Thomas Barlow Walker

T. B. Walker
Thomas Barlow Walker in 1888
Born	February 1, 1840 Xenia, Ohio, United States
Died	July 28, 1928(1928-07-28) (aged 88) Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
Occupation	businessperson, art collector
Known for	lumber, Minneapolis Public Library, Walker Art Center
Spouse(s)	Harriet G. Walker
Children	Gilbert, Julia, Leon, Harriet, Fletcher, Willis, Clinton, and Archie
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Thomas Barlow Walker (February 1, 1840 – July 28, 1928) was a highly successful American businessperson who acquired timber in Minnesota and California and became an art collector. Walker founded the Minneapolis Public Library. He was among the ten wealthiest men in the world in 1923. He built two company towns, one of which his son sold to become part of what is today known as Sunkist. He is the founder and namesake of the Walker Art Center.

T. B. Walker was the son of Platt Walker and Anstis Keziah (Barlow) Walker (1814–1883), a sister of New York State Senator Thomas Barlow (1805–1896). He was born in Xenia, Ohio, in 1840, where in 1849 he got his first job in a bakery cutting biscuits. He had accompanied his parents and siblings west from New York when his father died of cholera in 1849 at Westport, Missouri, on their way to the California gold fields to seek their fortune.

In 1854, his mother married Oliver Barnes and in 1855 his family moved to Berea, Ohio, where while traveling for Fletcher Hulet, he was able to study mathematics intermittently and Newton's Principia at Baldwin University. When he finished college at age 19, he filled a contract in Paris, Illinois for railroad ties. He then taught school and then became a traveling salesman of grindstones. He is remembered as a man of "strong opinions" who would not eat grapefruit and who slept with a pistol under his pillow. His brother Platt Bayless Walker II founded Mississippi Valley Lumberman, a magazine. He had another brother and two sisters: Oliver W. Barnes, Adelaide B. Walker, and Helen M. Walker.