In 1868, following his fathers death, fifteen-year-old Chester Congdon went to work in a lumber yard. He told his mother that someday he wanted to be better off than everybody else. Thanks to his skills as an attorney, wise investments, and shrewd business strategies that found him entangled with John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan, by 1902 Congdon had become one of the wealthiest men in Minnesota. In 1905, Chester and his wife, Clara, began building a grand home on the north shore of Lake Superior in ...
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In 1868, following his fathers death, fifteen-year-old Chester Congdon went to work in a lumber yard. He told his mother that someday he wanted to be better off than everybody else. Thanks to his skills as an attorney, wise investments, and shrewd business strategies that found him entangled with John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan, by 1902 Congdon had become one of the wealthiest men in Minnesota. In 1905, Chester and his wife, Clara, began building a grand home on the north shore of Lake Superior in Duluth, Minnesota: Glensheen, a self-sustaining estate that survives today as a symbol of Congdons success and Duluths gilded age, when its East End mansions housed the families of grain trade commissioners, lumber barons, mining magnatesand their attorneys. Over 200 modern and historic photographs guide you along a detailed room-by-room tour of the Minnesotas most famous mansion and stroll through the estate grounds as you learn the story of the Congdon family and how Chester created the fortune that financed their grand home on Lake Superiors North Shore. Five percent of the publisher's sales of this book directly support Glensheen Historic Estate.
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