In 1914 Linda Burfield Perry Hazzard’s unconventional healing methods landed her in prison in Washington State for manslaughter. Despite minimal medical training, she styled herself a physician and for more than thirty years promoted healing through fasting, killing as many as fifteen people. Most of her victims died in Washington, but this Minnesota native developed her craft, and took her first victim, in Minneapolis.

Mabel Simis Ulrich was a public health educator, physician, author, and public figure whose pioneering work in sex education propelled her onto multiple public health commissions in Minneapolis. She contributed to the cultural scene in Minneapolis through a bookstore that she owned, and headed the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) in Minnesota under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s.

In 1887, Carrie H. Lippincott was a twenty-seven-year-old New Jersey native with an eighth-grade education. She moved to Minnesota, where she created a mail-order company focused on selling flower seeds to women. Lippincott established herself in her new home by practicing innovative marketing methods and developing what we might call today a personal brand, declaring herself “The Pioneer Seedswoman of America.”