several text-books on engineering, and editor of the "Railway and
Locomotive Engineering."
SCOTS IN INDUSTRIES
Robert Gilmor (1748-1822), born in Paisley, was the founder of the
East India trade in this country. He also assisted in founding the
first bank in Baltimore (the Bank of Maryland), and the Maryland
Historical Society. His son Robert (1774-1848) was also prominent in
Baltimore business and was President of the Washington Monument
Association which laid the foundation for the Washington monument in
Baltimore in 1815 and completed it in 1829. Henry Eckford (1775-1832),
shipbuilder, was a native of Irvine, Ayrshire. On the outbreak of the
War of 1812 he built several ships for the American Government for use
on the Great Lakes. In 1820 he was appointed Naval Constructor at the
Brooklyn Navy Yard and there built six ships of the line. In 1822 he
built the steamer "Robert Fulton," which made the first successful
steam voyage to New Orleans and Havana. Angus Neilson Macpherson
(1812-76), born at Cluny, Inverness-shire, was builder of the frigate
"Ironsides," and designer of the furnaces for heating large plates and
the method of affixing them to the sides of the vessel. Donald Mackay
(1810-80), born in Nova Scotia, grandson of Donald Mackay of Tain,
Ross-shire, established the shipyards at East Boston, and constructed
a number of fast sailing ships, and during the Civil War a number of
warships for the United States Government. The beauty and speed of his
clippers gave him a world wide reputation as a naval constructor.
Thomas Dickson (1822-84), President of the Delaware and Hudson Canal
Co., was born in Lauder. William Grey Warden (1831-95), born in
Pittsburgh of Scottish ancestry, was a pioneer in the refining of
petroleum in Pennsylvania, and the controlling spirit in the work of
creating the great Atlantic Refinery consolidated with the Standard
Oil Company of Ohio in 1874. George Gibson McMurtry (1838-1915), born
in Belfast of Scottish descent, steel manufacturer and philanthropist,
was "one of the big figures of that small group of men which
established the industrial independence of the United States from the
European nations of cheap labor." James Edwin Lindsay (1826-1919),
lumberman, was descended from Donald Lindsay, who settled in Argyle,
New York, in 1739. John McKesson (b. 1807), descended from the
McKessons of Argyllshire, was founder of the, wholesale drug firm of
McKesson and Robbins; and Alfred B. Scott of the wholesale drug firm
of Scott and Bowne was also of Scottish descent. Edmond Urquhart (b.
1834) was one of the pioneers in the creation of the cotton seed oil
industry. To Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), born in Dunfermline, "the
richest and most free-handed Scot who ever lived," more than anyone
else is due the great steel and iron industry of the United States.
His innumerable gifts for public libraries, etc., are too well known
to need detailing here. To New York alone he gave over five million
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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