Grain merchant.
Born in Pohocco Township, Nebraska on 11 September 1882, he moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1908 and worked in the grain business, incorporating the R. B. McClean Elevator Company in June 1916.
He opened a Winnipeg office that year and became a member of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange. His firm operated a grain elevator at Waskada and at several places in Saskatchewan, selling them around 1921 to the Brooks Elevator Company. Anderson sold the company to McCabe Elevator, Province Elevator, and Pioneer Grain in 1924 and they were operating it in 1928 when it reentered the elevator business, buying one elevator from the McLaughlin Elevator Company and building eleven more. They were all sold in 1929 and the company was closed finally in 1932.
He and wife Lulu Fietta Smith (1884-1960) had four sons: Robert Boyd McClean (1910-1998), Francis Carson “Frank” McClean (1914-1937), Leslie McClean (1914-?), and Charles William McClean (1919-?). In 1921, he purchased a grand mansion in the Armstrong's Point area of Winnipeg, living there until it was seized for back taxes in 1935.
He died in a Winnipeg nursing home on 18 January 1940 and was buried in the Elmwood Cemetery. His pallbearers were his former colleagues in the grain trade: Samuel W. Henderson, John McDowell, Hector C. Nicholls, Victor Weld Tryon, John Moses Wiley, and Henry William “Harry” Lay.
See also:
Manitoba Business: R. B. McClean Elevator Company
Historic Sites of Manitoba: Ryan House (5 East Gate, Winnipeg)
1911 Canada census, Automated Genealogy.
1921 Canada census, Ancestry.
Birth registration [Charles William McClean], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
“Winnipeg firm gets possession Sask. elevators,” Winnipeg Tribune, 18 September 1924, page 8.
Obituary [Frank McClean], Winnipeg Tribune, 12 July 1937, page 20.
Death [Robert Boyd McClean], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
“Deaths and funerals,” Winnipeg Free Press, 19 January 1940, page 4.
“McClean burial on Saturday,” Winnipeg Tribune, 19 January 1940, page 17.
Death registration [Lulu Fietta McClean], British Columbia Vital Statistics.
Obituary [Lulu Fietta McClean], Winnipeg Free Press, 6 September 1960, page 24.
Armstrong's Point: A History by Randy R. Rostecki, Winnipeg: Heritage Winnipeg Corporation, 2009.
We thank John Everitt for providing additional information used here.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 2 January 2024
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