Ramsey County History – Fall 1999: ““… No Time or Sympathy for One Who Wouldn’t Work:” Crawford Livingston, Colonel Chauncey Griggs, and Their Roles in St. Paul History”

“… No Time or Sympathy for One Who Wouldn’t Work:” Crawford Livingston, Colonel Chauncey Griggs, and Their Roles in St. Paul History

Author: John M. Lindley

This article brings together the careers of two related, but different, major figures in the history of St. Paul in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The two men are Chauncey W. Griggs (1832–1910) and Crawford Livingston (1847–1925). Griggs came to St. Paul from New England in 1856. Livingston left New York for Minnesota in 1870 and relocated to St. Paul a few years later. Livingston was a shrewd investor who prospered from railroads, utilities, insurance, and land sales. Griggs put his money into supplying coal and wood and into transportation, land sales, the wholesale grocery business, and most importantly, the lumber business. Both men were in the right place at the right time when St. Paul boomed in the 1880s and both left their marks on the city in the businesses they led.

PDF of Lindley article