(5 Dec. 1875-29 Sept. 1929), university teacher. Born at Lancaster, GC. Parents: Alexander MacInnes and his wife Mary Stewart (1841-1936), who was the aunt of William Stewart, the blind lawyer of Lancaster. Charles Ranald MacInnes received his M. A. degree from Queen’s University in 1896, and his Ph. D., in mathematics, from Johns Hopkins University in 1900. While at Johns Hopkins he was active in athletics, including lacrosse. In the years 1900 to 1905, he was an instructor at Queen’s University and Manitoba College and a gymnasium director at Johns Hopkins. In 1905, he joined the faculty of Princeton University (where Woodrow Wilson, the future U. S. president, was at the time the university president), and remaining there for the rest of his career MacInnes made his way through the ranks from instructor to full professor in the dept. of mathematics. An obituary noted that he devoted “most of his teaching to phases of mathematics needed by candidates for engineering degrees.” Described as the author of textbooks on trigonometry and mechanics, he was the co-author of The Elements of Plane and Spherical Trigonometry (1911) and author of The Elements of Practical Mechanics (1929) and Practical Mechanics (19–). He died in the Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, at the early age of 53, of pernicious anaemia. (two children) Presbyterian. He was married in 1904 to Manetta LeRoy of Vankleek Hill, who outlived him by nearly 30 years to die 13 Jan. 1958 at her home in Princeton. A Princeton obituary stated that she “devoted much of her activity to assisting the blind, notably blind students in Princeton. She taught Braille and the transcription of reading material into Braille, in addition to producing many Braille books herself.” She and her husband are buried in Princeton Cemetery.
The Princeton Alumni Weekly 4 Oct. 1929 * Princeton University Archives: obituaries; MacInnes’s faculty data card, as approved by himself; university calendars * textbooks: obituaries & NUC (Pre-1956) 351:474 * Campbell, Tannis, & Stewart, MacDougalls, 171, 177-178 * Dumbrille, B, 33 * obituaries of wife, Princeton Herald 15 Jan. 1958, VKHR (ND) * obituary of his mother, Standard Freeholder 2O Nov. 1936 * appointment 1905 to Princeton remembered, 20 Years Ago column Cornwall Freeholder 14 May 1925