My Genealogy Home Page:Information about John Ellsworth Miner, Sr.
John Ellsworth Miner, Sr. (b. October 16, 1921)
Notes for John Ellsworth Miner, Sr.:
John A. Miner , Trevett, ME. the author of "The Lyon's Whelp" a history of the Thomas Miner linage and two other book on the Miner families. Bill Miner of 1804 Speegle Rd. Waco,Texas works with John A. Miner in compiling, proofing and publishing factual Miner information.
John Ellsworth, Sr. Was baptized, at the age of 5, at the ST. John's Catholic Church, by Father Lentz. Prior to this John's parents and family were Methodists. He attend kindergarten through 8 th. grade at St. John's School. He had the lead part in a stage play at the school in his 8 th. grade, "Mr. Morenose". While at St. John's School he was an Alter Boy for the last 4 years. He attended 9 th/ grade at the East Waterloo Junior High School and 10th through 11 th. grade at the East Waterloo Senior High School.
He did not finish all of the 12 th. grade because his father suffered a severe heart attack during the fall of that year and John had to stay out of school several months to operate his father's business, Miner's Sport & Repair Shop, while his father recovered, which was then located at 513 Water St. A gunsmithing, locksmithing and sporting goods store. This was during the major hunting season and young John and his sister Katherine managed the business for over three months by themselves.
During thispheasant hunting season young John had to repair hundreds of firearms during the period along with covering all of the locksmith service calls, lock repairs, bicycle repairs etc. The store had a fine business and this was some task for a boy who justturned 18 in October.By the time that John Ellsworth was 21 years old he was rated as a Master Locksmith and Gunsmith and was covering all of the locksmithing service calls, doing all of the gunsmithing etc. His father, John Elbert, took over his days at the shop doing the bookkeeping in the office and would sometimes wait on the customers or cut some keys. John Ellsworth became a fine gunstock craftsman and made some very fine stocks for shotguns and rifles for the stores customers and his own firearms.
John Ellsworth did all of the "Window Displays" in the Water St. building. Hand painting all of the items for the displays. John Ellswoth also mounted a cock pheasent. two mallard ducks, a squeil and a large Pike fish which were used in the shop and window displays. He tought the taxidermy art to himself. Photos of some of these window displays will be part of John's history in the 'John Elbert MIner History" book he is working on.
John Ellswoth took 4 semesters of bookkeeping in High School, four semesters of woodshop, four semesters of metalworking shop, two semesters of print shop, two semesters of typing, (still uses hunt and peck now), and of course all of the required courses. He was the "Business Manger, (record keeper), for the East Waterloo High School Football Team for two years.
John worked for his father until he enlisted in the Service in Sept. of 1942. Dicky Manahal, Bob Finger, and John, along with some other friends, all enlisted in the U. S. Army in Oct. 1942. Upon going to induction at Camp Dodge, Iowa it was found that John had a recently ruptured an eardrum and he was sent back to Waterloo to go to Doctor Joint to attempt repairs. Doctor Joint was successful in repairing the ear drum and John went back to Camp Dodge for induction on Nov. 2, 1942. He was shipped to Miami Beach, Florida for basic training.
John was at the Miami Beach for U. S. Air Corps basic training center for three months. Usually basic was for 8 weeks. John was held over at Miami Beach because he was slated to go to Maryland for Ordinance OCS training as soon as the new class started. During his time at Miami Beach, after his Basic training, he became a drill Sgt. training others recruits. The Maryland OCS school was closed at the end of that session so John was sent to Hammer Field to attend the OCS class there. During the time that John had to wait for that OCS class to start he attended an Aircraft Small Arms School. After a few classes in this school he was promoted to be the instructor of a class of his own.
When the Hammer Field OCS School was to commence a new class for John to attend this class was also closed. No more Ordinance OCS schools remained open at the time so John volunteered to go to the 1876 Engineer Aviation Battalion Cadre at March Filed CA. It was now March of 1943. John has a nice book about the 1876 Engineer Aviation Battalion's history developed by and published by Col. Robert Paddock the Battalion Commander during the years in the South Pacific. It will be retained along with other books and information with the master copy ofthe "Miner History Book"
While in the U. S. Army Air Corps John took advantage of th USAFE program, (United States Air Force Education program), and while at Hammer Field and March Field John attended class and completted the full courses neccessary for him to complete the twelveth Grade and was issued a Cirtificate of Graduation from the Waterloo School Board, Waterloo, Iowa. John continued with his education by enrolling in corespondence courses with the USAFE program, Mechanical Engineering, Product and Machine Design from the Maryland Technical Colledge. Through the years that John was in the Service, from Nov. 1992 to Dec. 30, 1995 he completted the entire courses and was issued a certificate of completion in the courses. (In those days there was no such thing as receiving any Colledge Degree diploma from a corespondence course). If John had attened one year on campus at any colledge offering a Mechanical Engineering Degree, along with the credits from the Marylan Technical Colledge he could have acquired a BA Degrre in Mechanical Engineering. Instead he elected to return to work in his father's Sporting Goods Store.
John remained with the 1876 E. A. B. for the duration of the war being the Weapons Sgt. of Company B.
The unit trained at March field, including a 600 mile march through the mountains around Riverside, CA and Hollywood, CA, a Gunnery range weapons training near 21 Palms, CA which John was the Non-Com. in charge of the firing range for several days.A battle conditions training in the Gavalan Hills area and Death Valley lasted several days each, including airfield, bridges and road construction training.
John was placed on Detached Service to work in the Base Ordinance for 3 months where he was in charge of the test firing of all kinds of weapons to determine their ability to sustain many environmental conditions and remain functioning, some of these were experimental at the time and the Johnson Automatic Rifle was one of them which later became the M14 Rifle used by the Army in Korea etc. John's suggestions to revamp the locking mechanism of the breach bolt of the Johnson Auto Rifle was latter applied to the weapon which helped in the later M14 design. (Can be verified by records kept at March Field Ordnance Dept. Files which were then kept by a civilian employee who was in charge of engineering at the department). At one time I had a copy of those records but no longer know where it is.
John also designed the ruptured cartridge case extractor that was produced and used during the war for metallic cartridge case firing weapons such as the Grand M1, 50 cal. & 30 cal. machine guns etc.
John came home on a furlough in Oct. of 1993 to marry his wonderful wife Virginia Finger. He had to request an extension of his furlough to get married which he received a 10 day extension. Being home for a while was great. John's great "Brother Paul" had saved up several gas allotment tickets so John could have gas to drive their father's car while he was home. Richard (Dick) Manahal was home on furlough also and John and Virginia spent much time with him.
The rest of the history of the 1876 Engineer Aviation Battalion can be found in the Red Book that Col. Paddock had made for us after the war which will be with one of the copies of my "Miner History" book that will go to one of my children eventually.
In 1948 John terminated his employment with his father and went to work for -----------------. A few months later the plant went on a lengthy strike and John took employment at Rath Packing Co. John had applied for employment at John Deere Tractor Co. some time before and 4 weeks later he quit Rath's and went to work at John Deere, first operating two Sunstrand Automatic Lathes turning tractor brake shafts. John seen where the production and quality of the product could be improved if there was changes made to the machines. John drew these changes up and presented them to John Deere. The first improvement was a spring loaded table return stop. With this pre-loaded spring slide stop the table would return to a soft cushion by driving against the spring loaded slide bar instead of a dead steel stop. This would take the stopping load off of the gears of the lathe and prevent breakage of the gears which caused frequent down time and repairs which is costly. The stop worked well and the reduction of down time allowed John Deere management to have only one shift of operator to turn out the break shafts with some overtime work to keep up with production. The man who had the day shift had bid off of the lathes some time earlier because he did not want to work hard enough to keep up with the machines once the downtime had been deleted and collecting average hourly pay for the many hours it took to repair the lathe was gone. For the first idea John received a $1000.00 U. S. Bond as an award.
John then watched the carbide tools as the cut the steel and determined that changing the tool grinding and the angles of approach would increase the life of the tools which would reduce the down time for changing tools often. John turned this into the John Deere suggestion plan and received another $500.00 award.
John was then transfer to the Tool Design & Engineering Shop.
John during this same period of time had a second job working for Gerald Sulky Works where he was the tool and product design engineer. He worked four to six hours 5 days a week here and while he was working the night shift at John Deere he worked at the sulky plant in the mornings. After John was put on day shit at John Deere he worked about the same number of hours five to six days a week in the evenings at the sulky works.
John, also during this time, had a third job. He had started a Gunsmith shop in the basement of the house they were renting and worked a few hours some nights in his shop repairing his customer's guns and some fishing tackle repairs. He was a very busy man.
In 1951 John took employment with Decker Bros. Sporting Goods Store in Mason City, Iowa where he was the Service Dept. Manager, Gunsmith & Locksmith. The Department had three employees servicing Bicycles, Locksmithing, Gunsmithing etc. in 1955 John purchased the Service Dept. from the Decker Brothers and continued to rent the back 1/3 of the building and a large portion of the basement for his operation.
This service department serviced many more kinds of equipment than John was acustumed to; Motion Picture projectors and cameras; photography cameras incluiding the German made Licca, the refurbishing of high grade antque firearms, gunstock making including hand carvings and gun metal engraving, Bank equipment service contracting throughout the North Eastern Iowa and Southeastrn Minnasota, and other trades.
To accomplish this trades John went to many schools, Bell & Howell Motion Picture Equipment School, Chicago, IL., Lica Camera School, Kodak camera courses, Minolta Camera courses, Elgin Bank Vault Timelock School, Many night courses on Electronis, (This was the begining of the Transistor period and the birth of computerization of machines), correspondence courses in metal engraving, self taught courses in wood carving, night courses in drawing and oil painting as background for scenery in wood carving etc.
John continued the operation of Miners Sport & Repair unti June of 1965. During that time hemoved the store to the building next door from what had been the Decker Bros. Sporting Good Store, (The two Decker Bros. split up at the time that John purchased the service department from them, the old store went four ways, John purchasing the Service Dept. including the Outboard motors and Marine dept; __________ purchased the new Camera sales dept. Emmerson Decker kept the New Motion Picture Projector and Camera Dept. with a contract to direct all motion picture projector, motion cmara and still camer repairs to John Miner's operation, Dudly Decker took the new Gun and Fishing Tackle Dept. and moved out of the building to another location several blocks away on a side street, _________ Decker, Dudly's son took the School Gymnastic Clothing & Equipment Dept. and move to the same location as his father.
Shortly after John had purchased the service dept. from the Decker Bros. he expanded the Marine & Outboard Motor department by adding new & used boats and trailers aquiring three new boat manufaturers product lines and two boat trailer franchises. He also added in a full line of fishing tackle. The company prospered and gave John and his family a good life.
While operating this business John became aquanted with an aviator that was a crop duster. Crop dusters had big problems with the powderd materials coagulating in the supply tanks on the aircraft wings from the aircraft vibraton an also in the ejection nozzels. This man asked John if he could design a system that would keep the dusting poweders loose during the flight for dusting operations. The design of the dist supply tank already had an agitator in them to stir the dust but that was not enough. John designed different paddles for the agitators and added small pipes with many orficeses along their length to the paddles of the agitators for air to blow the powder and keept it seperated, the air was supplied by the forward motion of the plain being collecst by air scops on the wings and sent through pipes to an pressure equalizing tank and out to the tubes on the paddles. This system woorked very well. The aviator presented it to tje manufacuters of the dusating equipment and John never heard of it or him again.
John had a big following in the gun and Gunsmithing trade in Mason City, Northern Iowa and Souther Minnisota. He had a fine trade in rebuilding sporting rifles and rebuilding military rifles into fine sporting rifles, rebarreling, restocking, rebluing, stock carvings and some metal engraving.
John was one of the few Gunsmiths to be accepted by Winchester Arms Company as one of their "Warrantee Work" locations. After severl written test and a vist to John's store and service Dept. to check out John's machinery and gunsmithing facility along with another hands on Winchester Gun servicing test by a representative from the Wichester Arms Co. John's operation was selectect to perform all vital warantee servicing operations on the Winchester line of firearms and alowed to by all Winchester gun parts direct from the Winchest factory. I, John Ellsworth Miner have the cetificat I received hanging on the wall of my computer room yet today. This qualification gave John the well earned title of "Master Gunsmith" endowed by one of the leading firearms companies of the world.
John also has like certificates from Marlin Arms Comapny, Stevens Arms Co. and Remington Arms Co.
John also had a large following of Bank equipment seviceing covering all of the Norther counties of Iowa and several Southern counties of Minnisota. Yearly service contracts covering vault doors, time locks, safes & combination locks, night depository heads and safesincluding bank security alarm systems.
John's store serviced the motion picture projection equipment, overhead projection devices, audio recording and playback equipment, school class bell signal devices etc. throught out the upper portion of Iowa and lower Minnisota. Over 140 school systems had their equipment serviced by John's service department during the school summer vacation period.
John's brother, Paul, was operating his own Gunsmith & Locksmith shop in Waterloo, Iowa. Their father had sold the family Miner's Sport & Repair shop to Elmer Heightower. Paul also was a well known Gunsmith and Locksmith in Waterloo and the State of Iowa. One of Paul's leading trades was "Accurizing the Colt .45 Cal. Automatic Pistol". Paul was very good at this service and had customers in many states.
in April of 1965 Paul sold his business to Mosler Safe Company and went to work for them. They placed him in Kansas City as the Branch Service Manger. Later he was transfered to the main office of Mosler in Hamilton, Ohio where he managed the Parts Department and later became the Manger of the Product Re-Work Dept. where all special order products were manufactured.
May of 1965 John was contacted by Dee Grover, the Vice President of Mosler Safe Company which developed in John selling his store and going to work for Mosler Safe Co. Mosler sent John to Detroit, Michigan to be the Branch Manager of the Detroit Office covering the State of Michigan and the upper portions of Ohio & Indiana. John transferred into the Installation Department in 1968 and directed the installation of Mosler products in bank buildings in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Western New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia etc.
It was during his traveling in these states that John carried out the research in many libraries in the cities he worked in, some of which had fine genealogy departments.
John again went to many schools of the trades the Mosler Safe Company wasin. Again he went to a time lock school at the main offices of Mosler and then went to Danbury, CN. and the main offices of Mosler to alarm and electronis surveliance schools.
John attended night courses at Oakland Univertity in Oakland, MI. taking Business Managment courses, over a three year period John achived a certificate fo completion of the courses. (To acquire a BA degree in Business Mnagement at Oakland University he woul have had to take another 15 credits), time would not aloow that at that time.
John worked for Mosler Safe Company untill late 1975. A salesman in the Mosler Detroit Branch office, Robert Holloway, wanted to start his own bank equipment sales company in the Metropolitian Detroit area and he sked John to become his partner, (mostly because Holloway new nothing about running a business or a service and installation dept). John refused the partner position but later on accepted a fine offer from R. Holloway to go with him as an employee being the company General Manger and Director for a fine increase in salary and benefits to duplicate Mosler's except no retirment fund.
R. Holloway rented a building in Royal Oak, MI. on 11 Mile Road and the business was born. (R. Holloway had two partners to begin with and shortly bought them out to become the sole owner). The business grew and and John grew in knowledge also. Now John had to hire and train service men and installers in the trades, also this now included the need to design products to fulfill the customers request. Again John is off to many schools of the trade.
The name of the company was "Security Corp. of Michigan". R. Holloway was a very good salesman and the company aquired many contracts from Michigan National Bank, National Bank of Detroit etc. from all over the states of Michigan. Ohio & Indiana. The compy prospered and grew adding in a complete millwork shop and hiring a good millwork manager to make all of the furnishing for the insided of a banking facility. During the second year the company begin to sell, install & service newmatic drive up equipment. (This was a product that was quite new in design and the newmatic tubes went under ground, called a downsend system).
John was the first to design an upsend newmatic drive up system so that the tubes could go up and over the canopy into the building and down to the teller, (no more digging huge holes in the ground to burry the newmatic tubes, no more water in the tubes due to humidity and tempiture changes, a much better operating design). This design was never put under pattent by either John Miner or Security Corp. therefor it was not long before all of the competitors developed an upsend system.
John being that Security Corp. was selling a newmatic system designd bySeamans of Germany and manufactured by Security Corp. of Japan ran into many sever problems with the product to begin with. John had to redesign the electronics of the system. He changed the entire circuit board from a 17 relay operation to a electronic transistorized circuts and conqued all of the product malfunctions. Security Corp. of Japan was given the design of the new circuit board by r. Holloway and Scurity Corp. of Japan sent six of their top production men over to the U. S. to change all of the old rely operated machine boards over to the new electronic diode circut board they were then manufacturing and of course the first U. S. compamy to get the new boards was R. Holloway's Security Corp. of MI.
John also designed the first drive up window drawer system to facilitate the fast growing "Fast Food Market". This design r. Holloway had patented in John's Name with production rights in Security Corp. of America's name.The product never got off of the ground because R. Holloway turned the sales of it over to his three salesman of Bank products which never gave the product any effort becuase bank sales was quite lucrative at that time and selling a new product to a new market took time and effort. We made 55 of the Food Service Drive up Window systems and sold and instlled all of them in the nearby Detroit, MI area in less than a year, it would have sold all over the country if R. Holloway would have promoted it corectly.
John was involved with a nother emplyee of Security Corp. of MI. in desiging what probably was one of the first completly transistorized alrm system main pannels. This new designe used no electronic relays to preform the task of detecting intrusions and relaying the information to the policing operations. Upon John achiving a well working transistorized. somewhat computerized main pannel that would handle a multitude of signalling devices, (door contacts, window detectors, sound detectors etc.), and either photgraphic and closed circuit TV surveylaince equipment),and relaying the proper information to a policing operation the saleman quit Security Corp of MI. and took a copy of the plans with him, he later became a partner in the first large company to put a computerized alarm sytem on the open market, the operation being located in Texas. John lost again.
John E. Miner retired from this employment with Security Corp. of Michigan in Nov. 1986. Joohn and Virginia sold there home on Eiffel Drive in Warren, MI. and moved to Lexington, KY. They put their furniture in storage and lived with their daughter Janis who lived there. They took care of the grnd children for two years living with Janis, Matt & Amy. (Ray Forgue had devordeced from Janis a short time before, all of a ssudin he just up and said "I do not want to stay married any more" and he has not married since. (see the history of Janis and Ray).
Now I must, again, take you back in years to my boyhood to tell you a few of the nice and fun things that happend during my life's years.
When I was attending St. John's Catholic School I became very good freinds with Richard (Dicky) Manahal. Dicky's family lived just of of Lafayette Road, (an extension of Lafayette St.), in what was the open country back then in the early 1930's. (It is now named Evensdale, Iowa). Dicky and John became best freinds and were together much of the time that both Dicky and John could find the time to be together. Dicky and John went fishing, hunting, rollerskating, and when they got old enough to drive a car Dicky bought a Hidson Teriplain and they went to many places in the Eastern parts of Iowa. Fishing in the Mississippi River, many of the lakes in Minnasota etc.
When dicky finished grade school at St.ohn's School he went to work, finding a job setting bowling pins at the Waterloo Bowling Allies. He went to work to support his father's family of two sisters, one brother, and his father and mother. Dicky's father was an invalid having had one leg rmoved to above the knee. Dicky supported the family untill he enlisted in the U. S. Army in 1942 at the same time John and Robert Finger enlisted. John visited Dicky and his wife in 1992, they then lived in Las Vegas, NV.
More About John Ellsworth Miner, Sr.:
Date born 2: October 16, 1921, Waterloo, Iowa-Black Hawk County.4269, 4270
Fact 1: 1926, School, Kind. - 8th grade, 1934.4271, 4272
Fact 2: 1934, East Waterloo Jr. High - 9th grade.4273, 4274
Fact 3: 1935, East Waterloo Sr. High - 10th. - 11th - 12 part..4275, 4276
Fact 4: 1933, Started work for father in Gun & Lock shop.4277, 4278
Fact 5: 1942, Enlisted in U. S. Army Air Corps.4279, 4280
Fact 6: 1943, Oct. 23, Married while on furrlough.4281, 4282
Fact 7: 1944, Overseas to New Guinea, Morotia, Luzon.4283, 4284
Fact 8: 1946, Home.4285, 4286
Fact 9: 1946, Returned to work for father..4287, 4288
More About John Ellsworth Miner, Sr. and Virginia Elizabeth Finger:
Marriage 1: October 23, 1943, Ceder Falls, Iowa-Black Hawk County.
Marriage 2: October 23, 1943, Cedar Falls, Iowa.
Children of John Ellsworth Miner, Sr. and Virginia Elizabeth Finger are:
- +John Ellsworth Miner, Jr., b. March 06, 1950, Waterlo, Iowa-Black Hawck, County4289, 4290.
- +Janis Kay Miner, b. January 1952, Mason City, Iowa4291, 4292.