Pillsbury family

The Pillsbury family is a New Hampshire and Minneapolis flour-milling family. Its firm, C. A. Pillsbury and Company, built the Pillsbury "A" Mill in 1881 and sold its milling properties to an English syndicate in 1889. The company went into receivership in 1908 and was acquired by Grand Metropolitan plc in 1989.¹ Antony C. Sutton places the family among the new-wealth families in his chart of Skull and Bones membership.²

New Hampshire origins

The family traces its descent from William and Dorothy Pillsbury of Newbury through a branch at Sutton.³ John S. Pillsbury was born in Sutton on July 29, 1827. His older brother George A. Pillsbury was born there on August 29, 1816.⁴⁵ George A. kept a country store at Warner, served as postmaster there from 1844 to 1849, and from November 1851 to July 1875 was purchasing agent for the Concord Railroad.⁴ He was an alderman and then mayor of Concord in 1876 and 1877, and he moved to Minneapolis in March 1878.⁴

His son Charles A. Pillsbury was born at Warner. The birth date is December 3, 1842, in the 1898 genealogy and October 3, 1842, in the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library record.⁶⁷ He attended Dartmouth College and graduated in 1863.⁷ In 1866 he married Mary A. Stinson, and the couple had twin sons, John S. and Charles S.⁷

Hardware, the first mill, and the "A" Mill

John S. Pillsbury reached Minnesota in June 1855 and settled at St. Anthony, which is now part of Minneapolis. He opened a hardware business there with George F. Cross and his brother-in-law Woodbury Fisk.⁵ A fire in 1857 caused a loss of about $38,000. The business was rebuilt and stayed in hardware until 1875, when John S. sold it to move into milling.⁵ On November 3, 1856 he had married Mahala Fisk, daughter of Captain John and Sarah (Goodhue) Fisk of Warner; their son Alfred F. Pillsbury was born on October 20, 1869.⁵

Charles A. Pillsbury came to Minneapolis in 1869 and bought an interest in a small flour mill at the Falls. He studied the milling process closely, and the firm adopted the middlings purifier, a Minneapolis invention.⁶⁸ His purchase is dated to June 4, 1869, for $10,000, and the formation of C. A. Pillsbury and Company to 1871, when the "Alaska" mill was bought.⁸ The 1898 genealogy gives 1872 for the association of George A. Pillsbury with the business and says John S. had been interested from the start.⁶ Fred C. Pillsbury, another nephew of John S., was admitted to the partnership in 1875.⁹

The "A" Mill began operation on July 5, 1881, with a daily capacity of 4,000 barrels. A fire in December 1881 destroyed much of the older complex, and from July 1882 the West "A" ran alongside the East "A". The mill averaged about 17,500 barrels a day after 1905.⁸ The 1898 genealogy gives a capacity of 9,000 barrels a day at completion.¹⁰ At its completion the mill was the largest and most advanced flour mill in the world.⁸

Public office in Minnesota

John S. Pillsbury took office as the eighth governor of Minnesota on January 7, 1876.¹¹ As a state senator he engineered the financial rescue of the University of Minnesota by streamlining its administration and retiring its debts. He is called the "Father of the University." He had completed no more than a common-school education before he became president of the university's board of regents.¹¹ His administration coincided with the grasshopper invasions that followed the panic of 1873. The genealogy lists his directorships in the Minneapolis and St. Louis and the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie railroads, the First National, Union National and Commercial banks of Minneapolis, the Minneapolis Stock Yards and Packing Company and the Pillsbury-Washburn Flour Mills Company.⁵ John S. died on October 18, 1901.¹¹ His son Alfred F. Pillsbury worked for the Pillsbury-Washburn company from July 1893 until his father's death, later became a director of the Pillsbury Flour Mills Company, and served as president of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.¹²

Charles A. Pillsbury sat in the Minnesota Senate for the 1879 to 1886 sessions, first for District 26 and then for District 29.⁷ The 1898 genealogy instead places ten years of state senate service from January 1, 1877.⁶ George A. Pillsbury was elected mayor of Minneapolis in 1884 and served two years.⁴¹³

Charles A. Pillsbury died of heart disease in Minneapolis on September 17, 1899.⁷

The 1889 sale to the English syndicate

In July 1889, financiers representing outside capital held an option on the C. A. Pillsbury and Company property, the Washburn mills, the East and West Side water powers and the Pillsbury elevator system, which together had a capacity of 22,000 barrels a day.¹⁴ In early October, Levy Mayer, a Chicago lawyer, asserted that two English syndicates with combined capital of $50,000,000 had bought the Pillsbury and W. D. Washburn mills. Charles A. Pillsbury denied that any sale had been completed.¹⁵ A Minneapolis report of October 18 had carried a Financial Times item that the Pillsbury and Washburn mills were to be promoted as a company with capital of 2,000,000 pounds.¹⁶ A London report on October 25 said the deal had fallen through.¹⁷ By November 1 the sale of the C. A. Pillsbury and W. D. Washburn mills was described as an assured fact.¹⁸ On November 8 Charles A. Pillsbury was still awaiting details of the sale by steamer.¹⁹

In November 1889 a London company offered shares to acquire Charles A. Pillsbury and Company; the Washburn Mill Company, which owned the Palisade and Lincoln mills; the Minneapolis and Northern Elevator Company; the Minneapolis Mill Company; the St. Anthony Falls Water Power Company; and a majority of the shares of the Atlantic Elevator Company.²⁰ The share capital was 1,000,000 pounds, in 50,000 eight per cent preference shares and 50,000 ordinary shares of 10 pounds each, with six per cent debentures of 635,000 pounds. The purchase price was $6,250,000, of which 300,000 pounds was taken by the vendors in debentures, preference shares and ordinary shares. The shares were offered by Morton, Rose and Company. The English solicitors were Paine, Son and Pollock, the bankers were Glyn, Mills, Currie and Company, and the American solicitors were Cary and Whitridge of New York. The directors were Richard H. Glyn, a director of the Bank of British North America; J. Flower Jackson; Sydney T. Klein of Wm. Klein and Sons; E. T. Rose; Charles A. Pillsbury as managing director; John S. Pillsbury; and William D. Washburn.²⁰

To comply with Minnesota law, the properties would be conveyed to the Minneapolis Mill Company, which held a special territorial charter, and the new company would own all of its shares except five. Charles A. Pillsbury was to remain managing director for five years. John S. Pillsbury and William D. Washburn were to sit with him on the committee of management in America.²⁰ Contracts dated October 29, 1889 were made between George Alfred, John Sargent, Charles Alfred and Frederick Carlton Pillsbury and the company; between William Drew Washburn, the Washburn Mill Company and the company; and between James J. Hill, acting through Sir George Stephen, and the company.²⁰ A November 22 report said the Pillsbury east-side elevator and a large flour warehouse had been reserved from the sale.²¹

On November 29 the Weekly Northwestern Miller reprinted London comment on the issue. A passage quoted from the Chicago Tribune of October 20 had said the Pillsburys desired to relinquish active business interests; the London commentator pointed to the prospectus clause keeping Charles A. Pillsbury as managing director for five years. The same comment objected that the agreements between the vendors and the promoters were not open for inspection, and noted that the director J. Flower Jackson was also a director of a London clearing bank. A later item in the same London journal reported that the public subscription was only 400,000 pounds, which left nearly 1,000,000 pounds of stock in the underwriters' hands.²²

The 1898 genealogy dates the sale to 1890. It says the syndicate also acquired the Washburn milling property and the water power of the Falls of St. Anthony, and it describes Charles A. Pillsbury as manager of the property and one of three American directors.²³ The company was known as the Pillsbury-Washburn Flour Mills Company.¹ Fred C. Pillsbury kept an interest in the new company but was not active in its management.⁹

Receivership, 1907 and 1908

On August 8, 1908, stockholders of the Pillsbury-Washburn Flour Milling Company petitioned the federal court at Minneapolis for a receiver. A Minneapolis dispatch of that date, carried in Portland, ran under the headline "Pillsbury-Washburn Company Needs to Be Reorganized."²⁴ The court named C. S. Pillsbury, son of the late Charles A. Pillsbury; A. C. Loring, head of the North-Western Consolidated Milling Company; and A. C. Cobb, an attorney. The petitioners were the North Western National Bank, the First National Bank, the Swedish-American National Bank and the Second National Bank of St. Paul, together with J. S. Pillsbury. The company consented, and the proceeding was described as friendly.²⁴

A later secondary history dates the receivership to 1907, after a poor harvest. It names Charles S. Pillsbury, a son of Charles A., as one of three men appointed to reorganize the company, which then became the Pillsbury Flour Mills Company.¹

The accountants Marwick, Mitchell and Company reported on September 30, 1908 on the accounts as at August 8. They certified quick assets of $2,358,089.66 and general liabilities of $5,203,546.92, and noted that the Minneapolis and Northern Elevator Company appeared as maker or endorser on notes of $4,412,400 whose proceeds the Pillsbury-Washburn company had received. The debentures of 875,000 pounds carried a lien of about $4,335,000 on the mill and water power properties. The receivers were Albert C. Loring, Charles S. Pillsbury and Albert C. Cobb, with Henry F. Douglas as receiver for the elevator company. A tentative plan reported in the same issue of the trade paper would form a leasing company with a capitalization of about $3,000,000 to operate the mills, "with the Messrs. Pillsbury heavily interested."²⁵

On October 21 the trade paper printed the circular of a committee of British shareholders. Lord Avebury was its chairman, A. G. Pollock was among its members, and its counsel were the London firm Slaughter and May and the New York attorney Samuel Untermyer. The circular referred to "the admitted insolvency of the company, brought about by grave irregularities in the American management," and said the committee represented about two-thirds of the preference shares and about one-half of the ordinary shares held in Great Britain.²⁶ An A. G. Pollock is named as secretary pro tem in the 1889 prospectus, and the solicitors were Paine, Son and Pollock.²⁰ At a London meeting of debenture holders, the chairman George A. Touche stated that J. B. Niven had been appointed an additional receiver for British interests and that nearly $1,800,000 of the $5,203,546 of liabilities had been kept in a private ledger, omitted from the company's financial statements, in a practice that began about May 1905. John S. Pillsbury and Ralph Whelan attended for the American side. The company's solicitor, William Paine, objected that the chairman's account gave the English board too little credit.²⁷

At the annual meeting of November 26, 1908 at Winchester House, London, the chairman Richard H. Glyn, who had been a director in 1889, said, "The company has been brought to its present condition by a system of fraud carried on apparently for about three years." He said that the proceeds of some $1,800,000 of notes had gone into "a special and secret account with a bank in Minneapolis," that the notes were destroyed when paid, and that the manager, Mr. Little, had certified each year's accounts without them. He added that "undoubtedly a large amount has been lost in speculation in wheat" and spoke of "the conduct of certain of our own officials in whom we have hitherto placed trust and confidence." John S. Pillsbury and Ralph Whelan attended as the company's American representatives, and Paine explained the reorganization scheme.²⁸ A cable of December 1 reported that the shareholders accepted the plan unanimously, and the longer account of the adjourned meeting records that the resolution passed with three dissentients.²⁹²⁸

The third generation

The twin sons of Charles A. Pillsbury were John Sargent Pillsbury and Charles Stinson Pillsbury, both born in Minneapolis on December 6, 1878.³⁰³¹ John Sargent Pillsbury took a B.S. at the University of Minnesota in 1900 and entered the company that year. He was sales manager from 1906 to 1909, secretary-treasurer from 1909 to 1913, executive vice president from 1913 to 1932, chairman of the board from 1932 to 1952 and honorary chairman from 1952. His directorships included the Soo Line and Wisconsin Central railroads, the Northwestern National Bank, Northwest Bancorporation and Munsingwear. He worked for the Food Administration in World War I and headed Treasury finance for Hennepin County in World War II. He married Eleanor J. Lawler of Mitchell, South Dakota, on December 5, 1911, and the couple had six children, John S. Jr., Edmund P., Ella S., Charles A., Jane L. and George S.³⁰¹² He was a trustee of the Pillsbury Settlement House.¹²

Charles Stinson Pillsbury was a vice president of the Pillsbury Flour Mills Company. On December 7, 1901 he married Helen Pendleton Winston, born October 16, 1878, a daughter of Philip Eickerton Winston and Katharine D. Stevens. He died at Rochester, Minnesota, on May 21, 1939. Their children were Philip Winston, Mary Stinson, Katharine Stevens and Helen Winston Pillsbury.³¹³²

Philip W. Pillsbury

Philip Winston Pillsbury was born in Minneapolis on April 16, 1903, the son of Charles S. Pillsbury and Nelle (Pendleton) Pillsbury. He received a Yale University B.A. in 1924 and an honorary LL.D. from Grinnell College in 1948, belonged to Alpha Delta Phi, and joined Pillsbury Mills in 1924. He was treasurer in 1940, president and director from 1940 to 1952 and chairman of the board from 1952.³⁰³² He married Eleanor Bellows of Minneapolis on July 5, 1934.³⁰³¹ The Newcomen Society in North America published his 28-page booklet The Pioneering Pillsburys in 1950.³³ A national wheat-quality contest bore his name, and a Utah congressman inserted an editorial on two of its 1945 national winners in the Congressional Record.³⁴ The 1958 directory lists him as a director of the First National Bank of Minneapolis, the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago, Wayne Knitting Mills and the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, a member of the Associates of Stanford Research Institute, chairman of the Yale Corporation nomination committee, and president and director of the Minnesota Orchestral Association.³⁰

His sister was Mary Pillsbury Lord, and the genealogies list Winston Lord as her son.³¹³²

The Grand Metropolitan takeover

Litigation over the takeover reached the Delaware Court of Chancery in 1988 in Grand Metropolitan Public Ltd. v. Pillsbury Co., 558 A.2d 1049.³⁵ Grand Metropolitan, an English company with 1987 sales of about $10.17 billion, and its subsidiary Wendell Investments Limited sued Pillsbury and its directors on October 3, 1988. Pillsbury owned the restaurant chains Burger King, Bennigan's and Steak and Ale, and had adopted a Stockholder Rights Plan (the "poison pill") in January 1986 without stockholder approval.³⁵ William H. Spoor, then chairman, president and chief executive of Pillsbury, was quoted in June 1988 as saying, "If you want to see a hell of a cat and dog fight, just let someone make a move on us."³⁵

Pillsbury became aware of Grand Met's interest in May 1988. In the months before the bid it contacted state alcoholic beverage commissions about tied-house statutes, which restrict liquor manufacturers from owning retail outlets, and on the day the offer was announced it sued Grand Met in 14 jurisdictions.³⁵ Grand Met began an all-cash tender offer for all Pillsbury common stock on October 4, 1988 at $60 a share. The opinion puts the aggregate value of the offer at about $5.5 billion, and the $63 price at about 60 percent above the roughly $39 closing price of September 30. The offer was raised to $63 on December 12, the day of oral argument. The letter delivered with the offer, from Grand Met's United States chief executive to Pillsbury chairman Philip L. Smith, stated an intention to make Minneapolis the world headquarters of its International Food Group.³⁵ The Pillsbury board voted on October 17 that the offer was inadequate and declined to redeem the rights. On November 6 it agreed to spin off Burger King to stockholders.³⁵

Justice Duffy, retired, sitting by assignment, wrote on December 16, 1988 that about 87 percent of the shares had been tendered, that the Pillsbury board's own plan placed the minimum value at $68 a share, and, as described at oral argument, that Grand Met had offered $65 a share in weekend negotiations. He granted preliminary injunctions against the Burger King spin-off and ordered Pillsbury to redeem the rights, conditioned on prompt settlement with tendering stockholders.³⁵ The directors named as defendants in the caption included W. Michael Blumenthal, John H. Perkins, James W. McLamore, Smith, Spoor and a George S. Pillsbury. The name and middle initial are those of George Sturgis Pillsbury, the former state senator and grandson of Charles A. Pillsbury, who had been a company group vice president.³⁵¹³ Among the tendering stockholders the opinion lists Bear Stearns, which held 14,050,000 shares, the California Public Employees' Retirement System and Prudential-Bache Securities.³⁵

The company was acquired by Grand Metropolitan in 1989. In 2001 General Mills bought Pillsbury for $10.4 billion.¹

Yale, Skull and Bones, and the Pillsbury cousins

Sutton's index of members of the Order by class year lists two Pillsburys: John Sargent Pillsbury Jr. in the class of 1935 and Edmund P. Pillsbury in the class of 1936.³⁶

The class book of 1936 describes Edmund P. Pillsbury (Edmund Pennington Pillsbury), born December 22, 1913, the son of John Sargent Pillsbury and Eleanor Jerusha (Lawler) Pillsbury. He prepared at the Blake School in Minneapolis and St. Paul's School in Concord, majored in economics, belonged to Davenport College and took part in hockey, crew, football and rugby. The entry states that he belonged to Chi Psi, the Torch Honor Society and Skull and Bones, and that he expected to enter the employ of the Pillsbury Flour Mills Company. The same book names his brothers John S. Pillsbury Jr., '35, and Charles A. Pillsbury, '39.³⁷ The class book lists among his fellow members of Skull and Bones Jonathan Brewster Bingham, John Hersey and Robert Train.³⁸

The 1958 directory records that John Sargent Pillsbury Jr., born October 28, 1912, received a Yale B.A. in 1935 and belonged to Psi Upsilon. He took an LL.B. at the University of Minnesota in 1940, was a partner of the Minneapolis law firm Faegre and Benson from 1945 to 1956, became president of the Northwestern National Life Insurance Company in 1956, and served on active duty in the U.S. Naval Reserve in World War II.³⁰ He chaired the Orono school board and sat on the board of the Pillsbury Settlement House.³⁰

George Sturgis Pillsbury, a son of John Sargent Pillsbury, graduated early from Yale in December 1942.³⁹¹³ He then enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served in the Philippines as a first lieutenant during World War II.³⁹ He worked for the Pillsbury Company for 24 years, rising to group vice president.¹³ He was elected to the Minnesota Senate in November 1970 and served from 1971 to 1982, first for District 33 and then for District 42.³⁹ He took part in the gubernatorial campaigns of his older brother John Jr. and of his brother-in-law Wheelock Whitney. He died at his Wayzata home on October 13, 2012, at the age of 91.¹³

Oswald Bates Lord appears in Sutton's index in the class of 1926, with the notation "Mary Pillsbury (of Pillsbury flour family)." Their son Winston Lord appears in the class of 1959.³⁶ Sutton's chart labels the Lord family "1635, Cambridge, Mass." and his text places the Lords among the old-line families of the Order. The text gives the line from Thomas Lord, who left Essex in 1635 in a company led by Rev. Thomas Hooker and settled at what is now Hartford, and names George DeForest Lord (initiated 1854), who founded the New York law firm Lord, Day and Lord with his father Daniel Lord. Sutton's list of Lords in the Order runs 1854, 1898 (Franklin Atkins Lord), 1922 (William Galey Lord), 1926 (Oswald Bates Lord), 1949 (Charles Edwin Lord II) and 1959 (Winston Lord).⁴⁰

Sutton wrote that a future volume would trace the University of Chicago, which Rockefeller funds had founded, "through Frederick Gates (of Hartford, Connecticut), and the Pillsbury family (The Order)."⁴¹

Mary Pillsbury Lord

Mary Stinson Pillsbury was born on November 14, 1904, a daughter of Charles Stinson Pillsbury and Helen Pendleton Winston. On December 7, 1929 she married Oswald Bates Lord, born March 15, 1903, a son of Charles Edwin Lord and Lucie-Taylor (Weart) Lord of Tarrytown, New York.³¹³²

Mary Pillsbury Lord served as a United States representative to the United Nations Human Rights Commission from 1953 to 1961, as an alternate representative to the United Nations General Assembly from 1953 to 1959, and as a delegate to the General Assembly in 1958 and 1960. The Eisenhower Library finding aid describes her as active in the Eisenhower campaign.⁴² Her oral history, given to John T. Mason Jr. for the Columbia University Oral History Project in 1967, 1968 and 1969, runs to 429 pages. The topics of the first interview include her first meeting with Eisenhower, her service as assistant director of civil defense for New York, New Jersey and Delaware, the advisory committee for women in the army and the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, a trip to Europe to visit the WACs, Bill Donovan (William J. Donovan), pre-convention work for Eisenhower's candidacy, Citizens for Eisenhower, UNICEF, the United Nations covenants on human rights, Eleanor Roosevelt and Marietta Tree. The third interview lists a trip behind the Iron Curtain in 1948 for the Army, Anna Pauker, Planned Parenthood, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Atlantic Institute; later interviews cover NATO parliamentarians, the Atlantic Treaty Association, and trips to Ethiopia and East Africa.⁴² In 1965 she sat on the panel of judges for the Federal Woman's Award.⁴³ With her husband she produced the memoir Exit Backward, Bowing (Macmillan, 1970).⁴⁴

Winston Lord

Winston Lord, born in 1937, is the son of Oswald Bates Lord and Mary Pillsbury Lord and a grandson of Charles Stinson Pillsbury.⁴⁵³² The Foreign Relations of the United States volume on China lists him as a member of the Office of International Security Affairs in the Department of Defense until 1969, a member of the National Security Council Planning Group, and from 1971 the NSC staff member for United Nations affairs.⁴⁶

On April 17, 1971, Lord sent Kissinger a seven-page memorandum listing the major contacts between the United States and the People's Republic of China through Pakistan, Romania and other channels.⁴⁷ On June 21, 1971, Henry A. Kissinger, Winston Lord and the Pakistani ambassador Agha Hilaly met at the White House, where Hilaly handed over two notes in the exchange of messages that arranged Kissinger's trip to China.⁴⁸ Lord was one of the four Americans in the party that met Premier Chou En-lai in Beijing on July 9, 1971 (Kissinger, John Holdridge, Lord and Richard Smyser), and Lord, Holdridge and Smyser prepared the transcripts of that visit.⁴⁹ On October 21, 1971, in Beijing, Kissinger told Chou En-lai that CIA agents "write long, incomprehensible reports" and added, "They are mostly from Yale and they don't have the people." Chou asked, "He is from Yale [pointing to Winston Lord]?" and Kissinger answered, "Does he look like a revolutionary?"⁵⁰

Lord was director of the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department from October 12, 1973 to January 20, 1977, ambassador to China from November 6, 1985 to April 23, 1989, and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from April 22, 1993 to February 18, 1997.⁴⁵ Sutton's 1983 text describes Lord as chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and as a member of the Order, and its chart of the Lords carries the caption "Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (1983)."⁵¹⁴⁰

Michael Pillsbury

Michael Pillsbury is described in the 1992 Senate report on BCCI as a former assistant undersecretary of defense and Senate staff assistant. He had a personal and business relationship with Mohammed Hammoud. The report states that Pillsbury told subcommittee staff he had met Hammoud through a real estate developer in 1981 or 1982, and that Hammoud gave him intelligence on American hostages in Lebanon, which he passed to government agencies.⁵² A 1984 memorandum for the record in the CIA reading room describes a "Mike Pillsbury" as a professional staff member of the Senate Labor Committee, for whom Senator Orrin Hatch asked that daily access to the National Intelligence Daily and to National Intelligence Estimates be provided.⁵³ A January 26, 1987 Washington Post column on Michael Pillsbury describes a Stanford graduate with a Columbia doctorate in Chinese studies, a Rand Corporation analyst from 1973, the recipient of a 1976 letter from Ronald Reagan endorsing a military relationship with China, a Senate Budget Committee staff member from 1978, and a man fired from a Senate committee staff, passed over for a post early in the Reagan administration, and dismissed from the Defense Department.⁵⁴

The San Francisco law firm Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro, named in a federal court caption, carries the same surname.⁵⁵