Minnesota Golfer - Summer 2011 - 19

And consider this: Tallman did not even
take up the game until age 50.
Tallman was dubbed " Minnesota's Grand
Old Man of Golf " in a 1952 profi le published
by the West Central Tribune of Willmar,
where Tallman spent his adult life.
Fitting enough. But he might also have
been dubbed " Minnesota's Grand Old Man
of Fate, " for it was Fate that viewed Tallman
with one very good eye and one blind eye.
David Newton Tallman was born on
January 22, 1872, in Dutchess County, New
York. He graduated from Union College in
upstate New York in 1893 with a degree in
civil engineering and moved west to Willmar,
where he took a job as a civil engineer with
the Great Northern Railway. He switched to
telephone work in 1896 and eventually came
to own the Minnesota Electric Telephone
Company, which controlled 2,000 miles of
toll line and 26 local exchanges.
Opportunity didn't knock for Tallman.
It barged through the door, said " room service "
and laid fortune at his feet-no doubt
with a measure of hard work and inspired
entrepreneurialism included. One example:
Tallman struck up a friendship with Louis
W. Hill, son of Great Northern chairman
and rail baron James J. Hill, and was furnished
with information on locations at
which the Great Northern Railway would
pass as it expanded westward. He founded
Tallman Investment Company and began
developing town sites to coincide with the
Great Northern expansion.
" He became the owner of 125 small towns
in Montana and North and South Dakota.
He established banks in 42 of these towns
and was president of them; he also established
24 lumber companies, " wrote Jon
Tallman, a distant relative of David Tallman
and a family historian, in the nomination
form for the MGA-PGA Hall of Fame.
" He went on at one time to become one of
the wealthiest men in Minnesota, " adds Jon
Tallman, reached by phone at his home in
Arizona.
No exact fi gure estimating Tallman's
wealth is available, but the " Grand Old Man "
article from 1952 included a reference to
Tallman as a millionaire.
In 1902, Tallman had a 9,000-square-foot,
three-story home built in Willmar for him,
his wife, Clara, and their fi ve daughters.
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The home became known as the Tallman
Mansion.
Equally dazzling was a second home site.
" I remember stories about him at their
summer home on Green Lake, " says Nancy
Ramey, one of Tallman's granddaughters
who lives in Baxter, Minn. The site, Ramey
says, featured 3,000 feet of lakeshore.
" They would have orchestras come from
Minneapolis. He loved to dance; they liked
to entertain, " Ramey says.
Then Fate intervened.
Tallman lost many of his good men with
the advent of World War I in 1914, and his
fortunes slipped.
" After the war, " wrote Jon Tallman, " property
values fell from $100 an acre to $20 (an
acre), and he lost his fortune faster than he
had made it. "
The 1920s and 1930s brought the Dust
Bowl and the Great Depression, and Tallman's
fortune was wiped out. In the 1940s,
the family was forced to move from its mansion
to a small home in Willmar. The 1952
story about Tallman included the mention
that he had lost $600,000 " in one nightmarish
stretch. "
What Tallman never lost, however, was
a remarkable profi ciency for all things athletic.
He was a baseball pitcher and team
captain at Union College, an accomplished
tennis player into his 40s and, according to
one source whose information could not be
confi rmed, a racecar driver.
" He was an all-around athlete for a little,
short guy, " says Ramey, who guessed that
Tallman, who bore perhaps an inappropriate
surname, stood only 5-foot-7 or 5-foot-8.
At midlife, Tallman gave up tennis and
took up golf-and quickly won everything
in sight. Jon Tallman wrote that in a letter to
a college classmate dated October 12, 1936,
David Tallman said he had won 142 trophies
playing golf. More would follow.
David Tallman's trophies in his Willmar home; they later disappeared from the Willmar CC and
haven't been seen since.

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