Dr. William W. Mayo House

Le Sueur, United States

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

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Heritage registerNational Register of Historic Places↗

Located at 118 North Main Street in Le Sueur, Minnesota, the Dr. William W. Mayo House is a Carpenter Gothic residence built in 1859 by brothers James and William Worrall Mayo, who had emigrated from Salford, United Kingdom in 1846. William, a physician, and his wife gave birth to their son William James Mayo in the home in 1861; William W. Mayo would later aid pioneers during the Dakota War of 1862 before relocating to Rochester, where he and his sons William and Charles established Saint Marys Hospital in 1889 and went on to found the Mayo Clinic. The house subsequently passed to Charlotte Wright Bradley, who gifted it to her daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law Carson Nesbit Cosgrove in 1874; Cosgrove pioneered canning in the Minnesota River valley and presided over the Minnesota Valley Canning Company (later Green Giant) from its 1903 founding. Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and managed as a state historic site by the Ney Nature Center in partnership with the Minnesota Historical Society, the house has been restored to its 1860 appearance and adjoins the Mayoview History Center, which documents the Mayo family's legacy.