George Donges & Sons
The business now conducted by the George Dodds & Sons Granite Company at Xenia was established in the year 1864 and has for more than half a century been carried on continuously from its present headquarters in that city. George Dodds, from whom the company derives its name, was one of the original founders of the business, and his six sons have grown up with knowledge of its various branches. The business was incorporated in 1911, under its present name. During the same year the Victoria White Granite Company was organized, with quarries and cutting plants at Keene, New Hampshire. The properties of the Milford Pink Granite Quarries, at Milford. Massachsetts, have also been acquired by the Dodds brothers, the transaction having been mentioned by a leading trade journal at the time as "the greatest granite deal of this generation." The Milford Pink Granite Company is also incorporated. The executive offices of all these companies are in Xenia, all are incorporated under the laws of Ohio, and in all of them the Messrs. Dodds own a controlling interest. The president of the George Dodds & Sons Granite Company is Earl C. Dodds, now in charge of the Victoria White Granite Company's general offices at Keene, New Hampshire, and who for nearly ten years past has been the general executive head of the business at Xenia. He also is vice-president and treasurer of the Victoria White Granite Company and treasurer of the Milford Pink Granite Company. John Charles Dodds, vice-president and general manager of the company, as well as president of the Victoria White Granite Company and president of the Milford Pink Granite Company, resides in Xenia, but is kept traveling much of the time looking after the company's interests. Leslie J. Dodds, second vice-president, was for some years in the engraving department and is now at the head of one of the departments of the wholesale house of Wilson Brothers at Chicago, in which city he resides. Ralph C. Dodds, third vice-president, was for many years a salesman for the wholesale house of J. V. Farwell & Company at Chicago, but is now devoting his entire time to the sales department of the George Dodds & Sons Granite Company, in charge of the territory adjacent to Indianapolis, with headquarters in Indianapolis. Frank W. Dodds, secretary of the company, is now in charge of the company's executive offices at Xenia. He is a graduate of the Ohio State University College of Law and was for years a student of art and architecture at home and abroad. He also is secretary of the Milford Pink Granite Company and assistant secretary of the Victoria White Granite Company. George F. Dodds, treasurer and superintendent of construction of the company, secretary of the Victoria White Granite Company and vice-president of the Milford Pink Granite Company, is also located at Xenia and has charge of the manufacturing plant there, as well as of the work of setting up important work outside.
The late George Dodds, founder of the business above referred to and father of the six brothers who are now in charge of the same, was a native of Scotland, but had been a resident of this country since he was seventeen years of age, most of his life being spent in Xenia, where he died on November 17, 1914. He was born at Primside Mill, near the village of Yetholm, in Roxboroughshire, February 19, 1837, fifth in order of birth of the seven children born to George and Isabel (Taylor) Dodds, who were born in that same community and who spent all their lives there, and he remained in his native Scotland until he was seventeen years of age, when, in response to the request of his elder brother, Andrew Dodds, who three years before had come to this country and was then engaged as foreman of a marble-cutting esablishment at Madison, Indiana, he came over and joined his brother at Madison. It was on July 11, 1854, that George Dodds sailed from Glasgow and sixteen days later he landed at the port of New York, losing little time thereafter in joining his brother in Indiana. Under his brother's direction George Dodds became an expert marble-cutter. In 1859 the two brothers left Madison and came over into this part of Ohio and set up a marble shop in the vicinity of Antioch at Yellow Springs, in this county, where they remained until 1864, in which year they moved to Xenia and there enlarged their facilities for monumental work and erected a plant for general marble cutting, doing business under the firm nanie of A. & G. Dodds. In the spring of 1866 Andrew Dodds returned to his native Scotland and sent back a large quantity of Scotch granite, the Dodds brothers thus becoming the first importers of this quality of granite west of New York City. In the meantime they had established a branch house af St. Louis and in 1867 Andrew Dodds moved to that city to take charge of the business there, George Dodds remaining in charge of the plant at Xenia. The partnership thus being dissolved, George Dodds continued in business alone until 1871, when he admitted to partnership Alexander Caskey and in the next year established a branch house at Pittsburgh, of which Mr. Caskey took charge in 1873, Mr. Dodds thus again being left alone in charge of the business at Xenia, and from 1873 to 1897 he conducted the business. In the year last mentioned Mr. Dodds took into partnership with him his son, John Charles Dodds, present general manager of the George Dodds & Sons Granite Company, and thereafter extended the operations of the concern, making more of a specialty of the architectural phase of the business than theretofore, the original operations of the plant having been confined largely to monumental work, and this business has since been extended from year to year until now it is recognized as the greatest establishment devoted to architectural and mortuary art in the world.
George Dodds was twice married. On October 11, 1861, at Madison, Indiana, he was united in marriage to Elizabeth I. Ferguson, of that place, and to that union were born two children. George Fremont Dodds, present treasurer and superintendent of construction of the George Dodds & Sons Granite Company, of Xenia, and one w ho died in infancy. Mrs. Elizabeth I. Dodds died on August 20, 1865, while on a visit to her mother at Madison, and on October 16, 1866, Mr. Dodds married Mary E. Brown, of Xenia, daughter of Hiram and Rebecca Brown, the former of whom, an architect and builder, had come to Xenia to superintend the erection of the old court house. To that union were born eight children, three daughters besides the five sons mentioned above, Carrie B., widow of the Rev. George H. Geyer and further mention of whom is made elsewhere in this volume; Mary Alice, who died at the age of one year, and Jessie K., who resides at the family residence in Xenia. Mr. Dodds was a member of the First Methodist Episcopal church, was for many years recording steward of the congregation with which he was affiliated and was a leader in the work of the Good Templars during the days of that organization's strength. Mrs. Dodds, who died on October 10, 1913, was for years contributor to the cause of temperance hereabout through her activities in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of which organization she was for some time the president.
From History of Greene County Ohio, Its People, Industries and Institutions, vol. 2. M.A.Broadstone, editor. B.F.Bowen & Co., Indianapolis. 1918