John F Calhoun, Eli H Long), dry goods 227 and 229 Central av
1890-91 Minneapolis City Directory
J. F. Calhoun
James P. Thomson
Calhoun & Thomson
Real Estate Loans & Insurance
We refer by permission to…John Edwards, Chicago, IL
1902 Minneapolis City Directory
J. F. Calhoun
Broker
agent Drexel Estate
Specialty: - Care of Property for Non-Residents
Office 500 Oneida Building Minneapolis
1909 Minneapolis Minnesota City Directory: Calhoun John F real est 500 Oneida bldg r 3625 Pillsbury ave
1910 Census - John F Calhoun (56), Clara Z (52), Virginia E (24), John E (27), Clara E (3) , Fredrick D (26) and Beatrice (19) are living at 1611 Support St. in Minneapolis, MN. John F is a real estate broker. They rent their home. John and Clara have been married 31 years.
1914 - moved from Minneapolis to Easton, Maryland
1917 - moved to Los Angeles, CA
1922 - Obituary
“J.F. Calhoun Dead at Home in California
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Former State Senator One of Commission That Built Court House
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John Franklin Calhoun, former state senator and resident of Minneapolis from 1881 to 1914, died suddenly of heart disease Friday night at his home in Los Angeles, at the age of 68. His home here was at 1611 Dupont Avenue south.
Mr. Calhoun was a member of the commission which built the Hennepin county courthouse. He was born in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1854, and when a small boy moved with his parents to Illinois. Before coming to Minneapolis he was engaged for several years in the wholesale and retail mercantile business there.
He entered the real estate and loan business in Minneapolis, devoting his attention largely to property and investments for owners outside the city. He was a member of the Minneapolis Club, and was a thirty-second degree mason.
In 1902, he was elected to the State Senate from the Fortieth senatorial district, serving in the sessions of 1903, 1905, 1907, and 1909. Mr. Calhoun left Minneapolis in 1914 for Easton, MD., where he lived three years before moving to Los Angeles, where he has been manager of a real estate firm.
He is survived by his wife, one daughter, Mrs. E.E. Elliot, who lives in the Philippines with her husband, a United States army Captain, and two sons, John Edwards Calhoun anf Frederick D. Calhoun, both of Minneapolis.
Frederick D. Calhoun left yesterday for Los Angeles, to attend his father's funeral services.”
(from Minneapolis Morning Tribune, June 11, 1922)
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OPINION: HOW ABOUT JOHN FRANKLIN (LAKE) CALHOUN?
AUGUST 10, 2015; Minnyapple (online news)
Choosing a different Calhoun may be easier than changing the lake’s name
By Kathleen Kullberg, Historian (Cover photo: Canoeing on Lake Calhoun, circa 1941)
To change the name or not to change the name? That is the question. Lake Cloudman? Lake Mendoza? Lake Mde Maka Ska? Lake Ohmygosh? Lake Calhoun–historically correct yet politically incorrect. Think of all the money and paperwork involved to undo what has been a part of the local geology for almost 200 years. The legal untangling to change the name to a more appropriate one would be costly for most businesses. And therefore an alternate solution is obvious–find another Calhoun to which the name is less embroiled and to which Lake Calhoun can remain Lake Calhoun. And the man for that position could be John Franklin Calhoun.
John Franklin Calhoun was a much respected man not only in Minneapolis but nationally at the end of the nineteenth century. He was first a merchant in Illinois, then a real estate broker, a local businessman and a Minnesota State Senator living and working within blocks of the chain of city lakes on Lowry Hill.
Born in April,1854 in Licking County, Ohio, Calhoun was a young lad when his family moved westward into Illinois. Coming from a large family, John was not able to attend school much beyond the local one room schoolhouse and at the age of thirteen left home and walked, reportedly barefoot, to the neighboring larger town of Keithsburgh to find a job. His first employment was as a ‘printer’s devil’ (apprentice or errand boy) for the local paper. After the newspaper went bankrupt, he briefly worked at a carpenter’s shop, and then in a clothing shop. Working his way up the ranks in the dry goods store, he found himself as owner of a mercantile and married in 1879 to Clara Zenora Edwards. Clara’s father was the Honorable John Edwards, a member of the first Indiana legislature. In 1881 John moved his young family to Minneapolis and engaged in a new business opportunity of ‘loaning money on real estate.’
According to his biography in Progressive Men of Minnesota of 1897, John F. Calhoun had succeeded well in both buying and selling Minneapolis and northwestern property and placing loans for Eastern investors. By 1906, Calhoun was listed as ‘Broker, Agent Drexel Estate, Specialty: Care of Property for Non-Residents’ at the Lauderdale Company of Minneapolis.
One mark of the success of the man is the residence he occupies. In 1896 Calhoun’s profitability resulted in the purchase of the singularly imposing grand residence at 1900 Dupont Avenue South from Edmund G. Walton, designed by James McLeod. The Calhoun family lived there until 1905. After temporarily housed in an apartment at 1762 Hennepin, the family then moved to 1611 Dupont Avenue South off Mount Curve with a sweeping view of the growing city. After a few more years on Lowry Hill, the Calhouns left Minnesota and moved to Easton, Maryland in 1914.
Calhoun was a prominent member of the first Chamber of Commerce of Minneapolis, the Minneapolis Club, the Commercial Club, and the Minneapolis Real Estate Board. As a member of the Masonic order, he achieved the highest thirty-third degree.
John and Clara Calhoun were the parents of three children, John Edwards Calhoun, born in 1880 in Illinois; Frederic David Calhoun, born in 1883, Minneapolis; and Beatrice Zenora Calhoun born in 1891, Minneapolis.
John Edwards Calhoun, married Virginia Braslen in 1904 and remained in Minneapolis, also becoming a real estate broker. The couple had six children. John E. Calhoun died in Fillmore County, Minnesota, in 1945.
After graduating from the University of Minnesota, son Frederic David Calhoun established himself as a well known commercial artist and teacher at the Minneapolis School of Art, now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He died in 1956.
Daughter Beatrice married a local man, Edwin Eugene Elliott, at the beginning of WWI in Baltimore, Maryland where her parents were living at the time. Elliott went on to become a career officer in the U.S. Army. The Elliott family lived all over the world and retired in San Diego, California.
One important contribution to the skyline of Minneapolis was the building of the original Richardsonian style Hennepin County Court House, located on Fourth Avenue. John Franklin Calhoun served on the commission to select the architect and build this iconic bastion of Minneapolis government in 1888.
During his last years in Minnesota, in 1902, Calhoun, a Republican, decided to run for the Minnesota state senate seat for Ward 4. “Mr. Calhoun has made a splendid race for the nomination and is backed by both the labor and business interests of the ward. There seems to be very little doubt in his nomination,” the Minneapolis Tribune reported on September 15, two months before the election. He won handily and served as senator from the 1903 to 1911 sessions. Throughout those years, he served on the following committees: Illuminating Oils, Insurance, Labor, Military Affairs, Geological and Natural History Survey, Public Parks, Public Accounts and Expenditures, Railroads, State Training Schools, and Taxes and Tax Laws. He also served as chair of the Municipal Corporations Committee.
For reasons not known, John Franklin Calhoun and wife Clara decided to move to Easton, Maryland in 1914 where they resided for three years before moving to Los Angeles, California. Once there, Calhoun again established himself as a manager of a real estate firm.
On January 10, 1922, John Franklin Calhoun, 68 years old, died suddenly of heart disease at his home in California. Both John and Clara, who died in 1940 at the age of 82, are buried at Lakewood Cemetery along side Lake Calhoun.
One incident caused a major uproar during Senator Calhoun’s term in 1908. Calhoun was a staunch Republican and against the rising movement of anarchists and the ‘black hand society’ growing throughout the country. When the well-known New York anarchist, Emma Goldman, applied to lecture in Minneapolis in 1908, Calhoun publicly renounced her demanding the city grant an injunction preventing her appearance. In retaliation, a letter threatening his life was sent to the Senator: “Beware. Beware. Take warning! Any more cheap utterances from you and ZIP you go to ____!” The letter was received by Mrs. Calhoun who went into shock after reading it. Calhoun gave the letter to detectives who were set upon to determine who sent the letter.
Calhoun continued to seek an injunction to prevent Goldman or any anarchist or socialist from appearing in Minneapolis. “If I were mayor of this city, I should prevent the appearance of Emma Goldman in spite of everything. She and all of her anarchistic and socialistic crowd are opposed to law and order and should not be permitted to encroach upon the territory of law abiding citizens.” In spite of his attempts at stopping her, Emma Goldman did arrive in the Twin Cities to give a series of lectures in the week of March 26, 1908, which were fraught with both cheers and harangues.
While she was out of town speaking in Minneapolis, the notorious bombing in Union Square, New York City, in which two reported anarchists were killed, took place on March 28. Goldman left Minneapolis for New Ulm, Minnesota and Winnipeg, Canada, on March 30 to continue on her lecture tour schedule.
According to the Calhoun family history, David Calhoun, great grandfather of John Franklin Calhoun, was a pioneering land owner of over 400 acres of farmland outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during the late 1700s. Part of the land he acquired incorporated the site of General Braddock’s battle field during the French and Indian Wars along the banks of the Monongahela River. General Edward Braddock was fatally wounded at the battle in 1755. Now situated on the site, the town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, is named after the General. David Calhoun served in the American Revolution, fighting in the battles of Camden and the Brandywine and saw General Cornwallis surrender his sword at Yorktown.
The Calhoun’s Pennsylvania farm today is part of West Homestead, adjacent to the famous U.S. Steel mill where the 1893 Homestead steel strike took place. The Calhoun family still retained the rights to some of the land during this time. The attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick, manager of U.S. Steel’s Homestead Works, by Emma Goldman’s lover, Alexander Berkman, may have been very fresh in his mind when John F. Calhoun denounced Miss Goldman’s anarchistic tactics in Minneapolis in 1908.
Calhoun’s legislative voting record and complete history may need to be studied to be fully vetted. Though his legacy has been lost to the decades, perhaps it is time to recognize the contributions by Minnesota’s own Calhoun and rededicate Lake Calhoun in honor of Minnesota’s own Calhoun–John Franklin Calhoun.
Kathleen Kullberg lives in Lowry Hill East Neighborhood.
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