Husband Robert Magee Downie 1 2
Born: 21 Aug 1853 - Adams Twp, Butler Co, PA 1
Christened:
Died: 23 Oct 1924 3
Buried:
Father: James Niblock Downie (1825/1825-1907) 2 4
Mother: Jane Boyle Magee ( -Abt 1917) 5 6
Marriage: 1909 3 7
Other Spouse: Martha Margaret Vale ( -1908) 3 7 - 23 Nov 1883 7
Wife Margaret Greer Dick 3 7
Born:
Christened:
Died: Aft 1924
Buried:
Father: Rev. John N. Dick, D.D. ( -Aft 1890) 8 9 10
Mother: Elizabeth Bovard ( - ) 11
Children
1 F Elizabeth Jane Dick Downie 3 7
Born: 8 Sep 1911 7
Christened:
Died:
Buried:
General Notes: Husband - Robert Magee Downie
He was born in Adams Township, near Valencia, Butler County, Pennsylvania. He attended the public schools, and then taught for one year in the Butler County school, after which he entered Geneva College, then located at Northwood, Ohio. Mr. Downie was a student with a theological bent, true to the religious traditions of the family, and at one time he thought of becoming a minister. While he was a student in Geneva College, that institution was moved to Beaver Falls, and during this period he studied for one year at Monmouth College, where he met his future wife, but he graduated from Geneva College in the class of 1881, the first class to receive degrees after the removal to Beaver Falls.
Mr. Downie was born a mechanical genius. As a boy and young man he was keenly interested in machinery, and in 1881, after his graduation from college, he and his brother, John G. Downie, invented and patented a portable drilling machine, which was the first piece of machinery of the kind ever made. More fortunate than many inventors, the two Downie brothers were almost immediately able to persuade wealthy and influential men of the vicinity to give them financial backing, and largely through the instrumentality of the Rev. Dr. H. H. George, then president of Geneva College, the new industrial project was located in Beaver Falls. The Keystone Driller Company, destined to become one of the most substantial industries of the vicinity, was organized, appropriately enough, on Ground Hog Day, 1882, with J. D. McAnlis, Rev. H. H. George, Robert Patterson, Dr. R. J. George, and Robert Magee Downie as the original members of the company. Mr. Downie was elected secretary and general manager of the concern at its organization in 1882 and served in this capacity until his death. The factory was at first located in the old Thornley foundry and machine shops in Fallston, but shortly afterwards moved to a site on Eighth Avenue and Twentieth Street, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. The concern began business by the manufacture of a portable machine for the purpose of making ordinary six-inch water wells for domestic use. Soon, however, the inventors of the machine discovered that they could improve it by making it self-moving; later the machine was adapted to drilling deeper holes to reach gas veins and mineral deposits. It could then be used for exploring and ascertaining the contents of alluvial gold deposits, and this use of machinery, by which more gold was made available and a great deal of the element of risk in gold-mining eliminated, had far-reaching results. At the time of Bryan's nationwide campaign for the free coinage of silver, the gold-dredging machine was widely discussed and had large sales in all gold-producing areas, and eventually so increased and cheapened the production of gold that Bryan's campaign was immeasurably weakened. Much of his failure as a presidential candidate is said to be indirectly due to the Keystone Driller Company.
A short time after the Keystone Driller Company was formed, Robert M. Downie and his brother, John G., invented the Downie pump. For a time this was manufactured at Downieville, but was later taken over by the Keystone Driller Company. The Keystone Excavating machine, another piece of machinery manufactured by the company, was greatly improved by certain inventions made by Robert M. Downie during the latter years of his life. He was also the inventor of the vitrified paving brick, and with George F. Kennedy, and T. Livingstone Kennedy, both of New Brighton, formed the Fallston Fire Clay Company; and he was connected with the Pittsburgh Wire Company of Downieville.
Although preeminently an inventor and a business man of extraordinary ability, Mr. Downie kept throughout his life the keen interest in religion that was an inheritance from his Covenanter forbears, and he had literary talent as well. The catalogues and sales literature published by his company were used as manuals in scientific training schools, a proof of their clarity of thought and diction. But Mr. Downie was an author in quite other and more pretentious fields. Among his books was one called "The Kingdom of Christ," which was widely read and attracted a great deal of favorable comment, and another, a book of poems, entitled "The Marriage of the Dawn," was also widely read. Shortly before his death he published a volume on "The Resurrection and its Implications."
Mr. Downie was a charter member of the College Hill Reformed Presbyterian Church, and served as an elder from its organization until the time of his death. He was a member of the executive committee, later known as the board of directors, of the National Reform Association, to which he gave generous support. From his college days there, he took the most active interest in the affairs of Geneva College, was a member of its board of directors, and gave much of his best effort to work for the college. After a long and honorable life, Robert M. Downie died, from an attack of appendicitis, at the age of seventy-one. He was deeply mourned, not only by those closest to him, but by a wide circle of friends and acquaintances throughout Beaver Valley.