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Chauncey W. [Wright] Griggs – Offices – Personal.
Away back in the past some thirty years ago, I remember Col. Griggs in business on Third street, and then in the grocery trade on the corner of Third and Seventh streets, or Seven Corners, and then at Chaska, Carver County, making and shipping brick, and then engaged in government contracts, and then dealing in real estate, and coal and wood in the city of ST. PAUL. He is of English descent, born in Connecticut in 1832; received a good academical education, and in 1851 left home for Detroit, Mich., as a clerk in a banking house. Was engaged in business in Ohio, Iowa and Michigan previous to coming to ST. PAUL, which was in the year 1856. In 1861 he enlisted in the Third Minnesota Infantry, and was soon after promoted to First Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel, but resigned in 1863 in consequence of sickness, and returned to ST. PAUL.
Col. Griggs was a member of the House two terms, member of the Senate three terms, and an Alderman of the city seven years. He was interested in banking in 1872, and occupies a prominent position in the banking interests of the city now; is a director in three national banks, the aggregate capital of which is $1,700,000. He is largely engaged in the wholesale grocery
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business. He is also the president of the State Building Association, which office he has held seven years; vice-president of the ST. PAUL National Bank; a member of the board of water commissioners, appointed in 1882, “and represents a class of business men who have made our Western cities marvels of rapid growth and enterprise.”
Col. Griggs is a fine-looking man, well-proportioned and possessing excellent business qualities. He is quiet in his movements, cool and deliberate, but effective in results, and has laid a basis upon which he is building up a fortune. He is exceedingly social and pleasant in his nature, yet back of all this he is shrewd and scheming. He has made a good public officer, more so by his earnest work than by outward display, and may very justly be classed among our sensible, sagacious, solid, able citizens. Col. Griggs married Miss Martha A. Gallup in 1859, an elegant woman of superior ability, of remarkable energy and charming manners, a young-old settler, so to speak, whose influence has always been for good. The Colonel himself having accumulated wealth, has cultivated with it a spirit of generosity which finds practical exemplification in all good enterprises.
Source:
Pen Pictures of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Biographical Sketches of Old Settlers
From the Earliest Settlement of the City, up to and Including the Year 1857, Volume I
T. M. Newson
Published by the Author, St. Paul, MN, 1886
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Source:
Magazine of Western History
Volume XIII, Number 1, November 1890
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CHANGE IN THE GRIGGS-COOPER CORPORATION JAN. 1.
Col. Chauncey W. Griggs, of the firm of Griggs & Foster, as well-known in St. Paul as on the Pacific Coast, where its members now reside, was here yesterday on business connected with the forming of a new corporation, to be known as Griggs, Cooper & Co. The change was made the first of the year and amount to the accession to the firm of Theodore Griggs, a son of the colonel, and Richmond P. Warner, both of St. Paul.
Col. Griggs and Addison G. Foster, United States senator from Washington, formed the firm of Griggs & Foster – still in existence – some thirty years ago, and the present corporation has resulted therefrom.
Both gentlemen are associated in the St. Paul and Tacoma Lumber company at Tacoma, which operates a lumber plant and the Wilkinson coal mines, east of Tacoma, with something over 1,300 names on the payroll. Both gentlemen are interested with the estate of F. W. Miller, in the Beaver Dam Lumber company, of Cumberland, Wis., which will clean up its operations within a year or two, and which is putting on the market something like 10,000 acres of Wisconsin land.
Col. Griggs is a busy man, being president of the Fidelity Trust company bank, the Tacoma Dry Dock company, and the Chehalis and Pacific Coal company, in addition to his duties as executive of the lumber and coal companies. He is most enthusiastic as to the future of Tacoma.
Source:
Saint Paul Daily Globe
Friday Morning, January 4, 1901
Volume XXIV, Number 4, Page 8
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Page 310
Source:
A History of the Puget Sound Country
Its Resources, Its Commerce and its People, Volume 1
Col. William Farrand Prosser
The Lewis Publishing Company, New York & Chicago, 1903
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Col. Chauncey W. Griggs, lumberman and prominent in the state of Washington politics for many years, died at Tacoma Saturday [October 29, 1910] after a long illness.
Source:
San Juan Islander
Friday, November 4, 1910
Volume XX, Number 41, Page 2