DAVIDSON COMPANY (SAINT PAUL, MINN.):

This collection of business records, although entitled Davidson Company Records, includes records generated by and documenting several business entities, all of which were interrelated to some extent. These include the Oregon and Western Colonization Company; Manitoba Dairy Farms, Ltd.; the Davidson Company; and various miscellaneous personal and business affairs of Davidson family members associated with those three corporations.

The common denominator linking these many business interests is Watson P. Davidson, Sr. (1871-1954), a St. Paul real estate speculator and developer and commercial building manager who was primarily responsible for organizing and managing the firms documented in these records. Davidson was the son-in-law of William Fuson Davidson, a St. Paul steamboating, real estate, and grain trade entrepreneur.

Oregon and Western Colonization Co.

The Oregon and Western Colonization Company was incorporated in 1910 as a South Dakota corporation by Watson P. Davidson, Sr., and several other investors— including Louis W. Hill, who secretly obtained a quarter interest—for the purpose of trading in real estates. The corporation acquired 800,00 acres of Oregon lands, including several billion feet of standing timber, from the Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountain Wagon Road Company which was owned by the Lazard Freres, Paris, through Charles Altschul, New York. These lands comprised a federal land grant awarded the Willamette Valley company in 1871 to construct a military road and consisted of alternate sections, 15 to 20 miles wide, extending from Ontario, in eastern Oregon, to Albany, midway between the Cascade Mountains and the Pacific.

Until May 1911, the Oregon and Western Colonization Company was subsidiary of the United States Farm Land Company whose president, Orlando A. Roberts, served as treasurer of the Oregon and Western company. Davidson was the president of the company and John E. Burchard was its vice-president and general manager until his resignation in May, 1911, during the company’s reorganization. Davidson assumed active corporate affairs thereafter. Hill withdrew from the company in 1917, taking its western Oregon timber lands as compensation for his equity, leaving Davidson the eastern Oregon agricultural lands, the maintenance and disposition of which became the primary business of the company. The company later acquired small properties in several other states, including real estate in Ramsey County, Minnesota. Its corporate interests were liquidated in 1970.

Manitoba Dairy Farms, Ltd.

Manitoba Dairy Farms, Ltd., got its start in 1909 when Watson P. Davidson traded two St. Paul hotels—the Aberdeen and the Angus—to John W. G. Winnett (London, Ont.) and Arthur C. Burdick (Victoria, B.C.) for 70,000 acres of marginal agricultural land near Marchand, Manitoba, about 60 miles southeast of Winnipeg. The company was chartered in 1924 under the provincial laws of Manitoba. Its purpose was to subdivide its 100,000 acres of land (including the original 70,000 plus additional land purchased from the provincial government) into dairy farms of 160, 320, and 640 acres, complete with livestock and buildings, and to dispose of these units to settlers. The company was operated by the Davidson Company and was closely affiliated with the Oregon and Western Colonization Company which held controlling stock. F. E. Davidson, Watson’s brother, was largely responsible for managing the property. The company later acquired land in Saskatchewan as well.

On June 30, 1958, the corporation was liquidated and all assets were transferred to the Oregon and Western Colonization Company, apparently due to a modification in the Companies Act of Manitoba which permitted the Oregon and Western Company to carry on Canadian operations under its own name. The Davidson Company thereafter grouped all these Canadian operations under the title of the Marchand Development Company, although the Canadian and provincial governments, in their fiscal and licensing functions, treated it as the Canadian operations of the Oregon and Western Colonization Company.

Davidson Company

The Davidson Company, per se, was formally created as a Minnesota corporation in 1928, under the impetus and control of Watson P. Davidson, Sr. (WPD), for the purpose of acquiring and managing many disparate properties that had theretofore been held by WPD personally. These included such assets as the Pioneer Building in St. Paul, which had been acquired by WPD in 1909 when it was known as the Pioneer Press Building; Minnesota and western lands, especially acreage in Morton County, North Dakota; 11,680-1/3 shares of Oregon and Western Colonization Company capital stock; life insurance policies and WPD and his son William F.; as well as notes, mortgages, and other accounts receivable or payable by WPD.

To this asset base were later added the Endicott Building; the Globe Building, acquired by WPD in 1917 on a 99-year lease; the Oppenheim Building, leased in 1931 under the same terms; the Finch Building, acquired by William F. Davidson in 1941; and the Griggs-Midway Building, purchased in 1954. These St. Paul properties were all operated as commercial office space rental facilities according to the ―Davidson Plan‖ of direct owner management. This type of real estate activity was always the Davidson Company’s principal business. The company also engaged in land sale and financing and in the management of various St. Paul and Minneapolis residential rental properties and the Jackson parking ramp. The company was also very much a Davidson family institution and provided a vehicle for managing various family-related trusts, estates, and investments.

Although its legal existence begins in 1928, the Davidson family’s—and especially WPD’s—interests in many of the properties that later composed it, extend back to the beginning of the century, at which time WPD began the real estate trading activity that led to the later acquisition of Davidson Company properties.

The precedent of the later Davidson Company with its generalized capitalist functions and strong family associations dates back to 1885 at which time William Fuson Davidson (WPD’s father-in-law) and his son Edward E. Davidson formed a co-partnership for purpose of general real estate, loan, and collection business.

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The collection documents the Davidson Company (1928-1976) and its predecessors (1890s-1920s), which engaged largely in the rental of commercial office space, primarily in St. Paul; the Oregon and Western Colonization Company and its predecessors (1871-1977), which sold land in Oregon and other western locations, as well as in Ramsey County, Minnesota; and Manitoba Dairy Farms, Ltd., which sold agricultural land and farmsteads in the province of Manitoba (1910-1976).

Also includes personal business files of W.P. Davidson (1870-1953), his brother Ernest H. Davidson (1914-1920), and his son William F. Davidson (1924-1927), containing additional information on these companies and on their other business, social, family, and philanthropic activities.

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These papers are organized into the following sections:

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Availability:

The collection is open for research use.

Preferred Citation:

[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. Davidson Company (Saint Paul, Minn.) Company Records. Minnesota Historical Society.

See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples.

Accession Information:

Accession number: 12,528; 12,692; 12,700; 13,798; 13,918; 13,947

Processing Information:

Processed by: David B. Peterson, December 1998

Catalog ID number: 990017351050104294

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These files consists of correspondence and related records pertaining to the personal business affairs of Watson P. Davidson, Sr. (WPD)*, his brother Ernest H. (EHD), and his son William F. (WFD), and provide a good deal of information on the management and operation of properties that eventually evolved into the Davidson Company. EHD and WFD each managed the Pioneer Building at different times and assisted WPD in various other business affairs, including sundry aspects of real estate disposition and management. There is also documentation of their many professional, philanthropic, and social activities in St. Paul and elsewhere.

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This unit of the collection consists largely of correspondence documenting the personal, largely non-business, affairs of WPD and other Davidson family members, including WPD’s wife Sarah M. and their children. Also included are tax files of various family-related estates.

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Some photographs have been transferred to the Minnesota Historical Society sound and visual collections.

The William Fuson Davidson and family papers are in the Minnesota Historical Society manuscript collections.

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This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.

Topics:

Business enterprises -- Minnesota -- Saint Paul.

Office buildings -- Management.

Real estate business -- Manitoba.

Real estate business -- Minnesota.

Real estate business -- Oregon.

Persons:

Davidson family.

Davidson, Watson Pogue, 1871-1954, author.

Organizations:

Globe Building (Saint Paul, Minn.)

Hamline Methodist Church (Saint Paul, Minn.)

Manitoba Dairy Farms, Ltd. (Saint Paul, Minn.), author.

Oregon and Western Colonization Company (Saint Paul, Minn.), author.

Pioneer and Endicott Buildings (Saint Paul, Minn.)

Places:

Saint Paul (Minn.)

Document Types:

Photographs.

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