McKenna Process
Company
Plant
formerly located in Joliet, Illinois - ca. 1920.
Autobiographical Data
- Outline
by George Langford, Sr.
1887
Trip
to South Dakota, where I saw Sitting Bull and met a Ute Indian hunting
party.
1890-1894
Central
High
School, St. Paul,
Minnesota, graduated 1894.
1895-1897
Sheffield
Scientific School, Yale
University
Three-year
course, graduated in
Mechanical Engineering, June 1897.
Member
of Book
& Snake (Cloister)
Society.
Stroke
oar,
Yale University
eight-oared crew for the three years,
first
Yale
freshman to fill that post
as far as known.
Took
part in
Varsity races at New
London, Connecticut, and Poughkeepsie, New York,
and
in
Yale's
competition for the Grand
Challenge Cup at Henley, England, 1896.
1897
Took
part in
various four- and
eight-oared races with
Duluth
and
Canadian Crews on Lake
Minnetonka, Minnesota.
1900
Lost
left arm
in a mill accident
January 30th;
married
Sydne[y] Holmes in Kansas
City, Missouri, November 14th.
1898-1929
McKenna
Company
mills
at Joliet, Illinois, Kansas City, Kansas, Tremley, New Jersey, and
Birkenhead, England.
Foreman,
Master
Mechanic,
Superintendent, General Superintendent,
Vice
President
& Director,
President.
1910
Visited
Whitewillow, Kendall County,
Illinois, and secured the Mastodon Elephant collection
found
on John
Bamford's farm.
Collection donated to Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago,
the
museum
paying in part for expense
of collecting and preparing the fossil teeth and bones.
1887-1925
Accumulated
large collections of
fossils and Indian artifacts now in various museums.
1925-1929
Fisher
Mound
and Village Site on the
Des Plaines River, Illinois, near its confluence with Illinois River.
Ten
mounds and
forty house pits
excavated with assistance of Albert Tennik, McKenna mill foreman;
over
600 human
burials; 75 clay pots;
numerous artifacts of stone, bone, copper and shell, potsherds
and
animal
bones. The collection with
complete manuscript records, photographs, maps, etc., presented
to
the
University of Chicago.
1929
Company
business near 2212
North Clark
Street, Chicago.
Adler
Mounds, etc.
1930
Voted
Research
Associate in
Anthropology by Trustees of University of Chicago.
Voted
life
membership in American
Museum of Natural History, New York.
1937-1945
Five
hundred or
more days in the strip
coal mines west and southwest of Wilmington,
Will
County,
Illinois, collecting
Pennsylvanian fossil flora and fauna.
The
specimens
are now in the Illinois
State Museum (Springfield, Illinois), Colorado Museum of
Natural
History
(Denver, Colorado),
and various other museums, the bulk of the collection
now
being in
the Chicago Natural
History Museum.
1945
Retired
from
the steel business. About
75 United States and a few foreign patents issued to Langford
from
~1917 to
~1929 on railroad rails
and appliances.
1947
-1962
Chicago
Natural
History Museum. Put in
charge of a new department, Fossil Plants, as Curator,
and
has held
that post up to the
present time. Work in the strip coal mines of Will County, Illinois,
and
clay
deposits in Tennessee and
Mississippi has resulted in a collection filling two large storerooms.