Nelson Powell Hulst

Nelson Powell Hulst was born in 1842 in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. In 1857, his family moved to Alexandria, Virginia where Hulst attended a small Quaker private school. He subsequently attended a Quaker school in Sandy Spring, Maryland.

Prior to his entry to Yale, Hulst was recommended to President Lincoln for appointment to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Him and his father had met Lincoln, but an appointment that was promised to a young Hulst by the president never came to fruition.[2]

Hulst attended Yale College from 1863 to 1867 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. He subsequently attended Sheffield Scientific School and in 1870 received his PhD. In that same year, he accepted a position at the Milwaukee Iron Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as a chemist and technical engineer. The plant was closed by 1878. By then, Hulst and others had organized the Menominee Mining Company and were looking to continue pursue iron further in the Menominee Iron Range in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

At the time of his retirement in 1904, Hulst was vice-president in charge of mining properties for the United States Steel Corporation. Hulst's career in mining was said to have two milestones: the discovery of the Chapin mine in Iron Mountain, Michigan in 1879 and the discovery of the Pewabic mine, which began producing in 1887.[2]

Nelson Powell Hulst died January 11, 1923 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was buried in Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee.[3] At the time of his death, Hulst was said to be "the greatest American authority on iron".[2]