John Daymond

Background

John Dymond was born on May 3, 1836 in Canada. He was the son of Richard and Anne (Hawkens) Dymond.

Education

He was educated in the public schools, Zanesville Academy, and Bartlett’s College, Cincinnati, worked for a time in his father’s store, dabbled in cotton manufacturing, and in the spring of 1860 went to New York, where he at once secured a position as a traveling salesman.

Career

In 1863 he became a broker in New York, in the firm of Dymond & Lally, which three years later opened a branch house in New Orleans and did a tremendous business in Louisiana sugar and molasses as well as in imported sugar and coffee.

In the autumn of 1868 the firm purchased the “Belair” and “Fairview” sugar plantations on the Mississippi River, thirty miles below New Orleans, and Dymond began his career as a planter, gradually withdrawing from his city business.

In the autumn of 1877 he led the movement resulting in the creation of the Louisiana Sugar Planter’s Association, and from 1887 to 1897 was its president.

He was one of the leaders in urging the expediency of research work in the culture and manufacture of sugar.

This agitation culminated in the organization of the Louisiana Scientific Agricultural Association, of which he was president until his death, and in the establishment of the Audubon Sugar Experiment Station.

When in 1888 the sugar-planters of New Orleans, in an endeavor to save the sugar industry from many preventable losses, formed a corporation to publish The Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, Dymond was chosen as managing editor as well as general manager and president, and served for thirty- four years.

He was quick to grasp new ideas in labor-saving devices and in processes, and to aid in their development.

The only time in his life that he visited a moving-picture show was when he went to see the interesting picture of a new machine for harvesting sugar-cane.

With the Hon. Henry McCall he was placed in charge of the experiments in diffusion conducted in the later eighties at Gov. War- moth’s Magnolia Plantation by Norman J. Colman fq. v. f, then United States commissioner of agriculture.

Inventors of new appliances of every sort for use in the sugar factory or in the field always received from him cordial interest and an opportunity to make at “Belair” such trials and experiments as they might wish to conduct.

Louisiana then led the sugar world in industrial progress, and many distinguished men from distant lands came there to investigate and study.

No visitor to the state ever went away without seeing Dymond at “Belair. ”

In 1888 he was a delegate to the National Democratic Convention and a member of the platform committee, where he energetically op- Dyott posed extreme free-trade ideas.

When, in September 1894, at a meeting of sugar-planters in New Orleans, the Lily White movement was inaugurated in protest against the Wilson-Gorman tariff act and the planters voted to go into a White Republican party, Dymond, as a protectionist and old-fashioned Democrat, cast the only dissenting vote.

He was also involved in local politics, serving as president to the police jury of Plaquemines Parish and as chief executive on Levee Boards.

In 1890 he became seriously interested in the anti-lottery movement and was the business manager of the party organ, the New Delta.

He carried his parish against the lottery, and as president of its police jury declined the proffered gift of $3, 000 of lottery money for the maintenance of the public levees during the high-water season of 1891.

He was active in the campaign that led to the election of the anti-lottery candidates, Edward D. White and Murphy J. Foster, as United States senator and governor of Louisiana, respectively.

In 1892 he sat in the legislature as representative from his parish, which had been under negro control since the Civil War.

In 1896 the parish still had a negro sheriff and a negro clerk of the court, but under Dymond’s lead white men were elected to all the parish offices, and he himself was reëlected to the legislature.

He represented his parish in the state constitutional convention of 1898 and in the state Democratic convention of 1899, and was four times elected state senator, declining reelection in 1920 on account of failing health.

After the burning of his “Belair” sugar house in 1907 and the sale of two of his large plantations, he gradually turned his attention to other industries.

In New Orleans, where he resided most of the time, he edited the Southern Farmer and the T rade Index of New Orleans, and published The Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, El Mundo Azucarero, and the Lower Coast Gazette.

Achievements

• Conspicuous among the devices he helped introduce were the Mallon stubble digger and the McDonald hydraulics; and among the processes, double and triple milling in grinding the cane, the redivivus or multiple effect evaporation, and the so-called dry-vacuum in vacuum boiling. He installed the first nine-roller mill ever erected in Louisiana; patented a sulphur machine, the shelf or cascade machine, which is now in use everywhere; was the first man in the sugar world to weigh sugarcane received at the mill as the basis for a comprehensive system of cost determination; and was also the first to purchase cane at the mill by weight.

Membership

He was a member of the Unitarian church from boyhood, and was honorary president of the First Unitarian Church of New Orleans at the time of his death.

Personality

He was quick to grasp new ideas in labor-saving devices and in processes, and to aid in their development.

Connections

In 1862 he was married to Nancy Elizabeth Cassidy of Zanesville.

Father:

Richard Dymond

Mother:

Anne (Hawkens) Dymond

Spouse:

Nancy Elizabeth Cassidy