1921 Duluth & St Louis County MN, Van Brunt.pdf - Garon.us

756 DULUTH AND ST. LOUIS COUNTY
and Royal D. Alworth. The sons are actively associated with their father,
Marshall looking after the mining properties and Royal after the real
estate holdings.
John R. McGiffert. While he came to Duluth in 1892 to practice
law, and made a name in that profession, John R. McGiffert is best known
in the Northwest as one of the executive officials of the Clyde Iron Works,
as an inventor and mechanical engineer and as patentee of a large list
of devices, most of them used in the lumber industry and which have
in some respects almost revolutionized certain logging and lumbering
operations.
Mr. McGiffert was born at Hudson, New York, ^larch 19, 1869, a
son of John N. and Sarah (Carnahan) McGiffert, the former, a native
of New York and the latter of Pennsylvania. His grandfather, James
McGiffert, was born near Belfast, Ireland, in 1800 and came to New
York in 1819. In the maternal line Mr. McGift'ert represents some distinguished
American names. His maternal great-great-grandfather,
John Carnahan, was commander of a Pennsylvania company in the
Revolutionary war. The Carnahans were Scotch-Irish and settled in
Pennsylvania during the eighteenth century. One of the Carnahans,
James, was an early president of Princeton College. The grandfather,
James McGiffert, was a grandson in the maternal line of Colonel William
Dinwiddie, whose brother was the Robert Dinwiddie. known to
every American schoolboy as the Colonial Governor of Virginia.
John R. McGiffert was liberally educated, attending ])ublic schools
and an academy in his native town, taking two years in Hamilton College,
graduating in 1890 from Williams College in New York, and in 1892
receiving his law degree from the University of New York. Admitted to
the bar the same year, he came to Duluth and opened his office and soon
had a comfortable clientele as a lawyer.
W'hile in school and during his law practice Mr. McGiffert found
time to encourage his inventive genius and allowed it more or less full
scope, though the first invention patented and turned to commercial use
was the McGiffert Log Loader, which he fir.st patented in 1901. During
subsequent years he obtained more than twenty other patents covering
different types of logging machinerv.
About the time he obtained his patent on the McGiffert Log Loader
the Clyde Iron Works was established as the reorganization of another
iron working plant at Duluth. The Clyde Iron Works has long been the
most com])lete iron working plant in the Northwest, and has specialized
in the manufacture of logging and other heavy machinery. The Mc-
Giffert Log Loader has been manufactured by the Clyde Iron Works
from the beginning, as w^ell as other of Mr. McGiffert's patents. In
1902 Mr. McGiffert became superintendent of the logging machinery
department, and subsequently became treasurer and secretary and later
vice president of the corporation in general charge of the design and
construction of all the machinerv manufactured in the immense plant
at Duluth.
Mr. McGiff'ert is a member of the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers, the American Society for the Advancement of Science, the
New York Machinery Club, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
belongs to the Duluth Commercial Club, Kitchi Gammi Club, Duluth
Boat Club. Northland Countrv^ Club, and has allied himself with every
progressive civic business and patriotic organization since he took up
his residence at Duluth. Air. McGiffert has served as a member of the
Board of Education and in other capacities.