The city of Minot carries the name of Henry D. Minot. Several decades later, Minot AFB acquired that same name.

Recently old files were “unearthed” at the Minot Daily News that give more details about Henry Davis Minot and his life.

More than 60 years ago, a bronze head of Henry Davis Minot was unveiled in a park in Gloucester, Mass., to honor him.

A Minot Daily News file about the Minot family in Massachusetts provides details about Henry D. Minot, including a lengthy introductory statement by Robert Walcott, president of the Trustees of Reservations, at the dedication of the Henry Davis Minot Memorial at Mount Ann Park in West Gloucester, Mass., on June 18, 1954. Following are excerpts from that speech.

“Henry Davis Minot was by descent a member of that portion of the original Puritan company of 1630 known as the Dorchester men, to distinguish them from the Boston men. His great-grandfather, George Richard Minot, began a law practice in Boston as early as the latter half of the eighteenth century.”

Henry Davis Minot was the fourth of five sons of William Minot and Katherine Maria Sedgwick. He was born Aug. 18, 1859, at the family’s home on a plot of 30 acres of land on the outskirts of Roxbury on the edge of the so-called Great Forest.

“He was not a robust child. His delicate health filled his parents with grave concern. This concern simply accentuated their natural love for him so that he became the object of their special devotion and solicitude, a feeling which his three older brothers generously shared. So far as he was concerned, home meant the place where everybody loved him.”

He made the most of opportunities to be outdoors and to build up his health, and he became a born lover of nature. Before he reached his teens, he was a skillful, experienced bird watcher. He learned to use his ears as well as his eyes to discover the habits and peculiarities of birds, and kept careful notes. When he was barely 17, his work was published in “The Land-Birds and Game-Birds of New England” by F.W. Putnam & Co. of Salem, Mass., on Nov. 1, 1876. The book was so popular it was republished 19 years later.

That fall, Henry Minot entered Harvard University hoping to graduate with the class of 1880, but his health failed and he withdrew. But during his few months of college he and a classmate, Theodore Roosevelt, became friends.

(Roosevelt later developed strong ties to Dakota Territory, as he continues to have today to North Dakota.)

“Both were ardent lovers of nature; both were frail in body and delicate in health; both were devoted to their mothers; and both passed through the Valley of the Shadow when their mothers died within a few months of each other. It is moving experience to read Roosevelt’s letters to Henry Minot: ‘Dear Hal,’ then a few words that still gleam with sincerity, then ‘Your affectionate Teddy.’ “

Henry Minot joined Jackson and Curtis who were involved in the railroad securities business. They liked him for his honesty and his charming personality.

“Very soon they began the practice of sending him out to examine some new railway project in which they might take a financial interest, like the Santa Fe for example. They learned to place entire confidence in his reports.”

Instead of watching birds and observing their habits, Henry Minot now “was watching rolling stock and tracks and curves and tangents and grades and possibilities of passenger and freight business.

“The same patient intelligent observation, the same painstaking accuracy of statement, the same sanity and logicality of judgment that had made him an excellent student of birds now made him an equally excellent student of railroads.

“Thus two facts became evident: railroading was his congenial work and the rugged outdoor life of those north-central states offered the best chance for him to regain health and physical vigor.”

Henry Minot became closely associated with James J. Hill (the “Empire Builder”). He was entrusted with the construction of the Eastern Railroad from St. Paul, Minn., to Superior, Wis., and on its completion was made its president. The youngest railroad president in the country.

Walcott said in his statement that wherever Henry Minot was living, naming several places, “he was universally respected, trusted, and loved, an upright, reliable, public-spirited, great-hearted American citizen. Few men have faced so bright a future. Even fewer have been denied the privilege of advancing into that future.”

Various other accounts say Henry Davis Minot was connected to Minot, N.D., by name only and that James J. Hill named the city of Minot after Henry D. Minot in the 1880s when the railroad reached this area of Dakota Territory.

Henry Davis Minot was killed in a railroad collision near New Florence, Pennsylvania, on Nov. 14, 1890. He was 30 years old.

“Henry Davis Minot will do an even greater service to the world which he found so beautiful,” the president of the Trustees of Reservations noted at the end of his introductory statement at the dedication of a memorial to the man whose name is on this North Dakota city.

(Prairie Profile is a weekly feature profiling interesting people in our region. We welcome suggestions from our readers. Call Editor Mike Sasser at 857-1959 or Regional Editor Eloise Ogden at 857-1944. Either can be reached at 1-800-735-3229. You also can send e-mail suggestions to msasser@minotdailynews.com.