John Davey

Background

John Davey was born on June 6, 1846 in Somersetshire, England; the son of Samuel and Ann (Shopland) Davey.

Education

The farm was his school, for no formal educational opportunities were offered him.

Career

From his father, who had charge of a large farm, Davey learned much in his boyhood days about elementary agriculture. At eight years of age he began working ten hours a day, but instead of permitting his tasks to become drudgery he made them aids to learning and to physical and mental discipline. At eighteen a foreman superintending an estate, he could neither read nor write, but his own application soon remedied the lack.

In 1866 he went to Torquay to make himself more proficient in horticulture and landscape gardening. After serving an apprenticeship of six years in those branches, he emigrated to the United States. Friends having preceded him to Warren, Ohio, he made that place his destination.

For several years after his arrival there the country was in a period of financial depression.

Davey’s attempt to conduct a greenhouse and landscape-gardening business was unsuccessful, but after his removal to Kent, Ohio, he enjoyed steady prosperity for many years. Davey was past fifty before he really struck his stride. His unusual knowledge of the vegetable world, acquired as a youth in England and continually broadened and amplified after he came to America, was gradually brought to the notice of estate-owners and others who needed his counsel. In regard to shade and ornamental trees, especially, he possessed a stock of information that seemed almost uncanny. It was the result of years of research and experiment.

Once having grasped the importance of a better understanding of the care and culture of trees in America, he set out on a one-man campaign to advance the cause. In his early efforts to spread the gospel of tree surgery, he expended thousands of dollars. Bringing out his first book, The Tree Doctor (1902), put him in debt, and years elapsed before the practise of his new profession was in itself remunerative.

After his service came widely into demand it was necessary to start at Kent an institute for the training of helpers. Later a research department was organized.

This was intended to test proposed improvements in tree surgery and to furnish free information about the care of trees.

Although two-thirds of Davey’s lifetime was spent in preparation for his actual career, the progress made in the last twenty years was significant.

At his death in 1923, he left a business of $750, 000 a year.

In addition to The Tree Doctor he published: A New Era in Tree Growing (1905), Davey’s Primer on Trees and Birds (1905), Instruction Books on Tree Surgery and Fruit Growing (1914), and various magazine articles on the subject of tree surgery.

Achievements

• In 1920 Davey received acclaim from such clients as The White House, The Naval Academy, and innovators and entrepreneurs Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller and William Wrigley.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Tree Doctor A Book on Tree Culture

    (Hardcover reprint of the original 1902 edition; hardbound...)

  • Davey's primer on trees and birds

    (This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)

Connections

On September 21, 1879 Davey married Bertha A. Reeves, of Salem, Ohio. He left two sons, Martin Luther Davey, member of Congress, and Paul H. Davey, who carried on their father’s work from the headquarters at Kent.

Father:

Samuel Davey

Mother:

Ann (Shopland) Davey

Wife:

Bertha A. Reeves

Son:

Martin Luther Davey

Son:

Paul H. Davey