Theodore H. Rowell

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Theodore H. Rowell, Sr. (July 15, 1905 – September 26, 1979) was a pharmaceutical industrialist, outdoorsman, conservationist, and politician from Minnesota.

Rowell was born in Watertown, Wisconsin, and was the great grandson of John S. Rowell of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin (1825–1907), a notable pioneer inventor and manufacturer of farm machinery. In 1912, he moved with his family to Chetlo Harbor, Washington, where his father Joseph C. N. Rowell and uncle Douglas Rowell founded the Chetlo Harbor Packing Company, a salmon cannery.^{[citation needed]} After canning 10,000 cases of salmon in 1914, the cannery failed in 1915. Ted and his family then moved to Warroad, Minnesota, and eventually settled at Wheeler's Point on Lake of the Woods, which is north of the town of Baudette, Minnesota.^{[citation needed]}

Rowell studied pharmacy at the University of Minnesota, where he was the class president from 1926-27. Upon graduating in 1928, he returned to Baudette and opened a drugstore. Meanwhile, his father Joe continued in commercial fishing and also raised blue foxes for their fur. When fur buyers commented on the quality of his foxes' fur, Joe deduced that it was due to their diet consisting primarily of burbot, which is the only freshwater relative of the cod. The fish had no market value but came up in his nets and were fed to the foxes.