GRINNELL, Frederick, President of the General Fire Extinguisher Company, and inventor of the Grinnell Automatic Fire Extinguisher, was born August 14, 1836, in New Bedford, Mass., the son of Lawrence and Rebecca Smith (Williams) Grinnell.  The Grinnells were French Huguenots, who came to this country in 1632 and settled near Newport, R. I.  They intermarried with the well-known families of Williams, Smith, Ricketson, Tallman, Russell and Howland, all of whom were among the first settlers of New England and distinguished in its history and social and business life. This portion of the ancestry of Mr. Grinnell is all of English descent. He received his early education in the Friends’ Academy of New Bedford, Mass. He adopted civil engineering as a profession and studied at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy, N. Y., from which he graduated in 1855. He commenced his practical work as draughtsman together with shop practice at the Jersey City Locomotive Works in the fall of that year. In the summer of 1858 he was assistant engineer in the construction of the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad, now a part of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. He returned to the Jersey-City Locomotive Works and remained until 1860, when he entered the employ of the Corliss Steam Engine Company, Providence, as draughtsman, and was soon after elected Treasurer of the Company.  He acted as Superintendent of the Works, and during the war went on three trips on the steamer Blackstone, because of his familiarity with the construction of the engines designed by Mr. Corliss.  One of their trips was in search of the line-of-batt!e ship Vermont, which had been given up for lost.  In January 1865 he accepted the appointment of manager of the Jersey City Locomotive Works, then leased by the Atlantic & Great Western Rail-road Company. In the fall of the same year he was appointed superintendent of motive power and machinery of the Atlantic & Great Western Rail-road. Previous to taking this position he spent three months in visiting and studying the large mechanical establishments of England and Scotland.  He remained in the employ of the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad Company until 1869, when he purchased an interest in the Providence Steam and Gas Pipe Company, of which he has since been the President, Business Manager and Mechanical En-gineer. The corporation has done a very large business in equipping manufacturing establishments with steam-heating apparatus, gas works for lighting them, and in providing them with automatic fire-extinguishers. It is in this last department in which Mr. Grinnell has accomplished a work of original genius of the utmost practical importance, and which has made his name known all over the civilized world.   He became attracted by an invention of Henry Par melee of New Haven, of an automatic fire-extinguisher exhibited in 1874. In 1878 the Providence Steam and Gas Pipe Company began the manufacture of fire-extinguishers under an arrangement with Mr. Parmelee. Since that lime Mr.  Grinnell has so improved and perfected them that he has completely revolutionized the system of fire protection in manufacturing establishments through-out the world. He has solved the problem of automatic fire-extinguishing in buildings so high as to be above water service, and when water would freeze in the pipes, by a system of air pipes and force pumps acting automatically. The apparatus has been very generally introduced not only in this country but in Europe, India, and Australia. His improvements in the apparatus include some forty patented devices.   The work has received the endorsement of all the principal fire insurance com-panies, and has resulted in a reduction in the rates of insurance for manufacturing establishments of from thirty to fifty per cent and in other buildings of twenty-five per cent.   He is President of the Providence Steam and Gas Pipe Company and of the General Fire Extinguisher Company, and a Director of the National Bank of Commerce of Providence, the Mechanics National Bank of New Bedford, the Dunnell Manufacturing Company of Pawtucket, and the Wamsutta Mills of New Bedford.   He is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Hope Club, and the New York and Eastern yacht clubs.    He is an enthusiastic yachtsman and spends his brief vacations in that recreation.   In politics he is a Republican.    He voted first for Abraham Lincoln, and for every Republican Presidential candidate since.   He married, October 15, 1865, Miss Alice Brayton Almy, daughter of William Almy of New Bedford, who died January 5, 1871 ; they had two children: Lawrence and Alice Almy Grinnell. He married, February 17, 1894, Miss Mary Brayton Page, daughter of John H. W. Page of Boston; they have five children: Russell, Lydia, Frederick, Lawrence and Francis B. Grinnell.  Source: Rhode Island Men in Progress - Submitted by Marie Miller

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