John Carruthers

biography

JOHN CARRUTHERS, president of the Bessemer Gas Engine Company, of Grove City, Pennsylvania, was born in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, January 14, 1855, a son of George and Jane (Dunn) Carruthers, both of whom were born and reared in Scotland, where they were also united in marriage. They came to the United States about 1845. The father was a blacksmith by trade and a master of that most useful of the trades, useful especially in his day and generation. In 1863, when the great Civil war cloud was the darkest, George Carruthers enlisted in the Union cause, participating in the war for about twelve months, one-half of which period was spent in the hospital. He was finally discharged on account of his disability. After the Civil war the father followed the oil fields and was accompanied by his son John, of this sketch, who learned the machinists’ trade and became the inventor of several oil well “fishing tools.” George Carruthers died in 1893, aged seventy-five years. The wife and mother survived and now (1908) is living in Bradford. Pennsylvania, aged eighty-three years. To this worthy couple were born eight children. 

For about sixteen years John Carruthers was interested in machine shops, first at Knapps Creek, New York, then at Harmony, Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the firm of Carruthers & Peters. He sold his interest and for a time operated a shop at Colby, Pennsylvania, from whence he went to Grove City in 1898, and there became interested in the Bessemer Gas Engine company. He is the joint-patentee, with E.J. Fithian, of the automatic friction clutch, manufactured by the Carruthers-Fithian Clutch Company, of Grove City.

Mr. Carruthers is an advanced Mason, belonging to the commandery. Being interested in educational matters, he has served as member of the school board and is noted for the interest he takes in the proper advancement of the public school system, especially at Grove City, his home. He was united in marriage, in 1880, to Laura Jenette Warthey.