The first female nominee of a major party for the US Senate, Anna Dickie Olesen was a celebrated orator and passionate social reformer who became one of the most prominent Democratic women of the early twentieth century.

David Lance Arneson was a game designer from St. Paul who collaborated with Ernest Gary Gygax to publish the famous tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in 1974. Although the D&D property changed hands in 1997, and the game’s mechanics have evolved, its core wouldn’t be what it is today without Dave Arneson.

Francis Lee Jaques emerged from rural Minnesota in the 1930s and 40s to become a nationally known wildlife artist. After two decades at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, he returned to his home state to paint a much-loved series of habitat dioramas at the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum. His images of Minnesota are a valuable record of the state’s natural history.

As a trader, businessman, treaty negotiator, and legislator, Henry Mower Rice played a crucial role in Minnesota’s statehood and the development of St. Paul. At the same time, Rice was responsible for policies that benefited himself and his business partners at the expense of Minnesota’s Indigenous populations.

The only Socialist mayor of Minneapolis (1917–1919), Thomas Van Lear was a machinist and influential union leader. Socialist opposition to World War I proved a major factor in his failure to win reelection in 1918, after which he retired from politics. A talented writer and orator, he later helped found and lead the short-lived Minneapolis Daily Star.

Norwegian immigrant musician F. Melius Christiansen founded the St. Olaf College Choir in 1911. Through his career as a conductor, composer, and arranger, he established the preeminent Lutheran a capella (unaccompanied) choral tradition in America.

Joseph Linwood Laughy was born in 1897 and moved to Baudette, Minnesota, in 1915. In April 1918, four days after the United States entered World War I, Linwood signed up for the Navy. After serving only five months, he was killed in an accident, making him the first victim of the war from the Baudette area.

Lawrence Taliaferro, the wealthy scion of a politically connected, slave-owning Virginia family, was the US government’s main agent to the Native people of the upper Mississippi in the 1820s and 1830s. He earned the trust of Dakota, Ojibwe, Ho-Chunk (Winnebago), Menominee, Sauk (Sac), and Meskwaki (Fox) leaders through lavish gifts, intermarriage, and his zeal for battling predatory fur traders. In a series of treaties, he persuaded these leaders to cede tracts of land in exchange for promises that the government would later break.

Walter Hoover was a competitive rower and rowing coach from Duluth who became world famous by winning the Diamond Sculls at the Henley Royal Regatta in 1922. The annual event, held in England, was the world championship for single scullers (rowers who propel their boats alone) at the time.

Though his life was tragically short, Colorado Pete made his mark on the history of Clearwater County, Minnesota, through both his civic activities and his poetry.