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

850 DULUTH AND ST. LOUIS COUNTY
Mr. McDonald was instrumental in having the Mullery-McDonald
Lumber Company purchase a controlling interest in a wholesale lumber
yard, including a complete planing and shingle plant, at North Tonawanda,
New York. He is still vice president and purchasing agent for this company.
In the meantime for several years past he has been interested in the
white pine timber regions of Idaho and is a stockholder in the Western
Land Si Timber Company. Mr. McDonald carries on an extensive business
under his own name as a manufacturer and dealer in logs and lumber.
He is interested in several ranches in the province of Alberta, Canada,
and has always participated in iron mining, having organized the Cuyuna
Iron & Land Company in Minnesota. He is one of the officials of this
company. Otherwise he is identified as a stockholder or director in several
business organizations in Minnesota, Idaho and Kentucky. In 1920
he organized the McDonald Lumber Company, extensive manufacturers
and wholesalers of lumber and timbers and large handlers of piling and
other forest products.
Mr. McDonald is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason, and
Shriner, a member of the Kitchi Gammi Club, the Curling Club and
Duluth Boat Club, and is serving a second term as chief of the Clan
Stewart, Order of Scottish Clans. He has never held any political office,
votes as a Republican, and is a member of the First Presbyterian Church.
In March, 1911, at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Mr. McDonald married Nellie
Martin. She was born in Menomonie, Wisconsin, and her people came
originally from Cape Breton. Mrs. McDonald obtained her education in
the schools of Wisconsin.
Frederick C. Witte is giving an administration which in the fullest
sense has justified his appointment to the office of chief of the police
department of the city of Virginia, one of the vital muniC:ipalities of the
Mesaba Range. He was born at Freeport, Illinois, June 22, 1876, and is
a son of Charles and Sophia (Steinke) Witte, the former of whom was
born in Germany and the latter at Freeport, Illinois. Charles Witte was
a young man at the time of his immigration to the United States and was
reared and educated in the state of Illinois, where he has long been
actively engaged in the work of his trade, that of a brick and stone mason.
Of the children all but one are living, and of the number Virginia's chief
of police was the third in order of birth.
In the public schools of his native city Frederick C. Witte continued
his studies until he had completed the work of the fifth grade, and his
parents then removed to a rural community near Freeport, where he
attended a district school until he was fourteen years of age. In the
meanwhile he assisted in the work of the farm which his father had purchased
and also gained considerable knowledge of the mason's trade
under the direction of his father. As a youth he was specially fond of
hunting and fishing, and his predilections along this line led him to adopt
an unusual medium of travel when he set forth for the Mesaba mineral
range of Minnesota. In 1897, in company with a chum, Robert Derr, he
set forth with team and wagon, in true gypsy style, on the interesting
overland trip to the Mesaba Range, and it is needless to say that he
enjoyed every moment of the fine out-of-doors journey. Upon arriving
at their destination the two men became associated in work at the trades
of brick mason and plasterer at Hinckley and Pine City, and this alliance
continued about eighteen months. Mr. Witte thereafter devoted about
one year to learning the barber's trade at Pine City, and in 1898 found
employment at this trade in a shop at Virginia. Here he continued to be
thus engaged until 1900, when he went to Spokane, Washington, in which