William Hood Dunwoody

William Hood Dunwoody (March 14, 1841 – February 8, 1914) was an American banker, merchant, miller, art patron and philanthropist. He was a partner in what is today General Mills and for thirty years a leader of Northwestern National Bank, today's Wells Fargo. By 1901, he was one of sixteen millionaires in Minneapolis.

He is remembered today for his bequests that created the Dunwoody Institute (now the Dunwoody College of Technology), Abbott Hospital (now Allina Health), and The William Hood Dunwoody Fund of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Early years and family Dunwoody attended the Hood Octagonal School, built by his father, James Dunwoody, in 1842. Of Scottish descent, Dunwoody was a Quaker but worshiped as a Presbyterian at Westminster Presbyterian Church.

He was born March 14, 1841, in Westtown, Chester County, Pennsylvania, about eleven miles from Philadelphia, to James and Hannah (Hood) Dunwoody, who were farmers. Dunwoody went to local country schools, and at fourteen he attended an academy in Philadelphia. He then worked for five years with his uncle Ezekiel Dunwoody, who owned a grain and feed business in Philadelphia. Then as senior partner at age 23, he started his own business, Dunwoody & Robertson, and became a flour merchant.

He and Kate L. Dunwoody (née Patten) married in 1868; they had no children. They made a permanent move to Minneapolis in 1869, when Dunwoody was 28. Called Overlook, the Tudor Revival house had 42 rooms. Eventually in 1878 English bakers realized that American flour made more loaves per barrel than English flour.

Vicinity of the Dunwoody home in Minneapolis. A townhouse project replaced the house in 1981, a decade after it had been demolished. He became a silent partner in Washburn-Crosby & Company (which became General Mills) with Washburn, John Crosby and Charles Martin. There he oversaw the development of the production of "new process" white flour. A reserved and shrewd capitalist, he served a time as vice president of the company and was sometimes in demand because of his banking connections.

In 1888, after Washburn had died and Dunwoody himself was ill, Then United States Milling Company of New York started to speculate and succeeded in buying the rival Northwestern Consolidated. In 1898 Dunwoody bought 75% of his company from the surviving Washburn brothers, preventing a takeover and making the company operators its owners for the first time.

Other affiliations Dunwoody was vice president of the Minneapolis Loan & Trust Co. (formally merged with Northwestern in 1934 ), and at various times president and chairman of the board of Northwestern National Bank (today known as Wells Fargo). He was an organizer of the Minneapolis chamber of commerce and president of the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts. He was president of the St. Anthony & Dakota, vice president of the Duluth and the St. Anthony Elevator companies,

Legacy

Dunwoody was one of the first donors for the Minneapolis Institute of Art building designed by McKim, Mead & White. The William Hood Dunwoody Care Center in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, earned 5 of 5 stars as one of the nation's best nursing homes according to U.S. News & World Report in 2015. Dunwoody left $1 million in his will to build a retirement village in his birthplace.

Dunwoody started Abbott Hospital for Dr. Amos Abbott, who had operated successfully on Kate Dunwoody. The hospital was owned until 1963 by Westminster Presbyterian Church; it merged with Northwestern Hospital to become Abbott Northwestern Hospital and later became part of Allina Health. Among thousands of other works, At her death in 1915, Kate Dunwoody gave the institute their personal collection. It included two major works by Constant Troyon, a small work by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, a George Inness and work by Thomas Cole.

Gallery Some of the thousands of works from the Minneapolis Institute of Art purchased with The William Hood Dunwoody Fund: