|
a.
|
Continued: John Calvin Skinner graduated from the Royalton Academy. He taught school. He lost his right arm when 17, because of being shot accidentally, whilel hunting, by a boy being cared for at the Skinner home. He was kept in bed for a major part of three years because of additional amputations, after the first, due to gangrene and medical notions of the times as to the desirability of bleeding, and denying normal amounts of food and water to those possessed of fevers. He went to Cincinnati in 1869 where his elder brother, Lewis Edward Skinner, was connected with the Little Miami Railroad. He went to the Pilgrim Church the first Sunday there, where his robust-tenor voice was noticed in the congregational singing, and he was invited to choir practice at his un-introduced wife-to-be's home (she being organist). He became chorister of both the Church and the Sunday School. He was given "Deserved Testimonials" of "a handsome copy of the Bible", on Sunday, by Sunday School Teachers of Pilgrim Church, and, on the Tuesday following, "an elegant dressing case" preceding his "departure for the West" in 1872. He left the terminal of the railroad in Iowa, and, with four others, gathered and herded a large flock of sheep as far west as Denver. He sold his interest to partners. He returned first to Vermont and then Cincinnati. He was married June 3, 1873, and tended the bridge between Cincinnati and Covington Kentucky. He engaged in the coal business in 1875 at Cleveland. He sold this in 1878 to founder Eugene R Grasselli who made him Superintendant of the 5-mile and 8-mile-lock sulphuric-acid-restoring plants of the Gasselli Company. He became General Superintendant of Grasselli plants at Cleveland within a year. He was one of the organizers of the Hege-Farm Sub-division in southwest Cleveland about 1882. He was one of the incorporators of the Canfield Oil Company, but, because John D Rockefeller resented the formation of this and other competitors to the Standard Oil Company, and the Grasselli Company was furnishing much sulphuric acid to the Standard Refineries, he sold out. He resigned February 1891 from GCCo. He built his own sul-acid-restoring plant at Overton (10 miles north of Pueblo Colorado), adjacent to the Rocky Mountain Oil Refinery, then being constructed by Cleveland parties, but the latter venture proving a failure, he had no spent acid to restore. He acquired a financial interest in and became Vice President and General Manager and Director of the Western Chemical Company in Denver in Oct 1891. He retired from active connection in 1909, but remained a Director of Western Chemical Manufacturing Company. He was long on the Board of Home for the Blind. He was one of five City and County Commissioners of Denver in 1912-1913. He was a member of Board of Trustees of First Av. Presbyterian Church and later of First Congregational Church. When the Denver Union Water Company was acquired by the City and County of Denver in 1918, he became one of five Water Commissioners, in which connection he remained to a third term when he passed away, as a result of thrombosis. He was on the World War Draft Board, Division 3, Denver 1917-1918.
|
