William G. LeDuc is born in Wilkesville, Ohio. After moving to St. Paul in 1850, he opened a law office and bookstore and published three yearbooks publicizing the territory. In 1857 he moved to Hastings, where he built a Gothic Revival home and ran a mill that processed spring wheat flour. He became a general in the Civil War, served as US commissioner of agriculture, and helped develop the Remington typewriter. LeDuc died in 1917.