McGill Libraries
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Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Renton, Herbert S., 1854-1939
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1854-1939
History
Herbert Stanley Renton was born on December 27, 1854, in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts.
He was a businessman, journalist, editor, and book collector. He worked at various branches of his father's Fergus A. Renton (1833-1885) brass foundry and finishing shop business. He invented several successful sanitary devices. Renton became interested in journalism and rose from a pioneer columnist to editor of the Old Brooklyn Globe. He travelled to Australia and Hawaii several times and gave stereopticon lectures on his travel experiences. Renton was president of the Chicago Aero Works, pioneer manufacturers of aeroplanes from 1909 to 1919 when he sold the business and moved to New Rochelle. He spent the last twenty years collecting theatrical books and playbills. He was a well-known authority on the history of American theatre. He was a charter member of the Aero Club of Chicago and an early member of the Chicago Rotary Club.
In 1882, he married Margaret Jane Harned (1860–1905), and in 1906, he married Antonia Christine Rozmarynowski (1872–1935). He died on March 22, 1939, in New Rochelle, Westchester, New York.