William John McGee was born on April 17, 1853, in Farley, Iowa.

He was an American inventor, geologist, anthropologist, ethnologist, and author. Largely self-taught, he devoted his early years to reading law and to surveying. He invented and patented several improvements on agricultural implements. In 1881, he was appointed geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey and was primarily in charge of surveying the Atlantic Coastal Plain (1881-1893). In 1901, he received an L.L.D degree from Cornell College. From 1893 to 1903, he was an ethnologist in charge of the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution. Then he became the head of the Department of Anthropology of the St. Louis Exposition and from 1905 to 1907, he was the first Director of the Saint Louis Public Museum. In 1907, he was elected Vice-Chairman and Secretary of the federally created Inland Waterways Commission and was also appointed as an expert on soil waters in the Bureau of Soils, U.S. Department of Agriculture; the positions he held until his death. He also served as president of the National Geographic Society (1904–1905) and was a founding member of the Geological Society of America. In 1890, he became the first editor of The Geological Society of America Bulletin. He contributed numerous articles on his research to various journals. Mount McGee in California is named in his honour.

In 1888, he married Dr. Anita Rosalie Newcomb (1864–1940). He died on September 4, 1912, in Washington, D.C.

Miss Jennie McGarry was a popular Montreal elocutionist in the late 1880s. By 1891, she was teaching elocution at the Halifax Ladies' College.

James McGarry from Niagara Falls, Upper Canada, graduated in Medicine from McGill in 1857. He practiced in Drummondville and Stamford, Ontario. His first wife, Esther, died of tuberculosis in 1876. He was the father of Dr. James Henry McGarry, who died in 1948. After his death, his widow Amelia made a military pension application.

Dr. McGarry was born in Montreal, matriculated from the Ontario Ladies College (Whitby, Ontario) and received both her B.Sc (1937) and her M.D. (1947) from McGill. As an undergraduate she was active in many student societies such as the McGill Women's Medical Society, the Medical Undergraduates' Society and the Osler Society. She was Vice-President of her medical class for three years. After receiving her medical degree McGarry was awarded a Post Graduate Medical Fellowship from the National Research Council of Canada, and, later, specialist diplomas from the Royal College (Canada) and the Quebec College of Physicians and Surgeons. Her particular field of interest was Endrocrinology.

Dr. Janet Donalda McFee was born on October 29, 1863, in Beauharnois County, Quebec.

She entered McGill College in 1884 as one of the college's first women undergraduates. A brilliant student, she became especially interested in philosophy, which then included psychology and she graduated in 1888 (B.A.). She continued her studies at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Later she went on to work with the founder of experimental psychology, Wilhelm Wundt, in Leipzig, Germany, and in 1895, she became the first woman graduate of McGill University to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Zürich, Switzerland. In the 1900s, she worked as a school teacher in New York and translated texts from German to English and vice versa. In the early 1920s, she returned to Montreal, Quebec. She and her twin sisters made a world tour shortly before World War II and traversed across the widest part of India in 1937. At the age of 93, she took her first flight and went to Bermuda for the winter. She suddenly took ill the following spring and died there on March 5, 1957, in Tucker's Town. She is buried in Montreal, Quebec.