Profile · Superior, Wisconsin
Martin Pattison (born Simeon Martin Thayer)
Settled in Superior, 1879
$3 million
Martin Pattison was the Superior lumberman and iron investor who built Fairlawn Mansion on the harbor, served three terms as mayor, and quietly saved Big Manitou Falls for the public. He arrived in Superior in 1879 with a younger brother and his new wife, Grace Frink, the lighthouse keeper's daughter, and built a fortune first on Black River pine, then on Minnesota's Vermilion Range, where he located the Chandler and Pioneer mines and became one of the largest individual holders of Minnesota iron land. He bought a city block on the harbor and finished Fairlawn in 1891: forty-two rooms at a cost of more than $150,000. He served once as sheriff and three times as mayor. In July 1890 the Sunday Morning Call disclosed another life: he had been born Simeon Martin Thayer in Ontario on January 17, 1841, left Port Huron on business in 1872, and never returned to Isabelle Murdock and their two children. The divorce made the papers; Superior elected him anyway. In 1917, when a power dam threatened to drown Big Manitou Falls, he bought 660 acres and gave the land to Wisconsin. He died in December 1918, before the sixth state park was dedicated on January 20, 1920. Grace later moved to California and donated Fairlawn to a children's home; Babe Ruth visited the children there in 1926. The house is a museum, and the falls still run in the park that bears his name.