George Draper Dayton (born 1857) bought a department store in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1902 after making money in banking. George Draper Dayton had two sons – David Draper Dayton (born 1880) and George Nelson Dayton (born 1886). Generation #1
George Draper was quite the philanthropist – he donated lots of money to the Dayton Foundation and laid the foundation for what would evolve into the United Way.
His two sons worked for the store – David Draper Dayton died at the age of 43 in 1923. George Draper (Gen #1) didn’t die until 1938. Younger son George Dayton would live until 1950. Generation #2
George Dayton (#2) had 5 sons – Bruce, Donald (d. 1989), Wallace (d. 2002), Kenneth, and Douglas. (Like men of their age, 4 of the 5 fought in World War 2). When George #2 died in 1950, each of his sons got 20% of the company. (Generation #3)
The company was still just the original store in downtown Minneapolis, and it wasn’t big enough to support 5 families – so they needed to expand.
In 1956, Dayton’s built the first 2 story enclosed shopping mall and opened its second store. In 1962, Douglas J Dayton would launch a new discount store chain called “Target”, and worked to make sure it wasn’t confused with the Dayton name and devalue their upscale brand or their standing in the Minneapolis social registry.
This NY Times Profile suggests that Bruce Dayton is more interested in collecting art and building museums than running a chain of department stores. The Dayton family were socially connected with the families running General Mills and Pillsbury. (Bruce Dayton is 91 now)
in 1966, Bruce Dayton would launch B Dalton books (as in Bruce Dayton). The book store chain was sold to Barnes & Noble in 1986 and the last stores were closed in 2010, in case you were wondering why you haven’t seen one recently.
The 3 members of generation #3 of the Dayton family actively working for the company were put out to pasture in 1978 and replaced by experienced non-family corporate managers, when the company really started to grow (after merging with Detroit’s Hudson department store and becoming Dayton-Hudson)
Which brings us to Mark Dayton. Mark Dayton is the son of Bruce Dayton, making him Generation #4. He was just elected to be Governor of Minnesota – he is a member of the Democratic Farm Labor party, a merger of the Democratic Party of Minnesota and the Farm Labor Party.
The Farm Labor party was founded in 1918 (Wasn’t something going on in Russia in 1918?) – an attempt to combine the power of farmers and labor unions. Communists were active in creating the organization…. (dissecting the history of the Farm Labor party would give Glenn Beck another year of material). The ties between communism and the Democratic party are not hidden, just ignored for the obvious reasons.
So the reason for digging up all this obscure history – Mark Dayton is in a beef right now with CBS owned radio station WCCO-AM. The past two governors (Jesse “the body” Ventura – 9/11 truther – and Republican Tim Pawlenty) have been given an hour a week on Fridays at 9 AM (Central) to talk to the Governor. WCCO offered him an hour on Saturday mornings instead. He’s upset. WCCO carries no syndicated programming other than John Grayson, who works for CBS and is carried on a handful of CBS affiliates in the middle of the night.
In totally unrelated news, the University of Minnesota has announced that its sports will be moving from WCCO to Clear Channel’s station.
