A Brother to the Trees
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Book courtesy of Richard Blacher. Comments and pictures courtesy of Paul Jackson.
A Brother to the Trees
By Elbert Hubbard, 1909
This booklet measures 8" x 6" and is basically an advertisement for the Davey Tree Expert Company of Kent Ohio. Founded by John Davey and his son Martin L. Davey, the Davey Tree Expert Company was incorporated on February 4, 1909. In the original articles of incorporation, the purpose of the new company was stated as the, "...care, preservation, cultivation, propagation, and sale of trees, shrubs and vines, and the practice of landscape architecture." In addition, the company established one of the first formal, professional schools for tree surgery in the country. The Davey Tree Expert Company still is in operation today.
Roots of the Davey Tree Expert Company were firmly
implanted in England 63 years before the company gained corporate status. It was
on June 6, 1846, that John Davey was born at Stawley in Somersetshire on a farm
where his father served as manager. During John Davey's years of youth there
were no public schools in rural England, hence no opportunity for him to gain an
education. He was 21 before he learned his ABCs. At that age, too, he made an
important decision---he would study horticulture and landscape gardening. To
fulfill that commitment, he went to Torquay in southern England, the home of
famous gardens and greenhouses. He was apprenticed there for six years,
completing his training at age 27.
Like millions of other sons of Europe, he heard the call to
America....At age 27, he landed at Castle Garden, N.Y., in the spring of 1873.
Soon after, he came to Warren, Ohio, and found work as a janitor at a private
school. [eventually]...he accepted a job at Standing Rock Cemetery in Kent,
Ohio. With his wife, whom he had met and married in Warren, he moved to Kent in
1881. His job was a challenging one. In existence for more than twenty years,
Standing Rock Cemetery was overgrown with plants which were suffering from lack
of care and poor planning....He worked out a careful plan for the grounds and
transformed the cemetery into a place of striking beauty with new plantings of
trees, shrubs and flowers.
He became a prolific writer of pamphlets and a frequent
lecturer on natural subjects, and continued to preach his doctrine of tree
surgery and the importance of maintaining a proper balance of nature. By 1890,
he became known as the "treeman of the town." John Davey and his eldest son,
Wellington, planted hundreds of trees along the streets and around homes in the
community and performed a modest amount of tree work. He became determined to
gain acceptance of his methods for the care of trees, and he decided to write a
book. He worked 12 hours per day earning a meager living and then, at night, he
meticulously prepared copy for a book for which he could find no financial
backers. Dedicated to the preservation of trees, he assumed a debt of $7000 to
meet the cost of printing. The year was 1901. The Tree Doctor was
published, a milestone in the career of John Davey and the science of tree
preservation. As a result of The Tree Doctor, more work came John Davey's
way than he and his two sons, Wellington and Jim...could handle. John Davey
began to train men in the new science as early as 1902.
With the same determination that had marked his whole life,
he began the development of a tree care organization. He trained men, supervised
their work, managed the expanding venture and still found time to write more
books and articles and to give more lectures.
The Tree Doctor won the support of several prominent easterners, among them
J. Horace McFarland, president of the American Civic
Association....McFarland...arranged contracts with those leaders for...speaking
engagements and tree clinics. Among those leaders was George Eastman, father of
the Eastman Kodak Company who, in 1908, arranged for Davey to address some of
the wealthiest citizens of Rochester, N.Y.
John and his son Wellington established the Davey School of
Practical Forestry, field training which evolved into more formal classroom
study renamed The Davey Institute of Tree Surgery and, later, The Davey
Institute of Tree Science....the school came into being between 1902 and 1906.
John Davey was a naturalist, not a manager. As orders for his services exceeded
his expectations, he soon realized that he was being inundated by managerial
matters and something must be done. Enter, Martin L. Davey,...John's second son.
Martin then was a student at Oberlin College. His father induced him to
interrupt his studies to become a partner in the growing tree business. That was
in 1906. Martin, then not yet 23, recognized this as a great opportunity so he
accepted. He never returned to school. In the fall of 1908, John Davey and son
Martin made two important decisions. One was to establish a formal school in
which men would be trained scientifically to perform tree surgery work; the
other was to organize the business on a permanent basis. The business was
incorporated as The Davey Tree Expert Company on February 4, 1909. John Davey
was the President, and Martin became the general manager and treasurer.
Instructors for the first formal school included two
well-known professors from Cornell University....Botany and entomolgy were the
principal courses of study along with specimen identification , trimming
training, tree diseases, cavity filling and the like, plus instruction in
English and accounting. Throughout most of its early years, The Davey Tree
Expert Company was beset by a multitude of problems: insufficient operating
capital, shortage of credit, difficulties in finding men to perform the work. In
1910...Martin set in motion a table of organization that still prevails in the
company today. He set up territories and assigned a salesman to each of them.
The salesman was responsible for obtaining sufficient business to keep crews
busy and for profit in his territory.
In 1911, Martin took a bold step. He conceived the idea that
the Company could gain immeasurable prestige if Davey crews could perform work
on the U.S. Capitol grounds. After frustrating attempts to interest the grounds
superintendent, Martin turned to a more direct approach. He clipped an insect
infested branch from a maple tree and placed it upon the superintendent's desk.
He got the order and, thus, began a long association of The Davey Tree Expert
Company in the performance of government work, which has included Davey
treatment of trees at the White House, the Washington elm in Washington D.C., a
horse chestnut planted by the first president in Fredricksburg, VA., and many
others including work performed on trees on the Parliment Grounds in Ottawa,
Canada. Such bold moves went a long way in launching Davey's national
reputation.
By 1915, the Davey Expert Tree Company was demonstrating
steady progress. Earnings had been plowed back into the business and, during the
period from 1915 to 1920, the company expanded five times than during its first
years following incorporation. The burgeoning company...was plunged into sorrow
on November 8, 1923 with the death of John Davey. He was laid to rest in
Standing Rock Cemetery. John Davey's death called for a reorganization of the
company. Martin...was elected president. Paul Davey was named first vice
president and director of research. James A.G. Davey became second vice
president and New York manager.
The "Davey Radio Hour" was a serious bid for national
attention. For 26 weeks in 1930, the company sponsored the program of old music
favorites which was aired from New York City and transmitted by 18 stations of
the National Broadcasting Company. A weekly feature on the program was an eight
minute talk by Martin Davey. His talks dealt with the Davey philosophy of caring
for trees.... The radio program, coming at a time when the country was in deep
depression, was only one phase of a multi-sided public relations and advertising
thrust conceived by the company during that period.
Other Important Davey Tree Expert Company Figures
Martin ("Brub") L. Davey Jr. : son of Martin L. Davey, 1940 graduate of
Yale University with a major in botany and a minor in business administration,
veteran of WW II, elected company president in 1946, left the office in 1961.
Alexander M. Smith: husband of Evangeline Davey, served on board of directors,
elected cahirman of the board, served as president of Lamson and Sessions
Company, and served as "part-time" president of Davey Tree Company from 1961 to
1965.
Paul Hershey: served as president from 1965 to 1968. (first nonfamily president)
Joseph T. Myers: served as president from 1972 to 1976.
John W. Joy: began term as president in 1977
*** During the tenure of Mr. Joy, the Davey family sold the company
Excerpts taken from the Davey Bulletin,
December 1984
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