Arthur Fitzgerald Kinnaird, 10th Lord Kinnaird, was born on July 8, 1814, in Rossie Priory, Perthshire, Scotland.

He was a Scottish banker and Liberal politician. He rose to become managing partner of Ransom, Bouverie & Co., a banking firm. He continued in this role once he was elected to Parliament for Perth (1837-1839; 1852-1878). In 1847, Kinnaird represented the British Association for the Relief of Distress in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland, in distributing relief to the Scottish poor. He was treasurer of the Highland Emigration Fund. In 1868, he was elected as President of the National Bible Society of Scotland. He was also a keen farmer and, in 1862, installed a Turkish bath for cattle at his Millhill Farm at Inchture, raising the temperature higher than usual and successfully using it in the treatment of distemper.

In 1843, he married Mary Jane Hoare, 10th Countess Kinnaird (1816–1888). He died on April 26, 1887, in London, England.

Elias Durand was born on January 25, 1794, in Mayenne, France.

He was a French-born American pharmacist and botanist. He apprenticed as a chemist and pharmacist in Mayenne from 1808 to 1812, studied pharmacy in Paris, and on his graduation in 1813, he joined the medical corps of Napoleon's army. In 1814, he resigned and became an apothecary in Nantes where he studied botany. In 1816, he sailed to New York and settled in Philadelphia, where he established a successful drugstore. In 1825, he became a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and in 1832, he was elected a corresponding member of the Societé de Pharmacie in Paris. In 1835, he was the first to begin bottling mineral waters in the United States. In 1854, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. Durand became thoroughly familiar with the flora of North America, collecting an herbarium that included a remarkable 10,000 species of North American plants. He presented it to the museum of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris in 1868.

In 1820, he married Polymnie Rose Ducatel (1803–1822) and in 1825, he remarried Marie Antoinette Zelia Berauld (1801–1851). He died on August 15, 1873, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

D.J. Spence established a decade-long partnership with Samuel Arnold Finley between 1901 and 1912, encompassing residential, commercial, industrial, and public buildings.

Samuel Arnold Finley (1873-1933) was born in Montreal. The firm of Finley and Spence was active between 1902 and 1914. The architects designed numerous industrial buildings in Montreal.

David Jerome Spence was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1873. He studied architecture at M.I.T and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He moved to Montreal around 1900 and became a member of l'Association des Architectes de la Province du Québec in 1901. He established architectural firms with Samuel Arnold Finley from 1901-1912, and F. David Mathias from 1937-1952. Between 1940 and 1945, while Mathias was called to war, the firm practised under the name of Spence, Mathias and Burge. He operated an architectural firm under his own name from 1913-1937.

Ernest Isbell Barott (1884-1966) was born in Canastota, NY, and studied architecture from 1902 to 1905 at Syracuse University. Later he apprenticed at the New York office of McKim, Mead and White. In 1912 Barott formed a partnership with Gordon Blackader and Daniel T. Webster.