Cyrus Northrop, second president of the University of Minnesota (1884-1911), was born in Ridgefield, Connecticut on September 30, 1834. He received a common-school and academic education in his native town, and spent one year in Williston Seminary in Easthampton, Massachusetts. In 1852, he entered Yale College and graduated in 1857, having lost one year due to ill health, and received an LL.D. from Yale in 1886.
He was married in 1862 to Anna Elizabeth Warren of Stamford, Connecticut. Of the three children born to them, the eldest, Minnie, died in childhood; the only son, Cyrus, Jr., died in 1920 after a life as an invalid. His younger daughter, Elizabeth Northrop Beach, died in 1918 of tuberculosis, leaving two sons. Dr. Northrop died suddenly of heart failure on April 3, 1922.
From the guide to the Northrop Family papers, 1836-1923, (University of Minnesota Libraries. University of Minnesota Archives [uarc])
