WILLIAM EDGAR CULKIN was born in Oswego, New York in 1861, and died in Duluth, Minnesota 25 June 1949. He was a redhead. He married HANNAH ALICE YOUNG, daughter of John Young and Margaret Plunkett in Waverly, Minnesota , 8 July 1886, the ceremony performed by Rev. Father Guuillot. He started "reading law" in Oswego, then got dissatisfied with the life there and left for the West from New York, via New Orleans, in the summer of 1880, bringing consternation to the family.
In a letter, his brother John said that his father has asked him to say that if he was going to practice law, it had better be elsewhere than in Oswego, which already had too many young lawyers, adding that his father had always advised them well.
From New Orleans he took a river steamer up the Mississippi as far as it went, getting off at what is now St. Paul, Minnesota. While still reading law, he taught school for his food and board.
After admission to the bar, he was elected County Attorney of Wright County for three terms; served one term as State Senator for Minnesota's 38th district from 1895-97 entitling him to the term Honorable for the rest of his life. In 1892, he carried the Republican electoral vote to Washington. He was a charter member of the first I.O.O.F.(International Order of Odd Fellows) lodge in Wright County.
In 1897 he was appointed by President McKinley to the post of Register of the Duluth Land Office. When the Republicans went out of office he took up general law practice in partnership with his brother-in-law John Samuelson, specializing in court room trials and labor law, representing labor. The story is told that he once asked a hostile witness..."Just one more question, Mr. Savage, is your name inherited or acquired?" He continued until his hearing was so bad he could no longer follow the procedures, and in 1915 he retired from law practice to write editorials for the Duluth Herald. He was a life long Republican, except for voting for Theodore Roosevelt for whom he had great admiration. He was founder and first president of the St. Louis County Historical Society.
A lake was named after him by the Minnesota Legislature, supposedly the source of the St. Louis River, and thus the whole St. Laurence waterway; it turned out the source was elsewhere, but the thought was there. In 1988 a million dollar Memorial Rest Area off Interstate I-35 was dedicated to him, on some land given by his children, Margaret and William.
