Nobles County MN Archives Biographies.....Humiston, Ransom F. 1822 - 1889
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Author: Arthur P. Rose (1908)

  PROFESSOR RANSOM F. HUMISTON (1822-1889), guiding spirit of the National

Colony company and founder of Worthington, was responsible, more than any other

man, for the rapid settlement of Nobles county in the early days, and during the

years he made his home in the county was by far its most prominent resident. In

the historical part of this volume is to be found much of his life's history,

which otherwise would have its place in this biography.



  Prof. Humiston was born at Great Barrington, Berkshire county, Mass., July 3,

1822, and from that place the family moved, in May, 1833, to Hudson, Portage

county, Ohio. Our subject was educated in the Western Reserve college and took

up teaching as his life's work. While yet quite young he took high rank among

the educators of Ohio. For several years he was superintendent of the schools of

Cuyahoga Falls, an important manufacturing center of northern Ohio. From there

he went to Cleveland, purchased buildings on "University Heights," then a

sparsely settled suburb of Cleveland, and established a classical school called

the Cleveland Institute. He there introduced a new feature which has since been

copied in many of the colleges of the country, namely, a military training for

the students. Prof. Humiston's school was successful and popular. He was not

only a wise manager, a good diciplinarian and popular educator, but also a

public spirited and enterprising citizen. Around this school there grew up an

educated and refined community.



  Selling his school property in 1867, Prof. Humiston started the next year on a

tour of Europe, Asia and Africa, in which countries he spent two years.

Returning home and being possessed of a handsome competency and made sanguine

and hopeful by his previous successes, Prof. Humiston conceived the idea of

founding a colony somewhere in the great west which should, so far as he could

make it, be a center of educational and moral influence. After visiting various

localities, he selected Nobles county, Minn., as the place for making realities

out of his mental projects. It waa in 1871 that he formed the National Colony

company, secured control of a large tract of railroad lands in Nobles and

adjoining counties, founded the village of Worthington, and began his life in

the new country.



  Amid the extraordinary trials of the grasshopper period he was among the most

undaunted, hopeful and helpful. So far as the colony was successful, it was due

to his generous, wise and vigorous endeavors. The misfortunes of the colony were

such that no human skill could forsee or prevent. For all the good he did, and

for the larger good he meant to do for it, Nobles county owes him a meed of

hearty praise and an enduring monument to fitly perpetuate his memory. He lost

practically all his fortune in financing the colony company, and departed the

county in the late seventies.



  After leaving Nobles county Prof. Humiston returned to the east and devoted

his time to educational matters and to perfecting several patents. He died in

April, 1889.



Additional Comments:
Extracted from:



AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF NOBLES COUNTY

MINNESOTA

BY

ARTHUR P. ROSE



NORTHERN HISTORY PUBLISHING COMPANY 

WORTHINGTON, MINNESOTA 

PUBLISHERS

1908



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