Duncan E. McKinlay

Born in Orillia, Ontario, Canada, McKinlay attended the common schools. He later learned the trade of carriage painting and worked in Flint, Michigan, and San Francisco, Sacramento, and Santa Rosa, California. He studied law. He was admitted to the bar by the Supreme Court of California in 1892 and commenced practice in Santa Rosa. He later served as second assistant United States attorney at San Francisco 1901–1904, and first assistant United States attorney 1904–1907.

McKinlay was elected as a Republican to the Fifty-ninth, Sixtieth, and Sixty-first Congresses (March 4, 1905 – March 3, 1911). He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1910 to the Sixty-second Congress. In 1910, President William Howard Taft appointed him United States surveyor of customs for the port of San Francisco, California. He died in Berkeley, California on December 30, 1914 and was interred in Sunset Cemetery.

McKinlay was an avowed supporter of the Geary Act restricting Chinese immigration. At the Chinese Exclusion Convention in 1901, he led the speakers with the "Legal Aspects of the Chinese Question", lauded by the San Francisco Call as a "brilliant address". He concluded the speech calling for a renewal of the Geary Act which would "guard and protect [us] from the blighting curse of Asiatic immigration".[1]

• United States Congress. "Duncan E. McKinlay (id: M000518)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

 This article incorporates public domain material from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress website http://bioguide.congress.gov.