Pillsbury, Charles Alfred

Charles Alfred Pillsbury, (born Dec. 3, 1842, Warner, N.H., U.S.—died Sept. 17, 1899, Minneapolis, Minn.), U.S. flour miller who built his company into one of the world’s largest milling concerns in the 1880s.

After selling his share in a Montreal dry-goods business, Pillsbury went to Minneapolis in 1869 to join his uncle, John S. Pillsbury, who would later become the state’s governor.

Staked by his uncle and his father, Pillsbury paid $10,000 for a one-third share of a small flour mill. A floundering enterprise, the mill used water power from the Falls of St. Anthony to produce 200 barrels of flour a day. Pillsbury installed purifiers, machines recently invented by Edmund La Croix, that could produce fine white flour from the district’s hard spring wheat. The mill showed a $6,000 profit a year later. His was also the first American mill to use steam rollers instead of burr stones to crush the wheat.

In 1872, he founded C.A. Pillsbury & Co. and began purchasing and building more mills. By 1886, the Pillsbury mills produced 10,000 barrels a day.

Pillsbury had a share in getting low freight rates for Minneapolis, as well as in building up the railroad system that helped make Minneapolis the centre of the grain trade. To protect his supplies, he founded a grain elevator company that owned storage elevators throughout the Northwest.

In 1889, he sold his company to an English syndicate. He remained managing director of the combined Pillsbury-Washburn Flour Mills Company, Limited, until his death.

Pillsbury was elected to the Minnesota state senate for five terms.